SAMUEL HUNTINGTON

 

Selection from “The Democratic Distemper”

 

1975

 

The governability of a democracy depends upon the relation between the authority of its governing institutions and the power of its opposition institutions.  In a parliamentary system, the authority of the cabinet depends upon the balance of power between the governing parties and the opposition parties in the legislature.  In the United States, the authority of government depends upon the balance of power between a broad coalition of governing institutions and groups, which includes but transcends the executive and other formal institutions of government, and those institutions and groups which are committed to the opposition.  During the 1960's and early 1970's the balance of power between government and opposition shifted significantly.  The central governing insti­tution in the political system, the Presidency, declined in power; institutions playing apposition roles in the system, most notably the national media and Congress, signifi­cantly increased their power.

 

"Who governs?" is obviously one of the most important questions to ask concern­ing any political system.  Even more important, however, may be the question, "Does anybody govern?" To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War 11, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, founda­tions, and media, which constitute the private sector's "Establishment." In the 20th century, whenever the American political system has moved systematically with respect to public policy, the direction and the initiative have come from the White House.  When the President is unable to exercise authority, when he is unable to command the cooperation of key decision-makers elsewhere in society and government, no one else has been able to supply comparable purpose and initiative.  To the extent that the United States has been governed on a national basis, it has been governed by the President.  During the 1960's and early 1970's, however, the authority of the President declined significantly, and the governing coalition which had, in effect, helped the President to run the country from the early 1940's down to the early 1960's began to disintegrate. . . .

 

The most notable new source of national power in 1970, as compared to 1950, was the national media-meaning the national television networks, the national news magazines, and the major newspapers with national reach, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.  It is a long-established and familiar political fact that within a city, and even within a state, the power of the local press serves as a major check on the power of the local government.  In the early 20th century, the United States devel­oped an effective national government, making and implementing national policies.  Only in recent years, however, has there come into existence a national press with the economic independence and communications reach to play a role with respect to the President that a local newspaper plays with respect to a mayor.  This marks the emer­gence of a very significant check on Presidential power.  In the two most dramatic domestic policy conflicts of the Nixon Administration-the Pentagon Papers and Watergate-organs of the national media challenged and defeated the national execu­tive.  The press, indeed, played a leading role in bringing about what no other single institution, group, or combination of institutions and groups had done previously in American history: Forcing out of office a President who had been elected less than two years before by an overwhelming popular majority.  No future President can or will forget that fact.

 

The late 1960's and early 1970's also saw a reassertion of the power of Congress.  In part, this represented simply the latest phase in the institutionalized constitutional conflict between Congress and President; in part, also, of course, it reflected the fact that after 1968, the Presidency and the Congress were controlled by different parties.  In addition, however, these years saw the emergence, first in the Senate and then in the House, of a new generation of Congressional activists willing to challenge established authority in their own chambers as well as in the executive branch.

 

     The increased power of the national opposition, centered in the press and in Con­gress, undoubtedly is related to and perhaps is a significant cause of the critical attitudes which the public has towards federal, as compared to state and local, government.  While data for past periods are not readily available, certainly the impression one gets is that over the years the public often has tended to view state and local government as inef­ficient, corrupt, inactive, and unresponsive.  The federal government, on the other hand, has seemed to command much greater confidence and trust, going all the way from early childhood images of the "goodness" of the President to respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, and other federal agencies having an impact on the population as models of efficiency and integrity.  It now would appear that there has been a drastic reversal of this confidence.  In 1973, a national sample was asked whether it then had more or less confidence in each of the three levels of gov­ernment than it had had five years previously.  Confidence in all three levels of govern­ment declined more than it rose, but the proportion of the public which reported a decline in confidence in the federal government (57 per cent) was far higher than that which reported a decline in confidence in state (26 per cent) or local (30 per cent) government.  As one would expect, substantial majorities also went on record in favor of increasing the power of state government (59 per cent) and of local government (61 per cent).  But only 32 per cent wanted to increase the power of the federal government, while 42 per cent voted to decrease its power.

 

     The balance between government and opposition depends not only on the relative power of different institutions, but also on their roles in the political system.  The Pres­idency has been the principal national governing institution in the United States; its power has declined.  The power of the media and of Congress has increased.  Can their roles change?  At this point the media are deeply committed to an opposition role.  The critical question concerns the role of Congress.  In the wake of a declining Presidency, can Congress organize itself to furnish the leadership to govern the country?  During most of this century, the trends in Congress have been in the opposite direction.  In recent years the increase in the power of Congress has outstripped an increase in its ability to govern.  If the institutional balance between government and its opposition is to be redressed, the decline in Presidential power has to be reversed, and the ability of Congress to govern has to be increased.

 

      The vigor of democracy in the United States in the 1960's thus contributed to a democratic distemper involving the expansion of governmental activity on the one hand, and the reduction of governmental authority on the other.  This democratic dis­temper, in turn, had further important consequences for the functioning of the political system.  The extent of these consequences, as of 1975, was still unclear, and dependent on the duration and the scope of the democratic surge.

 

      The expansion of governmental activity produced budgetary deficits and a major expansion of total governmental debt from $336 billion in 1960 to $557 billion in 1971.  These deficits contributed to inflationary tendencies in the economy.  But at the same time that the expansion of governmental activity creates problems of financial solvency for government, the decline in governmental authority reduces still further the ability of government to deal effectively with these problems.  The implementation of "hard" decisions imposing constraints on any major economic group is difficult in any democ­racy and particularly difficult in the United States, where the separation of powers provides economic interest groups with a variety of points of access to governmental decision-making.  During the Korean War, for instance, governmental efforts at wage and price control failed miserably, as business and farm groups were able to riddle the legislation with loopholes in Congress, and labor was able to use its leverage with the executive branch to eviscerate wage controls.  All this occurred despite the fact that there was a war on and the government was not lacking in authority.  The decline in governmental authority in general and of the central leadership in particular during the early 1970's opens new opportunities for special interests to bend governmental behav­ior to their special purposes.

 

In the United States, as elsewhere in the industrialized world, domestic problems thus become intractable.  The public develops expectations which it is impossible for government to meet.  The activities-and expenditures-of government expand, and yet the success of government in achieving its goals seems dubious. in a democracy, however, political leaders in power need to score successes if they are going to stay in power.  The natural result is to produce a gravitation to foreign policy, where suc­cesses-or seeming successes-are much more easily arranged than they are in domestic policy.  Trips abroad, summit meetings, declarations and treaties, and rhetorical aggres­sion all produce the appearance of activity and achievement.  The weaker a political leader is at home, the more likely he is to be travelling abroad.  The dynamics of this search for foreign policy achievements by democratic leaders who lack authority at home gives to dictatorships (whether Communist party states or oil sheikdoms) ­which are free from such compulsions-a major advantage in the conduct of international relations.

 

The expansion of expenditures and the decrease in authority are also likely to encourage economic nationalism in democratic societies.  Each country will have an interest in minimizing the export of some goods in order to keep prices down in its own society.  At the same time, other interests are likely to demand protection against the import of foreign goods.  In the United States, this has meant embargoes-as on the export of soybeans-on the one hand, and tariffs and quotas on the import of textiles, shoes, and comparable manufactured goods, on the other.  A strong government will not necessarily follow more liberal and internationalist economic policies, but a weak government is almost certainly incapable of doing so.

 

Finally, a government which lacks authority and which is committed to substantial domestic programs will have little ability, short of a cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary to deal with foreign policy problems and defense.  In the early 1970's, as we have seen, spending for all significant foreign policy programs was far more unpopular than spending for any major domestic purpose.  The United States government has given up the authority to draft its citizens into the armed forces, and is now committed to providing the monetary incentives to attract volunteers with a stationary or declining percentage of the GNP....

 

Unlike Japanese society and most European societies, American society is charac­terized by a broad consensus favoring democratic, liberal, and egalitarian values.  For much of the time, the commitment to these values is neither passionate nor intense.  During periods of rapid social change, however, these democratic and egalitarian values of the American creed are reaffirmed.  The intensity of belief during such "creedal pas­sion periods" leads to the challenging of established authority and to major efforts to change governmental structure to accord more fully with those values.  In this respect, as has already been remarked, the democratic surge of the 1960's shares many charac­teristics with the comparable egalitarian and reform movements of the Jacksonian and Progressive eras.  Those "surges," like the contemporary one, also occurred during peri­ods of realignment between party and governmental institutions on the one hand, and social forces on the other.  The slogans, goals, values, and targets of all these movements are strikingly similar.  Consequently, the implication of this analysis is that in due course the democratic surge and the resulting dual distemper in government will be moderated.

 

    Al Smith once remarked, "The only cure for the evils of democracy is more democ­racy." Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the fire. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an "excess of democracy," in much the same sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to those consequences of the Jacksonian Revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War.  What is needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.

 

     In practice, this moderation has two major areas of application.  First, democracy is only one way of constituting authority, and it is not necessarily a universally appli­cable one. in many situations, the claims of expertise, seniority, experience, and special talents may override the claims of democracy as a way of constituting authority.  During the surge of the 1960's, however, the democratic principle was extended to many insti­tutions where it can, in the long run, only frustrate the purposes of those institutions.  A university where teaching appointments are subject to approval by students may be a more democratic university, but it is not likely to be a better university.  In similar fashion, armies in which the commands of officers have been subject to veto by the collective wisdom of their subordinates have almost invariably come to disaster on the battlefield.  The arenas where democratic procedures are appropriate are, in short, limited.

 

     Second, the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups.  In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics.  In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it also has been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively.  Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political system.  Yet the danger of "overloading" the political system with demands which extend its func­tions and undermine its authority still remains.  Less marginality on the part of some groups thus needs to be replaced by more self-restraint on the part of all groups.

 

    The Greek philosophers argued that the best practical state-the "mixed regime" ­would combine several different principles of government in its constitution.  The Con­stitution of 1787 was drafted with this insight very much in mind.  Over the years, however, the American political system has emerged as a distinctive case of extraordi­narily democratic institutions joined to an exclusively democratic value system.  Democ­racy, as a result, can very easily become a threat to itself in the United States.  Political authority is never strong here, and it is peculiarly weak during a period of intense commitment to democratic and egalitarian ideals.  In the United States, the strength of the democratic ideal poses a problem for the governability of democracy in a way which is not the case elsewhere.

 

     The vulnerability of democratic government in the United States thus comes not primarily from external threats, though such threats are real, nor from internal subver­sion from the left or the right, although both possibilities could exist, but rather from the internal dynamics of democracy itself in a highly educated, mobilized, and partic­ipant society.  "Democracy never lasts long," John Adams observed: "It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.  There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." That suicide is more likely to be the product of overindulgence than of any other cause.  A value which is normally good in itself is not necessarily optimized when it is maximized.  We have come to recognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economic growth.  There are also potentially desirable limits to the extension of political democracy.  Democracy could have a longer life if it has a more balanced existence.