RealClearPolicy Newsletters: Original Articles
The Extended Republic
Dear Reader —
What is a political community? This seemingly abstract question has become perhaps the practical problem for our politics today. With the rise of globalization, identity politics, and nationalist populism, it is increasingly clear that any successful politics must be capable of articulating a plausible conception of political community — by virtue of which a wide array of otherwise distinct individuals might nevertheless be said to belong.
According to Aristotle, every community “is established for the sake of some good.” This is because “everyone does everything for the sake of what they believe to be good,” though they of course can be wrong about what “the good” is. It follows that a political community must also be established for the sake of some good. But what? Aristotle’s answer is human flourishing — happiness or the “good life” — just as it is for each individual.
Like Plato, Aristotle believed that such a community must be large enough to be self-sufficient, but must nevertheless remain relatively small. This was partly for practical reasons, since it is difficult to govern a city-state effectively if it has a “swollen population.” Moreover, to administer justice and to “distribute the offices according to merit” require that the citizens “know each other’s personal characters,” which is only possible in a small community. Then there is the difficulty, which especially preoccupied modern philosophers, that we do not all agree on what constitutes the good life, and these disagreements only multiply with size.
For such reasons, as Ryan Streeter points out, political philosophers throughout history have tended to agree with Aristotle that “the size of a polity matters” and that, typically, smaller is better.
One of the central innovations of the American political system is to flip this reasoning on its head in what James Madison called the “extended republic.” Here the political community is conceived of as an ensemble of distinct, smaller communities, which may disagree about how best to pursue the good life. Such a republic is thus a kind of second-order political community, which can tolerate a high degree of difference and competition between rival interests. This solves Aristotle’s practical problem by maintaining a dual system in which power is centralized within the federal government and, at the same time, dispersed throughout state and local governments. And it solves the problem of conflicting accounts of the good by ensuring that all communities, not just the majority, have a voice in this system.
For this to work, the power to govern must be delegated to elected officials — at both the state and national levels — who represent the citizenry. This is in contrast to ancient republics in which the citizens participated directly in government. Thus, while the inhabitants of Madison’s “extended republic” are citizens, not subjects, most of them are excluded “most of the time…from direct self-government,” as William A. Galston writes. And herein lies another key innovation of the American system: This “exclusion … opens up a large sphere of noncivic life — economic, social, cultural, religious — which citizens expect to conduct on their own terms.”
As Tocqueville saw, the American political system works precisely because of the institutions of civil society that thrive within this sphere, and which mediate between the individual and state. Aristotle’s vision of a political community may be possible, then, but within a broader political community that includes within it a “variety of moral subcultures suited to enabling citizens to flourish together,” as Yuval Levin puts it.
Madison defended the idea of the extended republic because the United States was in its early days already relatively large and heterogeneous. One might imagine, then, that as our country has grown in both size and complexity, the Madisonian principle would have assumed only greater force.
But the opposite has happened.
These are some of the many issues lately taken up in our pages. Below you will find just a few more highlights.
— M. Anthony Mills, Managing Editor | RealClear Media Group
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A Late Summer Budgetary Nightmare? James C. Capretta highlights discouraging new forecasts.
Racist and Unjust Bail System Needs to Be Reformed. Justin Sherman & Leah Abrams call for overhauling processes that “amplify the disparate impact of the criminal-justice system.”
Dems Should Drop Delay Tactics and Evaluate Kavanaugh on the Merits. Joshua D. Wright makes his case in our pages.
Antitrust Is About Constraining Market Power. Glenn B. Manishin argues that critics of mega-mergers miss the mark.
RealClear Book of the Week: “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50.” Carl M. Cannon reviews Jonathan Rauch’s examination of the peaks and valleys of middle age and beyond.
Jonathan Rauch on Happiness After 50. Also in RealClearBooks, Carl M. Cannon interviews the author.
What If OPEC Doesn’t Have the Oil That It Claims? In RealClearEnergy, Jude Clemente explores the possibility of future price spikes.
The Dethroning of King Corn in the U.S. Ethanol Industry. Also in RCE, Joe Barnett considers the fate of a federal mandate that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline.
Businesses Game the FDA to Block Competition. In RealClearHealth, Andrew Yarrow worries that companies’ ability to game the regulatory process undercuts the agency’s mission of ensuring safety.
Trump’s Health Reform Fixes Obama’s Mandate Mess. Also in RCH, Sally C. Pipes defends the administration’s move to allow consumers to buy “short-term” coverage.
