29/06/09

Another week, another display of reputational self-harm by the political class: an ostensibly trust-restoring speaker elected by one party to wind the other up; the failed attempt to hold the inquiry on Iraq in private; not to mention those redacted expenses.

During his unsuccessful bid to become the next speaker, Patrick McCormack let his fellow members know that the contest coincided with the date of Niccolo Machiavelli’s death.  Amidst the candidate’s paeans to a new era of virtuous politics, McCormack seemed to be invoking old ‘Hatchevil’ to remind the House of the disdain with which the public now views it. In fact, I’d argue our political culture is nowhere near Machiavellian enough. Although Machiavelli gained his amoral reputation for teaching princes how to maintain power, he saved his best advice for citizens seeking to maintain their liberty. 

In his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli used the ‘glorious’ history of republican Rome as a foil for why his native Florence degenerated from a free republic into tyranny. He argued Rome preserved its freedom more effectively because of the way power was divided and managed between citizens and elite. He lavished his highest praise for the tribunes of the plebs (an institution in which only the lower classes could sit), for restraining the power grabbing insolence of the ‘grandi’ (plutocrats and the upper classes).

Machiavelli singles out the tribune’s capacity to publicly indict members of the (grandi dominated) senate of corruption or malfeasance, or even prominent private citizens for seeking to exert excessive influence over the Republics politics. Machiavelli contrasted public accusations to ‘calumnies’: frivolous, anonymous and unconfirmed charges, and stressed that those who made them warranted a counter indictment on these grounds. He argued, “calumnies are as injurious to republics as public indictments are useful”. Machiavelli believed Florence’s political disorder stemmed from  “the inability of the masses to find a normal outlet for the animus” aroused by the conduct of political or economic elites.

If politicians want to save themselves from the modern day calumnies launched against them by the press - not to mention the  ‘electoral disorder’ marked by the growth of extremist parties and voter abstention, - perhaps they should institute a modern version of the public accusation. This form of citizen oversight would also be more effective at deterring abuses of power than the vote alone, and more educative and engaging for citizens to boot.

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