We come to the tail end of the United States Independence celebrations and now France gears up for Bastille Day.
Two Republics – France spent nearly 80 years riven by almost constant internal strife, killing many of their own countrymen. The United States held out a bit longer before it erupted in Civil War.
The tension of Paris during the Reign of Terror is the subject of my WIP Moonstone Conspiracy. Here is a snippet:
Daniel immediately stepped forward to put himself in front of Abigail. He thrust his hand out.
“Citizen Rene at your service. I’d be indebted to know news of Paris. I’ve never been there and it’s been what…? Ten years?” Daniel turned to Abigail, “since my wife was there. Not since her sister married Bernard.”
The old man shook his head. “There are executions daily. They renamed Place Louis XV — called it Place de la Revolution. It is now awash with the blood of priests and aristocrats to appease the new god of the Republic.”
– Moonstone Conspiracy
There are fundamental differences between the formation of the two republics, articulated by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine , which I touch on in this post here.
“And time is a facility we don’t have, my friends,” sighed Pitt. “Mirabeau is France’s last great hope.
“If he can persuade Louis to accept limits to his power and a Parliament like Britain’s, it will be enough reform to satisfy most of the French revolutionaries, and the agitation to spread revolution to our shores will wither on the vine.
“But if he cannot, it means Louis’ head on the chopping block and no turning back the tide of bloodshed.
“And if history is our guide, should France go to war with itself, it will also go to war with England.”
– Moonstone Obsession
Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, was a man ahead of his time and, had he be listened to, there was every chance that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette might have kept their heads and the Reign of Terror and the associated internecine deaths might never have happened.
But all that’s history right? After vacillating between being a monarchy and a republic France has been a peaceful republic (association with two world wars not withstanding) since the late 1850s. The US has flourished as a republic almost from the beginning and was the 20th Century’s greatest super power (I don’t believe it is any longer, but that will have to be the subject of another post).
Well, today I came across a fascinating review of a new book by American Constitutional scholar FH Buckley, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America,
In it he reveals that if the United States is to claim any especial exceptionalism, it is that it has managed nearly 240 years without falling into despotism as republics are apt to do.
He claims that the most stable and prosperous form of government is a constitutional monarchy – just as British Commonwealth has. It must also be pointed out that it has been more than 325 years since England was riven by Revolution (1688’s Glorious Revolution which is also known as the Bloodless Revolution).
There’s a lesson there, Buckley argues. While “an American is apt to think that his Constitution uniquely protects liberty,” the truth “is almost exactly the reverse.” In a series of regressions using the Freedom House rankings, Buckley finds that “presidentialism is significantly and strongly correlated with less political freedom.”
In this, he builds on the work of the late political scientist Juan Linz, who in a pioneering 1990 article, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” argued that presidential systems encourage cults of personality, foster instability, and are especially bad for developing countries. Subsequent studies have bolstered Linz’s insights, showing that presidential systems are more prone to corruption than parliamentary systems, more likely to suffer catastrophic breakdowns, and more likely to degenerate into autocracies. Buckley puts it succinctly: “there are a good many more presidents-for-life than prime-ministers-for-life.”
Even France as a Parliamentary system of sorts, a semi-presidential system (like Russia) in which the President is the titular head shares executive powers with the Prime Minister.
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The advantage of having a completely politically independent head of state as opposed to a electing a partisan politician is explained this way:
“The character of the presidency is such,” the British journalist Henry Fairlie wrote in 1967, “that the majority of the people can be persuaded to look to it for a kind of leadership which no politician, in my opinion, should be allowed, let alone invited, to give. ‘If people want a sense of purpose,’ [former British Prime Minister] Harold Macmillan once said to me, ‘they should get it from their archbishops.'”
Presidential regimes invite executive dominance by combining the roles of “head of state” and “head of government” in one figure. “As heads of government,” Buckley writes, “presidents are the most powerful officials in their countries. As heads of state, they are also their countries’ ceremonial leaders,” and claim “the loyalty and respect of all patriots.” Where parliamentary systems cleave off power from ceremony, presidential ones make the chief executive the living symbol of nationhood: the focal point of national hopes, dreams, fears—and occasionally fantasies.
Agree with the perspective or not, it does make for fascinating reading.
And the lessons of the past that can be learned today is why I love writing historical romance.