The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

The founder of political science and its greatest exemplar is Aristotle, who wrote treatises on some 150 regimes. Alas, only fragments remain of what he wrote about Athens.

What Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, knows compared to Aristotle can be put on a postage stamp. The same may be said of postmodern political scientists vis-à-vis Machiavelli. Yes, unknown to Darwin, we have descended from Swift’s Brobdingnagians to Lilliputians to Yahoos.

Here, then, is a general outline of Aristotle’s political science, which I have distilled primarily from Book IV of his Politics.

A. The Scope, Subject Matter and Methods of Political Science

1. Political science is predominantly a practical discipline intended primarily for statesmen.

2. Aristotelian political asks: “what are the best political arrangements?”

   1. a. Political science is not merely a descriptive science; it is also prescriptive.

   2. b. The object is to preserve what is good in any regime and how to make things better.

   3. c. Hence, political science is concerned with preservation and change.

   4. d. To make things better presupposes a standard of the Best.

B. The Term “Best “is Ambiguous.

1. What is the Best Regime in Theory?

   1. a. Answer: What a person of understanding would reasonably wish for—not a utopia.

   2. b. Best regime is one most conducive to the best way of life: kingship-aristocracy.

   3. c. Its primary emphasis will be education or ethics or the development of character.

2. The Best Practical Regime (or best in general): republic meaning a mixed regime (or middle class that combines aspects of democracy and oligarchy).

   1. a. Requires good physical and human resources or must be attainable by most men.

   2. b. Could be instituted under less than ideal circumstances.

   3. c. Does not require exceptional virtue and understanding.

   4. d. Its primary emphasis will be not be on the cultivation of virtue but on laws and institutions (“checks and balances”) to promote moderation (a middle class tendency).

3. The Best for a Particular People

   1. a. Designed for a particular people (agricultural, commercial, or combination).

   2. b. It must be appropriate to a particular people’s customs, economy, natural resources, circumstances, etc.

4. The Best for Preserving Existing Regimes

   1. a. The best way to preserve the way of life of a specific people.

   2. b. Requires knowledge of actual regimes: their origin, development, beliefs and values, laws and institutions, economic resources, geographic circumstances.

   3. c. Must study their factual distribution of power, class structure, interest groups.

C. Causes of Revolution or Change in Different Kinds of Regimes

1. What preserves and what destroys each kind of regime?

2. How to establish the different kinds of regimes and their variety.

   1. a. The statesman and the political scientist must know all the different kinds of regimes so that they can guide them along the path or reform and improvement.

   2. b. There are different kinds of democracies and different kinds of oligarchies.

   3. c. It would be disastrous to attempt to establish, say, an aristocracy, when only a democracy was feasible.

   4. d. But since there are different kinds of democracies, it would also be disastrous to establish one type when another was more appropriate.

   5. e. If the demos greatly outnumbers other groups (the wealthy), a democracy may be inevitable. But you might try to bias political arrangements to favor farmers over laborers.

   6. f. Democracy is generally better than oligarchy, but there might be some situations where an oligarchy is better—depends on the composition of the population. (E.g., debased unskilled laborers or illiterate masses, but a fairly large number of well-to-do families.)

   7. g. Try to insure that some old families get some political recognition.

3. The statesman or political scientist must know how to draft laws appropriate to the regime.

   1. a. Must understand the character of the regime.

   2. b. Must understand the virtues and vices of its citizens—their beliefs and habits, their likes and dislikes, their different interests groups.

   3. c. Must understand their potentialities for improvement.

4. Unskilled statesman or politician may enact laws in conflict with the regime and lead to its eventual transformation or destruction.

   1. a. Suffrage and tax laws (may disaffect either the poor or the rich).

   2. b. Education laws or policies (may encourage either chastity or immorality).

   3. c. Immigration laws (may cause excessive ethnic heterogeneity).

5. Because there are different kinds of regimes—say democracies—laws cannot be equally beneficial for all types.

   1. a. Presidential versus parliamentary systems of government.

   2. b. Small and large democracies; monocultural and multicultural democracies.

From the above it will be clear there is no dogmatism in Aristotle. I wonder how many political scientists in Israel teach Aristotle’s Politics—an inseparable part of which is his Nicomachean Ethics?

(to be continued)