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July 13 - July 20, 2022
In sum, he saw many upsides to the untrammeled freedom and independence permitted in the United States. But he saw downsides as well. He was prescient in predicting that slavery would eventually tear America apart. He worried about materialism, isolation, and the tyranny of the majority. And he judged that American arts and science left something to be desired.
Athens was the world’s first democracy, and it became leader of the Greeks. Rome was a lonely republic in the ancient world, yet it rose to become the most dominant polity of antiquity. The leading power of Renaissance Italy was the Venetian Republic, the only major Italian city-state to retain its status as an independent republic throughout this time period. The Dutch Republic was the first republic of early modern Europe, and it overthrew the Spanish yoke and established its own global empire.
Thompson, the leading states in the international system for the past four hundred years (the timeframe of his study) have been: the Dutch Republic (1609–1713), Great Britain (1714–1945), and the United States (1945–present). These states were also among the most democratic of their time. According to this reckoning, therefore, liberal leviathans have led the world for the past four centuries and counting.
Political scientists measure a state’s power in the international system, using the Correlates of War Composite Index of National Capabilities, or CINC score.2 The
According to the standard coding, the major powers since 1816 (the year in which that dataset begins) include: the United States since 1898; the United Kingdom since 1816; France from 1816 until 1940 and again after 1945; Germany (1816–1918, 1925–1945, 1991–present); Austria-Hungary (1816–1918); Italy (1860–1943); Russia (1816–1917, 1922–present); China (1950–present); and Japan (1895–1945, 1991–present).
Polity scores. As discussed previously, Polity scores measure a country’s level of political openness on a continuum, which ranges from −10 (most autocratic) to +10 (most democratic).4 Full democracies, such as the United Kingdom, receive a Polity score of +10. The most autocratic dictatorships, such as Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, receive a −10. Other countries are somewhere in the middle. For example, the United States was scored a +10, Russia +4, and China −5. Positive six and above is the standard cutoff to qualify as a democracy in the modern international system.
Democracies are also more likely to rank among the “major powers.” Sixteen percent of all full democracies in the data were categorized as major powers. This compares to only 7 percent of autocracies.8 Again, this is a statistically significant difference.
To put this finding in more concrete terms, what if China and Russia were to undergo a thoroughgoing transition to full democracy or the United States were to backslide into dictatorship? Given the above statistical models, we would predict that if China were to undergo a full transition to democracy in the future, the probability that it would be the most powerful state in the international system would increase twenty-fold. The consequences of complete democratization in Russia would be to increase more than eight times its chances of global hegemony. Contrariwise, a collapse of the
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Figure 3.2 shows that while Chinese power has been climbing upward in recent years, these gains have come only in the wake of more than a century of steady decline (China’s so-called Century of Humiliation). Indeed, Beijing has only recently surpassed the share of world power it possessed in 1860, the starting point of the analysis.
Political scientists have devised standards to ensure that scholars do not cherry-pick historical examples to prove their argument, so please permit me to pause for a brief moment to consider why I study the following cases. Best practices call for scholars to select cases in order to ensure (to use social science jargon) “variation on the independent variable.”13 In other words, for this study, we need to look at both democratic and autocratic great powers and trace how their domestic political institutions affect their power trajectories and the outcome of great power competitions. Since
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The problem with this approach is that, throughout much of human history, autocratic states did not face off against democratic competitors. Autocracies can certainly do well against other autocracies, but to return to political science jargon, these rivalries do not provide variation on the independent variable. A study of why the Mongols were able to overthrow China’s Jin dynasty would be interesting, but since they are both autocracies, it would not tell us anything about how democracies and autocracies stack up against one another, which is the focus of this book.
the end, Athens’s form of direct democracy and decision-making through tyranny of the majority was its undoing. But not before Athens reigned as a liberal leviathan for nearly a century and showcased an enduring model for how other open states
The Persians overthrew the existing governments and installed local tyrants loyal to the empire. The practice of great powers overthrowing regimes and installing ones more to their liking is far from a new phenomenon.
The word “democracy” comes from the ancient Greek and literally translates as “people power.” Cleisthenes followed through on his promises and established a revolutionary system of government. The most notable feature of Athenian democracy was the assembly, a body in which all adult, male citizens met, debated, and voted on political matters important to the city,
The Persian forces were victorious in several early battles, but suffered an unexpected defeat at the Battle of Marathon, just outside of Athens, in 490 bc.
Darius would pass away before he could send another military expedition, but his son, Xerxes, vowed to avenge his father’s losses and subjugate Greece once and for all.
Athens constructed two hundred trireme warships, rapidly transforming it into a major naval power. In addition, it sought to improve its geopolitical position by forming an alliance. In 481 bc, Athens worked with Sparta, the other major city-state of ancient Greece, and corralled roughly seventy of an estimated seven hundred Greek city-states into an alliance to resist the Persian invasion.
In 480 bc, Xerxes was ready to once again take on the Greeks, and he personally led a large invasion force. According to legend, Xerxes commanded a million-man army.
This is likely an exaggeration, but even one hundred thousand men would have been enough to greatly outnumber the Greek forces. The Greeks, however, were better trained and equipped. Indeed, this is the first example of a quantity-quality distinction we will see throughout history,
cavalry to attack and harass enemies into exhaustion from a distance while avoiding direct combat. The Persian army also included infantry, but they were armed with only wicker or animal-hide shields and short spears. This style of warfare worked well in the wide open Asian steppes, but was less well suited for the rocky terrain and tight quarters of the Balkan Peninsula.
Unlike the indirect style of Persian warfare, the Greeks sought direct frontal engagements in which they attempted to engage and annihilate the enemy in a single, decisive battle. Some military historians have pointed to these basic differences between the Persians and the Greeks as the beginnings of distinctive traditions of Eastern and Western styles of warfare, respectively.3 The goal of the Eastern style of warfare is to use maneuver and deception to, as the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu put it, “win without fighting.”4 By contrast, the Western style seeks to directly engage the
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position in the rear of the Greek army. The Persians surrounded the Greek forces and massacred them. The way was clear for Persia to march uncontested to Athens, which it did and burned the evacuated Acropolis to the ground. Xerxes had nearly subjugated Greece. The last remaining step was to destroy Athens’s formidable naval fleet. The Greeks did not give up, however. While Thermopylae was a battlefield defeat, it was something of a moral victory as they learned that they could hold off a much larger Persian force with superior technology and strategy.
Later that year, in September 480 bc, the Greeks lured the Persian navy into the narrow straits of Salamis.
Once again geography constrained Persia’s quantitative advantage. In the narrow straits of Salamis, the large number of ships could not easily maneuver. The allied Greek navy was lying in wait. It rammed the Persian ships, sinking or disabling an estimated two hundred to three hundred Persian vessels and won a clear naval victory. This was the turning point of the Greco-Persian Wars. Xerxes feared that with its newfound naval superiority, the Greeks might attempt to cut off his retreat, so he decided to return to Persia with the majority of his forces.
In 800, Charlemagne, king of the Franks and the Lombards, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope on Christmas Day. In 804, a pro-Frankish faction within Venice conspired with Charlemagne and invited him to take control of the city.
Grateful that Venice had helped fend off a major potential rival, and bowing to reality, Constantinople granted Venice greater autonomy and endowed it with special trading privileges within the Byzantine Empire. By this time, Venice enjoyed de facto independence.
The Adriatic Sea was firmly in control of the people from the lagoon, and the northern portion was nicknamed the Gulf of Venice.
Like other dominant democracies, Venice enjoyed domestic political stability with a single republican form of government in control for nearly one thousand years, from 726 to 1797.
To prevent vote rigging, the process for electing the doge consisted of an almost-comically-complicated, ten-step procedure. First, the names of thirty members of the Great Council were drawn from an urn. Then, these thirty names were returned to the urn for another blind draw in which nine names were selected. These nine people would then nominate forty other members of the Great Council. These forty were reduced to nine and these nine would then put forward another twenty-five names. And so on, until, eventually, a single person was selected. And we think the U.S. electoral college is
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To be sure, the Venetian Republic would not qualify as a full democracy according to modern standards. But it was more open than other states in this period. It was considered a republic by itself and its contemporaries, including Machiavelli.
The origins of capitalism can arguably be traced to the Venetian commenda.
Aided by its special rights in the Byzantine Empire, Venice was able to dominate the trade in goods between the Middle East and Europe, including spices, silks, lumber, wheat, and salt. Venice became a “staple” port—most goods traded in the Mediterranean first passed through Venice for weighing and inspection before being sent off to their final destination. At its peak, Venetian trading routes stretched from the Black Sea, to the Levant, North Africa, southern Europe, and even to England.
Venice’s most famous merchant and explorer was Marco Polo, whose
what may have been the world’s first government bonds in 1164.4 Although
This Monte Vecchio system expanded and became more flexible and sophisticated, allowing for voluntary purchases of government debt in exchange for repayment with interest. The system helped Venice borrow large amounts of money to meet extraordinary expenditures, including for international warfare.5 Venice
Venice is often considered the world’s first international financial center.7
Naval warfare had not changed much since the ancient world and was still largely conducted by ramming enemy ships and/or attempting to board them for hand-to-hand combat. Ship technology had advanced somewhat, and triremes were replaced with Venetian galleys. These ships were larger and allocated multiple rowers to each oar. In addition, Venice incorporated projectile weapons into naval battles, including bows and crossbows, to be fired as enemy ships approached.
Venice’s most rapid period of expansion took place during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Christian powers of Western Europe needed some way to transport large numbers of men to the Middle East, and Venice agreed to offer its large fleet for that purpose. In addition to payment and spoils of war, Venice capitalized on crusader victories by acquiring strategic port cities, further enhancing its naval control of the Mediterranean.
1123, Venice signed a treaty with the Kingdom of Jerusalem that granted Venetian citizens complete autonomy within the holy city. On its return from the Holy Land, the Venetian fleet attacked Greek islands and territory, forcing the Byzantine Empire to also recognize Venetian control over, and trading privileges in, Greece.
Venice and the crusaders, therefore, agreed to assist Alexios IV, and, once again, the crusade was hijacked for intra-Christian warfare. And, once again, as we have seen throughout history, an open power, the Venetian Republic, engaged in an act of regime change against an autocratic rival.
In January 1204, the aged Isaac II passed away. In February, Alexios was strangled to death by a rival nobleman who declared himself emperor. The upstart emperor refused to pay the crusaders, and in response, in April 1204, the crusaders sacked Constantinople. They raped and pillaged. They burned large portions of the city to the ground. They destroyed art and looted large stores of wealth. In the aftermath of the war, the Byzantine Empire was dismembered and three-eighths of its territory passed to the Venetian Republic.
Having subdued its major rival to the east, Venice turned its attention to the west. It may come as no surprise that some of Venice’s most formidable challenges came from other open states.
There were three other “maritime republics” in late-medieval Italy, including Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa. Like Venice, they possessed republican governments and excelled in trade, finance, and naval warfare. In still more historical evidence against the democratic peace theory, these open states were about to square off in an extended rivalry for the control of Mediterranean trade.
(Amalfi and Pisa are sought-after tourist destinations today, suggesting that some of today’s most charming sites are the places that were wealthiest centuries ago, but subsequently fell from power).
Democracy versus Autocracy The Venetian Republic was a prototypical example of a dominant democracy. It grew from a series of villages in a lagoon into a sprawling Mediterranean Empire (Figure 6.1). While we often refer to Venice as a “city-state,” political scientist Daniel Nexon has argued that it would be better understood as a “city-empire.”12 Governors appointed by Venice ruled over subjected communities in far-flung Venetian colonies and trading ports.
The Venetian Republic was a trading power and the world’s first global financial power.
Venice innovated economically, introducing the world to large-scale industrial production at the Arsenal, early versions of a limited liability company in the commenda system, and public debt through the Monte Vecchio.
Venice skillfully advanced its diplomatic interests. It signed trading agreements with friends and former enemies alike. It also built effective alliances, harnessing the Crusades to achieve its geopolitical
Venice was also an innovator militarily, becoming arguably the first state to mount cannons on warships, among other ingenious tactics in the Battle of Chioggia. It took down a string of major power autocracies in battle, including Charlemagne, the Byzantine Empire, the Duchy of Milan, and France. It also defeated its democratic rival, Genoa, for maritime control of the eastern Mediterranean.
Venice seems to have devised a clever grand strategy and stuck with it for hundreds of years.14 It leveraged its geographic position to become a trading power. It acquired strategic holdings along the coasts of its trade routes without biting off more than it could chew.
