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sizemattersThe central problem facing the burgeoning Iraqi democracy is the same as that which faced the burgeoning American democracy in 1776. It is the problem of faction.Because we live at our particular point in history on the latter side of both the Revolutionary war and, more importantly, the Civil War, we have difficulty seeing how similar the proto-Americans of the late 18th century are to the Iraqis of the early 21st century. Colonial Americans spoke different languages, and it is historically conceivable that Americans could have ended up as German speakers, which would have deprived us of the privilege of appearing in Mr. Churchill's books. More to the point, Americans were of widely varying religious faiths. This is a difficult thing to see from our vantage point in history when, apart from Northern Ireland and a few other hot spots around the world, the various Christian sects do not wage violent war upon one another. But at the time that the colonies were planted in North America, they did. British history at the time had been preceded by an oscillating cycle of Catholics who were in power persecuting Protestants, alternating with Protestants returning the favor when the roles were reversed. In short, the Shiites versus the Sunnis today are no worse than the Papists versus the Roundheads yesteryear. What insights did the Founding Fathers, especially their premiere political philosopher James Madison, offer to the problem of faction? They offered an innovation in thinking about the problem rather than the definition of the problem in the first place. Montesquieu, in his book The Spirit of Laws, had already noted that regional, economic and religious differences constituted the most serious threat to the idea of self government, but it is in his solution, not his definition of the problem, that he erred. For Montesquieu, democracy would only work on a very small scale where the factions are by extention also very small. Madison stood this argument on its head by noting that the problem of faction was diminished rather than enlarged as the size of the democracy expanded. Yes, in a continental-sized nation like the United States the regional factions can become quite large, but so can the counter balancing factions. Here’s another way to think of it, a faction of a nation is a lot like the word that it sounds most like: fraction. The faction is the numerator and the nation at large is the denominator. Madison saw that as you move the scale of the democracy upwards you actually weaken the relative power of any individual sub-group within the democracy. Followers of Montesquieu would have predicted that the colonial American model of the Town Hall meeting would not work on a continental scale; followers of Madison would have, and did, predict that in fact it would work better on a continental scale. History has cast her vote in favor of the Madisonian and American prediction and against Montesquieu and the French. |