Oligarchical Tendencies

Otherwise known as 'government'

The King supported by ministers

Recently I was talking with a friend about the nature of government structures, particularly the difference between oligarchical tendencies between democracies and monarchies. My point was that all governments above a certain size are in fact oligarchies, whether they are officially democracies or monarchies or what have you. This was not clear to my friend, and so I thought it was valuable to discuss it a bit here, since it rather goes against the standard civics class definitions. It is a direct result of public choice theory, and should be a direct result of political science, although I have noticed many economists and political scientists making a similar mistake¹.

So, what's even the controversy? Oligarchy is defined as rule by a small group, while monarchy is defined are rule by one individual. That should be pretty obvious, right? I mean, it is right there in the etymology after all!

Well, yes, but only in very small scale governments ruling small scale societies. There certainly was a time when a monarch did pretty much all the ruling himself. The king held court, directly led his army into battle, toured around the kingdom settling disputes, performing religious observances, that sort of thing. However, we must remember a few other things: at this time that was about all that the government did, and the kingdoms were very small. How small? Well, small enough that a dozen or so existed on the main island of Britain, for instance. Still, in this case the king more or less does rule all by himself, directly dealing with the problems he cares for the government to deal with².

As things get bigger, both in scale (larger kingdoms) or scope (more things being done by the state) we start to see a change. Specifically, we start to see the king have to delegate more roles and responsibilities to ministers. As his military gets larger the king cannot command all of it at once, and so requires generals, captains and lieutenants to command various parts for him. As his lands grow larger the king cannot oversee their running himself³ and so hires ministers to handle the peasants and make sure they are doing their jobs. As the realm grows larger and more populous the king no longer has time to decide every important legal dispute, and so hires judges to handle courts for him. Admirals to manage the fleets, ministers for bureaucracy, minting coins, diplomacy, public works, the list goes on. After a point the king cannot engage in line of sight management anymore, and must rely on subordinates to oversee all the other subordinates that are supposed to be enacting the king's will.

Now, the obvious problem the king faces is familiar to anyone who has had to manage an organization: the principle agent problem, which is that what the king wants is not necessarily what his servants want, yet the king has to rely on them to do the job without being able to directly control them. The issue takes two forms, incentivizing your agent to do what you want, and gathering knowledge to evaluate whether they did.

That first form should be ring a bell for anyone who has ever had to rely on another person. If I go to the doctor and ask them to diagnose and cure my back pain I want them to figure out what is wrong and find the best answer, while not charging me a lot of money (and hopefully having spent a lot of time before I even show up learning about such matters). Incentives for the doctor to do all that include the fact I am paying and can be a future customer if they do a good job, reputational effects from word of mouth on future patients, possible malpractice suits if they screw up badly, and some moral or ethical considerations that hopefully have been ingrained into them.

Do those work? Well... What happens at these visits? Maybe they say "Look, you are getting old, back pain is what that is like. Have a prescription for some pain meds." Maybe they send me out for a bunch of tests they know I don't need then write me a prescription for meds. Maybe they refer me to a specialist for a price. Maybe they make some recommendations and schedule me to come back in in a month to see how things are going. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't, but I am definitely paying in any case. Hence why people are so keen on finding a good doctor: incentivizing them is hard, and in many ways you are hoping they are independently motivated to do the right thing by you.

The other value of the good doctor falls into the realm of the evaluation knowledge problem. Say I go to the doctor and he can't keep my back from hurting, but gives me some pain killers I have to take when it gets too bad, possibly for the rest of my life. Did he do a good job? How can I tell?

It is tempting to just say "Well, he didn't fix my back, he must be a bad doctor." Maybe, but what if my back just isn't fixable? Is it reasonable to expect him to work miracles?

Then again, what if my back is fixable, but he just doesn't know how? Or doesn't care to fix it, or gets a kickback on his oxy prescriptions so always goes that route? Without being a doctor myself, how do I figure that out?

Now sure, other doctors might say "Nah, he's an idiot. We can fix it." Can they? Do they just want to put me on a different medicine so they get the kickback instead?

Did someone poison me so my back will hurt and then they can make money on the recurring fees?

Ok, that last one seems unlikely in the case of doctors, but when you are a king, well, you've got more problems. I can do some internet searches on potential causes and cures of back problems, but I don't think Googling "How can my generals put down the rebels in the western province?" is going to turn up much useful⁴. So how does the ruler incentivize the general to solve the problem, and how does he know the general is doing the best he can and not secretly encouraging the rebels to have an argument for funneling more resources to the military? Is some other minister supporting the rebels as part of some scheme? Is it time to replace the general? Will the next be worse at the job and put you in a more difficult spot? What if he isn't as loyal?

When the size of the kingdom isn't too big, maybe the king can have a closer feel for the situation, but it doesn't take too much size before he has to rely on others to give him information on what happens, and hope that those channeling him information are doing a better job than the guy he is worried about.

The scope of the kingdom matters too, as sure, maybe the king can be an expert on military matters and recognize how well generals are performing. Maybe he can be an expert on trade policy at the same time. Throw in farming, diplomacy, roads and ways, admiralty, all the other roles the government might decide it wants to put a hand in, and no ruler can hope to be an expert in even a fraction of the roles being executed, even if they have an idea of what the desired outcome is.

Now, one can argue that the king can still fire any minister when he doesn't like the outcomes, but again, how does he know what the outcomes are or what they could be? What does he compare them to? What's the proper trade off between loyalty and efficacy, and how do you measure each with such high uncertainty?

This still, however does not quite get us to oligarchy, merely a recipe for ineffective governance. It is one thing to say the king does not have full control over his ministers and thus his government, but another to say that his ministers themselves control his government. To get there we need to consider why the king has the governors he has, and what they do for him.

The obvious answer is that the ministers work for the king, carrying out his will. Not only obvious, but also incorrect, or at least very incomplete. As noted above, the ministers serve their own interests along side those of the king, with it being a toss up when those interests conflict. The ministers rule in the king's name because they want to rule in the king's name, so what happens when they decide their interests no longer align? In short, the king no longer can rule.

If that seems extreme, consider a smaller, more familiar example. Imagine you own a business, say a moderately sized factory with a large number of line workers, warehouse workers, administrative staff, etc. such that you hired a number of supervisors and managers to handle all the specialized tasks.

Now imagine one day that all of your managers and supervisors quit.

Things might continue apace for a bit, as workers keep in their routine and you rush to cover gaps, but quickly problems would arise that require attention, attention that no longer worked there. Questions would go unanswered, unpleasant activities would go undone, liberties would be taken. Of course you can try to rapidly promote candidates to replace your management team, and might even have had a few people tagged as potential replacements for the roles. Yet how well would that work out? Every new role takes time to grow into, and what if you don't even have good replacements on hand right away? Your business is falling apart with every passing day, organizational knowledge gone forever, networks degrading and needing to be rebuilt around massive gaps. Soon enough you will be the owner of a defunct business.

The lesson here is that the ministers need the king to give them legitimacy to rule, and the king needs his ministers to do the ruling, to get things done. When one or two ministers draw the king's ire he can expel and replace them; when a certain percentage act together, the king must think twice, lest he lose too much of his governing capacity. As this rapidly becomes clear, ministers and other officials will form networks and cabals to protect themselves and their interests from the king's displeasure while preventing rivals who would redirect resources to themselves or maneuver to take their positions if the king creates an opening. The king must negotiate with and maneuver through these political webs to keep ministers adhering to his wishes and prevent a situation where the administration decides the king would be better if he were younger and more easily manipulated...

In other words, the king does not rule alone, but shares with power with other rulers in exchange for their using those powers to attend his interests. The king cannot control his realms by himself, and cannot control his ministers fully, situations exacerbated by the increasing amount of realms and ministers. Many in fact rule the realm.

Note as well that we have not even examined the case where the king is more interested in finding out all the ways the old saying "it is good to be king" can apply, and thus can't be bothered to pay attention to the intrigues of court. Nor any cases where the hereditary ruler is a few gems short of a crown and not up to the task. Nor even the very important case where the new monarch does not have a hereditary legacy, and thus no inherent legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Machiavelli had quite a bit to say about this unfortunate situation in The Prince; would be dictators and monarchs take note.

In all, the monarchy has the same dynamics as all governmental types, with the same root causes: you cannot rule alone, so once the government exceeds a certain scale and scope power is shared across an increasingly large and increasingly unaccountable group. To wit, an oligarchy.

1. If you are the video loving type, I highly recommend this video from CCP Grey on the Rules for Rulers. I am not familiar with the source work he references, “The Dictator’s Handbook”, but the core arguments follow a public choice framework.

2. Notably there were still sub king level government functions here as well, your local lords, moots, village councils, etc. One thing with humans is that it tends to be government all the way down.

3. Or just chooses not to.

4. Although there are probably plenty of people who claim to know the answer if you’d just hand the reins of power to them…