Hume's Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England

Introduction

1 Introduction In the particular exertions of power, the question ought never to be forgotten, What is best? But in the general distribution of power among the several members of a constitution, there can seldom be admitted any other question, than What is established? . . . If any other rule than established practice be followed, factions and dissentions must multiply without end.1 Many find David Hume’s writings on politics agreeable. This book will argue that they are also astonishingly useful. Hume’s political ideas illuminate a host of questions in political theory, political science, and practical politics that would otherwise seem intractable, as well as calling into question some political assumptions that would otherwise seem easy. And if Hume’s ideas are crucial to students of politics, distinctly political forms of analysis are just as crucial to students of Hume. Aspects of Hume’s work that might seem either hard to understand or of questionable modern relevance when treated with the methods of philosophy or history both fall into place and prove their continuing importance when viewed through the lens of political theory. Political theorists can find in Hume an innovative, unfamiliar way of understanding and addressing political disagreement. It is common to assume that political order rests, or must rest, on a normative consensus, given that our political, social, and economic interests would normally place us at odds. What I shall call Hume’s “liberalism of enlargement” suggests that the opposite is the case. Moral factions divide the members or potential members of polities ; political interests, suitably defined and creatively accommodated, unite them. Conventions of authority need not rest on moral agreement. In fact, their great attraction is that they can arise in the absence of such agreement and persist, to the benefit of peace and good government, even as the social and moral foundations of society shift radically. To the extent that Hume can be labeled a “conservative” in matters of constitutional authority (and the label should be disputed even there), this conservatism, if such it be, extends to no other realm of life. In fact, stable constitutional authority not only is proof against social and moral change but can even facilitate change. When social change carries no deadly implications for basic political order, it is harder to 2 Introduction oppose such change by appealing to fears for personal security. Nor does the fact that political order is a very good thing imply for one instant that it is the only good thing. Hume valued England’s distinctive mixed government precisely for its ability to unite authority with liberty. His modern admirers need not overstrain his theory in order to make room as well for equality and democracy , as things that not only are consistent with authority but make it more durable. Hume is often compared with Burke, and may in fact have much in common with the Burke who prized liberty and restraints on arbitrary power (whether traditional or revolutionary). But he in fact has fewer affinities with the cartoon Burke (drawn from a few unfortunate passages of his Reflections on the Revolution in France), the peddler of an aristocratic constitutionalism founded on chivalry and reverence for political myths, than with a more populist constitutional tradition that enjoys exploding rather than cultivating myths of origin and of ancient virtue, and that judges structures of constitutional authority according to their ability to check unduly powerful social actors and to be challenged in turn by emerging social forces. Political scientists, whether students of domestic or comparative politics, can find in Hume’s work a comprehensive account of political change, both from one regime to another and within regimes that stay formally the same while their effective governmental powers alter drastically. This account is grounded in a familiar set of ideas: what we now call coordination problems and their possible solutions. But it applies in situations in which familiar formal or mathematical treatments of those problems yield answers whose use is limited because those treatments abstract away from features of the real world that are crucially important (sometimes more important than what the models include). Formal models typically assume that the relevant actors are fixed and known; Hume treats situations in which they are uncertain, ever-changing, or the occasion of political controversy. Classic game theory assumes that the actors know how much they stand to gain from each outcome; Hume treats cases in which the gains from huge and durable changes in political structure are potentially vast but massively...