Abstract
Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. Thus theorists considering Aristotle’s Politics attempt to transcend his polis-centric focus and make the case that Aristotle offers ways to address these global concerns by focusing on Empire. This article, contra Dietz et al., argues that Aristotle’s political science is first and foremost a science of politeia and that this approach to the operation and working of political systems is far superior to recent attempts at regime analysis in comparative politics. Thus Aristotle’s mode of examining political systems offers much fruit for those interested in approaching political phenomena with precision and depth as diverse manifestations of the political communities formed by the species Aristotle called the ‘political animal’. From this perspective, focusing on the politeia constituting each political community permits an analysis of contemporary transformations of political life without distorting what is being analyzed.
Introduction
The claim made by Aristotle that ‘human beings are political animals’ (Politics 1.2.1253a2–6 and 3.6.1278b18–19) has, in the past several years, become a controversial topic in Aristotle scholarship. 1 While some scholars have used the concept ‘political animal’ to stress the natural sociability of humans, they’ve been opposed by many contemporary social scientists and philosophers who follow the view held by Hobbes and other modern political theorists, who argue that human sociability is not per se natural. This debate needs to be reopened in the light of new scientific evidence that humans are naturally sociable, contradicting the widespread views stemming from Hobbes, Rousseau and other modern thinkers who have rejected Aristotle’s claim that the polis or the political community is natural. 2 Also, a good portion of the scholarship concerning the political animal in Aristotle’s political thought fails to understand the true character of human associations, which lead to the formation of political communities.
There is a tendency, among certain scholars, to over-emphasize the cultural and productive (or technological) aspect of human nature, which they believe really explains humans as a political animal (see Ambler, 1985; Arnhart, 1990, 1994, 1995; Davis, 1996, 1–20; Kullman, 1980; Masters, 1989a, 1989b; Mulgan, 1974; Saxonhouse, 1992, 189–230; Wilson, 1993; Yack, 1985). This group tends to stress the human need to create and construct both physical and linguistic social constructs as being what defines how humans are political. Yet this view ultimately denies any sort of naturalness to the political bond and therefore tends to turn Aristotle into Kant or another modern social thinker. Then there are those scholars who claim that Aristotle’s political-animal teaching is a blunder, which forces an inconsistency in Aristotle’s political thought, since otherwise he would agree with the Sophists (and ultimately Hobbes) that the political community is a human construct and hence is not really natural (Keyt, 1987). This view can see no difference between the nature of human beings within a modern state and in other forms of political community.
Then there is another group who in a way agree with the prior view but argue that Aristotle does not make a blunder: instead, the blunder about the naturalness of the city is an esoteric cover which points to the tension between the polis and the best way of life – i.e. philosophy (Ambler, 1985). This group does not think that teaching about the political community is truly important for Aristotle; it is rather an overt teaching that masks the more philosophical teaching. This view seems more concerned with the higher-level argument and has no concern regarding the validity of the political argument.
Finally, Mary Dietz’s 2012 American Political Science Review article symbolizes a recent trend among scholars in political theory to use Aristotle, and especially his Politics, to argue that his text can help us comprehend the political phenomenon of global political rule that is often described in the contemporary literature of this group of scholars as ‘Empire’ (Dietz, 2012). This concern with ‘Empire’ is a current trend among postmodern political thinkers, who are turning to the key authors in the history of political thought to understand the perennial nature of political things and thus allowing the groundwork necessary for a possible return to politics as a characteristic domain of human activity – thereby escaping from the reign of global capitalism or global liberalism, which they view as a form of global tyranny. Dietz (2012) generally does a good job showing how Aristotle’s political thought is not confined to the polis and is thus something of the past to be relegated to the departments of history or classics. She makes a strong case that, if one pays attention to Aristotle, one sees that he also addresses the concept of empire – and other forms of political rule as well.
Dietz’s work must be understood within this larger narrative in the thought of postmodern political theorists (see Agamben, 1998; Derrida, 2009, 2012; Hardt & Negri, 2000; to mention just a few), who fear the political effects of the rise of globalization would be a move towards a unitary, universalized, homogeneous system of rule, a form of global tyranny. 3 Dietz (2012) rightly points to the whole discourse on empire that emerged on the postmodern left after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the backlash against globalization that quickly crystallized in the late 1990s. The renewed interest in empire as a way to understand and confront the political dimensions of globalization clearly found their voice in Hardt and Negri’s (2000) book, Empire. This renewed interest in empire has been very much a theme among the postmodern left, particularly after the events of September 11 and the Bush administration’s response to this attack on the US.
Dietz’s article (2012) attempts to make a case that Aristotle should also be studied by those interested in empire, even though on the surface the polis clearly appears to be the focus of the Politics. Imperial rule is, however, not obviously present in his text. Dietz does a good job showing that we should not be fooled by Aristotle’s rhetorical presentation. Given the political climate of Athens at the time Aristotle wrote the Politics, anyone openly dealing with Macedonian rule would have been unpopular, especially if the author was an alien as Aristotle was. 4
In her attempt to get beyond the polis-centric view, Dietz (in common with many scholars within this trend of scholarship) misses something important in Aristotle’s argument about the nature of political rule which helps us to see the implication of imperial rule as opposed to political life. 5 Dietz and the tradition she addresses miss the concept that offers a key to the means by which political rule occurs within any political community. This is to say, they fail to understand how one can get beyond the historical polis to the nature of the political simply by exploring the reasons the polis should be understood not merely as an urban center but as the political community. The key Aristotelian concept utterly absent from Dietz’s much-touted article on Aristotle is the politeia. She is completely silent on Aristotle’s teaching that it is the politeia that gives shape to and forms the true nature and character of the polis. Nowhere in Dietz’s article is there an examination of the term and its role in Aristotle’s understanding of the nature of political rule.
Why does she fail to see the centrality of the politeia in Aristotle’s thought? Dietz doesn’t pay enough attention to the text on its own terms. Rather she brings to her understanding of the Politics outside things such as historical knowledge of the time, the biographies of key players such as Alexander, and Aristotle’s use of broader philosophical concepts from other areas of his thought. Dietz’s focus on Aristotle’s ontology and metaphysics to explain Aristotle’s teaching about empire leads to several problems: (1) this strategy requires a defense of his metaphysics and ontology – a much broader project that is beyond the scope of a single review article; and (2) this strategy also requires leading political scientists, who usually have behavioral and historicist presuppositions, to see how Aristotle’s metaphysics and ontology are fundamentally at odds with those that shape our world.
I would suggest that, by focusing more attention on the text of the Politics in its own terms, we see ontological and metaphysical issues addressed in a way fitting to the subject-matter. Due to her focus on Aristotle’s ontology and metaphysics, Dietz misses the element that identifies the very ‘being’ of politics and allows us to see the eidos/form of the political community.
Translating politeia into English
How to translate the Greek word politeia into English is a highly contentious issue. It became contentious after Leo Strauss and his students insisted on using the term ‘regime’ rather than ‘constitution’ to translate the general use of politieia. Previously ‘constitution’ had been the traditional term used for politeia – it was the term used by Clark in the 18th century, Jowett in the 19th and Ernst Barker in the 20th. And while Leo Strauss had the greatest respect for Barker’s 1946 translation of the Politics (and in fact used that translation over all the others when he taught Aristotle’s Politics at Chicago), he disagreed with him on translating politeia as ‘constitution’. Strauss thought the term ‘constitution’ was misleading in the contexts where Aristotle uses it. He thought the constitution was too formally tied to written constitutions and written legal norms, and thus gave Aristotle’s teaching an overly legalistic sound which distorts what Aristotle was saying in the Greek text.
The Anglo-American analytic tradition that focuses on Aristotle’s political writings (e.g. Everson, 1996; Keyt, 1999; Kraut, 1997, 2002; Reeve, 1988; Saunders, 1991, 1995) both opposes Strauss and his students’ work on Aristotle (and other classical authors) and firmly sticks to ‘constitution’ as the translation for politeia. 6 They openly reject the use of ‘regime’ because they hold it to be: (1) a word foreign to English, and (2) a word that in common English usage has a negative and pejorative meaning that the Greek term politeia lacks.
Peter Simpson, who is not a camp-follower of the Strauss school and very much sees himself as part of the analytic tradition of later 20th-century Thomism, has a very powerful rebuttal of the Anglo-American-tradition scholars and their criticism of ‘regime’ for politeia (see Simpson, 1998: xxii–xxvi). He argues that their suggesting the term ‘regime’ has a pejorative character is less distorting than the legalistic formalism conveyed by the contemporary understanding of the word ‘constitution’. Simpson adds that using the term ‘regime’ imposes a priori an alien static characteristic on the phenomena of human political communities in a way that would distort our attempt to understand these situations in the realm of praxis.
It is Aristotle who shows us that this dynamic perspective is necessary, however, because he emphasizes that the political community exists in an ontological state of contingency, as something that comes to be and passes away. While Aristotle himself sees that the polis is obviously not something that has always remained in the same state of being, this conclusion is self-evident for us today. Because the realm of praxis is a condition of contingency and temporality, any attempt to understand such a thing must seek to know it on its own terms, without imposing an outside or alien framework on it. Aristotle’s use of politeia is essential because it offers a way to understand the political in its own terms and in its own environment.
It is rather surprising that Dietz (2012) should miss the role of the politeia in the Politics and its centrality to Aristotle’s characterization of political rule. Nowhere in her articles (Dietz, 2012) does she deal with this fundamental concept, which explains what makes the polis a polis and can help us answer the question of how globalization could be political and yet escape the consequences, envisioned by postmodern political thinkers, of a global tyranny produced by a homogenized universal political system.
Aristotle’s use of the term politeia
Aristotle offers the tools for understanding the interplay between human action and the institutions and structures that are created to fulfill/carry out/implement desired political action. Aristotle’s treatment of politeia offers us a way to access in an understated way the dynamics of human political community. 7 Aristotle’s politeia is not the current view of ‘constitution’ as a written legal document – a meaning of the word ‘regime’ that the Greek word politeia utterly lacks.
So what is the politeia? Is the concept so tied to the polis that politeia cannot be understood as something one can separate from a Greek ‘city-state’? I think the answer is that politeia is not limited to the ancient polis since, as Aristotle teaches, the political is something separate and distinct from the polis but gives shape and direction to it.
Let us look at the politeia as a thing, and try to understand it – as Aristotle teaches we should understand anything – by the four ways of a thing. (1) A politeia has a material character in the specific institutions and offices that it uses to shape the political order of the given political community. (2) The politeia shapes the specific form of different political communities – as a democracy looks different from an oligarchy, and different from a kingship. (3) The effective character of the politeia is the ruling part, the politeuma, which has authority and reigns in the political community (see Hansen, 1994). (4) The final, or teleological, character of the politeia is that it provides the view of justice and right that each politeia holds to be true and its members seek to attain and preserve. As a result, the politeuma defends the way of life that the politeia holds best for the community as a whole to have in order that its members live well – with the example that in some cases the politeia is organized to care only for the rulers to live well.
Politics 3.7 begins with an inquiry or investigation into the characteristics of a politeia. It is a transition within Book 3 from the discussion of the citizen to a more detailed examination of politeias and the fundamental claims they use to justify their rule. Aristotle says that this investigation will be twofold. It will (1) deal with ‘how many in number and of which sorts they are’ and (2) the various correct and deviant forms of politeias (Politics 3.7.1279a22–25). This echoes the beginning of the typology of politeia in the Nicomachean Ethics 8.10 (see Grant, 1885; Irwin, 1985). Yet the echo of Nicomachean Ethics 8.10 is omitted because deviation is not understood to be a deviation from the correct politeia, as it is in the Nicomachean Ethics text, but a deviation in the number of rulers. In other words, the typology is a twofold typology, involving two criteria: (1) a quantitative claim about the number of those who are in authority; and (2) a qualitative claim as to whether the rule of those who rule is for the common advantage or for their own self-interest.
Let us examine the quantitative claim first. Aristotle asserts that politeia and politeuma, ‘governing part’, signify the same thing (see Hansen, 1994). This premise sets up the assertion that the authoritative element must therefore be ‘either one, or few or the many’ (Politics 3.7.1279a25–26). This is basically a quantitative claim – concerning the number of those who rule. Although it does make sense that the rulers must be either one, a few or many – given that the politeia is the same as a governing body – it does not necessarily follow that the number of rulers truly distinguishes one politeia from another (Politics 3.7.1279a27–28). Does the quantitative claim really define, or help in truly defining, a politeia?
The qualitative claim concerns the justness of the politeia. Aristotle says, ‘when the one, the few or the many rule with a view to the common advantage, these politeias are necessarily correct, while those with a view to the private advantage of the one or the few or the multitude are deviations’ (Politics 3.7.1279a28–31). Again, this eliminates the echo of the typology of politeia in Nicomachean Ethics 8.10. Here the deviation is not simply from a correct politeia, but one form of rule derived from the quantitative claim of one, few or many. Also, in this context justice is seen strictly on the basis of the answer to the question ‘in whose advantage do the rulers rule – their own or the common advantage?’ But is this enough? Could the ruler ruling in his own interest be seen as just in some contexts? If so, this understanding of justice and the ‘justice’ of a given politeia is not so clearly useful as it first appears.
Both the quantitative and the qualitative claims are presented in the same sentence (Politics 3.7.1279a27–31). Aristotle then proceeds to present the correct politeias, following the claim that ‘either it must be denied that persons sharing [in politeia] are citizens, or they must participate in its advantages’ (Politics 3.7.1279a31–32). This ensures that we have the citizen-centered notion of politics that is developed in the earlier chapters of Politics 3. The standard presentation of Politics 3.7’s typology of politeias typically looks as Table 1 illustrates.
A typology of politeias as presented in Politics 3.7.
If there is one single teaching that all readers of Aristotle’s Politics or readers of textbooks summarizing Aristotle’s political science take away with them, it is Aristotle’s typology of politeias. The tendency to take the typology of politeias presented at Politics 3.7 as a final account of the classification of politeia seems to be justified by the presentation of the text and by how the text has been authoritatively interpreted. Clearly, the typology of politeias appears to be presented in a straightforward manner, indicating that Aristotle may wish us to view the typology as a true statement rather than a merely provisional one used to present another argument. However, the tendency to see the typology as simply true is a misreading of the text. Thus, taking the typology of Politics 3.7 as the final statement about the way we are to understand how politeias are to be ultimately structured and typologized fundamentally misunderstands what Aristotle is doing with the overall schema of politeias.
The politeia typology has a tendency to mislead the reader in that the reader tends to see the typology as simply a final teaching. One is misled also because most readers are not careful readers and will miss the subtle way Aristotle undermines this typology. Another reason most readers will misread the argument is, as Tzvestan Todorov says concerning what happened to Aristotle’s Poetics during the Renaissance, when the text became ‘so-celebrated no one dared contest or even, finally read it at all’. Todorov also says, “instead it is reduced to a few formulas quickly transformed into clichés that removed from their context betray their author’s thought altogether’ (Todorov, 1981: xxiv). One can say that this is also true of Aristotle’s typology of politeias. It has been divorced from its context within the text of the Politics. It has also been divorced from its rhetorical role within the structure of the overall argument being developed in Politics 3. Furthermore, it has been divorced from its didactic and dialectical roles. Finally, it has also been made into a cliché – easily remembered and thus easily made into textbook pabulum and thus dismissed as too simplistic (see Dahl, 1956, 1964; Diamond, 1981; Finer, 1997; Johnson, 1988; Lockyer, 1988; Tilly, 2006; and contrast Hansen, 1993).
Although the surface reading – that the typology of politeias is not merely a provisional argument but a final and authoritative one – may mislead most readers, a careful and attentive reader will see that the argument developed for the typology of politeias undermines the possibility that it is a final statement concerning how to understand politeias. How does the argument undermine itself? It undermines itself because it deconstructs upon close and careful examination. Deconstruction occurs when the logic or structure of an argument can no longer remain persuasive because either logically or rhetorically it falls apart. 8 In Aristotle’s Best Regime, Bates (2003: 80–85) spells out how the original typology deconstructs, why this deconstruction happens on the theoretical level, and what implication this has for the question of the best politeia in the presentation of the Politics.
What Aristotle’s text does not do is examine how the new model of politeia that must follow from the deconstruction of the actual polities in ancient Greece would work out practically, and how this model would look from the perspective of those not wishing to address the normative question of the best politeia, since their concern is more concrete and focused on how to understand the politics of a given political community – trying to understand how and why it works as its does (Bates, 2003: 80–83). And for such an examination of the uses of the politeia in Aristotle, we must turn away from the more philosophic and theoretical discussion in Book 3, and focus on the presentation of the politeia in Politics 4, 5 and 6 (see Keyt, 1997; Robinson, 1962).
The politeia of Politics 4–6
The issue of the politeia is fundamentally tied to the concept of the political community as being a whole composed of distinct parts. The fundamental part of the political community (its elemental foundation) is the household. But even if we take the household as the basic unit of composition, there remain various types of household, not to mention associations of households. For example, can households whose members speak different, mutually unintelligible languages or worship different, mutually exclusive religions, form a political community? To say that the political community is a joining together (understood as an association or union) of households is to beg the question of its composition.
Book 3 teaches the reader that the politeia is the fundamental ordering of the political community, in terms of the ‘who, how and why’ of who governs, as well as the way in which they govern and the ends or goals which their governing styles and forms strive to obtain. The teaching about the politeia is that it will reflect the authoritative part of the political community, its ruling part (politeuma). But this governing body/ruling part (politeuma) is nonetheless a part of the whole. Contra the teaching of Hobbes and the modern teaching that follows from his understanding of government representing the whole body politics as such, and not merely a ruling part, Aristotle’s teaching about the nature of political rule is that a part of the political community acts on behalf of the whole (either for its own sake or for the common benefit) (see Colby, 1986; Johnson, 1988; Lindsay, 1992a). The politeuma thus is the structural way for a given politeia to take shape within a given political community. Differences between one politeia and another not only reflect different understandings of who should rule and why, but also the competing understandings of what is good per se (both in terms of the self-interest and the interest of the community per se).
The teaching of the so-called ‘practical’ books (e.g. 4, 5 and 6) of the Politics suggests that the very character of the politeia will echo the character and composition of the different parts that rule or have authority within a given political community (Colby, 1986, 1988; Davis, 1996; Keyt, 1999; Lindsay, 1992a, 1992b; Mulgan, 1977; Nichols, 1991; Robinson, 1962; Swanson & Corbin, 2009). Thus to understand what part will rule within a given political community, one must know what are the various parts within it. Here is why there is the shift in Politics 4.3 from the general types of politeia that one saw earlier in Politics 3.7 to an account that focuses upon the parts of the polis/political community, especially those that rule or have supreme authority over the others in that polis/political community.
Aristotle notes in Politics 4.3 that one generic division of the parts of any given political community is the distinction between the rich, the poor and the middling sort. Yet although he mentions the middling sort, Aristotle still notes that the most important division tends to be the distinction between the rich and the poor. The tension between these two poles seems to point towards two general types of politeia, and this tension concerns the nature of political rule as such. Aristotle speaks of the distinction between rich and poor as akin to the different types of winds that govern the weather. The tension between the rich and poor is thus one of the key forces of the dynamic contestation shaping which part of the political community has control over the others.
Aside from the issue of rich and poor, we have to deal with larger and smaller parts of the community. Aristotle seems to suggest that the question of number and size of the parts is as important to the contest for control and the way that control will be exercised as the mere issue of comparative wealth or poverty. This is to say that any political community will contain certain associations of parts (or groups) and those groups will vary in size and makeup (i.e. how it is composed, the type of people who will form it), and will also vary with regard to what function they play within the given community. The given makeup or construction of the different parts and their precise role within a given political community will have a significant impact on how to understand the character of the politeia. 9
In the last part of Politics 4.3 we not only move away from both the tension between the rich and the poor, and that of the many and the few (which often seem to be the same question, but really are not), and now turn to the question of the ways of life that arise in a given political community. By the way of life, I mean to say the way of securing one’s life, one’s sustenance – what today one would call economics. The various ways of life include differing means of production and producing the needs for the political community. We must recall that, for a political community to be a political community, it must not only share a common life and common identity but also be what Aristotle called self-sufficient, which means having the basic ability to act as a common political unit and have the resource capacity (monetary, material or human) to do so. Lacking such resource capacity, becoming an autonomous political community is highly unlikely.
Even if we say there has been much development of the question of lifestyle and economy since Aristotle’s days, Aristotle’s basic formulation of the way of life – distinguishing between the forces of agriculture (both land and care and use of animals for meeting human needs), those who labor physically (referred to as the vulgar sort), and those who engage in commerce or trade (which would also include what today we call the service and finance sectors) – remains as true today as it was in his time (with the addition of what is today the industrial mode of production, entailing the scientific and technological development of new tools, processes and products which now include new modes of communication and manipulating information). Aristotle connects the issue of how the different ways of life, which are bound up with the question of what is the best and most authoritative way of life for that community, connect to the different parts of the community. Thus the interactions between these two factors are then to be tied to the question of what part of the community ultimately controls and rules in a community. All of this taken together ultimately gives shape to what is called the politeia, which is the political form that shapes a political community.
From the presentation of the forms of politeia and how they emerge that we found in Politics 4.3, we turn to Chapters 4 through 10, which present the various types of politeia and the variations within each type. We see the different types of democracies (in Politics 4.4), oligarchies (in Politics 4.5), a comparison between oligarchies and democracy (in Politics 4.6), aristocracies (in Politics 4.8), and the politeia that is called politeia (in Politics 4.8 and 4.9), 10 and finally tyranny (Politics 4.10). After the presentation of the variety and sub-variety of politeias, three chapters discuss the questions of what is the best type of politeia practically (Politics 4.11) and what type of politeia suits what type of city/political community (Politics 4.12–13). These three chapters offer us an example of the comparative benefits and utility of what type of politeia for what type of political community. We come to see the role of circumstance and the variety of givens that a particular political community possesses and how it impacts the differing levels of advantage or disadvantage each different politeia type would have in those conditions.
From the question of what politeia type is best for what type of political community, we turn to a detailed discussion of political institutions per se (Politics 4.14–16). Here we have Aristotle’s famous presentation of the reasons why, for the sake of effectiveness, political rule is divided into parts on the basis of functions suited to each political community. Aristotle presents the classic three parts/functions of political rule – deliberation/deciding (Politics 4.14), the offices of implementing what has been decided (i.e. the various ‘offices’ of the city) (Politics 4.15), and the adjudicating or judging part of the city (Politics 4.16). Later in the history of political thought, this distinction became the classic three powers of government – legislative, executive, and judicial – but Aristotle does not talk about powers; he speaks instead of functions, which his treatment suggests matter more in understanding how these institutions really work. In this discussion of institutions we see how institutions themselves evolve and change in regard to function and how that change impacts how politeias can and do change from one form (or sub-form) to another.
The politeia as a window on political change and conflict
From the discussion of political institutions in the last three chapters of Politics 4, we turn to the discussion of how politeia change and can be preserved in Politics 5. Throughout Book 5 we see a detailed and complex account of how different types of politeia change (both in terms of change from one form to another and how politeia change within any one type) and given politeia can be preserved. And we see that Aristotle not only gives accounts of how to preserve not only a good politeia, but also those commonly held to be defective – shockingly including even tyranny in Politics 5.10–11. 11 The politeia offers the observer a window to see and contextualize both political change and conflict that arises within a political community. Thus by comparing different types of the politeia we have a framework that allows one to observe and trace the complex dynamics of political life in action.
At the end of Politics 5, Aristotle discusses Plato’s account of change of politeia as presented in the Republic. In challenging Plato’s account of politeia change, Aristotle criticizes the view that there is only a single cycle of politeia change. 12 Rather, Aristotle makes the case that politeia change varies greatly, and the forces of change can be so subtle and so different that in different circumstances and with different conditions the direction of politeia change can vary significantly. As a result, there is generally no one fixed cycle of revolution or politeia change that is predetermined by the character of any given politeia type. This is to say that any politeia could change not only in terms of variety of sub-types within the politeia (in both directions within the sub-types) but also in general types of politeia. It is not so that aristocracy must turn only to oligarchy, as Plato’s account suggests, since it could also turn to democracy or tyranny. Likewise the other politeia types. This criticism of Plato’s teaching could also be applied to the teaching of others who hold a similarly predetermined cycle of political change, from Hegel to Marx (or even Nietzsche) on to the teaching of any who follow them in their progressive or regressive models of political change.
After the examination of political change in Book 5, Aristotle reexamines politeias and their forms in Politics 6. At the beginning of Book 6 he returns to a discussion of political institutions (see Davis, 1996, Mulgan, 1977; Nichols, 1991; Swanson & Corbin, 2009). But this discussion of political institutions adds what was learned from the process of political change in Book 5. The way different institutions arise and the role they play will vary from politeia to politeia. Here we get a more complex presentation of the way institutions work and how the function they secure in each political community will be shaped by the community’s changing politeia. The fact that politeias will shape the way institutions work recasts the discussion of Politics 4.14–16 in a new light – one similar to the discussion at Politics 3.14–16, where the reader comes to see how law is relative to the type of politeia.
As a result, any discussion of political institutions that does not address the question of politeia is defective, and distorts one’s understanding of how institutions affect the political action as well as the social behavior of actors (i.e. leaders and followers/rulers and subjects). Understanding Aristotle’s approach would have an impact on discussions of political institutions in contemporary political science that have been shaped by game theory and rational choice. Even those who bemoan the pathologies of rational choice are often blind to the politeia question and fail to learn from Aristotle that the limits of rational choice are to be found in the way political actors work within the established structures/rules that any given politeia presents. This follows because the rational choice model falls apart when it has to explain how we move from one set of rules to another. When considering how a politeia changes, Aristotle’s account offers a useful correction to those scholars of the rational choice approach (see Tilly, 2006).
From the reexamination of political institutions in Politics 6.1, we turn to an account of the varieties of democracies and how they are established (Politics 6.2–5). Here Aristotle goes over ground covered in Politics 4.5 in more detail, dealing with the general character of democratic rule (Politics 6.2), the character of the principle of equality at work within democratic rule (Politics 6.3), the variations of democratic politeia as shaped by type of multitude that constructs the given politeia (Politics 6.4), and the ways democracies can be preserved (Politics 6.5; see Lindsay, 1992b).
From democracy Aristotle turns to oligarchy. In the next two chapters, Aristotle discusses the varieties of oligarchies and how they are established. The interesting point in Politics 6.8 is that the discussion of preserving oligarchies is left silent after discussion of their creation. This suggests that the discussion of change in oligarchies in Politics 5 posed issues that cannot be avoided or that Aristotle is unwilling to make a clear case for how to avoid them. 13 This must be contrasted with what is clearly done in Politics 6.5, because differences in the question of perseverance perhaps suggest the preferability of one type of politeia over another. The fact that no other politeias but democracy and oligarchy are discussed in Politics 6 is also a clue about how we should understand the opening of Politics 4 and the discussion of fundamental types of politeia. The hint in Politics 4.3 that today there are commonly held to be two types of politeia – democracy and oligarchy – seems to be upheld in the more detailed discussion of politeia in Politics 6. The fact that Politics 6 ends with a chapter giving another account of executive institutions, or ‘the offices’ (Politics 6.8), seems to frame the whole body of Book 6 as shaped by the question of political institutions.
Aristotle’s proto-‘neo-institutionalism’
If one looks closely at this last account of ‘the offices’, we see that it differs significantly from the account in Book 4.15. The account at 6.8 looks at the question of which offices are not only the most kalon (good, noble, fine or beautiful) for a city but the most necessary as well. Aristotle makes the case that the size of the political community will determine the number and variety of offices it will require and their relative kalon ordering. Those smaller political communities will need fewer offices than larger ones. On one level this finding is not that shocking, but Aristotle moves on from the question of number to the question of type, and the rest of the chapter deals with an account of the given types of offices one would need in a well-balanced political community.
On one level, the list of offices we find at Politics 6.8 suggests the ordering and character of those offices of a city that is beautifully ordered, also known as the best city, the city whose politeia is the best. Given that the next two books in the traditional ordering of the Politics deal with the best politeia and the question of education for that politeia, this discussion of the proper ordering of offices suggests a preparation for the discussion of the best politeia per se. Yet on the other hand the question of the best ordering also has an impact on the question of what is best in the realm of political practice as well. Because the discussion here is not about theoria but praxis, the apparent general character of the discussion of the order of the offices at Politics 6.8 perhaps points to a given politeia and a set of conditions for that politeia to exist. The only time we get a specific setting and place for any particular example of an office being discussed in Politics 6.8 occurs with reference to the distinction between an office which guards prisoners and ‘the office that takes actions’. The example Aristotle gives is the ‘so-called Eleven’ of Athens (Politics 6.8.1322a20). That Athens is the only specific political community that is named in this chapter perhaps should make us look more closely at the account and presentation of Athenian offices in general, which is perhaps what is intended by this chapter. In any event, the fact there are no other specific examples from any given city begs us to question the practical relevance of the discussion of the offices found at Politics 6.8. It smacks too much of what contemporary political scientists would call a normative statement of preference. But is this the case? Does not this account seem to spark more questions than answers in the attentive reader? And in doing this, is not Aristotle getting us to re-read what was said and getting the reader to start thinking about what was said and to work through the problems that arise from what was presented? 14
Our quick review of Politics 4–6 gives us a picture of the way Aristotle not only frames the whole discussion of the politeia and its varieties and changes, but also how he offers through the concept of politeia the means to allow the observer of political action and actors to address adequately the complexity and temporality that is inherent in politics. Hence the simple typology of politeia in Politics 3.7 is unable to address the complexity and variation one finds in observed political phenomena, and explains to some extent why later political scientists rejected Aristotle’s treatment of politiea (in its original twofold dimension) as being overly formalistic and legalistic, and thus unable to grasp the reality of political action or political actors. The model of the politeia found in Politics 4–6 gives one account of Aristotle’s politeia that offers students of politics a complex tool to access and understand the political behavior of any existing political community at any given time. This reading is quite contrary to the interpretation of a great number of scholars who write about Aristotle’s Politics and speak of its datedness, insofar as the time of the political viability of the polis has long passed. But this was true even at the time Aristotle was writing, since Philip of Macedon and the dominance of his Greek League – which was clearly at play when Aristotle was writing the Politics – is never even mentioned.
This has led all too many who have commented on Aristotle’s Politics to claim Aristotle was making a normative case for the polis as the only genuine form of the political community as political community. It is true that Aristotle fails to talk explicitly about either the nation (ethnoi) 15 or the political character of empire. Although he implicitly accepts the political character of empire, Aristotle explicitly states that its size is too great for it to be a proper political community for the reasons he elaborates at Politics 3.3.1276a26–31. Aristotle limits his focus to the polis, but does this really suggest that Aristotle had a limited knowledge of the political viability of other political forms? Does his teaching fail to take into account either empire or the nation because his focus on what was the political body/unit was limited to the form that could or would provide for politics, as politics was defined in the work?
Given that politics is the form of ruling and the ruling in turn of a people who are of different parts and makeup (i.e. of a heterogeneous character), the only form among these forms available was the polis. The realities of time and place limited what could be politically viable.
Today the changes that technology has created with regard to the time and space of communication and transportation have transformed the very perception of space that could define what is and is not a community. Under these circumstances, Aristotle might well suggest that what was the polis – the political community as distinguished from polis as urban unit, aka the city – may differ from his points about why Babylon at the time of his writing could not be a political community (contrast Vlassopulos, 2007). And, as such, perhaps we ought to say that truly the focus of Aristotle’s science of politeia is not the polis as understood historically. Rather, what Aristotle is speaking of when he talks of politeia is the political community per se, which, in that given setting, suggests that the polis is accidental to the question of the political community and the nature of politics per se, whereas the politeia is central to our understanding of it.
Although the concept of the politeia is central to the understanding of any genuine political community, it was only possible for Aristotle to observe and understand within the polis. The polis is something in time and space, something that came to be and will pass away, as do all things connected to praxis. Thus the polis as the locus of political community also pointed to the political community as something within the nature of things per se which does not pass away as things of praxis must. For Aristotle, the political community is something natural to human beings as human beings, whereas the polis in Ancient Greece was a type of political community with a more temporal and contingent character. The polis, however, was the form of political community that offered Aristotle the means to understand the politeia as the structure that makes the character of political things more truly apprehended and understandable. Whereas the polis could (and indeed did) fade away, the function of the politeia within each political community is something that is simply true at the level of theoria – the things that are eternal or are simply and always ‘true’. And thus the politeia transcends the passing away of the polis and can serve as a way to understand what replaced the polis as the thing or body we consider to be the political community.
To speak of the political community as the focus of Aristotle’s political science is to show how universal his work is. It is not a mere historical account that loses contemporary relevance with the passage of time and the changing facts of political development. Aristotle’s account probably seems ‘dated’ because he does not speak about the institution of the nation that, from the 16th century on, became the central focus of politics, at least in its European setting. Aristotle’s dismissal of the political character of the nation deals with a phenomenon that remains as true for today, insofar as the nation is as sub-politically or politically non-viable today, as it was when he made it. Does not the troubled political history of the nation-state both in Europe and in Africa suggest the limitations of the nation as a political concept? Some today argue that the time of the nation-state has passed. But such a claim also suggests that the end of politics has come as well. Such talk about the end of politics is surely a product of the modern attempt to limit or escape politics (as we find in the writings of Karl Marx, among others). In contrast, Aristotle’s writings suggest that attempts to overcome politics or escape from it are doomed to fail, or end in despotism. 16