Recent work in political theory shows a burgeoning interest in the nature and normative value of political parties, particularly the constructive or even catalytic role parties might play in ideal theories of democratic legitimacy.Footnote 1 This welcome change began in earnest with Rosenblum's (Reference Rosenblum2008) landmark study, which, among many valuable insights, includes a critical reflection on the dominant antiparty view found throughout the history of political thought, and a persuasive defense of partisanship as “the political identity of representative democracy” (Reference Rosenblum2008, 367). Similarly, Muirhead (Reference Muirhead2006, Reference Muirhead2014) argues for a “higher” partisanship that places group loyalty at the center of legitimating a particular conception of the good. Though many scholars concerned with public justification have been and remain resistant to parties (Johnson Reference Johnson, Katz and Crotty2006; Van Biezen and Saward Reference Van Biezen and Saward2008; Bonotti Reference Bonotti2014),Footnote 2 some now argue that parties contribute to, and may be essential for, various ideals of public justification (Muirhead and Rosenblum Reference Muirhead and Rosenblum2006; Goodin Reference Goodin2008, 204–23; White and Ypi Reference White and Ypi2011). Along these lines, White and Ypi (Reference White and Ypi2016) have developed an ideal conception of party and partisanship with demanding notions of public justification at its core, creating a critical yardstick against which current practices may be judged.
These efforts to discover the normative possibilities of parties stand in stark tension, however, with the sobering empirical debates on the topic. In practice, parties increasingly appear unable to perform the ideal tasks prescribed for them, including their basic function of acting as representative mediators between state and citizen. Party membership and grassroots activism is in a decades-long decline (Dalton and Wattenberg Reference Dalton and Wattenberg2000; Whiteley Reference Whiteley2011; Van Biezen, Mair, and Poguntke Reference Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke2012);Footnote 3 citizens do not respond when parties alter their policy positions as spatial theory predicts (Adams, Ezrow, and Somer-Topcu Reference Adams, Ezrow and Somer-Topcu2011); and citizens increasingly hold negative views of parties, decreasing voter turnout and encouraging previously unthinkable levels of cynicism toward democratic governance (Dalton and Weldon Reference Dalton and Weldon2005; Foa and Mounk Reference Foa and Mounk2016). In the American experience, ideologically polarized party elites are disconnected from their constituencies, insofar as citizens have not also congregated at the poles (Fiorina and Abrams Reference Fiorina and Abrams2009). This representational failure may be due to the parties representing coalitions of interest groups rather than voters (Bawn et al. Reference Bawn, Cohen, Karol, Masket, Noel and Zaller2012). Further, if partisanship is indeed a prerational social identity (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler Reference Green, Palmquist and Schickler2002), then parties merely represent various social identities with little exogenous ideological content (Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2016).
In short, the current debate points to a stark gap between the normative ideals we set out for parties and the evidence that reveals their deep and perhaps insurmountable shortcomings in realizing these ideals. Though there have been efforts to address this problem,Footnote 4 the dominant perspectives in the literature will continue to widen this gap by articulating the ideal function of parties with increasing sophistication. The current debate, then, invites us to consider the perspective of David Hume, who offers a theory of the normative value of parties that is resilient to current empirical realities by pointing to the important role parties might play in securing political legitimacy as that ideal is practiced or understood by citizens.
Hume's political theory offers radically different theoretical grounds for thinking about parties and their role in government.Footnote 5 For Hume, government is a convention or artifice, and its legitimacy is founded and maintained “on opinion only” (Hume Reference Hume and Miller1985, 32).Footnote 6 Given the foundation of opinion, he refuses to evaluate the legitimacy of governments from a justificatory perspective external to political practice, as theorists both yesterday and today are wont to do, instead holding that there is “only the internal perspective of sentiment” from which to make these judgments (Sagar Reference Sagar2016, 297).Footnote 7 Parties are important institutions in this theory because they influence the opinions by which government can be considered legitimate. More specifically, parties mediate and distort the system of shame and blame by which we generate and maintain the virtue of allegiance, and they displace the general psychological rules by which experience usually produces the opinion that the current generally beneficial authority is legitimate. The importance of parties in this Humean perspective is both distinct from current accounts and foundationally valuable: because parties affect the opinions of allegiance that make a legitimate government possible, and because government is the foundation for other beneficial conventions, parties can either act as a support, or pose a fatal threat to the entire project of society.
My analysis of Hume's theory points to the contributions of parties even amidst their noted failures and independent of the various ideals of democratic legitimacy. This is not to dismiss the value of ideal theorizing: as White and Ypi argue, normative theorizing need not be constrained by what is available in contemporary forms (Reference White and Ypi2016, 9). Yet focusing our energies on articulating a high bar for parties risks foreclosing the discovery of the contributions that can be made by these imperfect forms. These discoveries are possible due to Hume's understanding of government as a convention and his understanding of parties as manifestations of our problematic psychology. Because Hume does not analyze parties as vehicles of democratic collective action—as empirical and theoretical scholars today usually do—he provides us a theory of the value and proper function of parties, even if they continue to fail to perform the prescriptive tasks usually set out for them in recent scholarship. Even if parties fail to offer generalizable visions of the public good, and even if the parties fail to act as responsive mediators between citizen and institution, they remain invaluable mechanisms in the machinery of legitimacy, and by extension, in the maintenance of a stable and just society.
My analysis also contributes to our understanding of Hume by reading his analysis of parties as both a scientific account of a recurring political phenomenon and as an essential component of his theory of political obligation. Existing treatments of Hume's artifice of allegiance are largely silent on the effect of party psychology. Sabl's exploration of Humean convention briefly explores the negative effects of faction (Reference Sabl2012, 34–5, 47–9, 55–7), describing it as a “pseudo-convention” that, like religion, is both objectively unnecessary and often actively harmful to other conventions. Yet Sabl leaves unexplored the effects of the factional mind on allegiance specifically, or how this effect may be cast in a constructive light given Hume's opinion that faction inevitably recurs in constitutional governments (Footnote E 60). In a similar vein, Herdt (Reference Herdt1997) explores the fatal effects of religious faction on our moral psychology and on our much-needed capacity for extensive sympathy, but these insights are not applied to the psychology of allegiance, as I wish to do. Further, existing treatments of Hume's party thought largely treat him as a philosophical commentator on his own times, trying to influence the party debates and stabilize or reform the British constitutional order. Scholars have shown that Hume approaches these party debates in roughly two ways: first, Hume criticizes the parties’ principles, attacking the epistemological foundations of party principle (Livingston Reference Livingston1984), and seeking to moderate the principles into forms that are compatible with the constitutional order (Whelan Reference Whelan1985); second, Hume provides a genetic or scientific education, explaining through a science of politics the constitutional origins of the parties, in an effort to show that the parties were both natural and beneficial to the constitution established after the Revolution (Forbes Reference Forbes1975; Stewart Reference Stewart1992). Largely unexplored, however, is that this scientific education involves an analysis of party psychology that is intended to apply much beyond the specific problems endemic to the British case: the experience of group opposition, on whatever grounds, and in all constitutions, creates psychological tendencies with direct effects on the artifice of allegiance. It is this scientific and broadly applicable analysis that I will now explore.
MOTIVATIONAL MYOPIA: THE FOUNDATIONAL PROBLEM OF OUR PSYCHOLOGY
Dominant conceptions of parties usually emphasize their role as solutions to many of the collective action problems inherent to the democratic system: they direct citizen participation, define democratic choice, set legislative agendas, and so on. Coordination for the purposes of winning an election is thus the primary end of the party and its most-discussed feature. As famous formulations have it, parties are “an organized attempt to get power” (Schattschneider Reference Schattschneider1942, 35), or “a team seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election” (Downs Reference Downs1957, 25). They are supplementary institutions, “designed as attempts to solve problems that current institutional arrangements do not solve” (Aldrich Reference Aldrich1995, 21–2). We might expect Hume to offer a similar analysis of parties, given his much-vaunted analysis of political phenomena such as property, justice, and allegiance as solutions to coordination problems. For example, Hardin (Reference Hardin2007) shows that Hume not only anticipates but even surpasses the coordination scholarship that would appear two centuries later.Footnote 8 Sabl (Reference Sabl2012) has persuasively interpreted the six-volume History of England as a monumental treatise on political coordination that does not shy away from coordination's unwieldy and irreducible complexity: “Humean conventions are relevant, or most relevant, precisely where the simplifying assumptions of game theory, fully justifiable in many other circumstances, are deeply and essentially misleading” (Sabl Reference Sabl2012, 25).Footnote 9
When Hume turns to analyze parties, however, he does not employ the perspective of coordination. Parties develop in Hume's analysis not as a solution to a coordination problem, but from a partial failure of prior coordination solutions. In short, parties are the manifestation of the root psychological problems the political conventions of justice and allegiance are designed to mitigate, namely, our short-sightedness and partiality. Both problems are caused by what I will term our motivational myopia.Footnote 10 This is our tendency to be motivated by whatever is more affecting to the mind in the moment of action, such that we are more likely to be motivated to act according to “very frivolous” near-term interests, thus failing to act toward our “great and important, but distant interests” (Footnote E 38). I begin, then, with a brief exploration into the psychological problem that requires the solution of convention, and which leads to the inevitable development of parties and factions within these conventions.
The problem of motivational myopia follows from Hume's psychological account. Here we find that the way the mind organizes our perceptions to make experience understandable is at the same time the source of our frequent misunderstanding. The mind will more likely relate certain ideas over others because these ideas are close in appearance, are close in space and time, or seem from experience causally related (Footnote T 1.1.4.1, 10–11). Similarly, the liveliness with which we perceive ideas or objects depends upon the degree of relation to ourselves (Footnote T 2.3.7.1-2, 427–8, 3.2.7.8, 538). Thus the expected pleasures that are distant from me in space and time will appear weak and dull, as the liveliness of the pleasure decays over the space and time through which my mind must recognize it (Footnote T 1.2.3.6, 35). Decay occurs most sharply through distances of time (Footnote T 2.3.7.4, 429), but contiguity is not the only informant of liveliness; anything that is more easily associated to ourselves will be perceived with greater liveliness. This contributes to the myopia in our motivations: just as one with visual myopia more sharply discerns whatever is closer to the eye, so too will our motivations be more affected by whatever is more easily associated to our mind (Footnote T 3.2.7.8, 538): “Tho’ we may be fully convinc'd, that the latter object excels the former, we are not able to regulate our actions by this judgment; but yield to the solicitations of our passions, which always plead in favour of whatever is near and contiguous” (Footnote T 3.2.7.2, 535). I may, for example, firmly believe in the benefit of an engaged citizenry, but after work on Election Day the draw of a warm home and a cold beer easily eclipses whatever civic motivation I previously determined to have. To be clear, my civic laziness is a problem of motivation, not judgment. As Tuck (Reference Tuck2008) has shown, Humean freeriding is importantly distinct from the problem described in Olson's (Reference Olson1965) famous theory. For Olson, I will freeride when it is rational to do so; that is, I will freeride when my action makes no noticeable contribution to the desired end. On Hume's view, however, whether my action makes a noticeable contribution to the desired end is rather beside the point; I will only be motivated to act toward a collective end if this desire outstrips competing desires in my mind.Footnote 11
When this motivational myopia concerns persons, the result is partiality. The needs and desires of our family and friends are far more affecting to our minds than the needs of our community or of humanity, such that we are callous to a stranger but appear selfless to our family and friends. What makes us unsuited to large society is thus not selfishness but “limited generosity” (Footnote T 3.2.2.7, 488), as we tend to shower the products of our avidity upon those few who deeply affect our passions (Footnote T 3.2.2.12, 492).Footnote 12 Our uncultivated sense of virtue only entrenches the problem, for as we experience the unequal course of affection, we begin to believe that any great violation of this usual partiality is “vicious and immoral” (Footnote T 3.2.2.8, 488). Generosity to a stranger becomes stinginess to one's family. In Hume's conjectural history, then, the natural condition of mankind is simply that condition in which our sympathies have a limited horizon, and in which we have little motivation toward our true interest in equity and coordination. As we shall see, this myopia “plays a troubling role in the genesis and spread of factional zeal” (Herdt Reference Herdt1997, 2), and threatens to undermine the very conventions designed to mitigate it.
THE NECESSITY OF CONVENTION AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALLEGIANCE
For Hume, a theory of politics that articulates the abstract or ideal independent of the experiential cannot be sensible: whatever our notion of justice or allegiance, it must be “contingent on human nature and the conditions that humans face in their world” (Hardin Reference Hardin2007, 140).Footnote 13 At the core of Hume's political thought is the need to demonstrate how social conventions can and do mitigate the problems of our motivational psychology. From this perspective, as we will see, parties are not supplementary institutions acting toward some ideal, but supplementary institutions acting against an ineliminable problem—or failing to do so by manifesting this problem. Before understanding the role parties play in the convention of allegiance, then, we must first articulate how conventions generally, and allegiance specifically, overcome the psychological problem of motivational myopia.
Conventions mitigate the deleterious effects of motivational myopia by creating and maintaining predictable patterns of collective behavior that make our better interest in enlarged coordination consistently lively to the mind. In other words, they provide the experience from which motivations toward the collective good may develop. This motivation is first found in the development of an artificial virtue. As we sense the general advantage secured from the maintenance of collective behaviors, we begin to feel that we ought to adhere to the convention—a moralizing tendency seen often in what we call norms (Hardin Reference Hardin2007, 103). This motivation is then made durable and lively through habitual experience, as the repetition of any psychological association facilitates the association and creates a tendency or inclination to it in the future (Footnote T 2.3.5.1, 422; 3.2.3.4, 503). As we experience the interest of limiting our partiality through many iterations, the action which was originally difficult may soon become unthinking habit, and the long-term interest that was psychologically remote slowly appears lively and real.
Three features of Humean convention should be mentioned for our purposes. First, conventions such as justice and government succeed in mitigating our myopia because they are established from the unintended consequences of aggregate human action (Footnote E 473).Footnote 14 They are not established by way of right reason or by force—both of which we find in Hobbes—but through the iterative experience of convention's beneficial effects. They are “laws without a legislator” (Haakonssen Reference Haakonssen1981, 37). It is by experience, not reason, that our interest in coordination can become consistently lively to the mind, as a determination today does little for my passions tomorrow.Footnote 15 Second, conventions do not eradicate our motivational myopia, but motivate us to satisfy our desires by better means, demonstrating to our passions that our partialities are best served by the collective interest (Footnote T 3.2.5.9, 521). Conventions do not seek to denature or oppose our natural passions, but are rather “constructions upon them” (Whelan Reference Whelan1985, 251). We may say that conventions generate an enlightened partiality. Finally, conventions coordinate interests. They do not rely on any foundation of shared values (Hardin Reference Hardin2007, 86), nor do they eradicate normative diversity by way of enlarged sympathy (Sabl Reference Sabl2012, 52). Conventions coordinate without homogenizing—leaving space for group conflict that is not fatal to the convention.
Of the two dozen or so conventions Hume discusses (enumerated by Hardin Reference Hardin2007, 85), he thinks government is the most important because it secures the conditions for other beneficial conventions and succeeds in an environment of increased wealth, where the pre-civil convention of justice tends to fail (Footnote T 3.2.8.2, 541). Since the collective success of the many contributes to the interest of the few who rule, the maintenance of justice would be in the immediate interest of the rulers, who can then use various forms of persuasion to make justice the immediate interest of the many. The fundamental laws of nature that were fragile in pre-civil society—stability of possession, transfer by consent, performance of promises—gain new strength from the “artifice of politicians,” who “have endeavour'd to produce an esteem for justice, and an abhorrence of injustice” (Footnote T 3.2.2.25, 500). Theoretically, with justice the contiguous interest of all, the problem of our myopia is universally overcome: justice is happily executed and carefully adjudicated by the magistrates, and complex projects of general benefit are more easily undertaken under the interested direction of rulers (Footnote T 3.2.7.8, 539). In Hume's judgement, “Legislators and founders of states” deserve the “first place of honour,” for they secure the conditions in which all other beneficial conventions can thrive (Footnote E 54–55).
The entire project of society thus hinges on making obedience to the magistrates a lively motivation (Footnote T 3.2.8.6, 544). Like other conventions, the convention of authority and our motivation for allegiance to authority are usually created by way of experience, once we realize through experience that the advantageous laws of justice are only secure through collective obedience to government (Footnote T 3.2.8.3, 542). From this sense of enlarged interest develops the artificial virtue of allegiance, which gives us the moral taste that we and others ought to obey the government to secure this interest (Footnote T 3.2.8.7, 546). Such reasoning, Hume thinks, is how we think of our political obligations in practice: “But tho’ this train of reasoning be too subtile for the vulgar, ‘tis certain, that all men have an implicit notion of it, and are sensible, that they owe obedience to government merely on account of the public interest” (Footnote T 3.2.9.4, 553).Footnote 16 The success of government is then not due to its use of force: it is “on opinion only that government is founded” (Footnote E 32).
Yet here appears a motivational problem, which Hume himself anticipates. In his critique of Whig contractarianism, Hume shows that the contractarian's promise to obey under certain conditions is redundant for grounding obligation: If fidelity to promises and allegiance to government have the same motivation—a regard for societal interest—why must we add a promise to motivate us to obey? (Footnote E 480–1).Footnote 17 This same critique of redundancy can be applied to Hume's analysis of government, given his concession that considerations of interest are unreliable motivators for justice in most conditions (Footnote E 38). If it is from sympathy with the public interest that we are motivated to be both good neighbors and good citizens, what could possibly induce a bad neighbor to be a good citizen? In short, what is gained by the invention of obedience, when it is liable to the same weakness as the prior convention of justice, and appears to be just as easily overcome by our myopic tendencies?Footnote 18
Hume provides two responses to the problem. The first is civic education: since there is “nothing, which touches us more nearly than our reputation” (Footnote T 3.2.2.27, 501), politicians can bolster our sense of allegiance by attaching our love of esteem to the act of loyalty. This would artificially enliven the social praise and blame associated with obedience (Footnote T 3.2.8.7, 546). Hume also thinks politicians seek to educate their citizens toward justice (Footnote T 3.2.2.25, 500), which would bolster the familial education for justice that presumably was too weak to secure justice in pre-civil society. Cohon suggests that if the political education for justice is stronger than what was available in pre-civil society, then it is likely Hume considers the political education for loyalty similarly “potent” (Reference Cohon2008, 230–1). We can expand on this point by noting the interconnectedness of these educations: if we recognize allegiance as the sole means by which to secure the benefits of justice, then an increased regard for justice would have the effect of increasing our allegiance. Education, no matter how habitual, will never obliterate our contrary impulses, and there will always exist a tension between better motives and our myopic passions (Whelan Reference Whelan1985, 280). Yet Hume thinks the education of politicians is usually strong enough to maintain the level of obedience required for the convention of government.
Second, government introduces the experience of authority, which adds an object of our allegiance that acts on our imagination to create the opinion that obedience is usually not a matter of choice. Though interest is the basis for obedience to some authority, interest cannot be the basis for determining which authority, since private interests conflict and we can never agree on what is truly in the public interest (Footnote T 3.2.10.3, 555). What is needed is some invention that removes this divisive decision from our hands, some general rule that decides which government and which ruler we ought to obey without reference to individual views of what is best (Footnote T 3.2.10.3, 556). The benefit of government is that this general rule is supplied by our psychology, given habitual experience under some beneficial authority. When we have long obeyed a “set of men,” our imagination joins the notion of obligation to this set, so that we imagine these individuals have a right to rule over us (Footnote T 3.2.10.4, 556). These opinions of authority are often perfectly unreflective (Footnote E 39, 470), and this opinion remains so long as this authority maintains some semblance of the public advantage.Footnote 19 Experience shows this bar is usually quite low; the public interest must be violated in a “great degree, and in a considerable number of instances” (Footnote T 3.2.10.4, 553). Because we are “mightily addicted to general rules,” we can contradict our own moral intuition and think tyrants have a right to rule over us, merely because they resemble those authorities that do in fact secure the public interest (Footnote T 3.2.9.3, 551).
THE INFLUENCE OF FACTIONS AND PARTIES
Legitimate government rests on the maintenance of two psychological operations: the system of shame and blame by which we are motivated toward the virtue of allegiance, and the usual experience of beneficial authority through which we come to believe this authority has a right to rule.Footnote 20 I interpret Hume's analysis of parties and factions with respect to their effect on these essential psychological operations.Footnote 21 Parties arise naturally in government, as government is unable to prevent the distinction of interests that gives opportunity for our naturally partial sentiments to grow. Once grown, these partisan divisions tend to distort our experience of authority and inform the opinions that make government possible. First, parties can create a new system of shame that encourages partisan action and insulates us from the broader social shame connected to obedience. This in turn prevents us from developing the motivating virtue of allegiance. Second, parties can displace the general rules by which the imagined idea of right is formed in the mind, thereby stripping us of the most common motive for obedience. I read Hume's analysis of parties, then, as an integral part of his theory of political obligation, especially with respect to the governments of laws in which parties are most prevalent. Thus, as I hope to show, Hume intends his analysis of parties to provide insights into the nature of authority much beyond his own political context. To understand political obligation on Humean terms, we must consider the influence of the recurring phenomenon of political party.
The Inevitable Experience of Faction
Hume conceives of factions and parties as various manifestations of our myopic passions acting themselves out in the convention of government. These manifestations will inevitably occur, he thinks, due to the frequent opportunity for division that arises in government. He considers three broad types of “real” group division, those based on common material interest, on political or religious principle, or on affection for a particular royal family. Parties of interest are the most excusable and least preventable. As we have seen, conventions seek to coordinate, not homogenize, and “[i]nevitably, there are wheels within the great wheel” (Stewart Reference Stewart1992, 237). Hume mentions the nobles and people, each with a distinct interest that each will myopically pursue if given the opportunity.Footnote 22 Because the British constitution of Hume's experience contained a monarchical and republican element, it provided the opportunity for parties of principle to grow, one in support of greater authority in the constitution and the other greater liberty (Footnote E 68). This division of principle was also influenced, however, by further myopic opportunity: due to the various political offices available from the Crown, the draw of patronage added a division of interest to the existing division of principle (Footnote E 65).
Unlike current perspectives, Hume does not evaluate these parties from the perspective of rational coordination. The prevailing feature of parties in his analysis is the inevitable mixture of partisan animosity, for in every real division, “there is always observed a great deal of personal animosity or affection” (Footnote E 56). Group division in whatever form provides opportunity for our myopic tendencies: If I join a faction based in some material interest, I am motivated initially by interest alone, and my only connection to my fellow partisans is our common material end. But in sharing this common end, new psychological associations are formed, and those within my group will soon affect my passions to a different degree than those outside of it. Brief experience will make these associations more likely, such that I will increasingly feel the interests of my fellow partisans to a stronger and clearer degree than the interests of others. This experience of faction influences my passions in such a significant way that the division remains in my passions even when the original cause of the division disappears: “Nothing is more usual than to see parties, which have begun upon a real difference, continue even after that difference is lost” (Footnote E 58). In an earlier edition of the essay “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” Hume explains the prerational aspect of this partisanship by claiming that the “greatest part [of the parties] are commonly men who associate themselves they know not why” (Footnote E 610, my emphasis). Partisanship for Hume is therefore a manifestation of our myopic dispositions, more akin to a psychological orientation (Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes1960) or a prerational identity (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler Reference Green, Palmquist and Schickler2002) than a product of rational evaluation (Downs Reference Downs1957) or the product of a running evaluative tally (Fiorina Reference Fiorina1981).
The problem of division can somewhat be solved by looking to “free” governments, meaning those that divide power and act according to publicly known equitable laws (Footnote E 41). Taking the execution of justice out of the hands of passionate unreliable men removes one source of factional opportunity.Footnote 23 Yet, as Hume explains in a letter to Montesquieu (Reference Hume and Greig1932, 138), the many counterweights of the free constitution also make it liable to faction, as it is then easily disturbed by the opposition of these parts. Further, factions always grow in legislative bodies, “which alone could be able, by the steady application of rewards and punishments, to eradicate them” (Footnote E 55–6). Institutional design thus solves the problem of factional politics by bringing it out into the open. Indeed, this is the basis for Hume's preference for republican constitutions, as the wise legislator can then channel these factional interests back toward the public good (Stewart Reference Stewart1992, 238). Here again, Hume's analysis differs from contemporary perspectives: his analysis of factions in the legislature is relatively silent on the rationality of partisan coalitions (e.g., Aldrich Reference Aldrich1995; Cox and McCubbins Reference Cox and McCubbins2005), focusing instead, as we will see, on the effects of this division in creating knavish motivations not usually seen outside politics (Footnote E 42–3).Footnote 24
Parties and the Decultivation of the Virtue of Allegiance
The convention of government succeeds, in part, because politicians can use various artifices to increase our esteem for loyalty, providing a motivation for allegiance based in our fear of shame. This motivation holds even if the moral motivation for allegiance, from a regard for the public interest, fails to motivate. Hume thinks parties tend to undermine this motivation for allegiance, by displacing the existing motivating system of shame with a system of shame in service to the party. In the extreme, narrow partisan experience can redefine the public good, decultivating the sentiments necessary for the sense of the virtue of allegiance.
Partisan experience tends to exacerbate our myopic tendencies by enlivening our regard for a part over the whole, regardless of the end the party pursues. This is first due to the psychological environment of the partisan experience, which as we have seen, enlivens our partialities by creating closer psychological associations with some over others. Second, these partial tendencies—our feeling the interests and passions of co-partisans over out-partisans—are inflamed to a dramatic degree by the experience of partisan opposition. Any opposition to our passions creates a new emotion, which is then “transfus'd” to the original passion and increases its violence (Footnote T 2.3.4.5-6, 421). Parties therefore mutually inflame one another's principles and passions. “An over-active zeal in friends” is “apt to beget a like spirit in antagonists” (Footnote E 500), and the zealous combat of views “beget[s] an extraordinary ferment on both sides, and fill[s] the nation with violent animosities” (Footnote E 27–8). The effect of opposition thus more closely aligns and inflames our passions with our co-partisans and makes us passionately dismissive to out-partisans. As Herdt (Reference Herdt1997) has demonstrated, these psychological effects lead to disastrous consequences for our moral judgments. Factional experience stunts the extended sympathy so necessary for entering into foreign points of view, and leads to vicious behavior that is unfortunately insulated from the much-needed disapproval of out-partisans (Herdt Reference Herdt1997, 205; Footnote E 43).Footnote 25
This insulation from the disapproval of out-partisans also insulates us, however, from the motivational system upon which allegiance rests. Parties have a tendency to distort what we should be ashamed of, by creating a new system of shame and praise that may distort and undermine the motivational needs of allegiance: “Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed” as each “soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries” (Footnote E 43). When “men act in a faction, they are apt, without shame or remorse, to neglect all ties of honour and morality, in order to serve their party” (Footnote E 33). In a legislature, where parties are most apt to grow (Footnote E 55), the ruling faction will have no motivation for the whole, and the legislature will act “as if it contained not one member, who had any regard to public interest and liberty” (Footnote E 43). Thus the artifices of politicians cease to have motivating power, “when men find, that no iniquity can lose them the applause of their own party, and no innocence secure them against the calumnies of the opposite” (Footnote HE 6.438).
Further, as our motives begin to align with the party, Hume thinks our cultivated moral sentiments tend to follow suit. The sense we ought to obey is predicated on a perception that the natural laws of justice tend to ensure the general advantage, and these laws can only be secured through collective obedience to some government (Footnote T 3.2.8.7, 546). Yet, as we become dismissive of the interests of out-partisans, our idea of the general interest and our judgment as to the proper action by which to secure it become distorted toward the party line. In many situations this pursuit of partial interests will be under the “pretence of public good” (Footnote E 27). Yet if the parties become more and more enraged, their passions may blind them to the interest they have in “equitable behavior” (Footnote T 3.2.7.7, 538), and partisans may pursue the party line with the same force of moral conviction that should be tied to obedience. In short, partisan experience can operate on the passions to make us act as if our motivations were once again uncultivated by convention.
Throughout the History of England, Hume illustrates the dynamics of this partisan system of shame. Of the more emotionally compelling scenes in the History are the various death scenes of those condemned to execution, usually as a result of the parties being “actuated by mutual rage” as they “buried in their factious divisions all regard to truth, honour, and humanity” (Footnote HE 6.407). A particularly instructive example is the death scene of Stafford in 1680, who was accused by the Country Party and executed wrongly for treason for his supposed role in the supposed “popish plot.” Hume paints a portrait of the crowd as riddled with remorse as they watch the obvious injustice unfold on the scaffold: “The populace, who had exulted at Stafford's trial and condemnation, were now melted into tears. . . . And when the head was held up to them with the usual cry, This is the head of a traitor, no clamour of assent was uttered. Pity, remorse, and astonishment had taken possession of every heart” (Footnote HE 6.395, Hume's italics). As Herdt shows in her analysis of the scene, Hume uses sentimentalism “to evoke outrage at the enormities resulting from factionalism,” and “to rouse them in ways that challenge their unreflective evaluations of character and action” (Reference Herdt1997, 193, 195). Herdt does not tie this educative sentimentalism to the needs of allegiance, but it seems that Hume has this also in mind. As the author of the scene, Hume sees himself as the political educator for allegiance: he paints the scene in such a way that the reader cannot help but feel the shamefulness the Country Party should have felt back during Stafford's trial. The party inverted the motivational needs of society, motivating the punishment of a man who had not violated the needs of allegiance. Hume's portrayal demonstrates the influence of partisan shame on our motives surrounding allegiance, enlivens the reader's motivation for allegiance, and prompts us to question whether our own judgments concerning allegiance are similarly insulated from better views.
A similar education can be found in Hume's critique of the Long Parliament just before the breakout of the English civil war. By 1642, the power of the Crown had been so much circumscribed that the English constitution had experienced what “was almost equivalent to a revolution” (Footnote HE 5.200, 5.293). To adopt Sabl's analysis, Charles's various concessions to Parliamentary demands had made possible an uneasy union of two previously incompatible constitutional conventions of authority, the Crown and the Magna Charta (Reference Sabl2012, 181–4). However, the king's concessions “were made the foundation of demands still more exorbitant” (Footnote HE 5.373). Such exorbitance by Parliament destroyed whatever chance was had for constitutional refounding. It “predictably undermined” not only the convention of monarchical authority, but of Parliamentary authority as well, thus giving rise to the military tyranny of Cromwell (Sabl Reference Sabl2012, 183). We are led to question what drove the Parliament to their destructive demands. Hume lists two primary causes: first, religious zeal and an aversion to the church hierarchy (Miller Reference Miller1981, 171; Footnote HE 5.303, 5.328), and second, a “zeal for liberty” (Footnote HE 5.328), which silenced whatever sense they had of the legitimacy of the monarchy, which may have “told them when to stop” (Sabl Reference Sabl2012, 177).
Importantly, Hume points us as well to the psychological dynamics of party and allegiance to explain this failure of authority. First, Hume cites the extreme tendencies of partisan opposition as the root of Parliamentary zeal: “The contempt, entertained by the parliament, for the king's party, was so great, that it was the chief cause of pushing matters to such extremities against him” (Footnote HE 5.389). This contempt not only created a new set of motivations contrary to authority, but it insulated these partisans from the moderating experience of public shame. The parties themselves understood this psychology: “And when men were inlisted in party, it would not be difficult, they thought, to lead them by degrees into many measures, for which they formerly entertained the greatest aversion” (Footnote HE 5.285). Knowing they lacked the support of the public, the Parliament resorted ultimately to the sword for their authority (Footnote HE 5.374). The mechanisms of public shame by which existing conventions of authority are maintained were therefore properly in place, but the partisans were insulated from this shame. Even worse, they were aware that such opinion existed, and that many would feel that they should be ashamed for their exorbitant attacks on the monarchy: “They considered, that, in a violent attempt, such as an invasion of the ancient constitution, the more leisure was afforded the people to reflect, the less would they be inclined to second that rash and dangerous enterprize [sic]” (Footnote HE 5.364). The experience of party thus silenced better motives toward allegiance, and, as a result, conventions of authority were everywhere undermined.
PARTIES AND THE FRAGILITY OF LEGITIMACY
So far, I have shown Hume's analysis of parties as weakening the effect of social esteem in motivating allegiance, and how this tendency may blind us to the collective interest. In this final section, I interpret Hume's analysis of the British constitution to demonstrate his thinking that parties also affect the idea of right by which particular constitutional conventions garner legitimacy. Parties do so by frustrating the usual psychological operations by which the imagination creates the fiction that the established government possesses a right to rule. Hume's overall teaching concerns the fragility of legitimacy: parties naturally arise in constitutional forms of government and can strengthen these conventions of authority, but they contain ineliminable tendencies that can distort and damage the psychology of allegiance. While our mighty addiction to general rules (Footnote T 3.2.9.3, 551) can lead us to view regimes as legitimate even when they do not secure the general advantage, parties may lead us to view regimes as illegitimate even if they do secure this advantage.
Hume thinks the British constitution at the time of his writing was the excellent product of historical accident, even if it contained a constant source of partisan division. Though imperfect, it is a “good” or even “excellent” constitution (Footnote E 30–1), as demonstrated by his judgment that it is a government “where the utmost liberty is allowed” (Footnote E 27)—a ringing endorsement considering his general view that “liberty is the perfection of civil society” (Footnote E 41). Hume saw the British parties of Court and Country as a mixed good for this constitution: the parties were necessary to maintain the mixed constitution in Britain, but they had worrisome tendencies: “while [the parties] oft threaten the total dissolution of the government, [they] are the real causes of its permanent life and vigour” (Footnote HE 5.556). Parties were, first, an inconvenience inseparable from the “invaluable” blessing of liberty, since they always occur in the mixed government that best secures this liberty (Footnote HE 5.95). However, because of the need for jealousy between the king and Parliament, Hume sees these parties playing an essential and positive role: “The chief support of the British government is the opposition of interests; but that, though in the main serviceable, breeds endless factions” (Footnote E 525). Hume also defends the division created by Crown patronage (Footnote E 45)—the driving force behind the dangerous mixture of interest in the existing division of principle (Footnote E 65)—for such corruption was directed by the constitution toward the general good by keeping the immense power of the propertied house of commons in check (Pocock Reference Pocock1975, 495).
To secure the constitutional benefits of party, however, and prevent the parties from once again reaching for their swords, the parties had to understand the essential constitutional role they and their opposition played. This required a reconceptualization of their history and their relationship to the constitution (Stewart Reference Stewart1992, 249). In Humean terms, the parties must see themselves and their opposition as supports of the constitutional conventions of authority. Hume seeks to accomplish this, in part,Footnote 26 by providing a scientific or genetic education: showing the parties that the British constitution caused and shaped their development and tendencies.
This teaching can first be found in the essay “Of the Parties of Great Britain.” In this essay, tellingly published in a set of essays that included the notable “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science” and “Of Parties in General,” Hume explains how the development and character of the major parties is best understood as a product of the constitutional arrangement in which they are found. The constitution developed over time into a mixed government with both monarchical and republican elements, yet “the just balance” between these features is “so extremely delicate and uncertain, that, when joined to men's passions and prejudices, it is impossible but different opinions must arise concerning it” (Footnote E 64). Since the proper balance of authority cannot be rationally demonstrated, nor is any one answer widely held, parties naturally arise on either side by a “regular and infallible operation” (Footnote E 67). Those “of mild tempers, who love peace and order,” will think the monarchical part ought to have more authority, and those of “bold and generous spirits, who are passionate lovers of liberty” will think the republican part ought to have more (Footnote E 64–5). Hume considers this the “one genuine division in the British government,” between those of the Court Party who aligned with greater monarchical power, and those of the Country Party, who aligned with greater liberty (Footnote E 71). Thus the parties complement one another by representing the two essential ingredients of authority and liberty: “each is blind in one eye” (Stewart Reference Stewart1992, 253).
In offering this teaching, Hume sought to refute Bolingbroke, who had argued that the parties were caused by Charles's poor administration and thus have no reason to exist following the Revolution (Bolingbroke Reference Bolingbroke and Armitage1997, 55–65).Footnote 27 Given the charge against Charles, Hume saw his History as an integral part of this refutation: the “greater moderation we now employ in representing past events; the nearer shall we be to produce a full coalition of the parties, and an entire acquiescence in our present establishment” (Footnote E 500).Footnote 28 This moderation was accomplished in the History through the same scientific point of view propounded in the Essays. “The scientific or ‘philosophical’ historian relates the behavior of rulers and statesmen to the nature of the constitution and the laws, or to the absence or imperfection of these restraints” (Forbes Reference Forbes1975, 285). Charles vigorously defended the royal prerogative, not to encroach on the ancient constitution out of personal ambition—and thus incite party division, as Bolingbroke had claimed—but because that is what the unsettled constitution at the time encouraged him to do (Footnote HE 5.574). It was not “either of the parties, but the constitution, that was to blame” (Forbes Reference Forbes1975, 284). Hume applies the same scientific interpretation to the parties. Once it is seen that the parties are the products of the constitution's inherent tension between authority and liberty, then the parties of Court and Country can drop the unnecessary and dangerous dynastic question,Footnote 29 and maintain their partisan division without endangering the constitution. Allegiance and partisanship can act in concert.
Showing the parties the possibility of a constructive relationship is also the point in Hume's critical analysis of the partisan views of Walpole's administration. Walpole had violated the “independence” of Parliament that many had thought sacred by using the patronage of the Crown to gain power in Parliament. By 1724, with the help of patronage, Walpole had created a “Walpolite Whig majority” (Hill Reference Hill1976, 190). This development became the center of dangerous party vitriol, one side arguing Walpole was defending the constitution, the other that he was destroying both the constitutional system and the checks by which the constitution could be preserved in the future (Footnote E 27–8). Hume responds to this debate in “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science,” and, as Forbes shows (Reference Forbes1975, 221), the context of political science is paramount. Just as Hume does in the History, he shows the parties that political affairs should be explained by way of the prevailing political institutions, such that “it is unphilosophical to blame statesmen for actions which are largely the necessary result of the prevailing form of government and state of society” (Reference Forbes1975, 285). From this perspective, Hume shows that the partisan vitriol concerning Walpole was incoherent and hyperbolic. If the constitution remained so excellent under Walpole, then a change in ministry is not to be feared; if the constitution was so easily corrupted under Walpole, then evidently the constitution was not as perfect as his detractors presumed (Footnote E 30). Hume then advises what is proper: the Country and Court parties can reasonably disagree about Walpole's administration, “with a suitable degree of zeal,” while accepting the constitution as imperfect yet excellent. Parties can thus serve an essential role, helping to point out the “mal-administration” of government without weakening the opinion that the constitution remains legitimate (Footnote E 30).
The flip side of Hume's teaching in “Politics as a Science,” however, is that this relationship between party and allegiance is perpetually a fragile one, due to the ever-present tendencies of the partisan mind. What Forbes does not do in his analysis of the essay, but what Hume wants us to do, is to apply this scientific view not only to Walpole, but to the parties as well, by understanding the actions of the parties from the same point of view from which Hume understands the actions of all political actors: “in the light of the circumstances which condition or determine them,” meaning primarily “the prevailing form of government” (Forbes Reference Forbes1975, 221). Walpole's ministry was a natural, if not inevitable development given the prevailing constitutional constraints on human nature. Likewise, the party disputes and their dangerous vitriol are best understood as the natural tendency of human beings acting within a constitution that invites party opposition. Indeed, Hume explains the divergent party views as products of party psychology. Those who opposed Walpole and wished to see an independent Parliament heap every criticism and crime upon him. Due to the psychological effect of opposition, “the partizans [sic] of the minister make his panegyric run as high as the accusation against him,” and praise him for every blessing imagined (Footnote E 28). The mutual inflammation of the parties in turn causes these passions to run so high as to infect their view of the constitution itself. To “aggravate the charge,” Walpole's detractors argue that he had destroyed “the best constitution in the world” (Footnote E 28), while his partisans argue he is not destroying but preserving, with religious care, “the best constitution in the world” (Footnote E 28). What should have been a limited disagreement concerning the degree of Walpole's maladministration escalated, quite predictably, into fighting “pro aris & focis,” with the result that they threatened to “change a good constitution into a bad one, by the violence of their factions” (Footnote E 31).
Hume thus saw the British parties as consistent with and supportive of constitutional stability, but he also understood that this relationship rested on the fragile grounds of party psychology—a problem not unique to the British case. When calm experience is the source for our opinions, we usually come to respect the “fundamental laws” under which we live, due to the operation of the general rules of our psychology (Footnote T 3.2.10.14, 561). Parties frustrate these tendencies by replacing calm experience with impassioned animosity, blinding us to the truths of civic experience and giving us delegitimizing opinions of our authorities that may not accord with reality. As Haakonssen notes, Hume's concern is that factionalism tends to transform “the recurring question of who should discharge the offices of government into a [dangerous] question of the balance between the powers of the constitution itself” (Reference Haakonssen, Norton and Taylor2009, 368). I have tried to show why Hume thinks this tends to occur. Due to our motivational myopia, partisan experience displaces and distorts the calm experience by which we come to believe beneficial constitutions are legitimate. Because parties have a tendency to mutually inflame one another's passions, the opinions that are born from partisan experience may delegitimize governments that otherwise would be viewed as legitimate.
CONCLUSION
I have tried to show that Hume's analysis of party is an overlooked component of his broader theory of political obligation and that this provides insights into the dynamics of legitimacy beyond the British case he analyzes. Government stands in Hume's mind as a reliable convention to overcome our psychological tendencies by motivating action toward our collective interest in justice. Parties are prominent in this political theory, not merely because factions are weeds that grow naturally in constitutional government, but because they effect the opinions upon which government functions. Parties have the capacity to destroy the extended moral sentiments government works to cultivate, blunting the education of politicians by attaching our desire for social esteem to whatever narrow sentiments advance the party line. More dangerously, parties inform our opinions of authority and disrupt the usual development of the opinion that the present generally advantageous government has some right to rule. As Hont (Reference Hont, Melching and Velema1994) argues, Hume's view that society rests upon opinion alone led to deep and reflective anxiety concerning the fragility of this ground in a modern secular world. I agree, and suggest that part of this anxiety concerns Hume's understanding that the psychological mechanisms of legitimacy are inextricably bound with the psychological effects of party.
We are left to consider the import of Hume's insights for thinking about the empirical and theoretical questions facing party scholars today. Hume points us to the extreme examples of partisan animosity in the History not to demonstrate what is typical, but to warn us of what is possible. He reminds us that the delegitimizing motivations produced by partisan rage might be rare in practice but latent in the experiences of parties.Footnote 30 Because the prevailing feature of Hume's analysis of parties concerns their tendency toward personal animosity, his teaching suggests greater attention must be paid to the recent scholarship into affective polarization. This research finds an increasing divergence in affect toward co-partisans and opposing partisans, with no necessary relation to policy disagreements. Scholars have portrayed this in remarkably Humean terms: “the mere act of identifying with a political party is sufficient to trigger negative evaluations of the opposition” (Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes Reference Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes2012, 407). Existing scholarship worries about the effect of affective polarization on the legitimacy and contestation of policy outcomes (Iyengar and Westwood Reference Iyengar and Westwood2014, 705). Hume suggests a greater worry, that affective polarization at its most extreme tends to undermine not only the reception of policy outcomes, but the fundamental conventions that allow for any legitimate policy outcomes in the first place.
Hume's insights also encourage us to appreciate existing contributions of our institutions even amidst the shortcomings being articulated in the empirical literature. Scholars have pointed out that Hume's History of England and his science of politics were intended to bring about greater appreciation for the established form of the British constitution, even with its imperfections (Forbes Reference Forbes1975; Manzer Reference Manzer2001). I suggest a similar teaching is involved here: Hume's conventional understanding of politics reveals the valuable function parties ought to play in the maintenance of legitimacy, independent of whether they serve the ideal understandings of legitimacy currently being articulated by theorists. If the “theoretical discussion of the value of partisanship” should at times be independent of the “problems that attach to it in specific incarnations” (White and Ypi Reference White and Ypi2016, 9), Hume makes clear that it should not always be so: if we are to appreciate and understand the value of our political institutions, we must consider these institutions both as what they ideally ought to be and as what they currently or predictably are. Hume therefore invites us to ask a radically different and perhaps more foundational question than that being asked by theorists of parties today: What role should parties play in securing democratic legitimacy, given how this ideal is usually or could be understood by citizens? Achen and Bartels have recently argued that “actual democratic processes have quite real practical virtues unrelated to the idealistic virtues ascribed to them” (Reference Achen and Bartels2016, 316). Whether one agrees or not with their sobering conclusion that ideals of democracy are incompatible with the empirical evidence, their point remains true: lowering our sights beneath the ideal and taking seriously the information of experience reveals previously unseen normative contributions. Hume's political theory provides fertile grounds for these insights. To repeat Sabl's Humean lesson, “[t]o appreciate constitutions, we must stop seeing them as climb-downs from reason and principle. They are, instead, steps up from violence and extortion” (Reference Sabl2012, 206).
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