Patrimonialism

 

But her e-mails!

After four years of observing Trump, I am confident that I can locate him on the political taxonomy.

Trump is not a totalitarian.  He has no interest in controlling every aspect of society or imposing his vision on it.  In fact, he shows no real interest in what becomes of the larger society, so long as it shows sufficient deference to him and doesn't make him look bad.

Trump is not an ideologue.  (Totalitarians are almost always ideologues, but ideologues are not necessarily totalitarians).  He has no ideology, no social vision, no principles, really.  Everything is about him. Once I believed that Trump's reluctance to denounce neo-Nazis at Charlottesville meant that he agreed with them.  Since then I have come to another conclusion.  Trump was to egocentric even to care what neo-Nazis stood for.  Only one thing mattered to him. They were on his side.  And anyone on his side -- from neo-Nazis to Q-Anon to Epstein's procurer -- rates in Trump's eyes as one of the good guys.  I am not even convinced that Trump is an economic royalist.  Granted, economic royalism is the only ideology that could justify him.  I just no longer believe that Trump cares about finding an ideology the justifies him.  He is too egocentric to feel the need for justification.

Trump's approach to governing is best described as patrimonialism, at least as I understand the term.  Patrimonialism, as I understand the term, is "a type of rule in which the ruler does not distinguish between personal and public patrimony and treats matters and resources of state as his personal affair."  

A ruler treats government (and, to a lesser degree, the entire country) as his private property, to be used for his personal advantage.  Public responsibility is not even a concept. Nor is corruption, since it is taken for granted that the ruler is acting to his own advantage only, and that public resources are his private property.  There is no rule of law because the ruler's will is law.  Public offices go either to the ruler's family, or to cronies chosen, not for ability or ideological principle, but for personal loyalty.  Armies, bureaucracies, courts, are all the the ruler's personal command to be treated as his personal resources.  A ruler has no obligation to concern himself with his subjects' well-being.  Rather, they exist to serve him.

Patrimonial government is very old.  Indeed, many believe that it was the original and historically most common form of government, and that everything else should be seen as an exception.

It is also true that our system of government was intended to prevent patrimonialism, and that our government has multiple layers of institutions in place -- from the separation of powers in the Constitution, to civil service protections, to the Hatch Act forbidding the use of federal resources for political campaigns -- to prevent it.

And just to be clear, I would expect an honest and principled conservative to be just as opposed to patrimonialism as an honest and principled liberal, and just as horrified at the prospect of patrimonial forms taking hold in the US.  Isn't one of the reasons for libertarians' aversion to government a conviction that all government reverts to patrimonialism if given the chance?