Patrimonialism

I will get to the latest disgraceful sanewashing of the anti-vaxx failson soon enough, but on New Year’s Eve I thought I’d highlight a forceful argument against what he represents co-written by my favorite Weberian scholar Steve Hanson [gift link]:

President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for many of the top cabinet positions in his upcoming administration are unorthodox, to say the least. In some cases, it would be hard to think of people less qualified for their proposed jobs.

Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Kash Patel as F.B.I. director and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as overseer of the nation’s health care policies — each lacks the relevant experience and has an array of troubling biases that should be disqualifying.

Mr. Trump’s choices for ambassadors and senior advisers — sycophants, cronies and even his children’s in-laws and romantic partners — seem to break with a century of precedent in American politics.

What we are seeing in the United States today, though, is not so new. It echoes what is happening all over the world: an assault on the modern state as we know it. In countries including Hungary, Israel and Britain, the civil service, judiciary and law enforcement have been attacked by the very leaders elected to manage them.

We have seen the sort of damage these types of attacks cause — they enrich loyalists, weaken independent sources of expertise and information and erode vital public services. They will do much the same here.

Eviscerating modern state institutions almost always clears a path for a different type of political order, one built on personal loyalties and connections to the ruler. The German sociologist Max Weber had a word for this type of regime: patrimonialism, based on the arbitrary rule of leaders who view themselves as traditional “fathers” of their nations and who run the state as a family business of sorts, staffed by relatives, friends and other members of the ruler’s “extended household.”

Social scientists thought that patrimonialism had been relegated to the dustbin of history. And for good reason: Such regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by the expert civil services that helped make modern societies rich, powerful and relatively secure.

But a slew of self-aggrandizing leaders has taken advantage of rising inequality, cultural conflicts and changing demography to grab power. The result has been a steep decline in the government’s ability to provide essential services such as health care, education and safety.

It makes perfect sense for the MAGA project to have people like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard in important positions of power. The idea that they can somehow be manipulated to progressive purposes is a dangerous delusion.