Checks, balances, and the abuse of power

Current public pronouncements on the apparently untrammelled use of power – from absolutely any quarter with skin in the game (any game) – are to be taken with a high degree of circumspection.  Newspaper editorials?  Academics of repute?  Elected politicians?  NGOs?  Businesses?  To a greater or lesser extent they all live in fear of reprisals from a man, his entourage and his outriders who are drunk on power and their ability frighten everybody.  Yes, we are all afraid.  So, the signal degree of caution being displayed by all the above – who privately would all wish to articulate something much stronger – does not mean the western body politic is in some way calmly acquiescent.  The relative acquiescence is that of hostages in a bank raid whose only immediate instinct is to lie quietly on the floor with their heads down, and not move too much.

So what’s to be said, on a humble US-hosted blogging site?  OK, at the very top there is very great power, formal and increasingly informal.  We all knew that.  Almost all politicians at the top of their own governmental tree, whatever constitutional form that takes, have such power.  Effectively unlimited cash or credit as regards short-term measures they might want to take.  An administrative regime, enough of which will take their orders.  A monopoly on effective violence domestically, should they choose to flex their muscles.  Typically, the power to declare an emergency and to suspend due process, acting by fiat.  (Just check out the EU ‘constitution’: almost every right and freedom a naïve EU citizen might imagine to be sacrosanct, is subject to being suspended or withdrawn on grounds of ‘national security’.)

So we all know that a rogue government of any stripe and constitution can shoot its own people out of hand etc etc etc if it wants to.  To any but the most innocent, this is not news. 

So how come we mostly don’t lose sleep over it: what’s to stop rogue use of ultimate unilateral power happening?  Supposedly, a number of things.  (i) since modern times, elections – some kind of rough-and-ready filter on who gets to the top, their temperament and general suitability to wield such powers;  (ii) the commonsense of most humans capable of getting to the top – by whatever means – and wishing to stay there, that (ab)use of such powers, however tempting, is best deployed extremely sparingly, in the interests of the longer game; (iii) the fabled ‘checks and balances’ boasted by many constitutions: although if that means a material delay in any such counterbalance taking effect (as in the UK, to take one example, that if a PM takes emergency powers he must apply to Parliament for ratification after a while), then plenty can have happened in the meantime.  (And Johnson, of course, figured he could simply prorogue Parliament!)

We recognise (iii) – and its (short-term) limitations.  We think we’ve understood what went wrong with (i) – and history will not be kind to Biden and his imbecile entourage.  But (ii)?   Well, (i) having failed, (ii) is that bit more likely to fail, also.  But drunk-with-power seems the most likely.  Just look at their faces.  The passengers in any plane with a drunken pilot have reason to be scared witless.

ND