Classical Asian political philosophies deserve attention as rigorous attempts to discover the operating principles of social order and human nature. Confucius, Mencius, Han Fei, and others ask questions that engineers and scientists will recognize: which incentives reinforce cooperation and order, how institutions select for loyalty or corruption, why hierarchy sometimes stabilizes a system and sometimes degenerates into predation and parasitism, and what feedback mechanisms lead an order toward flourishing or collapse. Their arguments often begin with recurring patterns of conduct under different social conditions. 

In doing so, they can be very revealing and strategically useful, offering original addition underrepresented in Western thought. This especially applies to Western theories seeking single abstract principle as universal foundation. Asian traditions instead offer something closer to scientific design for societies: identify the forces at work, determine what they reward, observe how people adapt, and ask how the reinforcing structure may break.

A related style of systems thinking can also be seen in some fields central to East Asia’s modern development, especially manufacturing, industrial coordination, and advanced technology.

One could elaborate from it following principles:

Recursive incentive theory

Political orders endure because society shapes incentives, social status and expectations in such a way that make cooperation and compliance self reinforcing, resulting in stable equilibrium. On opposite end civilizations fail because incentive structure favor corruption, defection and predatioin erupting into a chain reaction making further disorder more rational.

For example: if competent and loyal official gets reward and recognition, others are inspired to imitate him and do better (for status, reward, or because honorable conduct looks more attractive lifestyle). Similarly the impunity of the corrupt and the treacherous bankrupts credibility of the system and make corruption look like attractive career strategy.

Second-order social coordination

People, being social creatures, naturally think about what others think or expect. This makes them act according to what others tend to approve, reward, imitate, and punish.

For example: people seeking status adopt recognizable signals—formal dress, prestigious goods, refined manners, or membership in likeminded societies. Or subordinates strive to provide information and advice to leaders motivated by what they would reward or approve.

Institutions coordinate behavior.

Main goal of politics is the design of institutions that channel ordinary human motives toward socially beneficial outcomes.

A constitutional republic, for example, institutionalizes accountability and peceful transition of power. This is to curbs violent power struggles and abuses of office. Market economy is thought to be an engine for economic efficiency: vendors compete to deliver cost-effective goods by using resources more efficiently.

This, each institution selects, amplifies and reproduces some kind of characters, strategies and standards of conduct. A corrupt court merely selects for flatterers and cliques. A well-governed court selects for competence, loyalty and public duty.

Testable, empirical political theory.

Testable political theory tells us what process to look for, what evidence would show that the process is operating, and what conditions would cause it to fail. On that grounds, Karl Popper criticized Marx, Hegel and Plato in “The Open Society and Its Enemies”: their theories insulated from refutation, by being able to “explain” any contrary evidence post-hoc.

Such pseudo-scientific theories strongly focus on essential principle lying beyond reality and with a chosen elite that understands its hidden logic (gnosticism in Erich Voegelin’s terms).

Empirical theory proceeds along recognizable lines, from observable human motives and goals, to coordination of these goals. In this we will recognize similarity among Mencius, Cicero and American Founding Fathers.

Example in Han Fei Zi. Why elite predation is top problem of statebuilding.

Political disasters are rarely destroyed by ordinary criminality alone. For Han Fei, the gravest danger comes from powerful and well-connected men, who turn authority and resources entrusted to them into instruments of private power. They may evade punishment through networks of clients and accomplices, capture the institutions meant to supervise them, or defect to a foreign enemy while offering sensitive information, political influence, and administrative expertise.

This is a structural danger present in every large organization unless it is deliberately dealt with. Yet such constrains are rarely found, because the privileged are rarely eager to impose scrutiny upon themselves.

Indeed then, ordinary citizens are commonly told two things.
– Sacrifice for the state, because your interests (livelihood, family, wealth, security) depends of it.
– Obey laws and orders, because you will be punished .
Attachment to the common good and fear of sanction are therefore two basic forces sustaining order.

For elites, however, it may be different. Deriving the greatest power and privilege from the system, they are often the most insulated from responsibility and punishment. They are also shielded from the consequences of political collapse, possessing wealth abroad, foreign connections, private security, or opportunities for defection. As much of elite collective efforts is aimed at keeping their power structure in place, they also have incentive to conceal this fact and to protect their members from accountability. In doing so, they may end up harboring corruption and criminality until it becomes a grave danger. This has been a recurrent flaw of hereditary aristocracies, patrimonial monarchies, and any other power-grabbing factions, however their official justification may be.

In this way Mencius, Han Fei, and modern republic share important ground by stating that elite corruption is major issue that must be controlled. Mencius, living in 4th century BCE, developed rule-by-benevolence ideal and came to some very modern conclusions.
– All people have same moral conscience.
– Power is fundamentally for the common good and therefore accountable to the people.
On this foundation modern republicans derive conclusion that people deserve to decide themselves on political matters.

Han Fei would not appreciate idea of republic, some fragments of Han Fei Zi read as a dark manual for a king ruling by iron fist. Nevertheless, much of his political analysis addresses the same structural problem. His aim is to prevent ministers, generals, favourites, and powerful families from converting delegated authority into private dominion. This is needed from preventing top few percent of the strong from preying on the livelihood and future of remaining mass of the weak and poor.

The An Lushan Rebellion

The An Lushan Rebellion of the eighth century China offers perhaps the simplest historical illustration of an insight Han Fei had formulated more than a thousand years earlier. A trusted servant proves himself competent, gains command of armies and supply networks, influences appointments, and eventually governs entire regions in the ruler’s name. He then transforms delegated authority into private power, fills key offices with dependants, and constructs a state within the state whose real loyalty is directed toward him rather than the imperial dynasty. At the moment of central weakness, he uses the court’s trust and the resources acquired through it as instruments of betrayal.

Example of Roman Empire.

Roman Empire faced repeated episodes of civil war and rampant domestic plunder, which ultimately lead to its collapse. Pattern is already found in final decades of Roman Republic. Then powerful generals learned that armies and plundered money are convertible to power, power can produce more armies and money, and then accumulate even more power, and so on.

Camaraderie and rewards made soldiers more loyal to successful generals like Caesar or Pompey, than to the insitutional order of the Republic. Conquest also supplied commanders with immense wealth and prestige, which they could use to sponsor public entertainments, reward dependants, influence elections, and support allied politicians.
Crassus ascended to power through alternative route of wealth through institutionalized predation. He enlarged his fortune by purchasing confiscated property during Sulla’s regime, investing in mines and slaves, and lending money to aspiring politicians. He was also a tax farmer, acquired tax colection right on conditions that allowed him to plunder population and keep all the surplus without scrunity.

The First Triumvirate:

Around 60 BCE the trio of Crassus, Caesar and Pompey made unofficial clique, called now the First Triumvirate. It was founded to advance each other interests and grow their power and wealth through manipulating elections, rewriting laws, and promoting own cliques to power. Theoretically, there were various elected officials and watchdogs in the Roman Republic, but some offices were taken by stooges, while many others were bribed or terrorized. In this way Republican institutions were either captured or deprived of any practical effect. The final obstacle to supremacy were each other and alliance ended with Casear and Pompey fighting civil war, and ultimately Caesar short-lived dictatorship.
Similar tremors repeated multiple times in the Roman Empire. This gradually made country poorer and more vulnerable, and the elite normalizing violence, impunity and conspiracies.

Big Picture of Roman Failure

Foundation of the fall lies deeper than in impunity alone, but rather the fact that wars of conquest founded incentive structures beneficial to successful generals and their soldatesque. Moral code, property rights and even myths (such as Vergil’s “Aeneid”) were rewritten to promote interests of this group (exalting conquest, valor and “rights” to take slaves and plunder), and resulting system was neither capable of peacetime administation, nor of stabilizing itself long term.

Similar problem was diagnosed by Cato the Elder, who expected Rome to implode, once pleasure, luxuria and ambition become more important than reputation and traditional morals.

True separations of powers vs formal one.

A foundational concept of Western European Democracy is the separation of power. European textbooks commonly proclaim the separation of government power into legistlative (senate or parliament), judicial (courts) and executive (cabinet of ministers) as exemplar, most perfect system. Montesquieu (an 18th century French thinker), propagated this idea as a counterpoint to early modern absolutist monarchy, either that of Bourbon, Hausburg or Tudor.

But while absolutist kind of monarchy is long gone from Europe, this tripartite model still presented as a defining achievement of enlightened European government.
Mencius-like thinker could rather think that this improved upon oppressive absolutism, but it did not solve most of other pathologies of the ruling elite. This was already demonstrated by First and Second Triumvirate in Ancient Rome, collusions of powerful generals that toppled Roman Republic, which did have similar separation of power. Another proof of this thesis came very quickly with Bourbon dynasty downfall, as violent fanatics in charge of French Revolutionary Government during 1792-1794 who orchestrated a machinery of political repressions and mass killings.

The separation that ultimately matters is therefore not merely the division of government into offices on paper, but effective dispersal of power in a manner that prevents abuse, capture, and collusion. Replacing Bourbon absolutism, aristocratic privilege, and tax farmers with less “rigged” system improved the wealth and perspectives of ordinary people. Yet formalities alone cannot prevent political purges, corruption and high-level treachery, if coteries are formed.

This undermines simplistic argument, that any Western country is “democratic”, because one group rotates its representatives every few years, while Central Asia countries, Russia or Belarus is not, because one man rules for a decade or two.

Real difference is rather actual republican mechanisms that disperse power equally: freedom of speech, open political competition, greater public order, greater public responsibility of those in power. If that happens, that is what could go for Western democracy in positive terms.

If (in a certain country) people end up in jail for uttering opinion different than the authorities at rates 20 times bigger per capita than in Russia, if many thousands of worst criminals are rampaging e.g. raping and torturing underage girls and such-called officials cover up these crimes for years, then even calling this a “regime” is an understatements. Reason is that there many “regimes” which were not as deadly to common people, and as morally bankrupt.

The advantage in operational efficiency and success would not materialize either in case when “watchdogs”, “think tanks”, “NGOs” and similar are in one clique and on one payroll with the corrupt officials and mostly useful to repress political enemies and rubber-stamp whatever the main clique wants to be true. Quite the contrary: dictatorships, at least, when confronted with the smoking gun of systematic failure and corruption, can retaliate sternly against their underlings. Underlings, knowing that, keep theft plausibly under the radar, while striving to deliver on time. For that reason, many autocratic and iron-fisted states actually do work and do survive for centuries.

A clique, if it grows big, shameless and deceived by their own lies once invented to deceive others, dismantles even this final primitive safety-check. Beyond that trainstop there is no other one, except “RUIN”.