Donald W. Livingston, Emory Philosophy Department
Donald Livingston: Diseconomies of Scale - Dismembering Leviathan
Donald Livingston: What is "Secession"? - Vermont Commons
Republicanism and Size
The characterization of the mass modern unitary state as a “republic,” one that appeared with the French Revolution, was the greatest open air swindle in modern history. Tocqueville immediately understood this. What was evil in monarchy, he said, was not so much an hereditary executive, as the disposition to build a centralized unitary state. The French Revolution and the mass democracy it spawned did not weaken this disposition to centralize power at the expense of smaller independent social authorities but increased it a hundred fold. In Tocqueville's view the so called “French Republic” was more of a monarchy, and potentially more despotic, than that managed by Louis XVI.
Do we see the same trends in the other countries of Europe? What about the United Kingdom? And if English self-governance and political liberty was so important, then what is the history of the decline?
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