Hello. My name is Nicholas Kenney. I'm a professor of political science and law who specializes in constitutions, both ancient and modern. And one question that drives the comparative study of constitutions across time is why do some constitutional orders endure for centuries while others die after only a few short years? Today, I want to take you on a tour that will enable you to better understand the question of how republics die, and give you one approach to answering that question.

You'll come away with new concepts and a framework for contextualizing what you read in the news about constitutional crises, political instability, and incipient civil wars. You'll know when to be concerned for your country and when to be less alarmed. Even though pundits are braying about imminent political collapse. My aim for this lecture, and the whole course, is to provide you with some solid footing intellectually, to form your own well-grounded opinions and not rely exclusively on others to do your thinking for you.

I'll define Republic in more detail in a moment. For now, understand that it means representative institutions. A republic is where the people are represented, typically by elected leaders. One key theme that I'll emphasize upfront is that it's important to see that republics almost never die due to the actions of one bad leader. Bad leaders are more of a symptom than a primary cause of the death of a republic.

Think of it this way when doctors study the causes of death in human beings, they don't just look at the surface level symptoms. For example, if someone dies of heart failure, the pathological analysis wouldn't simply conclude that the patient died when their heart stopped. The heart ceasing to beat is a symptom of a larger problem or pathology in the patient.

It could have been a reaction to a toxin that caused the heart failure, or it could be a more chronic cause like heart disease, for instance, where arteries of the heart become clogged. The point is that in doing postmortems of republics, we need to employ the same basic reasoning of separating symptoms from the underlying disease. Let's get started with an overview of what I'll cover today.

First, I want to define the key term republic. This is important because republics are not necessarily democracies. In Western political science, many scholars focus on democracy because there is a normative bias in favor of democracy. Indeed, two very accomplished political scientists, Daniel Blatt and Steven Levitsky, recently published a book called How Democracies Die. I generally agree with this bias as a Western political scientist myself, but I also think the fixation on democracy too often gets equated with the American version of democracy.

The term republic, you'll see, allows us to consider cases across a wider section of human history, including early modern cases like the Maritime republics of Italy and the Netherlands. And the term gets us to focus on the quality of governance, the results, as much as the processes of leadership selection that generate those results. So I want to diverge from that dominant trend and focus on republics and republican institutions.

But first we need to define what we mean by these terms. Second, I'll introduce you to one framework that helps discern when a republic is in a healthy state. Before we can explain how republics die, we need a clear idea of what a healthy, functional republic looks like. The framework sets forth four conditions for republican flourishing and sustainability, and we'll review each of them in turn three.

In the third part of this lecture. We'll apply this framework to explain the downfall of the Roman Republic. Why select this case from ancient history and not a more modern case? For a few reasons. First, the fact that it's an ancient case helps dampen the emotionality of our perceptions. Contemporary cases tend to excite the bias and passions of people who already have a political ax to grind.

Second, for the great thinkers in the design and implementation of new republics, especially the framers of the US Constitution, the Roman Republic is arguably the most influential case study. It was the example much more than Classical Athens, that structured the thinking of people like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Many of the Great Courses viewers and listeners will be familiar with this history.

If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend Professor Eldredge The Rise of Rome. Garrett Fagan has some excellent lectures as well. Both of them are historians, I am not. I am a political scientist and lawyer, so my approach will be to use what we know from political science and law to answer this question of why the Roman Republic, a republic that endured for almost 500 years, declined and fell, and what that teaches or does not teach us about republics today.

As a political scientist, I'm looking for lessons, insights, and causal relationships that could apply beyond this one case. Or alternatively, to clarify why certain lessons do not translate well to the modern era. This is the third reason for choosing this case. It's equally valuable to understand how the Roman Republic is not applicable to our current politics, as it is to identify the ways that it is applicable.

Both types of insights will give us ideas for analyzing other case studies, like the Republic of Turkey today, or Brazil, or the Philippines, or the United States or Hungary. Even the inheritor of Rome's legacy. Italy itself. So let's start by defining our key terms. Beginning with republic will define a republic as a system of government, where decisions are made by representatives who are accountable to the people, constrained by the rule of law, and committed to a shared conception of the common good.

Republics are not monarchies. In a monarchy, the ruler is not selected by the people, but through hereditary based custom or divine right. Nor are republics pure democracies. In a pure or direct democracy, the people make decisions directly on matters of law and policy. So the Athenian assembly in the classical era was a direct democracy, not a republic, because the citizens voted directly on matters of law and policy.

Yes, Athens had elected officials, but those officials did not make laws nor decide on policy. They implemented laws and policies, decided on by the people.

In contrast, the Roman Republic was a republic, but not a democracy. The most powerful institution was the Senate, whose members were former officeholders and were not elected. Rome did have popular assemblies, but for most of the Republic's history, those assemblies were weaker than the Senate. Three. There is a debate about the degree of democracy in the Roman Republic, but the point is that a republic emphasizes different types of institutions than a democracy.

A democracy prioritizes the voting, public, political equality, and majority rule. Even if majority rule leads to the tyranny of the majority. A republic prioritizes representation, the rule of law, civic virtue, and minority protections. To illustrate the contrast in the US Constitution, the House of Representatives, which is based on a state's population size and has a two year term of office, is a more democratic institution than Republican.

It's essential to note here that the terms Republican and Democratic as used are the small R and small D versions, not the Partizan versions of capital R and capital D. They are very different terms do not equate them. The representatives in the House are subject to more frequent elections than U.S. senators, and it is meant to mirror the overall voting population of the state more than the Senate.

In contrast, the Senate is a more Republican institution in that its legislatures have to face the voters less frequently every six years instead of every two years, and each state has two senators, regardless of population size. The Senate is more Republican and ethos than Democratic. Given this point, is the US Constitution a republic or a democracy? I would argue that the U.S. Constitution was originally and primarily a Republican document.

Many clauses and institutions were meant as a check on Democratic majorities like the Senate and the Electoral College. But over time, it's become more Democratic with its amendments. So what was originally a republic with some democratic elements has become a democratic system with some republican elements. Now, you're probably thinking a few things about this idea of a republic.

It sounds elitist. You would be right. The concept of a republic is premised on the idea that some, if not most, of the representatives have the skills and ability to make decisions not based on short term avarice and ambition, but based on the long term good of the whole community. You might also think that the idea of a republic sounds idealistic again.

You would be right, because it depends to some extent on these representatives not being captured by special interest or local prejudices, and being able to broker compromises that serve a broader conception of the common interest. But I would say that the idea of democracy is populist and idealistic in that it favors the majority will and is idealistically premised on the idea that the majority of voters will make the best decisions on law and policy.

Therefore, whether you emphasize Democratic institutions or Republican ones, each has its advantages and disadvantages. But what is important is that we understand what makes a republic thrive. This brings us to the second part of this lecture. The four foundational conditions that must exist for a healthy republic.

So what are these four conditions? The first condition is the rule of law. Condition. The basic idea here is that the law governs and constrains the use of force by the government, so that those in office cannot use violence to kill, imprison, harass, or impoverish those who are out of office. The rule of law condition is premised on the idea that legal authority limits raw political power in the threat of violence.

The more political violence we see in the system or the threat of violence and retribution, the more this condition is eroded. The opposite of the rule of law is where law no longer sets the limits on political competition, and the unchecked threat and use of violence determines who dominates. Second is the civic virtue condition. Civic virtue is the idea that public service is worth while for the public goods it generates, and not only for personal gains and material wealth, status, or power.

Officials do not need to have pure, selfless motives, but devotion to some idea of the public or common good must be part of the ethos of the elites. Without any civic virtue in leaders and voters, the system tends to generate only short term narrow gains for a select few and their followers, who have no concern for the long term best interests of the country.

Three. This condition is harder to measure than the rule of law condition, but one way to think about it is in terms of the rhetoric of self-sacrifice. A line like ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country is a classic line of civic virtue. It supports a norm of thinking, not of yourself, as an individual seeks only the benefits of being part of a republic, but as a citizen who has duties and responsibilities to serve.

The opposite of this condition is civic vice and cynicism, where societies fragmented into smaller and smaller groups, or even individuals seeking only to take from the system and not give back.

Third is the elite compromise condition. This is the condition that elites are able to reach compromises even if their constituents deeply disagree. These compromises can be about the grand vision of the country, but also about the nuts and bolts of day to day government operations, like agreeing on funding measures or on an overall budget. The elite compromise condition is premised on the idea that politicians see little to gain from obstruction for the sake of obstruction that there is a shared commitment to government functionality and not the promotion of government dysfunction.

Factors that are opposed to elite compromise are different types of polarization where zero sum politics, where winning politically can only be done by making someone else lose.

Finally, there is the reformative condition. This is the idea that when the system is threatened at its foundations with political gridlock, constitutional crises, or civil war, it provides mechanisms for change and reform to reestablish the three conditions mentioned above. For example, if the rule of law is threatened, there are mechanisms for strengthening the courts and enforcing constitutional norms.

If civic virtue is lacking, there are mechanisms for reestablishing pride in public service. If elite compromise becomes too infrequent, there are means for recalibrating the lines of conflict and disagreement, and increasing the chances of finding legitimate common ground. Think of this last condition as the capacity for self-correction as economic, technological and social conditions change over time. One basic measure of this condition is the frequency and effectiveness of constitutional amendments to correct fundamental flaws in the system.

Now you should see how these are reinforcing conditions. If the rule of law condition obtains, then elites are less likely to take a winner. Take all attitude and more likely to reach compromises. Those compromises will in turn begin to feed a sense of civic virtue, which will strengthen the rule of law. Conversely, if one of these conditions begins to significantly weaken, then the others do as well.

If the rule of law crumbles, the losing parties are less likely to stay within the bounds of the law when out of office, and or the winning party might weaponize the law to render the losing side permanently irrelevant to decision making. This makes compromise impossible, as feelings of vengeance and retribution take the fore. Instead of getting the job of governance done.

This, in turn fatally destroys any sense of civic virtue, which discourages anyone from finding a way to correct the flaws in the system. It reminds me of the famous line from the Irish poet W.B. Yeats in his poem The Second Coming. He wrote the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity. That is a sign that these three conditions are in a reinforcing feedback spiral of self-destruction.

To review the four conditions are the rule of law condition, the civic virtue condition, the elite compromise condition, and the reformative condition. Notice that none of these conditions necessarily require elections, but elections are one mechanism that can support all four conditions, provided the elections are in accordance with the law. That campaigns foster a shared sense of civic virtue, that winners have incentives to reach some compromises with the losing side, and that visions for reform of the system are regularly part of the debate.

Now, let's take what we've learned so far and move to our case study. The Roman Republic. Here is a brief historical and constitutional background. The Roman Republic was reputedly founded in 509 BCE with the ousting of the tyrannical king, King Tarquin the Proud. This historical belief in the courageous expulsion of an unjust king became the ideological basis in the Roman Republic for a profound distrust of monarchy and concentrated power.

It was the foundation for the belief in the collective leadership of the Senate. The balanced constitution, and the aversion to the personal politics of one strong leader. A Greek historian, Polybius, writing in the second century BCE, praised the Roman constitution for how it combined the strengths of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy in its various institutions. The monarchical institution was the consulship, and consisted of two executive officers who were responsible for commanding armies and keeping domestic order.

Both consuls had to agree on policy implementation, so each had a veto over the other. In the Roman Republican value system, this kept any single consul from gaining too much power. Consul served for a one year term and were elected by one of the popular assemblies, the committee. A century later. Consuls could not pass laws, but they could propose laws to the popular assemblies.

The consulship was considered the highest and most honorable office in Rome. Three. The aristocratic element was represented by the Senate, which was not elected, but consisted of former magistrates, for example former consuls. They considered themselves the repository of republican wisdom and tradition. Consuls and other magistrates were supposed to consult the Senate for advice on public matters. The number of senators varied over the centuries, from 300 and then to 600.

After the solemn reforms in the late 80s BCE. The Senate could not pass laws unilaterally. It could issue official decrees, but these would have to pass one of the popular assemblies to become law. It also performed judicial functions and hearing cases, especially those involving corruption in the management of the provinces and the three.

And the Senate played a leading role in foreign affairs, formulating policy and assigning military authority to designated generals. Finally, the democratic institutions were the four assemblies. I won't cover all four here, but it's important to know two broad points about the Assembly's first three.

First, they were the source of legal authority. They passed laws that were proposed by consuls, tribunes, or the Senate. Tribunes were elected leaders of one of the assemblies, the Plebeian Council. By the second century BCE, there were ten of them, and their power was the power of the veto. Often at least one of these tribunes was an ally of the Senate.

This gave the Senate an indirect means of blocking any legislation it opposed. Second, the assemblies were not necessarily representative of the Roman people because voting was not one person, one vote. For instance, in the committee a century later, voting was done by groups according to wealth. There were 193 groups in each group had one vote. The wealthiest groups voted first and made a majority of the groups, so the poorer voting groups were often irrelevant to the final tally.

Also, voting had to be done in Rome. The city itself. This meant that as Roman citizenship expanded to farther and farther regions, those citizens often could not afford to travel to the city to vote. This gave the poor urban representatives or rural Romans, who relocated to the city, but had not yet been reassigned to urban tribes. More voting power relative to the overall population.

Importantly, these institutions, as I have just outlined, developed over centuries. The Roman Constitution was not codified, but rather was the sum total of accumulated traditions and customary practices. As different elements of Roman society vied for influence, power, and the spoils of war. This constitution evolved at the same time as the Roman Republic grew in military and economic power.

Over approximately 350 years, from 509 to 146 BCE. Over this time, Rome conquered all rivals for control of the Mediterranean. It fought many wars east, west, north, south, and in some cases like the Second Punic War against Hannibal. It came very close to utter defeat, but by 146 BCE, when Carthage was leveled and Corinth sacked, Rome was the hegemonic of the Mediterranean basin, with no peer competitors on its borders.

So from 509 to 146 BCE, the health of the Republic was strong internally, even as it faced external threats. The rule of law was strong. Civic virtue animated those who served in the Roman army at this time, mostly small landholders. Elites were able to compromise on domestic and foreign policy and strategy. Finally, the Roman Constitution adapted and evolved over time to include more citizens, for example.

The assemblies were instituted to include plebeians, not only patricians who dominated the Senate. Several scholars have answered this question of why the Republic fell. The ancient authors mostly argued that it was due to a moral decline in the Senate and people of Rome, that the Republic lost its sense of traditional values. These authors, like Sol and Cicero, thought the traditional republic did not need reform and only needed better, morally upright leaders.

But as we noted earlier, this argument misses the fact that leaders were symptoms of a deeper problem that produced and incentivized these leaders. More modern scholars, therefore, have turned to causes like class conflict, or because of economic revolution, or because Rome never developed a thick, effective civil service institutions and bureaucracy to manage income and wealth distribution. One scholar, Eric Gruen, argues the republic did not gradually decline as I argue, but that it died suddenly due to Caesar and Pompey's decision to wage full scale civil war in the 40s BCE.

Except for GRU, in, almost every historian agrees that part of the cause of the Republic's fall was due to the institutional shortcomings of the city state of Rome that never constitutionally evolved to administer a vast empire. I agree with this fundamental point, but emphasize that the four conditions the rule of law, civic virtue, elite compromise, and the potential for fundamental reform consistently eroded intergenerational.

Over the course of about 100 years. And importantly, this erosion reflected a decline in the republican nature of the institutions. From roughly 146 BCE to the end of the Republic around 27 BCE. The institutions became less and less representative of Roman citizens as a whole, and incapable of pursuing the common good. When Rome had conquered the Mediterranean, its republican system began to corrode as wealth flowed into the city and transformed the Roman economy.

The initial diseases of political violence, civic vice, elite disunity, and the inability to reform had their roots in the years 146 to 107 BCE. These were the crucial years where the patterns of Republican decline set in from 133 to 121 BCE. For example, popular leaders like the Greek II brothers tried to redistribute land wealth more equitably among veterans who had fought in the wars of conquest.

Both attempted to pass their legislation via the regular order, but their opponents used political violence to stop them. Three.

Both brothers died fighting for reform to the system, but the conservative elements obstructed this adaptation, and the Greek I used tactics that, while technically legal, undermined elite cohesion. In short, the Greek. I tried to sideline the Senate and work exclusively through the popular assemblies, going so far as to expel a tribune who was trying to veto reform legislation.

This series of conflicts eroded the rule of law, condition and breaking legal norms, and it also showed how a league compromise was becoming more difficult.

But soon after the Greek I came Marius, an outsider to the system who rose up through the military and became the leading citizen. His military reforms broadened the eligibility for the army to include those who own no property, and Marius also set the precedent for Roman legions to be loyal to their general, not to the Republic. This was a massive blow to civic virtue, and set the stage for private armies that could be used to gain political power over civilian institutions.

The second phase was 105 to 71 BCE. In this phase, we see that these four conditions of Republican health continued to weaken and the feedback loops accelerated. During the period of the great Guy brothers, violence, claimed the lives of hundreds and was not in the form of pitched battles between professional armies. The rule of law was not completely destroyed, but in the second period of decline, we see two major civil wars and a major slave revolt, all involving full scale pitched battles.

All told, these wars resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Moreover, in the civil war between Sulla and Marius in the 80s BCE, both Sulla and Marius had their own private armies who followed their general, even if it meant killing fellow Romans. When Marius won in the early stage, he massacred some of his political opposition. Then, when Sulla won in the later stage, he massacred many in his political opposition and seized their property.

As a result, by the late 70s, the elite had not just lost the ability to compromise and had committed a form of partial self-destruction in the mass killings of senators, wealthy plebeians, and other leaders. This fatally undermined the rule of law, civic virtue, and elite compromise. Politics became a matter of winning absolute power or losing everything off in one's life.

To rephrase Clausewitz, politics became the continuation of war by other means. The next generation after, Selon Marius, from roughly 70 to 50 BCE, continued this pattern of undermining the rule of law, privatizing military power, compromising only to gain more power and strike at one's enemies when they are weaker. And finally, not adapting the constitution to deal with the distribution of wealth and create a pro-Republican coalition.

In reading the primary sources, one is struck by the lack of imagination in addressing the major structural problems of creating public institutions, of creating a stable class of citizens who were neither poor nor extravagantly wealthy, and of promoting some sense of civic virtue and the common good of the Republic. By 44 BCE, when Caesar claimed the office of dictator for life, which was contrary to the established practice of dictators being temporary.

The Republic was virtually dead. The assassins of Caesar made the mistake of thinking that by killing him, the Republic would magically reconstitute itself. But the fundamental problems of lack, of the rule of law, no culture of civic virtue and the rise of private armies, elite disintegration, and the lack of constitutional imagination continued after Caesar's death. Caesar's assassination is strong evidence that the diseases of the Republic were not due to one man.

They were long term and chronic. As we conclude, I will simply derive a few lessons from this case. First, the Roman Republic has to be appreciated for how it is different from modern cases. The issue of private armies is a case in point. In today's backsliding, democracies, the army is not paid primarily from the private wealth of a general and from war booty.

Most professional armies today would not follow even the most popular general into politics, because that general is the main source of income. The example of general MacArthur's clash with President Truman during the Korean War is a case in point three. MacArthur was extremely popular in the military and a bonafide war hero in both world wars. But still, the military did not show any willingness to back him.

If he had tried to defy his dismissal by the president. Relatedly, the Roman Republic was what political scientists term a thin state. A thin state is one that lacks developed multi-level institutions, bureaucracies, and administrative capacity. The Roman Republic thinness stemmed from the fact that there was no bureaucracy on the scale that we know in modern states. Thus, it lacked autonomy from the most powerful individual generals and politicians.

There was no civil service. There was no direct tax on citizens. After 167 BC, there was no state institutions at the local and provincial levels of any significance. It was a thin set of institutions at the very top in Rome that was not autonomous and independent of society and its wealthiest, most powerful individuals. That said, here are a few takeaways or themes worth noting for future case studies.

First, note the length of time of the decline. It took about 100 years for the Republic to destroy itself. Rome was not built in a day, nor was it destroyed in a day. It took about three generations, with each generation following an escalating the self-destructive patterns of the previous one. This was a process of transformation as much as it was a decline and fall as the four conditions corroded.

The Roman Republic gradually moved towards the concentration of power into one person, because only an emperor with absolute power could break the intergenerational cycle of political violence, cynicism, gridlock and reform. Paralysis. Augustus ended the civil wars and tried to reestablish some semblance of civic virtue, while compromise became irrelevant because he had the power to impose his will regardless of elite disagreement.

Second person list. Politics became more and more prominent in reading the primary sources. One notes that the disagreements between the various antagonists, whether it was sullen Marius or Pompey and Caesar, were not about fundamental differences. In a vision for republican flourishing. In both cases, each side cynically claimed in public that it was restoring the Republic, but in private they simply wanted to win and dominate.

In other words, one sign that a republic is dying is when debates lack any real policy substance and become a contest of wills between ambitious adversaries. Third, these diseases of the Republic could have been addressed if elites could design and negotiate a reform agenda. The catastrophic success of the influx of wealth required a fundamental reevaluation of the republic's institutional capacity.

The elites should have created new institutions after 146 BC, instead of adapting ill suited old ones. Here, it is worth noting that Rome's institutions were not representative. The consuls and the other magistrates were elected by the popular assemblies, but they were a small number and only had limited mandates. They could not pass laws, nor were the assemblies representative in the sense of reflecting the overall voting population.

The assemblies were waiting in favor of the wealthy. Three And the Senate was not elected at all. They were an aristocratic class that saw themselves as superior to and as a check on the people. Instead of developing republican institutions that were more representative and more amenable to governing a large area and a population. The elites tried to adapt ill suited institutions or simply did not realize the need for an alternative.

One historian, Christian Meier, calls the long decline a crisis without alternative. Elites did not offer a comprehensive alternative to Roman citizens, and as a result, everyone rich, poor, powerful and weak tried to get the most that they could within the existing system without anyone taking responsibility for the long term health of the Republic. It gradually weakened and died.

Yet, ironically, this death was also a transformation into an empire that became one of the most powerful in the world and lasted for hundreds of years.