VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 2
The United States, the Deep Wisdom of the Separation of Powers
Last section gave an objective account of China's political institution. This section covers another most representative present-day sample, the United States. China and the United States are the two most influential centralized-authority states in the world today, and two of the most different present-day forms of political institution. This section, like the last, does not accept America's self-positioning and does not oppose it, only describes objectively how it actually runs, seeing its many sides, letting the reader judge.
America has a clear self-positioning: a beacon of democracy and freedom, a model of the division and balance of powers, a guardian of individual rights. This self-positioning spreads through education, media, and cultural products to countries the world over, shaping the present-day global imagination of a good political institution. The duty of this book is not to accept America's self-positioning and not to oppose it, but to describe objectively how America's political institution actually runs, seeing its many sides, letting the reader judge. This section uses a special method, taking each seeming phenomenon and, starting from the logic of the American institution itself, making clear its inner reason. This is the respect due to a political institution of two hundred fifty years of history. Having read it, the reader thinks and judges for themselves by their own position and values.
To speak of America, one must first break a simplified impression. Many think America is a power-dividing state, that America opposes centralized authority, and this impression is not accurate. America is a highly centralized-authority state, only its form of centralized authority differs from China's. America's centralized authority is realized at the federal level. The president is the federal executive head, holding the military, foreign affairs, and the executive bodies. The Congress is the federal legislature, making national law. The Supreme Court is the highest federal judicial authority, with the final power to interpret the constitution and federal law. These three great pillars are all at the federal level, America's center. Federal law is above state law, and the federal government controls currency, foreign affairs, national defense, interstate trade, income-tax collection, and other key matters. America's division of powers is a division within a centralized-authority frame, not the absence of centralized authority. This centralized authority was strengthened step by step through several key nodes, the constitution coming into force establishing the federal level, a historic precedent establishing the Supreme Court's power of judicial review, the end of the Civil War establishing federal power above state power, this being a key node of American centralized authority and the greatest single reshaping of the American institution in two hundred fifty years, after which the federal government gained the power to collect income tax directly and greatly expanded its economic and social functions. Today the American federal government is one of the largest central governments in the world. So America is a sample of centralized authority, only the inner structure of this centralized authority differs from China's.
The most distinctive arrangement of the American institution is the separation of powers. The legislative power belongs to the Congress, the executive power to the president and cabinet, the judicial power to the Supreme Court and the federal court system. The three powers check and balance each other. The Congress legislates, but the president can veto, and when the president vetoes a majority of the Congress can override, a check within a check. The president executes, but the Congress controls the budget and can impeach, and the Supreme Court can rule a presidential act unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rules, but the justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Congress, and the Congress can amend the constitution to overturn certain rulings, though amendment is extremely hard. Behind this design of the separation of powers plus mutual checks is the deep reflection on history of America's constitutional founders. They studied a thousand years of European political history and saw that royal power alone easily fell into despotism, that church power alone easily suppressed thought, that noble power alone easily exploited the commoner, that the majority of the mass alone easily fell into the tyranny of the majority. Their answer was to scatter power into different branches and let them check each other, so that any branch wishing to grow supreme would be blocked by the other two. This design secured that no thorough dictatorship appeared in America across two hundred fifty years, the deepest wisdom of the American institution. In actual running, this checking mechanism often makes major decisions need long discussion, repeated revision, and much compromise. From one angle, this repetition is a sign that the institution runs slow and low in efficiency. From another angle, from the angle of what the American founders designed, this repetition is exactly the purpose of the design, giving major decisions full room for discussion, debate, and scrutiny. This is two sides of one phenomenon, slow being the cost of the division and balance of powers, and slow being also the purpose of the division and balance of powers. The reader judges for themselves how to view this slowness.
America's two-party system has long dominated American politics, a third party with almost no room to survive, the natural result of the electoral system and especially the single-member district. The two-party system has its inner advantages, simplifying the election, a stable formation of government, clear responsibility, and its inner challenges, a third voice hard to enter the mainstream, the opposition of the two parties easily sharpened, voters forced to take sides one way or the other, the voices of the middle voter and the moderate relatively pressed down. The American president is produced by the electoral college, a distinctive design, each state allotted electors by population, a compromise designed to balance large and small states and different regions. Some think it outdated, some think it protects the interests of small states and prevents large states from dominating, and this dispute is itself part of American democracy's self-reflection, history seeing several elections that won the popular vote but lost the electoral college, stirring repeated discussion. America's electoral system has federal, state, and local levels, each with elections, this multi-level democracy giving the people many chances to take part in politics. And at the small-town local level, this democratic participation has seen an interesting extreme, mentioned in the earlier chapter on voter enfeoffment, some towns making a cat honorary mayor for twenty years, some reelecting a dog as mayor. These cases, from one angle, are the interesting extreme of local democratic election. From another angle, they show too the freedom local democracy allows a community to express its own creativity and not be forced to be solemn. The reader judges for themselves whether this is a sign of democratic maturity or of democratic absurdity, and this book reaches no verdict.
America's official selection differs markedly from China's. America does not rely on a unified civil-service exam, the civil-service exam mainly selecting administrative-technical officials, and the high political posts mostly not through exam but relying on many entry paths. The first path, elite universities, today America's presidents almost all coming from elite universities, many legislators, cabinet ministers, and justices likewise from top schools. This elite-education path has its inner advantages, the top universities providing deep academic training plus an international view plus a wide network, the alumni network helping graduates gain opportunity, and its inner challenges, the educational path relatively fixed, the child of an ordinary family relatively hard to enter an elite university, the political elite possibly forming a relatively closed social circle. The second path, political-family transmission, America having many famous political families, several families producing several presidents. This transmission has its advantages, political experience, political resources, and voter recognition handed down across generations, and its challenges, contrasting with China's commoner-based official selection, the person of ordinary family relatively hard to enter the political summit. The third path, turning into politics from business, the military, academia, law, media, and other roads, the many-entry side of the American institution. The whole shape of American official selection, elite education plus political-family transmission plus many entry paths mixed, this system has its openness and its elite-leaning tendency, the reader judging by their own standard.
An important feature of the American democratic institution is allowing various social forces to take part in politics through organization and funds. Interest groups include business bodies, unions, trade associations, ethnic groups, and religious groups, influencing the political process through lobbying, political donations, media publicity, and community mobilization. From one angle, this is a sign of interest groups hijacking politics, big business and wealthy groups influencing legislation through money, the voice of ordinary people relatively weak. From another angle, this is a sign of plural interests taking part, any organized group able to take part in politics, different interests contending to form a dynamic balance. The American constitution secures the right to petition, and interest-group participation is a constitutionally protected right, the American institution itself seeing this participation as a sign of a healthy democracy. On political donations, the cost of American presidential and congressional elections grows ever larger, each on a scale of several billion to over ten billion. From one angle, this is a sign of money dominating politics, fundraising ability becoming key to a candidate's success, the influence of the rich and big business far greater than that of the ordinary voter. From another angle, this is a lawful way for citizens and groups to express political support, the American Supreme Court having once seen political donation as part of free speech. The revolving door describes the cycle of government officials entering business after leaving office and business executives taking high government posts. From one angle, this is a sign of the funneling of interest and the blurring of public and private. From another angle, this is a sign of the flow of talent and exchange of experience between the public and private sectors, government needing professionals who know an industry, business needing executives who know how government runs. The core of this section is to present as they are the actual running mechanisms of American democracy, and this book passes no verdict on whether these mechanisms are good or bad, only makes clear the two sides of each phenomenon, letting the reader judge by their own position and values.
The running of the American institution has several notable features, all presented with the method of seeing two sides of one phenomenon. Feature one, major decisions need long consultation, the two parties in Congress often discussing and revising a major bill again and again. From one angle, this is a sign of low decision efficiency and legislative paralysis. From another angle, this is the purpose of the design of the division and balance of powers, the American founders feeling a slow government better than a fast one, because a fast government easily does wrong, a slow government at least not making a great error quickly. Feature two, the federal government occasionally shuts down. From one angle a sign of government failure. From another angle a careful attitude toward the taxpayer's money, preferring a shutdown to a muddled signing. Feature three, the federal debt keeps accumulating. From one angle a sign of unsustainable finance and overdrawing the future. From another angle a fiscal model to finance long-term investment and crisis response. Feature four, the medical system is expensive but innovative, medical spending the highest share in the world, yet the reach of basic medicine less than in many developed countries, from one angle a sign of low efficiency, from another angle the center of global medical innovation and high-end medicine. Feature five, aging infrastructure, from one angle a sign of insufficient national investment, from another angle the localities bearing more under federalism, letting the localities set priorities by their own needs. Feature six, political polarization and regional division, from one angle a sign of a torn society and dissolving consensus, from another angle the true expression of a plural society, the democratic institution allowing these differences to exist openly. These are all two angles on one phenomenon, and this book reaches no verdict, only presents both angles, letting the reader see, think, and judge for themselves.
Having covered the many-sided observation above, set firm several real deep advantages of the American institution. First, the institutional guarantee of individual rights, the American constitutional bill of rights plus two hundred fifty years of ever-expanding case law securing a wide range of individual rights, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, personal liberty, property rights, privacy, due process of law, and this set of guarantees of individual rights is drawn on by many countries in the world today. Second, the environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, venture capital, the mechanism of going public, the protection of intellectual property, and a culture tolerant of failure, together making America's soil for innovation, many world-changing companies born in America. Third, the environment for academic research, American universities the core of global research, top scholars and students worldwide wishing to study and research in America, this pull of talent keeping America's edge in the competition of science and technology. Fourth, cultural soft power, America's films, popular music, television, social media, the English language, and way of life influencing global popular culture. Fifth, judicial independence, the federal courts and especially the Supreme Court institutionally independent of the executive and the legislature, able to restrain the overreach of the executive and the legislature, ruling executive orders unconstitutional many times, showing the real effectiveness of judicial independence. These deep advantages make up the real value of the American institution. Any objective evaluation of the American institution must see these advantages and also the various features discussed above, and only both sides together are the full picture of the American institution.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer: America is the core representative of mainstream Western discourse today, and through two hundred fifty years of institutional evolution has formed a complex system of the separation of powers plus the presidential system plus the two-party system plus the federal division of powers plus plural interest participation plus elite education and many entry paths plus the electoral system. This system has its deep wisdom, the design idea of the division and balance of powers, its inner tensions, phenomena like slow decisions, accumulating debt, and expensive medicine, and its deep advantages, individual rights, innovation, academia, culture, judicial independence. Each seeming problem, seen from another angle, has its inner logic, and each seeming advantage has its cost to pay. This is the true shape of any complex political institution. In contrast with the Chinese institution of the last section, two institutions, each with its logic, each with its cost, each with its gain, and this book passes no verdict on which is better, the reader judging by their own position and values.
But whether the Chinese or the American form of centralized authority, neither is all-powerful, and centralized authority fails too. Why do strong centralized-authority great states also collapse? Is there a common law behind the failure? The next section is about why centralized authority fails.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.