VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 3
How the Three Structures Fit Together, a Preview of Balance
By here, Part Three is covered. But have you noticed, this book covered enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority, these three root structures of political institutions, always separately. They in fact run at the same time in one group. This section brings the three structures together to see how they fit with each other, and makes one thing clear: these three structures alone are not enough, coordination and balance must be added.
By here, Volume Four has opened three Parts. Part One, enfeoffment, set firm the mechanism of a position existing. Part Two, the examination, set firm how the person in the position is selected by merit. Part Three, centralized authority, set firm how the decision-center runs. This section looks back and puts the three together, showing them as the complete skeleton of political institutions. The first structure, enfeoffment: political institutions are the institutions of enfeoffment, every politics begins from enfeoffment, of land, of office, of the army, of the party, of the bloodline, of the electorate, each an enfeoffment the granting of a position, and enfeoffment will not abolish itself, so a political institution can only evolve on the base of enfeoffment. The second structure, the examination: the examination is not history, it starts running the moment each child is educated, and behind it three things stand together, the will of the people, the enlightened ruler who knows talent, and merit selection that yields to the worthy, all three present the rare state of a time of good rule. The third structure, centralized authority: a life-level law crossing the state, the family, the enterprise, the army, every organized group, the First Emperor's breakthrough of twenty-two hundred years ago the founding ancestor of human political institutions, expansion the ultimate goal, centralized authority failing too by five common laws, crossing the category of politics and opened through five angles. These three together make up the root skeleton of political institutions. Enfeoffment set firm where the position is, the examination set firm who fills these positions, centralized authority set firm how these positions coordinate, the three interdependent, none to be missing.
Make clear how the three structures fit with each other. Structure one, enfeoffment, the mechanism of a position existing. Any political institution, the first step is the position, no position no politics, and no tier and function among the positions no politics either, the most basic matter of a political institution being to build, keep, and adjust a set of positions, the relation of this set of positions making up the political structure. Enfeoffment is the way a position is granted, history having had bloodline enfeoffment, military-merit enfeoffment, land enfeoffment, hereditary enfeoffment, party enfeoffment, electoral enfeoffment, examination enfeoffment, and many forms, but whatever the form, enfeoffment as the root logic of granting a position never vanished. Structure two, the examination, how the person in the position is selected by merit. A position alone is not enough, someone must sit in it, and how these people are chosen bears on the running quality of the political institution. The examination is the deepest merit-selection mechanism humankind invented, through an open exam plus an objective standard plus multiple rounds of sifting letting people of different background have a chance to enter the position system, and without the examination the position can only rest on heredity, bloodline, and connection, the running quality necessarily declining. Structure three, centralized authority, how the decision-center runs. The position and the person in it alone are not enough, how these positions coordinate decides the running effectiveness of the whole. Centralized authority is the most effective coordination mechanism humankind invented, letting positions scattered across different regions, fields, and tiers coordinate through one clear center, and without centralized authority the positions each go their own way and nothing large-scale can be done. The three structures are interdependent, position plus merit selection but no coordination, the whole effectiveness limited, position plus coordination but the one in the position being mediocre, the decision quality low, all three present and the skeleton of the political institution is complete, a feature every normally running state today shares, the root achievement of several thousand years of the evolution of human political institutions.
Here a deeper claim must be set firm. Enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority, the three root structures present, make up the skeleton of a political institution, but the skeleton alone is not enough, and for a political institution to run steadily, an inner mechanism of coordination and balance must be added on top of the skeleton. Why? The first reason, centralized authority plus inner factional contest must be beaten. The section on failure set it firm, that one of the most common causes of the failure of centralized authority in history is inner factional strife and contest, the middle and late Tang, the late Ming, and the late Soviet Union all so. The skeleton of centralized authority itself cannot solve the problem of inner factional contest, so there must be a mechanism of coordination, letting different forces work together, letting factional contest be institutionally absorbed, not letting conflict turn into destructive infighting. The second reason, centralized authority plus the inability to correct error must harden. Any decision can err, any center can make a wrong judgment, the repeated disorder of Roman succession, Chongzhen replacing more than fifty chief grand secretaries in seventeen years, the long ideological hardening of the Soviet Union allowing no inner criticism, all inabilities to correct error in different senses. The skeleton of centralized authority itself has no built-in mechanism of correcting error, so there must be a mechanism of balance, letting any decision be scrutinized, questioned, and corrected. The third reason, centralized authority plus the center abusing power must fall into disorder. The greater the power the center holds, the greater the danger of its abuse, history seeing many samples of catastrophic decisions made by one person's will. The skeleton of centralized authority itself gives the center too much power, so there must be a mechanism of balance, letting the center too be restrained, letting power not be wholly held by any one person or faction. These three reasons together show that the three structures of the skeleton must be fitted with an inner mechanism of coordination and balance to run steadily. Coordination lets the different parts of the skeleton work together. Balance lets no side wholly dominate, lets error be recognized and corrected, lets power not be abused.
Coordination and balance are not a kind of political institution, they are a running mechanism embedded inside all political institutions. They cross East and West. Chinese traditional political wisdom, such as the three lords and nine ministers of the Han holding each other in check, the three departments and six ministries of the Tang deliberating together, the cabinet plus the eunuch secretariat plus the six ministries of the Ming restraining each other, and Western political wisdom, such as the separation of powers of America, the monarch plus parliament plus judiciary of Britain, the multi-body balance of a cross-national union, all contain elements of coordination and balance. Coordination and balance have their own laws, what kind of coordination is steadiest, what kind of balance is most effective, how to hold the balance between coordination and balance. The full opening of this coordination and balance is what the later volumes of this book will do, where it will be made clear why some political bodies are long-lived and some short-lived, what kind of coordination mechanism can run steadily for centuries, what kind of balance mechanism can prevent the abuse of power, and how to apply this ancient wisdom to present-day governance. Why put coordination and balance later? Because it must be built on the base of the earlier volumes, the cultural institutions making clear the root character of being a person and being an organization, the economic institutions making clear how the material base runs, the political institutions making clear how the position runs, the legal institutions making clear the guarantee mechanism of enforcing force, and only at the end can these contents be fully integrated in how they coordinate and balance in the practice of governance. This layer is buried here first, and the reader need only remember one thing: the skeleton alone is not enough, there must also be the living mechanism of coordination and balance, and only then can a political institution truly run steadily.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer, and Part Three formally closes. Enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority, the three root structures, make up the skeleton of a political institution, enfeoffment setting firm where the position is, the examination setting firm who fills these positions, centralized authority setting firm how these positions coordinate, the three interdependent, none to be missing. But the skeleton alone is not enough, an inner mechanism of coordination and balance must be added, letting factional contest be institutionally absorbed, letting error be recognized and corrected, letting power not be abused, and only then can a political institution run steadily. The real things for the reader are three. First, a political institution is not an abstract concept, it is the running mechanism of every organized group, the country, enterprise, family, and association the reader is in all running by some combination of enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority plus coordination and balance. Second, there is no best political institution, only the most fitting one under particular conditions, and the reader judges by their own position, group, and age what combination of institution fits best, rather than simply accepting some ready-made template of political institution. Third, any political institution can fail and can be improved, and the group the reader is in must be alert at all times to those five laws of failure and can analyze itself through those five angles to find the direction of improvement.
By here, enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority, the three root structures of political institutions, are all covered. But this book, having covered so much, where in the end does it stand in the history of human political thought? What is its relation to the most famous political thinkers of the past five hundred years, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau? Are the things it covers new, or did the ancestors cover them long ago? The next Part walks into the history of thought, sets this book inside the coordinate frame of five hundred years, and sees clearly where it stands.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.