VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 1

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 1

The Decision-Center, One Name and Two Meanings

Part One covered enfeoffment, how a position comes to be. Part Two covered the examination, who fills the position. But we have spoken all along of the matter of one position. A real group is a whole structure of thousands of positions, and for that structure to coordinate, to pool its strength, to react to the outside world, on what does it rely? On a decision-center. This Part is about the third root structure of political institutions, centralized authority. This section lays down a judgment that may have you see the word anew: centralized authority is not one kind of institution, it is a life-level law that no organized group escapes.

Do a thought experiment. Walk into a classroom, a teacher at the front, dozens of students below, who has the say in this class? The teacher. If the teacher does not teach and the students each talk and none listens to another, the class falls apart. Walk into the kitchen of a restaurant, a head chef directing at the center, who has the say? The head chef. If the head chef gives no orders and several cooks fight for the lead, the hundreds of orders never come out as food. Walk into an operating room, the lead surgeon standing at the center, who has the say in this operation? The lead surgeon. If the lead does not direct and each acts on their own judgment, the patient is in danger. Walk into an army camp, an officer standing before the ranks, who has the say in this force? The officer. If the officer gives no order and the soldiers each decide how to move, this force on the battlefield will surely be beaten. Walk into a company, who has the say? The highest head. With no power of decision, several deputies each going their own way, the company soon declines. Walk into a country, there must be a person or a set of mechanisms that can make the final decision, a head of state, a parliament, a highest decision-making body, there must be a decision-center, or the country falls into chaos, division, and dissolution. Any organized group must have a decision-center, and this is not should have, it is must have. Even three people moving a table for a moment will form of themselves a hidden decision-center of whom to follow, or the table does not move. This law is life-level, not a political-science invention, but the instinctive reaction of life.

Lift that observation up: the decision-center of any complex group is what political science calls centralized authority. Central is a position, the position that can make the final decision. Authority concentrated is a mechanism, concentrating the power of decision in that position. Together, centralized authority is a group having one clear decision-center, plus that center holding the final power of decision. Here a common misunderstanding must be avoided. Many, hearing centralized authority, think at once of dictatorship, despotism, one man's say alone, and this confuses centralized authority with certain historical forms. Centralized authority is not the same as one-man dictatorship. A board making a joint decision is also centralized authority, the decision-center being the board, not any one director. A parliament making a legislative decision is also centralized authority, the decision-center being the parliament, not any one legislator. A married couple jointly deciding which school their child attends is also centralized authority, the decision-center being the consensus the couple forms. Centralized authority is about the existence of the decision-center, not about who alone makes the decision. So long as the group has one clear center holding the final power of decision, whether that center is one person, a few people, or a set of mechanisms, it is centralized authority. So centralized authority and dictatorship, democracy, and authoritarianism are concepts of two different dimensions. A country can be a democratic centralized authority, its decision-center an elected head of state plus a parliament. It can be an authoritarian centralized authority, many empires of history. It can be a dictatorial centralized authority, a few extreme polities. But a country cannot be one without any centralized authority, so long as it still exists. Seen through history, any country that lost its centralized authority was either swallowed by an outside enemy, or split within into several countries, or collapsed into chaos, and there is no fourth possibility.

Why must a group have centralized authority? The answer has four layers. The first, decisions must be consistent in time. Any problem a group faces must at some point be decided, this year's budget, whether to do this project, all with a time limit. If the power of decision is scattered, this one saying do it and that one saying not, discussed for months and years, the best moment missed, and the group is eliminated by time. Centralized authority concentrates the power of decision in one clear position, able to decide within a reasonable time, so the group is not paralyzed by endless discussion. The second, decisions must be consistent in execution. Any decision once made must be carried out, and if the decision is A but one person acts on B and another on C, the decision is void. Consistency between decision and execution needs a clear chain of command. History shows countless times an emperor ordering a tax cut while local officials outwardly obeyed and inwardly kept the high tax, the order nearly void outside the capital, and such a dynasty soon collapsed. The third, a group facing an outside challenge must be able to mobilize all its resources. To meet war, competition, crisis, or disaster needs people, goods, money, and wisdom concentrated on the key point in a short time. Centralized authority can do it, one order mobilizing the whole country's resources to meet the emergency, and scattered politics cannot, collapsing at once before a concentrated shock. In history the Qin destroying the six states, the Sui unifying the Northern and Southern Dynasties, each was a victory of centralized authority over scattered politics. The fourth, conflicts within a group need a final arbitration. Any group has conflicts of different interest, view, and demand, and if they cannot be arbitrated they magnify without end and in the end tear the group apart. Centralized authority provides the final arbitration, disagreements past a point brought to the decision-center, the center ruling, the group accepting and continuing to run. The four layers together: without centralized authority, a group cannot decide consistently in time, cannot act consistently in execution, cannot meet an outside challenge in concentration, cannot arbitrate an inner conflict, all four failing, and the group necessarily scatters.

More than twenty-three hundred years ago, Han Feizi taught, in the chapter Eminent Learning, that in the state of an enlightened ruler there are no writings on bamboo strips, the law being the teaching, and no words of the former kings, the officials being the teachers. On the surface this is about law and instruction, but underneath is a deeper claim, that the governing of a state must have a unified standard, and this standard comes from the center, not left to the localities or to each school to go their own way. Han Feizi also taught a plainer line, that affairs are in the four quarters but the key is at the center, the sage holding the key and the four quarters coming to serve. This line puts centralized authority clearly, affairs in the four quarters being execution in the localities, the key at the center being decision at the center, the basic format of how centralized authority runs. This layer that Han Feizi set out clearly twenty-three hundred years ago is one of the deepest contributions of the Chinese ancestors to the political wisdom of humankind, earlier than any comparable Western thought by some eighteen hundred to two thousand years. Hobbes teaching the concentration of state power, and Machiavelli teaching the ruler's art of rule, both came some eighteen hundred to two thousand years after Han Feizi, and without Han Feizi's complete theoretical system uniting law, technique, and position as three in one.

Centralized authority is not only the matter of the state. Widen the view and you find that every organized group follows this law. In a school, each class has a homeroom teacher, and a school has a principal, and without this tier of positions what to study, when to test, what the graduation standard is, all falls into chaos. In a hospital, each department has a director, and a hospital has a president, and without this tier the patient does not know whom to see and the doctors write conflicting prescriptions, and the hospital cannot run. In the courts, each court has a presiding judge, and the whole judicial system has a highest court, and without this tier the same case gets different verdicts from different judges, and justice loses its credibility. The army is the strictest sample, from squad leader to supreme commander, each level with a clear command relation, and any level with a double command or an unclear command routs on the battlefield. An orchestra too, the baton in the conductor's hand deciding the speed of every beat and the loud and soft of every passage, and dozens of players each playing to their own judgment collapse at once into noise, only following the conductor becoming music. A family, the couple together forming a decision-center, deciding the child's education, the family finances, and without this center the couple stands opposed, the child has nothing to follow, and the family relation breaks. Any organized group, from two people to hundreds of millions, follows this law of centralized authority, without it the group scatters, with it the group can keep running. This is why centralized authority is a life-level law, not only the matter of politics, but the root running principle of every organized group.

Among all organized groups, the enterprise's need for centralized authority is especially strict, because the enterprise must survive in the market, and once its centralized authority fails it is eliminated at once by competitors. A state losing its centralized authority may take decades to collapse, a family may take years to break, but an enterprise may be eliminated by the market in months. This is why the highest head of an excellent enterprise must have a clear power of decision, not hollowed out by the board, not split evenly among several deputies, not held in check by family members, not tied down by nepotism, for any way of eroding the power of decision sends the enterprise into a failure of centralized authority, slow decisions, chaotic execution, weakness before outside challenge, inner conflicts that cannot be arbitrated, and this enterprise perishes. History shows this law again and again. The family enterprise where wealth does not pass three generations, the founder with a clear power of decision leading it to rise, the second generation barely carrying on, the third often scattering the power of decision among several family members or trusted friends, the centralized authority failing, the enterprise declining. The startup where partners fight for power, several founders splitting equity and the power of decision evenly at first, which is scattered politics, and at the first great disagreement the company paralyzed, many startups of great potential dying young this way. The great company where factions contest, the highest head's power of decision hollowed out by several factions, the company unable to form a unified strategy, missing a technical shift, overtaken by a rising rival, and not a few once-giant firms that declined had such an inner organizational problem as one key cause. So for an enterprise to be long-lived it must hold to centralized authority, and any erosion of the power of decision must be watched.

So here is the position this section lays down. We set one layer firm: centralized authority is a life-level law, crossing the state, the family, the enterprise, the army, every organized group. Any complex group must have one clear decision-center holding the final power of decision, or the group cannot decide consistently in time, cannot act consistently in execution, cannot meet an outside challenge in concentration, cannot arbitrate an inner conflict, all four failing and the group necessarily scattering. Centralized authority is not the same as dictatorship, the decision-center able to be one person, a few, or a set of mechanisms, but it must be clear and hold the final power of decision. A country can be a democratic centralized authority or an authoritarian one, but it cannot be one without centralized authority. Han Feizi set out this law twenty-three hundred years ago, affairs in the four quarters and the key at the center, one of the deepest contributions of the Chinese ancestors to the political wisdom of humankind, earlier than any comparable Western thought by eighteen hundred to two thousand years.

But this law, though Han Feizi set it out long ago, was first truly realized in full in history in China over twenty-two hundred years ago. One person made this law into a whole institution that could run for two thousand years, and he is called the founding ancestor of human political institutions. The next section is about that person, the First Emperor.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.