Duet Of Concordance And Counterbalance

Many scholars woud like to understand the past thought of mixed regime in a perspective of constitutional democracy, which indicates there's a wide gap between the modern and the Ancient. To some extent, the gap is an imaginary one more than a truth. This article turns the way in reverse, trying to understand the history of western political thought in a perspective of mixed political regime, regarding constitutional democracy as a variety of mixed regimes. This perspective is in fact a natural one, which maybe relieve modern people of the myth, shorten the exaggerated ideological gap, and understand the merits and defects of the modern mixed regimes. Thus the core question of this article is how the ancient thought of mixed regime have changed into the modern one.What's the mixed political regime? In the introduction, the article defines it loosely as the regime mixed from two or more pure ones, in a way of tempering and moderating pure forms of regimes or check and balance between the divided powers, or both. The former way means combining the merits of pure forms, such as the unity of monarchy, the virtue of aristocracy, and the freedom of democracy; or balancing the interests of classes in the regime or changing them close to the middle class. The latter way means the different units in the mixed regime respectively holds relative independent authority institutionally, in order to produce an effect of check and balance. In the definition, "political regime" refers to the distributive system of political power, which refers to the power that can make a final decision over the public affairs in a community, which includes both the power of owning and governing.Based on the said core question, the article is divided naturally into two parts: Part I discusses the Ancient thought of mixed regime, including chapter one, two and three, Part II discusses the modern thought, including chapter four, five, seven, eight, and nine.The Ancient thoughts includes those in Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages. Chapter One describes those thoughts in Greek and Rome. Certain conception ofmixed regime can be traced back to nine century B.C. for Homer describes in Iliad a kind of mixture composed of a military leader, the council of nobles and the entire Greek camp. Plato turns his interest from the philosopher-king to the mixed regime in his last political work, The Laws. Aristotle forms a theory of the mixed regime, emphasizing on moderation of class interest, and combination of merits from simple regimes. The practice of Rome provided a different conception, which combined features of pure regimes by the counterbalance of different institutions. Polibius theorizes the Rome's practice into a conception of check and balance of powers. Compared with the Aristotle's thought, the Polibius' went more toward the modern, the difference of them decides to some extent the mood of the whole history of western thought of political regime. If the history were a game site of a long time, the competition of Aristotle and Polibius would have always been the key match.The following chapters two and three discusse the thought of mixed regime founded by Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, which aims at tempering monarchy, preventing it from despotism. Thomas carried on the Aristotle's conception of temperance and moderation, trying to harmonize the elements of aristocracy and democracy into the frame of monarchy. The mixture is asymmetric, in which the king holds not only the ownership of community, but also the principal governing power, the included aristocrats and commons holding secondary governing power. In the late Middle Ages, with the rise of political relativism, the participation of the multitude had got a strong base, the regime toward more inclusion. The development has different potential orientations, such as the Ptolemy and Oresme's thought easily toward pluralism, the Admont's toward popular sovereignty, the Gerson and D'Ailly's toward parliamentary sovereignty. The three orientations provide theoretical elements for the later division of the owning and governing power, and that of governing power itself. Just as said by James Blythe, modern thought of regime is not the renaissance of the Greek and Rome, but the evolution of the Middle Ages.Modern thought of regime includes links of formation, challenge, and development. Chapter four describes the practice of mixed regimes in Italy, England, and Dutch in the early modern times, which lead to the transformation of mixed regime from the Aristotle' pattern to the Polibius'. Italy and Dutch followed a line ofrepublicanism, and England mixed monarchy. Compared with the Ancient thought, the practice in the three places went from temperance and moderation to check and balance, the Polibius' pattern replacing the Aristotle's pattern step by step.Chapters five and six discuss the key contents of modern thought of mixed regime: the separation between the power of owning and governing, and that between governing power itself. His refusal of monarchy authorized by God suggests that any one or group should not obtain political power based on a myth or status, the legitimacy of political power is from the people's consensus. Representative system is the principal form of expressing the consensus, which indicates that the power of owning and governing is separated by a normal institution. In the Locke's conceptionof representation, there are two levels of sovereignty: (1) the people's sovereignty__the people holding the owning power, (2)the parliamentary sovereignty ___ theparliament holding the governing power. The representation is a "disembeding" system toward modern thought of mixed regime.The key content of modern thought of mixed regime is the separation of governing power itself. This task is mainly realized by Montesque, who carries on and transform the Ancient thought, forms a normal theory of modern mixed regime. The key elements of theory includes (l)separation of powers based on institution instead of class, (2)check and balance of governing powers , and (3)new dimension of separation of powers which mixed monarchy and the republic.Chapters seven and eight discuss the challenges from two non-mainstream theories, one is about Rousseau's mixed democracy and the other about Hegel's mixed monarchy. Modern normal theory of mixed regime builds the power of monarch and the people on stilts, which is thus criticized by the theories intimate to democracy and monarchy respectively. In Rousseau's theory, there's a division between sovereignty and governing power, but the latter just refers to the executive power, that means just part of governing power is separated from owning power. The popular sovereignty includes not only owning power but also supreme governing power, i.e., legislative power. On the level of sovereignty, Rousseau argues a pure form of regime, but on the level of executive power, he appreciates a mixed one. Because the executive power is subject to legislative power, his mixture is just a kind of temperance and moderation instead of check and balance. Hegel's mixedmonarchy is different from the Ancient, for it mixes modem representation and bureaucracy. In this asymmetric mixed monarchy, Hegel opposes check and balance. His combination of king's power, executive power, and legislative power characterizes the mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, but among them, the king's power is supreme. Hegel's mixed regime is a middle form between the Ancient and modem ones.Chapter nine discuss a development of modern thoughts of mixed regime, which was conducted by American Federalists. They shake off the impact of Aristotle, and proclaimed the victory of Polibius. It's well known that they applied Montesque's theory of separation of three powers to American regime, while the application is not a simple one, but based on new theoretical elements (such as the assumption of ambition), providing a more complicated model of mixed regime. This is a model of check and balance of plural powers.The conclusion points out again the main purpose of this research is to probe the successive and changed relations between the ancient and modern thought of mixed political regime, shorten the exaggerated gap between them. For modem thought of mixed regime evolutes from the Ancient, in an ancient perspective, the modem thought's defects can be more easily found: (1) modern thought of mixed regime overlooks class balance, which is in practice replaced by party balance; (2)the imperfection of the replacement requires modem thought pay more attention to the appeal of lower class in political participation and public policy; (3)besides party balance and class balance, it's necessary for modern thought to pay attention to the balance of interest groups; (4)modern thought has "lost" the value of "unity" originated from Ancient monarchy, which needs other institution to burden; (5)compared with Ancient mixed regime, the democratic element of modem ones is exaggerated; (6)modern thought of mixed regime is based on the assumption of self-interest oriented human nature, forgetting the virtue of regime, which is necessary for modern people to find back.