I have always found the internal logic of countries such as North Korea, Burma/Myanmar or Hoxha-era Albania to be absolutely baffling. Your Iron Law of Institutions (which I first learned of from your somewhat recent blog post on the topic) is the only explanation I've ever seen for why governments and leadership which have failed massively on every objective criteria, including their own measurements, cling to power in the face of utter ruin.

I think that you are right. Many people seem to think that people in positions of power in American society are either crazy or stupider than they are--the average American citizen (Tom Tommorrow's latest cartoon http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/10/08/tomo/. Obviously this is untrue, people in power are often very intelligent, and it would be foolish to think otherwise. But they are very selfish, and this Law is the perfect bridge that explains why people in power in the United States make the decisions that they do.

It depends. Institutions and internal factions adapt to their surrounding environments in unpredictable ways. As a rule of thumb, I'd argue that in high trust and transparent environments, the iron law of institutions is probably weaker, in low trust and secretive environments, it's probably stronger. That's why an educated and secure populace with access to a free press creates a much healthier society than an impoverished and ignorant or cynical one.

Check out Robert Axelrod's work on the logic of cooperation versus competition.

The Iron Law is an Iron Law because of but one thing: there are basically many opposing and cooperating forces in an institution, but the factions that would not seek to enhance their own power at the expense of the institution generally do not get to keep it or have a reputation in relative tatters. Think Vaclav Havel, who ended up being succeeded by one of his strongest rivals. Ambition is a powerful motivator, and the ambitious are always more willing to "get smart" than the unambitious.

I'd be interested in seeing a study done of this phenomenon. It raises questions -- like how well does the ILI (or teelee, as I just decided to pronounce it,) hold up for smaller institutions like local governments or Lions Clubs? And what about exceptions to the rule, as there usually are?

It certainly doesn't explain why the Dems seem so lame -- they'd sooner support Bush than attain power. This is long-standing, the Dems would roll over during Reagan too... I guess it doesn't work in a hyper-nationalist environment, like in the US...

btw - Jon, are boxes of your book available for my holiday needs?

I ALWAYS enter the net through Thismodernworld. (which is how I found this site)The Penguin and that Dog don't miss a lick.
Hate to tout the same old ideology I always pander, but GREED makes even the smartest people really STUPID. (as an aside, I honestly believe that George is really mentally disabled, could be genetic, but I kinda figure Babs was a little abusive when George was very young)

When I think about, if you notice he's really rebelious to his Dad yet wants to defend his Dad even unto ALL OUR deaths. I'm thinking that his Dad could not defend George from Babs nor George defend his Father, and OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD comes from those issues, somewhat.

I agree that the Iron Law of Institutions probably holds true in many cases but does it explain everything? Why not try and apply it to the occupation of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq is the latest in a series of imperialistic endeavors that began with the Spanish American War which spread to the Philippines and continued on in other various places in the world culminating but probably not ending in Iraq today. Almost all wars are the result of the build up of supplies or goods, which could be oil, water, or even land by one country desired by another country or so goes the anthropological view on the causation of wars. I have yet to hear a better explanation though no doubt there are some who would argue with it. The war or occupation has gone badly and we all know it, so does Bush yet Bush keeps hanging on for dear life. Why? Because to admit that the war is going badly would be to lose power and status within the institution (America). The Iraq war is the base for all of Bush’s power grabs and without the war it is doubtful he could have made said power grabs, thus we invoke the Iron Law of Institutions.

The Democrats have clearly angered the anti-war liberals but looking at a recent Pew poll I see that 54 percent of the people polled believe that the war is not going well while 41 percent believe that it is going well. 41 percent is a significant portion of the population (assuming the polling is accurate). My impression of the Dems is they have been playing a game of walking the fence. They “talk” about ending the war while at the same time claim they don’t have the numbers to do so. Actually they do have the numbers to do so yet they do not. They know that the war is causing great harm to the U.S. but by playing their little game of pretending to not be able to stop the war while fully funding it, in fact giving Bush exactly what he wants, we again invoke the Iron Law of Institutions because the Dems are trying to retain their power as the majority in congress and have their eye on the presidency. I would just add that the Dems believe in American imperialism just as much as the Republicans do.

Link to the Pew poll--

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=355

There are some very interesting examples of this in Greg Palast's ARMED MADHOUSE. He observes that in the 2004 elections, the Democrats in various states were often concerned with local issues -- getting rid of Cynthia McKinney, for instance -- and in consequence of these issues, didn't pay much attention to vote-rigging problems. He argues that control of local parties was often deemed more important than winning back control of Congress or the Presidency.

I can add that in the small political organisations which I've belonged to, individual egotism usually seems to override ideology.

So, yeah, I think it's an iron law.

(By the way, Palast convincingly accounts for the massive failure of the administration of Iraq over the first years of occupation, by the apparent fact that the State Department and the Pentagon didn't agree on what was to be done, and each was trying to outmanoeuvre the other.)

Before even reading the comments (which I look forward to), I have to say that I think you are probably about 90% or more right, probably more. The farther things go, the worse they get, the more frantic and the crueler people become.

One problem I see with it is that like any theory it can be used to explain too much. It's probably not a bad idea to have it in mind as a hypothesis when considering apparently self-destructive actions of institutions. However, there are plenty of other reasons: infiltration, popular misapprehensions, mistaken beliefs, incompetence (which has a large number of causes itself: e.g. illness, malnutrition, ignorance, zealotry, decadence), to name but a few.

Also, institutions don't suffer from cognitive dissonance. They can be pursuing many different goals simultaneously, the net pull of which can lead in a direction none of the factions actually wants.

OTOH, I wouldn't like to foster the idea that individual actors are any better. Individuals without institutional support (which in some cases can be enhanced by an individual's force of will, but most often not significantly) tend to be ignorant, ill-educated, unhealthy, have little access to resources and so on. Some kind of institutions are required, though I'd suggest they needn't be anything like the dominant institutions of our time.

At a tangent, the kinds of institutions that have been dominant and significant in the past has varied widely, generally due to the influence of technology (whether operating in the physical world or the world of the mind). It's important not to get railroaded by the recent past.

Didn't you leave out something about Blum?
If he had been merely a socialist (bad enough) without being a juif as well (really bad), how would the Right and righteous Frenchmen have reacted?

>you don't have to be told that someone is a scumbag; you can verify for yourself, firsthand

This is actually harder than most people think. It's often after fraud of some kind has happened that people realize. And even then, with particularly charismatic and cautious scumbags, someone is set up to take the fall or a MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION takes place.

As an aside, the book "Steeplejacking" suggests that the US church (at the grass-roots level) only started to become right wing during the 60s and 70s due to entryist action by what would nowadays be called wingnuts.

I'm certain it's led to significant misdirection of funds, e.g. to spurious building projects: in anticipation of massively swelled numbers, a project bolstered by a climate of fear of speaking out (against The Lord? Who could think of such a thing?!), the building contract for which is co-incidentally awarded to an influential, rich, right-wing congregation member.

Anyway, just because something is local doesn't mean it's any better. It just means that you're close to it and so the flaws are harder to see.

I just pulled a book off my shelves, TOTAL ESPIONAGE by Curt Reiss, published in 1941, which documents the fifth column (the business and banking class as well as elements of the French military) in France which did actually help to ensure Hitler's destruction of Leon Blum's socialist government.

Now move that idea to America. The American business class was absolutely at war with FDR and his social reforms. That class consisted of people like the Harrimans, the Bushes, the Dulleses, the Rockefellers. It's not surprising that these families and their business institutions were in the vicinity of things like the attempted coup (read THE PLOT TO SEIZE THE WHITE HOUSE) in the early thirties using the face of Smedley Butler, or that many of these families were in business with German banks and conglomerates during WWII, even while "we" were fighting them. Nor should it be surprising that many Wall Streeters drifted into the OSS and then the CIA after the war, nor that these "semi-secret societies" helped to rescue Nazis and Nazi supporters out of Europe, and it should not surprise that the Nazi spawn should keep turning up as Republicans in little scandals here and there. I think that the guy in the Justice Dept. who's been dreaming up ways of keeping blacks in Georgia from voting was one of them.

In the end the French business class DID have more in common with the Nazis than with Blum. Just as the American business class did. If one examines the history of America's intelligence services (most notably the CIA, but also the FBI, NSA, etc.) you will see the creation of secret organizations which protect business investments abroad while squelching dissent at home. The CIA is ultimately a tool for the wealthy to protect their wealth and to exploit new resources. The Cold War just an extension of Petain's Cordon Sanitaire, the strategy by which the French supported Nazi Germany as protection against the Soviets' threat to the elite's wealth. Vietnam was, among other things, a little wall for protection of the Indonesian oilfields. The "Domino Theory" was just a restatement of Cordon Sanitaire.

Part of the strategy to protect the elite is to keep the majority of the Americans undereducated, unhealthy, poor and dissatisfied. Like a herd of buffalo. Frighten them and aim them in some direction. It's a strategy that works.

"It certainly doesn't explain why the Dems seem so lame -- they'd sooner support Bush than attain power. This is long-standing, the Dems would roll over during Reagan too... I guess it doesn't work in a hyper-nationalist environment, like in the US...
Posted by sam"

actually, it does if you understand that Dems and Repugs are both beholden to the same corporate interests, and that those corporate interests don't really care how PEOPLE fare, as long as they get their tax cuts, kickbacks, and separate legal system. Dems are "weak" because they know their re-election campaigns will be starved of contributions if they piss off their corporate masters, so they're left to allow Bush to continue bringing the US down.
The idea of a weak USA is actually very attractive to multinational corporations because that would drive wages down, remove unions' pesky clamoring for such outdated concepts as "pensions" and "healthcare", and "sick days", and "providing reasons for being fired".
They also wouldn't have to worry about expensive methods to safely dispose of toxic chemical byproducts if they could just buy the EPA....if they haven't already.
so, in short, Dems really *are* following the Iron Law of Institutions, we may just be looking at the wrong institution.

You are half completely wrong and half completely right, but unfortunately you are that much right and that much wrong about exactly the same things! The right and the wrong cancel out, which means ... someone else wins.

"Better Hitler than Blum!" was poorly worded.
"Better Satan than Blum" was more like it.
Blum was Jewish and a socialist, which to many conservative Catholics in France at the time were two mortal sins even Satan didn't have.

Hitler, however, was German. Which made him much worse than Satan. One simply cannot overestimate how strongly anti-German French sentiment was (except, ironically, among intellectuals, even on the left, most of them bigtime germanophiles.)

So, Jon's thesis, while very interesting in its own right, could use a better illustration.

All the more so as it appears the phrase itself "Plutot Hitler que Blum" may never have been used as a rightwing slogan. It was first coined by Emmanuel Mounier as a putdown against the complacent French bourgeoisie. That much is known.

It's possible it was used by pro-nazi groups later but I am not aware there's any record of that.

I am actually curious. If anyone can find such evidence, please let me know.

Again the sentiment the phrase it expresses has high relevance. But it's like "The French have no word for entrepreneur." Bush could have said that, he should have said that. But there's no record he ever did.

Die Franzosen:

"Je suis pour le communisme
Je suis pour le socialisme
Et pour le capitalisme
Parce que je suis opportuniste"

Re: "that doesn't explain why the Dems seem so lame." Actually, TILI explains their lameness perfectly well. The big Dems like Pelosi and Clinton continually act to increase their power within the Democratic Party, while the power of their party overall continues to wither. Although they could attain more power at the national level by acting bravely (for instance, via impeachment), their control over their own organization would thereby be lessened.

The poster who references Palast's book - specifically the section about the '04 election in NM - illustrates this perfectly. Score Jon 100% on this one, imo.

Re: Bernard Chazelle. Jon - I've told you before to ban him from the comments section. Everything he writes makes him seem smarter and funnier than you are.

Palast convincingly accounts for the massive failure of the administration of Iraq over the first years of occupation, by the apparent fact that the State Department and the Pentagon didn't agree on what was to be done, and each was trying to outmanoeuvre the other.

mad management skillz, on display.

Jerry Pournelle (a blogger from the 'other' side of the blogsphere) also describes an Iron Law of Institutions. According to him, any institution has two kinds of people; those whose primary interest is in pursuing the institution's public goals, and those whose primary interest is in pursuing the institution's own goals. Over time, he says, it is the latter type who gain power in the institution and define its rules.

There are subtle differences between his formulation of TILI and yours. By your account, the French collaborators wished misfortune on France, considered as an institution, in order to maintain power within that institution. By his account, the French right wing was the institution, and France the public whose interests came second to the right wing's own institutional interest.

Your version: some individuals within societies gain advantage at society's expense.

His version: some institutions within society gain advantage at society's expense.

I guess it depends on what you call an institution. The basic point you share with Pournelle is an old chestnut: the selfishness of power. Your version and his can be regarded as stages in a decay. First the institution puts itself above the public; then individuals within the institution put themselves above the institution.