In explaining his nomination of Russell Vought for the position of director of the Office of Management and Budget, President-elect Donald Trump wrote (“Donald Trump chooses Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary,” Financial timesNovember 23, 2024):
Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end the armed government, and he will help us return self-government to the people.
What rational meaning can we give to the idea of popular self-government? Let us first note that the word ‘governance’ is often used to whitewash the coercive element of ‘government’, with the former concept apparently emphasizing the abstract process rather than the governors and their victims. But let us ignore this distraction and consider “self-government” and the traditional “self-government” as synonyms. We can distinguish four meanings of the expression ‘self-government (or self-government) of the people’.
First, an intuitive meaning is that “the people” govern themselves. Or is it ‘himself’ or ‘herself’? That question suggests that the phrase has no rational meaning unless “the People” is some kind of social organism or anthropomorphic being that can think or do things – and of which an individual is just a cell. Such views of society have inspired or justified totalitarianism in various eras of humanity. For an elaboration of this approach, see my “The impossibility of populism,” The Independent ReviewSummer 2001.
By the way, the underlying definition of populism that I use and whose implications I pursue is not far removed from the accepted definition in economics and political science: see Cass Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: a very brief introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017). Or consider Manuel Funke et al., “Populist Leaders and the Economy” (American economics magazine 113-12 [2023]), who, in explaining the definition they use for their econometric database, write:
More precisely, populists typically portray “the people” as a suffering, inherently good, virtuous, authentic, ordinary, and communal majority, whose collective will is embodied in the populist leader.
Academic students of populism emphasize that there are right-wing and left-wing versions of the regime, both historically and theoretically.
A second, less Frankensteinian meaning of popular self-government sees it as a majority government of the (plural) members of the people. How can this mean anything other than the majority somehow governing itself and, more clearly, ruling over a minority that is itself governed by others? It is worth recalling a fable by the late philosopher Robert Nozick (see his 1974 book). Anarchy, state and utopiapp. 290-292). You are one of the 10,001 slaves of a ruthless master. At some point, the master becomes nicer to his slaves (including you), stops beating them, and takes into account their needs, merits, and other similar factors when assigning them tasks. He then reduces their work week to three days. Later he even allows them to work in the open market, on the condition that they give him three-sevenths of their wages. He still has the power to recall them to the plantation in case of emergency and to restrict their rights to engage in certain personal activities (e.g. mountain climbing or smoking cigarettes) that could reduce their production capabilities. But by continuing the process of liberalization, your master ultimately allows his other 10,000 slaves – that is, leaving you out – to discuss and vote among themselves on all the decisions he has previously made, including what share of the revenue of the slaves, including yours, will go into a common fund and how the money will be used. One day the 10,000 graciously decide that you can vote for yourself if their votes are 5,000 to 5,000 (which never happens). Ultimately, the 10,000 decide to let you cast your ballot with theirs for they are counted. All 10,001, now including you, democratically make whatever decisions they want regarding the lives of everyone. Nozick’s question: Where in that series did you stop being a slave?
A third meaning of self-government is that every individual whoever constitutes the people, understood in the plural sense of the different individuals, governs himself. This valuable ideal was recognized as attainable, at least in part, by the 18th century discovery of the spontaneous social order. The literal self-government of individuals represents the ideal of classical liberalism and its later extension in the various theories of individualist anarchism (such as those of Murray Rothbard, David Friedman and Anthony de Jasay). These two broad liberal movements are perhaps best represented today by James Buchanan and the constitutional political economy school, respectively, which recognize an ultimate veto for every individual in a political society; and on the other hand that of liberal anarchism, by Anthony de Jasay, who advocates the total freedom of each individual over his contracts and his property.
Let me illustrate this with a simple but paradigmatic case of liberal self-government: the freedom of an individual or his suppliers and intermediaries to import, for example, dolls from a Chinese manufacturer if the parties, importer and exporter, come to a mutually beneficial agreement. The fact that the foreign party to such an agreement does not benefit from self-government in its own country, while unfortunate, does not change the definition of self-government for the party living in a free country. It is highly unlikely that Mr. Trump will embrace the third meaning of popular self-government.
The only remaining possibility for the meaning of the phrase would be some kind of religious incantation or something like an AI hallucination produced by a frequent alignment of words in the zeitgeist.
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Citizen kings who govern themselves