Full text of DOI:10.1177/0090591702030005004

1KP0Or.a1Lu1IsT7e7I/C/0TA0H9LE0T5UH9N1E0CO2E2RR3Y7T0A/3OI3NctoINbeErV2I0T0A2BILITY OF DECLINE
MONTESQUIEU AND CICERO
THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY
OF DECLINE IN MONTESQUIEU
SHARON R. KRAUSE
HarvardUniversity
T
he decline of regimes—its causes and direction—has been a subject of
interest to political scientists at least since the birth of the discipline in fifth-
and fourth-century Athens. In recent years, the tools of contemporary politi-
cal science have been engaged to explain the collapse of the former Soviet
Union, the fracture of Yugoslavia, and the instability of postcolonial states in
Africa, among other things. Diverse as they are in many respects, contempo-
rary treatments of regime decline are alike in regarding the phenomenon as an
exception rather than the rule of political life. They are the progeny of the rev-
olution in modern political thought that introduced the possibility of perma-
nent states based on universal rules of human nature, natural right, and rea-
son. By contrast, the ancients denied the possibility of permanent states and
considered regime decline and revolution to be intractable aspects of political
life. The modern change of mind on this matter was accomplished in the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries by Hobbes, Locke, and Kant and reached a
kind of peak in the nineteenth century with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Montesquieu occupies an unusual position in this history of ideas because he
was a modern thinker (and a liberal one) who believed in the inevitable ten-
dency of every regime to decline. Yet his agreement with the ancients on this
point was not complete either. He differed from them in his understanding of
the ultimate causes of political decline and its moral meaning. And while he
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This paper was presentedat the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Polit -
ical Science Association.
POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 30 No. 5, October 2002 702-727
DOI: 10.1177/009059102237033
© 2002 Sage Publications
702
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
703
did not think the tendency could be fully overcome, Montesquieu did believe
that it could be mitigated, although success always was uncertain.
The Spirit of the Laws first appeared in 1748, the fruit (Montesquieu said)
of twenty years’labor.1 It is a remarkably comprehensive treatment of virtu-
ally everything relevant to the life of a political regime, understood in the
broadest sense to include its political institutions, civil and criminal laws,
defense and foreign relations, economy, religion, culture, patterns of social
organization, and family structure. The book treats both ancient and modern
forms of government, and its comparative analysis ranges across every conti-
nent. The most famous and most influential aspects of the work are
Montesquieu’s teaching on the separation of powers,2 on which the Federal-
ist drew so heavily, and his emphasis on the political effects of social and cul-
tural factors, in view of which he sometimes is regarded as a forerunner (even
the founder) of modern sociology.3 His views on regime decline have drawn
less attention. Indeed, while the separation of powers and Montesquieu’s
quasi-sociological method have been the subjects of extensive commentary,
little sustained analysis exists on the corruption and decline of governments
in The Spirit of the Laws.4 This study explores that theme and shows why
Montesquieu regarded the general tendency toward decline to be inevitable
but its actual outcome in any particular case uncertain. Part I lays out the vari-
ous forms of government and the particular types of decline associated with
each one, as presented in Books II through VIII of The Spirit of the Laws. Part
II identifies two general causes of decline that affect all polities. The first is
the encroaching nature of political power itself, which makes the institutional
structure of every government permanently vulnerable because those with
power continually seek to augment it, overriding existing institutional
boundaries and modifying what Montesquieu calls the “nature” of the
regime. The second general cause of decline is the partiality of every regime
as embodied in what Montesquieu refers to as its motivating “principle,”
which can only ever be an incomplete expression of human nature and indi-
vidual moral psychology. The intrinsic partiality of politics and the encroach-
ing nature of power can be attenuated, however. Part III takes up
Montesquieu’s liberal mechanisms for mitigating decline—especially the
edifying effects of pluralism—and considers the significance of these find-
ings for contemporary liberal democracy.
I. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT AND TYPES OF DECLINE
Montesquieu’s discussion of the corruption and change of governments in
Book VIII of The Spirit of the Laws follows the tripartite typology developed
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

704
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
in Books II and III. In these early books, Montesquieu distinguishes between
three primary forms of government, each identified by a particular “nature,”
or the constitutional structure “that makes it what it is,” and by a specific
“principle,” the motivating passion that “makes it act” (III.1). Republican
government is rule by the people or a part of the people, and its motivating
spring is political virtue, defined as love of equality and the common good.5
Monarchy is the rule of one according to fixed laws, rule that is mediated by
the presence of powerful intermediary bodies, especially the nobility (II.1,
4). Its principle is honor—the ambitious desire for distinction, spirited inde-
pendence, and jealous regard for privilege and prerogative—which motivates
individual and collective resistance to the encroaching power of the crown
and thereby sustains a constitutional balance of power (II.4, III.5-8). Despo-
tism is the rule of one alone without fixed laws or intermediary bodies, gov-
ernment in which everything is swept along by “the will” and “caprices” of a
single man. It is sustained by the fear the despot’s unlimited power inspires in
his subjects (II.1, III.9). Montesquieu offers this typology of governments as
a template for interpreting the structure of political institutions and the
dynamics of political power in different settings. They are akin to “ideal
types,” as many commentators have noted, which actual governments will
approach more or less but never perfectly embody.6 While actual govern-
ments may combine elements of the different types Montesquieu enumer-
ates, however, each has its own distinctive nature and principle.
Book VIII, “On the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Govern-
ments,” opens with the general rule that “the corruption of each government
commences almost always with that of its principles” (VIII.1). Yet
Montesquieu initially treats the theme of corruption and decline with the
same degree of differentiation that he accords to political constitutions and
their animating principles. Different governments are corrupted by different
particular causes, and they decline in different ways. Some general rules
gradually become apparent, as we shall see, but Montesquieu’s analysis
begins by emphasizing the plurality of corruption and the particular forms of
decline associated with each type of polity. For example, democracy declines
when the “spirit of equality” that is so central to republican virtue gives way
to an acceptance of inequality, or when it becomes “extreme” so that “each
one wishes to be equal to those whom he has chosen to command him”
(VIII.2). When the love of equality is replaced by a spirit of inequality, the
government is led to aristocracy; when the spirit of extreme equality arises,
the government is led to despotism (VIII.2). The latter transformation begins
when the spirit of extreme equality makes limits on the action of individuals
seem intolerable to them. Gradually, the populace rejects all authority
asserted against itself (that of senators and magistrates, for instance, and
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
705
eventually that of the laws). In the process, it destroys the institutional con-
straints that limit the exercise of political power more generally. At the same
time, and also in the name of equality, “the people will distribute among
themselves all the public funds” (VIII.2), thus bankrupting the public trea-
sury for the satisfaction of private interests and rendering impossible the pro-
vision of public needs, including the public defense. In this situation,
Montesquieu says, “the more the people appear to take advantage of their lib-
erty, the more they will approach the moment they must lose it” (VIII.2).
Although Montesquieu is not explicit on this point, we can easily envision
“the moment” he has in mind here: a crisis arises spawned by chance or
intrigue, and the people, finding the treasury empty and unable to rekindle
their former spirit of self-sacrifice, turn in desperation to the first person
promising to return them to a state of stability and ease. In doing so, however,
they effectively deliver themselves into the hands of a despot because in their
earlier zeal to increase equality they destroyed the institutional limits on
political power. Extreme equality thus eventually leads to the rule of an indi-
vidual tyrant. A republic animated by the spring of political virtue therefore
must avoid both inequality and the spirit of extreme equality if it is to preserve
itself.
Similarly, monarchy must protect the integrity of the principle of honor.
This principle has been corrupted “when honor has been placed in contradic-
tion with honors and when one can be at the same time covered with infamy
and with dignities” (VIII.7). In other words, corruption occurs when a mon-
arch confers public honors, status, and office on those who bow obsequiously
to his authority rather than asserting a spirit of self-command or defending a
standard of right that is independent of his will.7 Under these conditions,
Montesquieu says, “the foremost dignities are the marks of the foremost ser-
vitude” and “the important men” (les grands) become “instruments of arbi-
trary power” (VIII.7). Dependency and the debasement of honor are two
sides of the same coin, for honor in Montesquieu reflects an independence
that is, at least occasionally, admirable.8 This independence is guided by
codes of honor that are embedded in publicly recognized social and political
traditions. Thus, “honor has its supreme rules” (ses règles suprêmes), which
transcend the private (subjective) wills of individual persons as well as that of
the prince (IV.2). Yet honor is not to be identified with moral virtue, at least
not directly. Even when the principle of monarchy is operating properly, it is
what Montesquieu calls “false honor.” “Philosophically speaking,” he says,
“it is a false honor that drives all the parts of the state, but this false honor is
as useful to the public as the true one would be to the individuals who could
have it” (III.7). Speaking “philosophically,” true honor would be something
resembling the ambition of Aristotle’s magnanimous man, who does the right
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

706
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
thing, for the right reason, in the right manner, at the right time, and so on.9
His ambition is guided not simply by a historically embedded code of honor
but by what is by nature good, and he receives public recognition (or honors)
for the goodness of his actions.10 The external honors he wins and the internal
honor he exhibits are “useful” to him as an individual, in Montesquieu’s
terms, because they make him a better man, a more perfect or complete
embodiment of what it means to be a human being.
Even uncorrupted honor in Montesquieu does not entail this level of per-
fection, however. In part, Montesquieu’s distinction between true and false
honor, and his acceptance of the latter, reflects his modern, liberal orienta-
tion to politics. He accepts in significant measure the comparatively modest
aspirations of politics introduced by earlier liberals such as Locke, for
whom the purpose of politics was individual security—or comfortable self-
preservation—rather than the perfection of souls. It also means that “false”
honor is not to be equated with corrupt honor. False honor is no threat to mon-
archy, on Montesquieu’s account, but rather supports it. By contrast, the cor-
ruption of honor entails a loss of personal and corporate independence on the
part of the nobility, and it is accompanied by a decline in the proper balance of
power that constitutes moderate monarchy. Yet if corrupt honor brings about
a decline of monarchy relative to the regime’s own nature and principle, it
does not mark a movement from truth to falsehood, or a simple shift from
moral virtue to moral vice, since even uncorrupted honor in this context is
false and not to be equated with moral virtue. In a similar way, the moderate
spirit of equality at the heart of republican virtue constitutes a middle point
between the spirit of inequality and that of extreme equality, but Montesquieu
does not connect this mean to an independent moral standard in the manner of
Aristotle. Montesquieu never says that the moderate equality of virtuous
republicans is what they by nature deserve, or that it reflects natural right. He
does not assess the principle of republican government on the basis of a
higher standard of justice. This is one implication of his emphatic distinction
between what he calls the “political” virtue of ancient republics and moral or
Christian virtue.11 And the spirit of extreme equality is shown to be problem-
atic not because extreme inequality is in itself unjust but because it produces
despotism. The hierarchy of regimes in The Republic of Plato, in which each
successive stage in the cycle of decline represents a loss according to an inde-
pendent moral standard, is replaced by Montesquieu with a different scheme.
Every change counts as a decline insofar as it marks a departure from the
existing nature and principle of the government. But there is only one change
that counts as a moral decline, and this is the change from any moderate gov-
ernment (republic or monarchy) to a despotic one.
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
707
Yet even in the case of despotism, the moral meaning of corruption is com-
plicated by Montesquieu’s ambivalent use of the term. This ambivalence is
exemplified in his application of the word “corruption” to the destruction of
despotic governments. Like honor and virtue, fear, the principle of despo-
tism, is subject to corruption. When fear has been corrupted, despotic govern-
ments—like the others—are likely to collapse. But what could it mean for
fear to be corrupted? To corrupt fear is merely to supplant it with other
motives, not to debase it, for there is nothing admirable or elevated about fear.
Despotism differs from republican government and monarchy on the
grounds that
the principle of despotism is corrupted without ceasing because it is corrupted by its
nature. Other governments perish because particular accidents violate their principle;
this one perishes by its internal vice when some accidental causes do not prevent its prin-
ciple from being corrupted. (VIII.10)
What makes despotism intrinsically “corrupt” is partly that it cannot sustain
itself as a form of government, and its “vice” here refers to its inadequacy in
this regard. One principal meaning of the corruption of both moderate and
despotic governments, then, is simply change or collapse, a pragmatic matter
rather than a moral one.
Despotism is intrinsically corrupt in a way that goes beyond the merely
pragmatic, however. Although Montesquieu never explicitly identifies a best
regime, he makes it abundantly clear that despotism is the worst one. So if
there is no clearly articulated summum bonum that informs his treatment of
corruption and decline, there surely is a summum malum.12 Despotism, he
says, brings “insults” (VIII.21) and “appalling ills” (maux effroyables) (II.4)
to human nature, causing it to “suffer” (VIII.8). Under this form of govern-
ment, “the portion of men, like that of beasts, is instinct, obedience, chastise-
ment” (III.10). No ambition survives, and the human capacity for delibera-
tion is markedly reduced (IV.3, V.13, III.9). Because life under despotism is
so insecure, few persons are willing to take the risks and make the invest-
ments required to prosper, and consequently commerce and other arts, such
as industry and the cultivation of land, suffer neglect (V.14-15). The personal
attachments and obligations that contribute to elevating human lives above
mere life, such as “respect for a father, tenderness for one’s children and
women, [and] laws of honor” (III.10), whither. All action is mere reaction, a
response to unreflective appetites and fears, rather than principled intention
(V.17-18). Montesquieu does not elaborate on the quality he refers to as
“greatness” (grandeur) of “soul” (l’âme), but he insists that it is possible only
under moderate governments that protect individual liberty (V.12), whereas
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

708
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
with despotism, as under slavery, the “soul . . . is constrained to be debased
without ceasing” (XV.13).13
The moral meaning of Montesquieu’s discussion of political decline
therefore is complex. He refuses simply to equate the corruption and decline
of particular governments with the decline of virtue per se.14 This represents a
significant departure from Plato’s account of corruption and the decline of
regimes in The Republic. The movement from kingship to aristocracy to
timocracy to plutocracy to democracy and finally tyranny, described in Book
8 of The Republic, constitutes successive stages in a process of falling away
from a unitary moral standard.15 At each stage, the decline of the regime
results from a moral failure, or an intellectual one, which is the failure to see
and act on the true nature of the good. Corruption is defined with reference to
this standard and not only, or even primarily, in terms of the collapse of a par-
ticular regime. For Montesquieu, there is no significant moral gain or moral
loss in the transition from a moderate republic to a moderate monarchy, or
vice versa. Thus, the corruption of a republic (for instance) could very well be
a morally meaningless event (VIII.8). Yet if its corruption should lead to des-
potism, the moral meaning would be clear.
The political meaning of such an outcome is somewhat more ambiguous.
Although Montesquieu treats despotism as a type of government, it is in some
ways nonpolitical, even antipolitical.16 It leaves no room for collective self-
determination or even reasoned deliberation since the despot “does not have
to deliberate, to doubt, or to reason; he has only to want” (IV.3). Despotism is
the rule of instinct and appetite (V.13) not the deliberate intentions of reflec-
tive human beings, and in this sense it resembles the necessitous realm of
nature more closely than the shared choices characteristic of political life.
Despotism also undermines the possibility of a public sphere, another central
component of politics. Under despotic government everything is the private
property of the despot. Consequently, Montesquieu says, “the preserving of
the state is only the preserving of the prince, or rather of the palace in which
he is enclosed” (V.14). No politics is possible under these conditions because
politics presupposes the existence of public matters. As a result, “politics
with its springs and laws here should be very limited” for “everything comes
down to reconciling political and civil government with domestic govern-
ment, the officers of the state with those of the seraglio” (V.14). The nonpolit-
ical quality of despotism may be one reason why Montesquieu speaks of
political “decline” rather than using the term “revolution,” as Aristotle does
in Politics V. The idea of revolution implies more than merely decline; it sug-
gests the replacement of one political order by another. Yet Montesquieu’s
treatment of decline makes it clear that the destruction of one political order
may not always be followed by the rise of another form of politics; the result
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
709
may instead be the loss of politics altogether and the rise of an antipolitical
form of organization. So if political decline sometimes may be morally neu-
tral, as when a moderate monarchy is transformed into a moderate republic,
Montesquieu nevertheless presses the point that the decline of a government
also may be devastating, not only for its particular way of life but for political
life in general. By speaking of political decline rather than revolution, he
reminds us of this constant danger.
What is Montesquieu’s morally ambivalent use of the word “corruption”
meant to convey? One effect is to draw attention to the pluralist approach to
politics that he introduces in The Spirit of the Laws. This approach is based on
a negative normative standard consisting of the regime most to be avoided
rather than a positive standard delineating the best way of life. For
Montesquieu, as against Plato (and ultimately Aristotle as well), there is no
single best way of life but rather a variety of good lives and decent forms of
government. No unitary standard makes possible a rank ordering of the lives
of honor, political virtue, moral virtue, and commerce; monarchy and repub-
licanism; or the ancient world and the modern world. Because he teaches the
plurality of human goods, Montesquieu has been accused by some of being a
relativist.17 The accusation is not easy to dismiss because Montesquieu does
treat every regime as a context for moral and political life, thus contextual-
izing standards of right. Yet his insistence on the moral degradation of des-
potic government implies at least one standard that transcends particular con-
texts and so cuts against the strongly relativist reading of his work.
Montesquieu was not a relativist but he was a pluralist, and this is one of the
marks of his liberalism. The morally ambivalent use of the words “corrup-
tion” and“decline”speakto thisdefining feature of his political philosophy.
II. THE INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
Montesquieu’s opening assertion in Book VIII, that the corruption of gov-
ernment almost always begins with the corruption of its principle, would
seem to make the character of its inhabitants the primary cause of every gov-
ernment’s decline. The motivating principles of governments (virtue, honor,
fear) are functions of character, after all. Yet later he insists that “the smallest
change in the constitution entails the ruin of the principles,” which indicates
that character follows rather than shapes political institutions (VIII.14). He
offers the republic of Carthage as an example, saying that the senate’s loss of
authority there during the Second Punic War corrupted the leading citizens so
that “the virtue of the magistrates fell with the authority of the senate.” Else-
where, as we have seen, Montesquieu attends to the ways in which changes in
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

710
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
the principle of a republic affect the structure of the regime, as when the spirit
of extreme equality in ancient Rome led the plebs to attack the prerogatives of
the senate (XI.16). In the case of monarchy, we find that nature and principle
(or institutions and character) have a similarly reciprocal relationship and
that political decline results from a combination of the two factors. For
although Montesquieu says that the decline of monarchy results from the cor-
ruption of honor (VIII.7), he also tells us that honor is corrupted as the result
of the sovereign’s encroachment on the prerogatives of the nobility, which
brings about a shift in the institutional balance of power, or the structure of
the government:
Just as democracies are lost when the people strip the senate, the magistrates, and the
judges of their functions, monarchies are corrupted when one takes away little by little
the prerogatives of the bodies (corps) or the privileges of the towns. In the first case, one
goes to the despotism of all; in the other, to the despotism of one alone. (VIII.6)
Thus, “the cause of the corruption of almost all monarchies” is the prince’s
attack on the independence of the intermediary bodies, a reference to Louis
XIV’s policy of eroding the power of the French nobility and replacing with
his own favorites those who had held high office on the basis of heredity. The
debasement of honor, monarchy’s principle, would seem to be the product of
structural changes in the government.
To note the reciprocal effects of structure and character on political decline
does not go far enough toward an explanation of the phenomenon, however.
What brings about the changes in the structures and principles of govern-
ments that in turn cause their decline? We know already that despotic govern-
ments inevitably decline because they are intrinsically self-destructive
(VIII.10).18 By contrast, Montesquieu tells us in VIII.10, moderate govern-
ments are destroyed because particular “accidents” violate their principles.
Yet elsewhere he suggests that the decline of republics and monarchies is
more than merely accidental. Indeed, he frequently conveys a sense of neces-
sity in describing the decline of these forms of government. A chapter titled
“Distinctive Properties of Monarchy” concludes with a fatalistic tone:
“Rivers run to mix themselves with the sea; monarchies go to lose themselves
in despotism” (VIII.17). Monarchy, like despotism, suffers from internal dif-
ficulties that make it intrinsically unstable. First among them is the tension
between king and nobility, in which the king is “the source of all civil and
political power” and yet the nobility (and the intermediary bodies more gen-
erally) mediate and therefore limit his power (II.4). The dynamic balance of
power between them is the genius of this regime and its defining feature, as
the “fundamental maxim” of monarchy is “no monarchy, no nobility: no
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
711
nobility, no monarch; rather, one has a despot” (IV.2). The very dynamism
that constitutes the balance also makes it precarious, however, because each
side continually seeks to press its own advantage at the expense of the other.
Reflecting on the successes of Louis XIV in this regard, Montesquieu attrib-
utes the greater advantage to the monarch, who controls the army, hence the
tendency of monarchies to run to despotism as rivers run to the sea.19 Things
could go the other way, of course, and later did so when the aristocratic upris-
ing of 1788-89 opened the door for a popular revolution, resulting in what
Montesquieu would have called “a despotism of all” (VIII.6) during the years
of the Terror, followed by a “despotism of one” under Napoleon. If the Revo-
lution shows that Montesquieu misread the direction that the decline of the
French monarchy eventually would take, it supports his broader thesis about
the general tendency toward decline, even among nondespotic forms of
government.
Problems internal to the principle of honor also contribute to this ten-
dency. Honor requires a relatively entrenched social order. Montesquieu
insists that the prerogatives of the nobility must be hereditary and exclusive,
and they must not transfer to the people “unless one wishes to offend
(choque) the principle of the government, unless one wants to diminish the
force of the nobility and that of the people” (V.9). The nobility even should
“regard[] it as the sovereign infamy to share power with the people” (VIII.9).
Yet elsewhere he maintains that a hereditary nobility tends toward “igno-
rance,” “inattention,” and “scorn for civil government,” all of which presum-
ably undermine its effectiveness as a counterbalance to the crown (II.4). Sim-
ilarly, royal appointments give political power to the king’s flatterers (V.19).
In his Pensées, he speaks of “the inner desire and restlessness that each one
has for leaving the place where he has been put” as the sustaining force of the
political world, and a positive one at that.20 Consequently, “the laws that order
each man to remain in his profession and to pass it down to his children are
not and cannot be useful except in despotic states, where no one can or ought
to have any rivalry” (XX.22). Montesquieu thus supported, in the context of
monarchy, the practice of buying offices on the grounds that it put political
influence into the hands the ambitious, assertive types most likely to engage
in the rivalries that sustain a balance of political power (V.19). Paradoxically,
the fixed, hereditary social order that is necessary to honor also prevents per-
sons of “merit” from coming to the fore and thereby undercuts honor, which
leaves the government of monarchy vulnerable to the encroaching power of
the crown.21 Its corruption appears to be inevitable.
The fall of republics seems similarly unavoidable, and for reasons that go
well beyond the “particular accidents” mentioned in VIII.10. Here again, ten-
sions internal to the regime make it intrinsically unstable. To maintain the
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

712
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
political virtue that animates it, Montesquieu says, “it is necessary that a
republic dread something” (VIII.5). The reason is that republican virtue,
which consists in a preference for the common good over one’s individual
interests, requires a “renunciation of oneself, which is always a very painful
(pénible) thing” (IV.5). Fear of external enemies unites the population in a
common purpose, and the heat of necessity makes the sacrifices required by
virtue more palatable. Consequently, “the more security these states have, the
more, as with overly tranquil waters, they are subject to being corrupted”
(VIII.5). Republics are thus forced to seek out military conflict when it is not
initiated by others, which leads them to expand their borders. Moreover, a
small republic is sure to be destroyed by a foreign force (IX.1). But the expan-
sion of republics also is their downfall, as the Roman republic illustrates.22 As
a republic increases in size, it loses its collective identity and common spirit,
whichintroducesinequalities and fuels private interests, thus undermining its
animating principle of political virtue (VIII.16). It is in the nature of republics
to have only a small territory, but it is necessary for them to expand. This con-
tradiction contributes to the intrinsic instability of republican governments. It
is compounded by their characteristic immoderation. Republican citizens
must be ferocious in order to defend their regime against foreign aggression,
but this makes them difficult to govern since warriors who are “so proud, so
audacious, so terrible outside could not be very moderate within. To ask, in a
free state, for men daring in war and timid in peace is to wish for impossible
things.”23
Thus, the decline of republics and monarchies is not caused solely by acci-
dents. Like despotism, these regimes suffer from inescapably debilitating
contradictions that contribute to making particular instances of each type vul-
nerable to decline. And yet even this does not tell the whole story, for one can
find in The Spirit of the Laws two additional causes of decline that are still
more fundamental than the ones just identified. The first is the encroaching
nature of political power itself. “It is an eternal experience,” Montesquieu
points out, “that every man who has any power tends to abuse it; he goes until
he finds some limits” (XI.4). The encroaching nature of power may lead to
changes in the structure of a government, whether it is a monarch’s attack on
the nobility or a popular usurpation of the senate. In the case of the Romans,
Montesquieu says, it was “due to a malady eternal among men” that “the ple-
beians, who had obtained tribunes to defend themselves, used them to
attack,” and gradually removed the prerogatives of the patricians, thus setting
in motion a radical transformation in the structure of the republic.24 When the
republic finally was “oppressed,” he continues, the true cause was not “the
ambition of certain individuals.” Instead, “we must accuse man—always
more avid for power in the measure that he has an advantage, and who desires
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
713
everything only because he already possesses a great deal.”25 The encroach-
ing nature of power—or of human nature—exerts pressure on every form of
government, insofar as any constitutional arrangement is vulnerable to those
who would overstep the established bounds of their authority. It also spurs the
territorial expansion of power, even beyond the limits any particular govern-
ment can sustain. The tendency of territorial expansion to produce political
decline is a theme Montesquieu takes up directly in VIII.15-20.26 Part of the
meaning of political corruption and decline in Montesquieu, as we have seen,
is a simple falling away from the defining nature and principle of any govern-
ment. To the extent that the universal tendency to abuse or extend one’s power
leads to shifts in the prevailing distribution of power in a particular govern-
ment or the excessive expansion of its borders, this feature of human nature
will have been an underlying cause of the corruption (i.e., change) of the gov-
ernment. It also has a tendency to lead regimes of all types in the direction of
despotism and so to corrupt them in the sense of morally debasing them and
not merely altering their structure, since attacks on the established con-
straintsonpoweropen the door to the rule of unlimited power, or despotism.
A second underlying cause of corruption and decline is the inescapably
partial quality of the principle of every government and its way of life more
generally. Virtue, honor, and fear are only partial expressions of human
nature. As the animating spirit of a government, each one faces a continuous
onslaught from the rest of human nature, many elements of which are bound
to conflict with it. This fact is perhaps most striking in the case of republican
virtue, which runs counter to self-concern, and which for this reason appears
to be especially vulnerable to the pressures exerted by human nature. But
honor also is limited in this respect, even if it is not equally self-sacrificing.
As Montesquieu presents it, honor is at odds with the humility of religious
faith, the narrow egoism of commercial interest, and the feeling of equality,
among other things; and as the prejudice of each person and each condition, it
is lacking in the sense of a common humanity. Similarly, fear must stave off
the stirrings of ambition, love, greed, pride, independence, and the love of lib-
erty. This comes through very clearly in Persian Letters, in which the regime
represented by the harem collapses under the weight of the many aspects of
human nature that undermine fear, which the structure of the regime cannot
accommodate, such as the ambition, the love, the greed, and the pride of
Usbek’s wives and eunuchs.27
This problem of partiality goes beyond the three forms of government rep-
resented by Montesquieu’s typology. One may infer that virtue, honor, and
fear are not the only incomplete representations of human nature but that the
principle of every government is bound to be so. Every regime embodies a
particular way of life, one that brings certain features of human nature to the
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

714
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
fore but not others, and develops some aspects of what it means to be human
but not all of them. No regime could embody every way of life or all of human
nature. To live in political society means to live in a political society, to make
collective decisions according to a particular set of standards, and to under-
take common enterprises in the name of some notion of what is good or right.
Some standards may be truer than others, and some regimes may be better
than others, but none is fully comprehensive since no one way of life can be
every way of life, or even every good way of life. Yet the possibilities fore-
closed by a regime and the aspects of human nature it pushes to the side often
press at the margins, or even the center, of its political life. The partial nature
of politics makes every government vulnerable to corruption and decline
because it makes every regime incomplete and either subject to challenge by
the parts of human nature it has left out or in need of them. Is the inevitability
of political decline exceptionless? Can its causes be attenuated? In particular,
can solutions be found to the fundamental problems of encroaching power
and the partiality of politics?
III. MECHANISMS FOR MITIGATING DECLINE
One method for avoiding political decline, which Montesquieu recom-
mends in VIII.20, is to contain territorial expansion. Republics should refrain
from growing so large that they can no longer sustain a shared identity among
citizens (VIII.16). Monarchical domains should remain limited to the size a
moderate prince can control (VIII.17). Excessive expansion of any regime
leads to despotism because only the iron hand of a despot can dominate far-
flung territories and the disparate peoples they necessarily contain. Beyond
Montesquieu’s specific advice about avoiding expansion, The Spirit of the
Laws as a whole suggests two more fundamental mechanisms for mitigating
political decline. One of these mechanisms is structural, relating to the nature
of the government, and the other is character based, relating to its animating
principle. The structural mechanism is the separation, or balance, of powers.
Toconstrainthe encroaching nature of power, he says, “it is necessary that, by
the arrangement of things, power should check (arrête) power” (XI.4). One
must establish distinctive sites of political power and authority within a given
government, and the constitution “must combine [these] powers, regulate
them, temper them, make them act;” it “must give, so to speak, a ballast to one
in order to place it in a position to resist another” (V.14). A solution to the
problem of encroaching power is not to be found in direct appeals to the wis-
dom of citizens or rulers. This is another place where Montesquieu’s treat-
ment of regime political departs from that of Plato. Individual reason is not
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
715
the solution to decline partly because decline does not result simply from a
failure of reason and partly because reason on its own cannot be relied upon
to check this natural tendency. The solution cannot be found without reason,
to be sure, as a constitution of balanced powers is “a masterpiece of legisla-
tion that chance rarely brings about and that prudence rarely is permitted to
bring about” (V.14). Montesquieu contrasts this type of constitution with des-
potic government, which “leaps to view” (sauté aux yeux) because “one
needs only passions to establish it” (V.14). But the genius of moderate gov-
ernments lies mainly in the indirect rule of largely self-enforcing, institu-
tional limits on political power rather than the direct rule of the wise. The pri-
mary role of reason in politics is not so much to orient the ship of state to a
particular end as to keep it afloat, to prevent the polity from self-destructing
as the result of encroaching power. The direction the government takes—the
end it pursues—is less important to Montesquieu than the form of its consti-
tution. His emphasis in this regard reflects the pluralism inherent in his liberal
approach to politics.28
The balance of power that a well-conceived constitution establishes
through political institutions is echoed in other aspects of a moderate regime.
A measure of social heterogeneity, as against the forced uniformity of
despotism29 and the cultural homogeneity of ancient republics,30 is conducive
to moderation and stability, and hence longevity.31 A plurality even of moral
standards can have a moderating effect. It is true that Montesquieu expresses
some ambivalence about the moral fragmentation of the modern world. He
contrasts education in ancient republics with education in modern monar-
chies on the grounds that
their education had another advantage over ours; it was never contradicted
(démentie). . . . Today we receive three different or contrary educations: that of our
fathers, that of our schoolmasters, and that of the world. What we are told by the last over-
throws all the ideas of the first two. This comes, in some part, from the contrast that there
is among us between the obligations of religion and those of the world, a thing the
ancients did not know. (IV.4)32
The modern plurality of moral standards undercuts the force of shared com-
mitments to collective standards and joint projects, with the result that feats
accomplished easily by ancient republics now can only “astonish our small
souls” (IV.4). Modern souls are “small” partly because our allegiances are
divided among different authorities. But this is not altogether a bad thing. The
unity and force of shared commitments in ancient republics also produced
extremism and immoderate government (V.2). This immoderation not only
jeopardized individual liberty but also was an important cause of political
decline, as we have seen. A measure of division among moral authorities can
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

716
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
be good insofar as it contributes to the balance of power. The independent
authority of religion can check the power of a tyrant (III.10), for example, and
the moral authority of codes of honor among the nobility can motivate princi-
pled opposition to the encroaching power of a monarch (IV.2).33 Another
extrapolitical source of authority that can contribute to the general balance of
power is commerce. Commerce establishes countervailing sites of power
(XXI.20) that can check and balance the power of political sovereigns, and so
it has “reduced (ôté) great assertions of authority, or at least the success of
great assertions of authority” (XXII.13). Montesquieu thus treats commerce
as an “auxiliary of constitutional safeguards,” which functions as a bulwark
against decline in the direction of despotism.34 Thus, the political balance of
power established by a constitution of separate powers may be enhanced by
social, moral, and economic divisions of power. All mitigate the tendency of
power to encroach and governments to decline, and so contribute to the pre-
vention of despotism, the most dangerous outcome of political decline.
Montesquieu presents his defense of separate powers through a discussion
of the constitution of England in Book XI, chapter 6, of The Spirit of the
Laws, the most celebrated portion of the work. England, as Montesquieu
characterizes it, embodies the constitutional balance of the three powers
found “in each state”: legislative power, executive power, and the power of
judging. The legislative body, “being composed of two parts, the one will
enchain the other by its mutual faculty of vetoing. Both will be bound by the
executive power, which will itself be bound by the legislative power.” For its
part, the power of judging is rendered “invisible and null” by being removed
from the hands of the executive and vested in popular juries responsible for
administering justice to their peers. Together these separate elements and the
system of checks and balances between them compose “the fundamental
constitution” of this government (XI.6).
Montesquieu nowhere defends the view that the English constitution
should be replicated by other nations in precise detail. The balance of power
can take a variety of forms (XI.7), and the specific form it takes in any given
regime should be suited to the broader context of social, cultural, economic,
religious, and historical factors that comprise what Montesquieu calls “the
spirit” of its laws (I.3). A constitution of balanced powers is compatible
with republican as well as monarchical forms of government, for instance.
Indeed, it is difficult to ascertain which type England itself more closely
approximates since its constitution places legislative power and the power
of judging (traditional marks of political sovereignty) in popular hands but
gives executive power to a king.35 Regardless of the specific form it takes,
however, a constitutional balance of power is Montesquieu’s general model
for moderate government. Insofar as it provides a mechanism for constrain-
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
717
ing the encroaching nature of power, it also provides a means for attenuating
corruption and decline.
A second means for containing decline is suggested by Montesquieu’s
treatment of the animating spirit of the English government, which is found
in Book XIX, chapter 27, of The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu does not
specify a particular principle for the English government in the way he speci-
fies the principles of other regimes. Instead, he tells us that “all the passions
are free there” (XIX.27). England seems to avoid the partiality inherent in the
principle of every government by incorporating every passion into the spring
that sets it in motion. The effect is not always salutary, for “hatred, envy, jeal-
ousy, and the ardor for enriching and distinguishing oneself would appear to
their full extent.” This is to be expected, however, because “if it were other-
wise, the state would be like a man, struck down by disease, who has no pas-
sions because he has no strength” (XIX.27). A comprehensive character can-
not be altogether pleasing because in order to be comprehensive, it must
reflect all aspects of human nature and not only the admirable ones.36 But the
English regime seems to be sturdier for the fact that its principle excludes less
of human nature than do those of other regimes. And even passions that are
less than admirable serve the constitution. For example, the self-interest and
the caprice of the English lead them to “often change parties,” forgetting both
“the laws of friendship and those of hatred.” This makes them easy fodder for
manipulation by officials in both the legislative and executive arms of gov-
ernment, but it also provides these two powers with the strength they need to
resist one another. If the party associated with one power should “rise too
much to the top, the effect of liberty would be to abase it while the citizens,
like hands that rescue the body, would come to raise the other.” In effect, the
citizens themselves function as the ballast that preserves the balance of pow-
ers in the constitution and keeps the ship of state afloat. Because it does not
rely on lofty motives, or even on a particular motive, the English constitution
appears to be unusually resilient, or impervious to corruption and decline.
England is not altogether invulnerable, however. In fact, Montesquieu
insists that “as all things human have an end, the state of which we are speak-
ing will lose its liberty; it will perish” (XI.6). Not even England is a perma-
nent polity. The cause most likely to bring it down, he predicts, will be the
venality of the legislature, which had already become known for its practice
of selling votes to the crown.37 England “will perish when legislative power is
more corrupt than executive power” (XI.6). It seems that despite the inclusive
quality of the principle of English government—the fact that it is open to all
the passions—some featuresof humannature neverthelessrise to the fore and
overpower others. In particular, Montesquieu says in his Notes on England,
“money is here held in sovereign esteem; honor and virtue little.”38 When all
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

718
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
the passions are free, the passion of material interest takes over,39 pushing
aside passions (such as virtue or honor) that might balance it and mitigate the
legislators’venality. Commerce inspires its own kind of virtue, of course, and
Montesquieu seems to have seen more of this virtue in the English populace
than in its magistrates.40 This suggestion is conveyed in notes he made prepa-
ratory to a letter addressed to the Englishman William Domville. Domville
had written to Montesquieu shortly after the publication of The Spirit of the
Laws, saying,
You feel that we are no longer what we ought to be, that our liberty has been turned into
license, that the very idea of the public good is lost and that the fate of rich and corrupt
nations is waiting for us and even that we are hurling ourselves toward it. Permit me to
ask you, sir, you who have reflected so much on the causes of the decline of nations, in
what mannerthe relaxationofour mores will end, this abandonment offirst principles.41
Montesquieu refused to fully endorse Domville’s characterization, however.
Although he agreed in his notes that in England there were “so many means
of making a fortune” in government service that it seemed the English had
“wished to corrupt” their magistrates and representatives, nevertheless he
argued that “it is not the same among the entire body of the people, and I
believe I have remarked a certain spirit of liberty that is illuminated always
and is not ready to be extinguished.” The English people, he wrote, “have
more virtue than their representatives.”42 The middle class especially “loves
its laws and its liberty,” and “as long as the middle class preserves its princi-
ples it is difficult for [the English constitution] to be overturned.”43 In the let-
ter of reply that he eventually sent to Domville, in fact, he insisted that “in
Europe the last sigh of liberty will be heaved by an Englishman.”44
Yet for all the energy the English show in defense of their interests, they
lack gallantry, sociability, and high heartedness (XIX.27). Montesquieu
reports that “their poets would have more often an original rudeness of inven-
tion than a certain delicacy that gives taste; one would find there something
that would approach the force of Michelangelo more than the grace of
Raphael” (XIX.27). The English lack precisely the traits Montesquieu cele-
brates in the French: “a sociable humor, an openness of heart; a joy in life, a
taste, a facility in communicating its thoughts.” As against England, France is
“pleasant, playful, sometimes imprudent, often indiscreet” and yet has “cour-
age, generosity, frankness, and a certain point of honor” (XIX.5). This is not
to say that Montesquieu simply prefers the French monarchy of his day to the
English form of government or that he regarded England as being in immi-
nent danger of collapse but rather to acknowledge the partiality of the English
way of life and its character. The partiality of their character, centering on
material self-interest, explains why Montesquieu predicts that it will be
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
719
venality rather than some other cause that one day will destroy their regime.
Certain capacities and qualities are shut out of the English character and oth-
ers are exaggerated, despite the fact that “all the passions are free there.”
This suggests that even when character is officially unregulated and
unshaped, it is likely to be (or to become) narrow, and hence vulnerable to the
dangers deriving from the partiality of political life. The inclusive principle
of the English form of government mitigates but cannot wholly alleviate the
inevitable tendency toward decline. The same is true with respect to the struc-
ture of the English constitution. Although the institutional balance of power
wards offdecline more effectivelythan reliance on an excessivelydemanding
form of moral virtue or the wisdom of philosopher-kings, it cannot guarantee
a perpetual polity. Montesquieu’s prediction about the corruption of the Eng-
lish legislature brings this point home forcefully. It demonstrates that the sep-
aration of powers is not an entirely self-executing solution but does depend
on character, even if this institutional mechanism makes the loftiest forms of
virtue unnecessary. In this respect, Montesquieu’s discussion of England is in
keeping with his more general portrait of political life as shaped by the recip-
rocal relationship between the structure of political institutions and their ani-
mating principles, or the moral psychology that brings them to life.
CONCLUSIONS
Montesquieu’s analysis of political corruption and decline suggests that
the tendency toward decline is indeed inevitable but that it can be attenuated,
at least in the case of governments that are not already despotic. The tendency
toward decline is always present because it is rooted in human nature and the
partial nature of politics. But it can be resisted. In particular, a constitution of
separate powers and an animating spirit that is inclusive of many aspects of
human nature rather than narrowly restricted to a few can help to ward off the
fall of a government. Yet the effects of such resistance also are uncertain
because the pressure toward decline never can be wholly transcended. The
paradox of the uncertain inevitability of decline in Montesquieu reflects the
paradoxical nature of political life, in which it is necessary for us to live one
way rather than to live every way simultaneously, even though we cannot
fully suppress the features of human nature that any one way of life inevitably
forecloses. The foreclosed features of human nature together with the
encroaching nature of power are the seeds of the conflicts that generate politi-
cal decline.
American liberal democracy offers no exception to these general rules.
We, too, must contend with the inescapable pressures that Montesquieu illu-
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

720
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
minates. His analysis reminds us to be vigilant in defending the division of
power—political and otherwise—at every level. It also challenges us to see
that although our constitutional apparatus takes much of the pressure off indi-
vidual character, our separation of powers could not survive if our animating
spirit were reduced entirely to venal self-interest. Beyond that, Montesquieu
gives us reason to renew our collective commitment to pluralism and hetero-
geneity in society. Although the motivating principle of every government is
bound to be (or eventually to become) partial, pluralism and heterogeneity
introduce principles of action into the polity that may counterbalance the
national spirit, or “principle,” and protect it from the narrowness that invites
degeneration. Thus, while the motive of material interest that predominates
in the United States today is a perfectly legitimate motive (and its predomi-
nance may be good for individual liberty on the whole), we are well served by
the presence of competing principles, seated frequently in the voluntary asso-
ciations of American civil society, which challenge our materialism and our
individualism. Honor, faith, friendship, pride, civic virtue, the love of liberty
as an end in itself, the creative impulse and the spirit of innovation, and the
ineffable longing for what is noble all shore up the integrity and strength of
our regime even as they challenge the principle of self-interest—because
they challenge it. They bring more of human nature into our way of life and
thereby reduce the pressure on our political order posed by the parts of human
nature that it inevitably minimizes or pushes to the periphery.
All this suggests that today we can best attend to the dangers of corruption
and political decline not by imposing a new (or an old) moral order on the citi-
zenry but by protecting the pluralism, heterogeneity, and individual liberty
that are the conditions for the rise of alternative animating spirits and the wid-
est realization of human capacities. The pluralism and heterogeneity of a lib-
eral society contest and thereby mitigate the partiality of politics. They can-
not undo the inevitable tendency toward decline that Montesquieu makes us
see, but along with the institutional mechanisms he enumerates, they may
make possible a continuous process of regeneration at the margins. So if
Montesquieu’s analysis of political decline suggests that liberal democracy,
like every form of government, contains the seeds of its own decline, there
may nevertheless be reason to think that we may find in it the seeds of renewal
as well.
NOTES
1. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, preface, in Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, vol. 2,
ed. Roger Caillois (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949-51). Translations are my own. Here-
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
721
after references to The Spirit of the Laws will be inserted parenthetically into the text, with roman
numerals indicating book and arabic numerals indicating chapter.
2. Montesquieu himself speaks of “distributed powers” (pouvoirs distribués) (XI.7) not
“separate powers.” In fact, the balance of power established by a moderate constitution presup-
poses a certain interaction between powers, such as the executive right to veto legislative deci-
sions, rather than a strict separation. For analysis of Montesquieu on the balance of powers, see,
for example, Sergio Cotta, “L’idée de parti dans la philosophie politique de Montesquieu” in
Actes du congrès Montesquieu réuni à Bordeaux du 23 au 26 mai 1955 (Bordeaux, France:
Delmas, 1956), 257-63; C. P. Courtney, “Montesquieu and English Liberty” in Montesquieu’s
Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Carrithers, Michael Mosher, and
Paul Rahe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 273-91; Joseph Dedieu, Montesquieu et
la tradition politique anglaise en France (New York: Burt Franklin, 1909); F. T. H. Fletcher,
Montesquieu andEnglish Politics (London: Edward Arnold, 1939); Gabriel Loirette,
“Montesquieu et le problème, en France, du bon gouvernement” in Actes du congrès
Montesquieu réuni à Bordeaux du 23 au 26 mai 1955 pour commémorer la deuxième centenaire
de la mort de Montesquieu (Bordeaux, France: Imprimeries Delmas, 1956), 219-39; Harvey C.
Mansfield Jr., Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York:
Free Press, 1989), chap. 9; Henry J. Merry, Montesquieu’s System of Natural Government
(Lafayette, IN: Purdue Research Foundation, 1970), especially 313-45; Thomas Pangle,
Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), espe-
cially 114-63; John Plamenatz, Man andSociety , vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 276-
93; Paul Rahe, “Forms of Government: Structure, Principle, Object, and Aim” in Montesquieu’s
Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Carrithers, Michael Mosher, and
Paul Rahe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 80-97; Judith Shklar, Montesquieu
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987), 79-104; George C. Vlachos, La politique de
Montesquieu: Notion et méthode (Paris: Éditions Montchrestien, 1974), especially 98-162.
3. For examples of this interpretation, see Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu andRousseau:
Forerunners of Sociology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960); Raymond Aron,
Main Currents in Sociological Thought, vol. 1 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 13-72.
Robert Alun Jones offers an appraisal of this interpretation in “Ambivalent Cartesians:
Durkheim, Montesquieu, and Method,” American Journal of Sociology 100 (1994): 1-39. Pierre
Manent also reads Montesquieu as the proponent of a fundamentally sociological approach to
politics in The City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1998). In a challenge to this reading, Catherine Larrère points out that it is ironic to call
Montesquieu a founder of sociology because “his domain is not that of necessity but of reason.”
Catherine Larrère, Actualité de Montesquieu (Paris: Presses des Sciences Po, 1999), 10.
4. One exception is Badreddine Kassem’s Décadence et absolutisme dans l’oeuvre de
Montesquieu (Paris: Librairie Minard, 1960), which treats the subject of regime decline exten-
sively. Kassem carefully describes Montesquieu’s account of the varieties of corruption, or the
“denaturation” of political systems (p. 9), ranging from the Orient to Spain, Italy, France, Eng-
land, and ancient Rome. He effectively charts the particular progress of each but is less persua-
sive in his account of the general underlying causes of decline. Specifically, in the third part of
the book, he identifies four “great causes of decline”: war, depopulation, religious intolerance,
and absolutism (pp. 213-66). Ultimately, he says these causes resolve themselves into a single
“essential cause of decline to which all others can be traced,” namely, despotism (p. 274; see also
p. 20). This explanation is inadequate, however, because it leaves untouched the causes of despo-
tism. Moreover, while in these passages Kassem treats despotism as a fundamental cause of
decline, elsewhere he treats it as the final effect of decline, saying that “despotism is the limit
toward which the degeneration of the other regimes tends” (p. 247). The latter assertion strikes
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

722
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
me as accurate. Yet if it is accurate to say that despotism is the effect of decline, it cannot also be
the case that despotism is the sole primary (or first and fundamental) cause. The present analysis
departs from that of Kassem in looking to human nature and the partial nature of politics for the
ultimate sources of political decline.
Aside from Kassem’s analysis, commentary on corruption has been limited largely to analy-
sis of Montesquieu’s book on the Romans or has concentrated on the government of despotism,
the endpoint of political decline, without exploring in detail the process of decline or its causes.
For analysis of Montesquieu’s Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de
leur décadence, see David Lowenthal’s introduction in his translation of the book (New York:
Free Press, 1965); Richard Myers, “Christianity and Politics in Montesquieu’s Greatness and
Decline of the Romans,” Interpretation 17 (winter 1989-90): 223-38; Roger B. Oake,
“Montesquieu’s Analysis of Roman History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 44-59.
For treatment of Montesquieu’s views on despotism, see Paul Vernière, “Montesquieu et le
monde musulman, d’après L’esprit des lois,” in Actes du congrès, 175-90; Robert Shackleton,
“Les mots ‘despote’et ‘despotisme,’ ” in Essays on Montesquieu andon the Enlightenment, ed.
David Gilson and Martin Smith (Oxford, UK: Voltaire Foundation, 1988); Françoise Weil,
“Montesquieu et le despotisme,” in Actes du congrès; Roger Boesche, “Fearing Monarchs and
Merchants: Montesquieu’s Two Theories of Despotism,” Western Political Science Quarterly 43
(December 1990): 741-62; Robert Koebner, “Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a Political
Term,” in Journal of the Warburg andCourtlandInstitutes, vol. 14, no. 1/2 (London: Warburg
Institute, 1951); Sharon Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws” in Montesquieu’s Science of
Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Carrithers, Michael Mosher, and Paul Rahe
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 231-72; Melvin Richter, “Montesquieu’s Compar-
ative Analysis of Europe and Asia: Intended and Unintended Consequences” in L’Europe de
Montesquieu (Napoli, Italy: Liguori Editore, 1995); Elie Carcassone, “La Chine dans L’esprit
des lois” in Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1924), 198-
205; David Young, “Montesquieu’s View of Despotism and His Use of Travel Literature,”
Review of Politics 40 (1978): 392-405; Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 90-97.
5. Republican government may take the form of either democracy or aristocracy (II.2). In
aristocratic governments, the zealous love of equality that characterizes democratic virtue is
replaced by what Montesquieu refers to as “moderation” (la modération), which is a “lesser vir-
tue” (une vertu moindre) that motivates the few, who hold power, to refrain from oppressing the
many (III.4). Although Montesquieu distinguishes aristocratic from democratic types of repub-
licanism, he gives pride of place to the latter, saying that “the more an aristocracy approaches
democracy, the more perfect it will be” (II.3). Throughout the analysis, democratic republican-
ism is treated as the exemplary form, and self-renouncing democratic virtue, rather than aristo-
cratic moderation, is treatedas the definingprinciple ofrepublicanism in general. Forfurther dis-
cussion of Montesquieu’s treatment of republican government, see David W. Carrithers,
“Democratic and Aristocratic Republics: Ancient and Modern” in Montesquieu’s Science of
Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Carrithers, Michael Mosher, and Paul Rahe
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 109-58.
6. See, for instance, Nanerl O. Keohane, “Virtuous Republics and Glorious Monarchies:
Two Models in Montesquieu’s Political Thought,” Political Studies 20 (1972): 383. Particular
despotic governments are never completely lacking in restraints on the sovereign’s authority, for
instance, since traditional customs and religious beliefs as well as natural conditions such as cli-
mate and terrain typically set some limits on actual despots. Montesquieu draws special attention
to China in this regard (VIII.21). On this point, see Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail: La fic-
tion du despotisme asiatique dans l’occident classique (Paris: Éditions du seuil, 1970), 47;
Anne M. Cohler, Montesquieu’s Comparative Politics andthe Spirit of American Constitution -
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
723
alism (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1988), 71-73; Weil, “Montesquieu et le
despotisme,” 201; Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 250; Richter, The Political Theory
of Montesquieu (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 83; Kassem, Décadence
et absolutisme, 247; and Young, “Montesquieu’s View of Despotism,” 401f.
7. For further discussion of the role of honor as a source of opposition to sovereign author-
ity, see Michael Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox: Honor in the Face of Sovereign Power” in
Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David Carrithers, Michael
Mosher, and Paul Rahe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 159-230; Corrodo Rosso,
Montesquieu moraliste (Bordeaux, France: Ducros, 1971), 100; David W. Carrithers,
“Montesquieu’s Philosophy of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 1 (1986): 76;
Sharon Krause, “The Politics of Distinction and Disobedience: Honor and the Defense of Lib-
erty in Montesquieu,” Polity 31, no. 3 (spring 1999): 469-99; Louis Althusser, Politics andHis -
tory: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1982), 80; Mark
Hulliung, Montesquieu andthe OldRegime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),
179; Lawrence Levin, The Political Doctrine of Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois: Its Classical
Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 104; Franklin Ford, Robe and
Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1953), 20.
8. Montesquieu’s admiration for the independence associated with honor is most evident in
his brief remarks on two disobedient noblemen:
Crillon refused to assassinate the Duke of Guise, but he offered Henry III to engage the
duke in battle. After Saint Bartholomew’s Day, Charles IX, having written to all the gov-
ernors to carry out a massacre against the Huguenots, the Viscount of Orte, who was in
command at Bayonne, wrote to the king, “Sire, I have found among the inhabitants and
the warriors only good citizens, brave soldiers, and no executioner; and so they and I beg
Your Majesty to use our arms and our lives for things that can be done (choses faisables).”
This great and generous courage regarded an act of cowardice as an impossible thing.
(Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, IV.2)
9. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic
Press, 1984), 1106b22-24. Bertrand Binoche indicates that Montesquieu also may have had in
mind Bossuet’s condemnation of worldly ambition as “false honor,” which Bossuet contrasted
with “the honor of Christians” that “consists in the observation of the orders of God and the rules
of Christianity.” Bertrand Binoche, Introduction à De l’esprit des lois de Montesquieu (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 125.
10. Or at least he should win honors on the basis of the goodness of his actions because politi-
cal recognition should reflect natural deserts. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1123b.
11. See his“Avertissement de l’auteur,” which precedes the preface toThe Spirit of the Laws:
For an understanding of the first four books of this work, it is necessary to observe that
what I call ‘virtue’in the republic is love of the homeland, that is to say, love of equality. It
is not at all a moral virtue, nor a Christian virtue, it is political virtue.
He reiterates the distinction at III.5 note, IV.5, V.2, and V.4.
12. Thus, Michael Zuckert insists that “Montesquieu is not in the least a moral or political
relativist, as his fierce opposition to despotism and slavery should make clear.” Michael Zuckert,
“Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Classical Liberalism: Montesquieu’s Critique of Hobbes,”
Social Philosophy andPolicy 18, no. 1 (2001): 247.
13. Weil notes that despotism destroys talents in “Montesquieu et le despotisme,” 201f. On
the same point, see Kassem, Décadence et absolutisme, 20, 92. For a more extended elaboration
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

724
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
of the ways in which despotism undercuts human nature as articulated in the preceding para-
graph, see Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 257-58.
14. This is another point on which the present analysis departs from that of Kassem, who
maintains that “the politics of Montesquieu is above all a moral doctrine (une morale). The value
of a government results in the first place from the human value of its principle. Virtue, honor, fear
are of a moral order.” Kassem, Décadence et absolutisme, 275. There is a moral teaching in
Montesquieu’s treatment of political decline, but it is more complex than Kassem indicates. For
instance, Kassem’s interpretation fails to acknowledge Montesquieu’s emphatic distinction
between the political virtue that is the principle of republican government and moral virtue
(Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, his “Avertissement de l’auteur,” III.5 note, IV.5, V.2, V.4).
Kassem is equally silent about Montesquieu’s embrace of “false” honor as the principle of mon-
archy (III.7).
15. Binoche also compares Montesquieu’s treatment of political decline to Plato’s, saying
that Montesquieu’s account is “more complex than that of Plato. The latter, in effect, was
describing the degeneration of the polity as a unidirectional process proceeding to tyranny via
timocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: because one went from better to worse there was a point of
departure and a point of arrival,” whereas in Montesquieu there are multiple points of both depar-
ture and arrival. Binoche, Introduction, 204.
16. Richter notes the absence of politics in despotism in “Montesquieu’s Comparative Anal-
ysis,” 338. See also Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” 240-42.
17. This was the thrust of Condorcet’s attack on The Spirit of the Laws. See his remarks on
Montesquieu reprinted in DeStutt de Tracy, A Commentary andReview of Montesquieu’s Spirit
of the Laws, trans. Thomas Jefferson (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 263.
18. One reason despotism is self-destructive is that it lacks fixed laws, including laws of suc-
cession. The result is a state limited in its duration to a single generation, marked throughout its
short life by instability as potential successors compete for predominance (Montesquieu, The
Spirit of the Laws, V.14). In addition, a despot depends on his army to sustain the fear among the
populace that upholds his authority, but without a popular base to counter this dependence, the
despot himself is as vulnerable to the military as his subjects are. Another intrinsic weakness of
despotic government is that the despot’s power is vulnerable to the devaluation in the currency of
fear that naturally accompanies its use. Over time, penalties must become increasingly severe to
achieve the same effects (VI.13), but penalties that are too severe are difficult to enforce because
individuals become too afraid to make accusations (VI.13-14). The lack of enforcement leads to
disdain on the part of the people for the political authorities, which means that the excessive use
of fear ultimately undermines itself. The conclusion Montesquieu presses here is that unlimited
power gives rise to unavoidable contradictions and so is intrinsically unstable and consequently
incapable of fulfilling the objectives of those who pursue it. This conclusion is intended to serve
as a recommendation to despots and potential despots to moderate their rule.
19. See Kassem, Décadence et absolutisme, 9.
20. Montesquieu, Mes pensées, no. 69(5), Pléiade, I, 993.
21. In a similar vein, Diana Schaub calls attention to Montesquieu’s portrait of the moral
bankruptcy of the nobility in Persian Letters (no. 74), where
we make the acquaintance of a “grand seigneur” of the realm—“who took snuff with
such haughtiness, who blew his nose so pitilessly and spat so phlegmatically, and who
caressedhisdogs in a manner so offensive to mankind.” Montesquieudwells onthe phys-
ical repulsiveness of this “little man,” the manner of whose expectorations shows a lack
of even the merest civility towards his fellows. Whereas he holds himself superior (and
indifferent) to the rest of mankind, he stoops low indeed in his unseemly attachment to
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
725
his pets. We may speak figuratively of the “bestiality” of the nobility when their social
standing is no longer accompanied by any real human excellence.
Diana J. Schaub, Erotic Liberalism: Women andRevolution in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 124. Kassem also insists that for Montesquieu, “all
nobility is doomed, when it is hereditary, to extreme corruption.” Kassem, Décadence et
absolutisme, 176. On the paradox of honor as simultaneously dependent on and resistant to a
fixed social order, see Sharon Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002), 65-66. For a discussion of merit and membership in the nobility in
eighteenth-century France, see, for example, Jean Egret, Louis XV et l’opposition parlementaire
1715-1774 (Paris: A. Colin, 1970); William Doyle, The Parlement of Bordeaux andthe Endof
the OldRegime, 1771-1790 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1974); Iris Cox, Montesquieu andthe His -
tory of French Laws (Oxford:, UK Voltaire Foundation, 1983), especially 167; and Ford, Robe
andSword , especially 117-19.
22. Montesquieu, Considérations, Book IX, Pléiade, II, 118-19. And see also The Spirit of
the Laws, IX.1:
If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it is large, it is destroyed by an
internal vice. This double inconvenience infects equally democracies and aristocracies,
whether they are good or whether they are bad. The ill is in the thing itself; there is no
form that can remedy it.
23. Montesquieu, Considérations, IX, 119.
24. Ibid., VIII, 112.
25. Ibid., XI, 129.
26. Binoche treats territorial expansion and “the disordering of the constitution” as the two
primary causes of corruption and political decline in Montesquieu (Binoche, Introduction, 207-
8). This reading is incomplete, however, because it does not explain why Montesquieu thought
these tendencies so inevitable. In fact, the causes Binoche identifies are not primary but interme-
diary, themselves resulting from deeper, underlying factors.
27. For an interesting treatment of the ways that motives other than fear enter into despotic
government in Montesquieu’s analysis, see Corey Robin, “Reflections on Fear: Montesquieu in
Retrieval,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (2000): 347-60.
28. And his skepticism about the possibility of having certain knowledge of metaphysical
objects (See Mes pensées, no. 2062[410], 1537 and no. 2063[1154], 1537). Montesquieu’s meta-
physical skepticism marks another point of convergence with earlier liberals. Like Locke, he
thought that the nature of the highest goods was impossible for human beings to know with any
certainty. And this skepticism leads Montesquieu, as it led Locke, to defend political orders that
aim for individual liberty rather than the perfection of the soul since the latter would require reli-
able knowledge of the nature of the highest goods.
29. Rica laments the forced uniformity of despotism in Persian Letters, saying,
Among us characters are uniform because they are forced; one sees not at all people as
they are but as they are obliged to be. In this servitude of heart and spirit, one hears spo-
ken only fear, which has only one language, and not nature which expresses itself so dif-
ferently and which may appear under so many forms.
Montesquieu, Persian Letters, no. LXIII, Pléiade, I, 223.
Montesquieu also notes in The Spirit of the Laws that “despotism is uniform throughout”
(V.14). Elsewhere in that work, he remarks on uniformity at greater length:
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

726
POLITICAL THEORY / October 2002
There are certain ideas of uniformity that sometimes seize great spirits . . . but that infalli-
bly strike small ones. They find there a type of perfection . . . the same weights in the
police, the same measures in commerce, the same laws in the state and the same religion
in all its parts. But is this always appropriate without exception? . . . And the grandeur of
genius, does it not consist rather in knowing in which cases uniformity is necessary and
in which differences are necessary? (XXIX.18)
30. In republics, Montesquieu says, each citizen “ought to have the same happiness and the
same advantages, each should taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes” (V.3). It is
partly in view of the need for homogeneity that one “needs the whole power of education” in
republican government (IV.5), which makes it possible “to raise (élever) a whole people like a
family” (IV.7). This homogeneity, like uniformity under despotism, also may be forced. Con-
sider Montesquieu’s comparison of the ancient republic and the Christian monastery in V.2.
31. Michael Mosher emphasizes this point in “The Judgmental Gaze of European
Women: Gender, Sexuality, and the Critique of Republican Rule,” Political Theory 22, no. 1
(1994): 25-44.
32. Note also Mes pensées, no. 1905(51), 1458: “There are three tribunes that are almost
never in accord: that of the laws, that of honor, and that of religion.”
33. Montesquieu’s references to the honorable disobedience of Crillon and Orte in The Spirit
of the Laws, IV.2, illustrate this point.
34. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions andthe Interests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1977), 78.
35. Although it has a king, Montesquieu characterizes England somewhat ambivalently as a
“popular state,” saying that the English, “in order to favor liberty, . . . have removed all the inter-
mediate powers that formed their monarchy” (II.4). Elsewhere he refers to it as a “republic hid-
ing under the form of monarchy” (V.19). Interpreters of Montesquieu differ as to whether he
regarded England as a republic or a monarchy. For instance, Pangle treats England as an example
of a new type of commercial republic in Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, while Mosher
thinks Montesquieu presents England as a monarchy, in “Sovereignty and Its Supplement.”
36. Kassem finds a certain “violence of tone” in Montesquieu’s discussion of the character of
the English, both in The Spirit of the Laws and in unpublished notes. Kassem, Décadence et
absolutisme, 180. Yet he sees Montesquieu as resigned to the view that it was “necessary to
accept the English such as they are” (p. 181). Thanks to its political institutions, England was the
freest country then in existence (p. 185). Consequently, admiration was due, if not to the English
character, then to the English form of government (p. 188).
37. Referring to this practice, Montesquieu once remarked that “the English do not deserve
their liberty. They sell it to the king; and if the king should return it to them, they would sell it to
him again.” Montesquieu, “Notes sur l’Angleterre,” Pléiade, I, 880.
38. Ibid., 878.
39. On this point, see Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 117.
40. On the virtues that commerce inspires, see The Spirit of the Laws, V.6: “the spirit of com-
merce” brings with it “frugality, economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and
rule.” In XX.1, Montesquieu maintains that “commerce corrupts pure mores,” but “it polishes
and softens barbarous mores.”
41. Cited in Charles Dedeyan, Montesquieu et l’Angleterre (Paris: Centre de Documentation
Universitaire, 1969), 35.
42. Montesquieu, “A Monsieur Domville,” Pléiade, I, 1447-50. Although these notes were
made preparatory to a letter to Domville, they were themselves never sent. Paul Rahe makes
much of these notes, finding in them the key to the durability of the English constitution. Com-
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015

Krause / THE UNCERTAIN INEVITABILITY OF DECLINE
727
merce, Rahe insists, promotes the independence that makes possible the political vigilance that
animates the English polity. Rahe, “Forms of Government,” 94-97.
43. Montesquieu, “A Monsieur Domville,” 1449.
44. Montesquieu to William Domville, July 22, 1749, in Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu,
ed. André Masson, 3 vols. (Paris: Nagel, 1950-55), III, 1244-45. Cited in Rahe, “Forms of Gov-
ernment,” 107, note 75. Yet even Rahe concludes that although “the principle of the English pol-
ity,” which Rahe defines as “uneasiness” (inquiétude) shaped by English political institutions
into “political vigilance” (pp. 84-90), is “generally reliable,” it is “not utterly impervious to cor-
ruption” (p. 97). In the wrong circumstances, this uneasiness could be transformed into the spe-
cies of fear that motivates despotism. Indeed, Rahe says, “because the modern republic and des-
potism are in the passions that set them in motion akin, the former can easily degenerate into the
latter” (p. 97).
Sharon R. Krause is an assistant professor of political theory in the government depart-
ment at HarvardUniversity. She is the author of Liberalism with Honor (2002) as well as
articles on Montesquieu andon contemporary liberalism. She is currently writing a book
on Montesquieu.
Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at WEST VIRGINA UNIV on March 10, 2015