Machiavelli, Underwood, and Tyrion Lannister (Part 2)

Netflix's House of Cards has been a surprise hit for the online-streaming service, and its not hard to see why. The saga of a corrupt congressman who will do anything to gain power and revenge is a truly engrossing saga, if some of the situations he encounters are a little bit far-fetched. When it comes to Machiavellian tactics, Underwood is a compelling case study, and he will be the focus of this post. For those of you who are fans of the British version of House of Cards, don't worry, I have a feeling I'll tackle that series sometime in the near future.
To surmise, Machiavelli stated that a ruler should try to be good, but should be willing to cross the line if need be. However, he should be careful to ensure that he is noted hated, as that can be a death sentence. When it comes to stepping over the line, the poster should give a clear indication that Underwood has no problems getting his hands dirty.

 

(He also has no problems with stealing the statue of Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial...the Monster)

If Underwood needs to bribe someone he does; if he needs to bust someone out of prison; he'll do so, and if he needs to kill someone, he'll get them drunk, drive them home, and then leave them to die as their car fills with carbon monoxide. Reviewers have often used the word 'pragmatic' to describe Underwood's character, and its a pretty fair judgement. Despite his clear disdain for those he works with, I never got the sense that Underwood ever ruined someone just to ruin them. If ruining someone fit into his goals for obtaining power, he did it, but he never went out of his way to do so. 

So Underwood is clearly willing to take the bloody road to power, if he needs to. At the same time, unlike Tyrion, people like him. Of course, he has enemies, but they only become enemies after he's robbed them of their power and influence (as the rep for teacher's union finds out the hard way). In addition, he expertly plays the part of a generally nice guy. He intervenes to help the Chief of Staff's son get into Stanford, he takes the lead on the education bill, and he masterminds a plan to win the governorship of Pennsylvania for the Democrats. He does all of this after he is passed over for the position of Secretary of State, which makes the president think 'Gee, what a great guy!' Thus, no one in power is out to get him, and his constituents seem to be pretty cool with him as well (he handles the peach incident with a lot of political flair in class). 

Underwood's Machiavellian skills also extend to his wife. As the head of a NGO that builds wells in Africa, its easy for her to convince others that her goals are noble. Granted social improvement has been used by people to gain power for most of history (the first national healthcare system was instituted under Otto Von Bismark in Imperial Germany), but Claire Underwood is pretty good at portraying herself as just interested in helping others. And in fairness, she does appear to show real concern when the Sudanese government refuses to unload her supplies. However, unlike Underwood, she occasionally lets her emotions get the best of her. Throughout the show, its implied that she is undergoing menopause and she is jealous of her pregnant co-worker, which inadvertantly leads to her getting sued.

So Underwood seems to have the Machiavellian thing down, but his actions seem to suggest a flaw in Machiavelli's philosphy. The show is titled 'House of Cards' for a reason, suggesting that the tower to power that he built is very unsteady. Indeed, the finale episode concludes, its implied that Zoe Barnes, his former lover and collaborator, is going to expose his crimes to the world. This opens up an interesting question, of what a ruler should do if the public were to find out about the terrible things that he has done. Machiavelli writes that a ruler should do any cruel actions at the beginning of his reign, but Underwoods actions are parceled out, and grow worse and worse as the season progresses. That being said, Underwood can use his influence to inspire fear when need be, and he does have leverage over Barnes in the form of some 'unflattering' photographs he's taken of her. Time (aka Season 2) will tell whether Underwood's house of cards will tumble, but for now he seems to have mastered the Machiavellian ladder to power. Whether he continues to climb or is falls from said ladder remains to be seen...

 

Machiavelli, Underwood, and Tyrion Lannister Part 1

Everyone has an opinion on Machiavelli. He has been alternatively praised and vilified, his works drawing praise for their pragmatic approach to government, while also being condemned for their supposed lack of morals. Indeed, there is as much debate about the man himself as there is about the value of his works. Before we begin however, I just want to clarify the focus of the discussion. For the next two blog posts we'll focus on his work in The Prince, and we move forward with assumption that he was being serious when he wrote it. I know that there is a lot of debate about whether or not he wrote the work as a satire, which one can (and many have) write whole books on the subject, but, for the purposes of the discussion today, we'll stick with the view that he wrote it as an honest attempt to return to the good graces of the Medici family. In addition, while I have read his work The Discourses, today's post will focus mostly on what he wrote in the Prince despite the fact that our second character of discussion, Francis Underwood of House of Cards, is part of a republic rather than a principality. I have done this because The Discourses focus on the Republic as a single entity and is concerned mostly about government, while The Prince focuses on the individual and places a greater focus on the concept of power.
When it comes to power, Tyrion Lannister knows that he isn't going to get it through strength. Despite being everyone's favorite character, Tyrion is despised in Westeros due to his small stature and lose morals. As such, as Tyrion explains to Jon Snow, '[w]ell, my brother has his sword and I have my mind. And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone'. In fact, Tyrion's mind helps him climb the ranks of the kindom even sooner than he expected. With Joffrey as the new king, Robb Stark marching on King's Landing, and Ned Stark dead (insert obligatory joke about Sean Bean dying in every movie/show he’s in), Tywin Lannister dispatches his son to King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King. As a result, we the viewers get one of the greatest scenes in television history...

So, the question becomes, does Tyrion rule in a Machiavellian manner? Well, the question is a more complex then it might seem. Machiavelli's work has often been simplified to the idea that it is better to be feared than loved, but such a statement ignores the complexity of Machiavelli's arguement. As I wrote in an essay for my History of Political Thought Class...


“As Machiavelli sees it, the average man is ‘ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours’.[1] Note the term as, ‘as long as you succeed’, which essentially means that being nice to an individual will only guarantee loyalty as long as the prince doesn’t fail. Therefore, to rely on kindness is to rely on luck and, as Machiavelli has argued, the prince who is most successful is the one who relies least on fortune.[2] Comparing fortune to a river, Machiavelli argues that one must be prepared for misfortune to flood one’s banks, lest it destroy everything that a person has worked for.[3] In the political sense, this means ensuring that those who could abandon a ruler are kept in their place via fear. As ‘fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails’, Machiavelli argues that a man frightened of a ruler will not challenge them.[4].
            However, unlike other writers, Machiavelli never states that violence and other cruel actions should be considered moral.[5] Rather he says that they are necessary sometimes, but only within a given set of parameters. While it is good to be feared, to be hated is often a death sentence for a prince, and, to avoid that, he recommends avoiding taking one’s subjects’ property and women, and to only taking life when one has just cause.[6] Provided a king never acts in a wanton and cruel manner, one could argue that he can still have a reign that was mostly committed to being just.”

Essentially, people are bad which means that a ruler must step outside of the bounds of morality at certain points in order to keep control. That being said, a ruler should not act in a fashion that makes him hated, and forces the people to view him as a tyrant (read: Joffrey). So, Tyrion comes to court, and, for the most part, he does a pretty good job. He successfully prevents Joffrey from doing anything catastrophic and his defenses help ensure the Lannister victory at the Battle of the Blackwater. At the same time, he never does anything to make him hated by the people. While certain members of the old council disappear, but neither the population of King's Landing nor the viewer/reader at home really cares that he shipped off the former commander of the City Watch.
However, Tyrion ultimately fails at this Machiavellian strategy of governing for the simple fact that, despite everything, he still winds up being hated. Part of that is beyond his control. As the Kingdom is fighting a civil war, food supplies and refugees become a major problem, and despite Tyrion's best efforts people do end up suffering. Secondly, the nature of his short status means that the people were more likely to despise him due to prejudice, so he would have needed to have gone the extra mile to win their trust (spoiler for season 3), an action such as Margarey Tyrell’s passing out food to the subjects would have greatly helped his efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people (end spoilers).
However, Tyrion's biggest enemies are not the common people but his fellow nobles at court. While The Prince focused mostly on the relationship between king and commoner, the idea of making sure that people don't hate you also applies to a rulers' nobility. In this area, Tyrion seems to have done nothing but make enemies. He sends his sister's only daughter to Dorne without consulting her, arrests the Grand Maester, and criticizes and slaps Joffrey (as I mentioned before, these actions under any other context should have won him a medal). Like his relationship with the subjects, he was on poor footing to begin with. Cersei hated him since their mother died birthing him, and many other members of the nobility were subject to the same prejudices that the commoners in King's Landing believed in. This hatred ultimately culminates in Cersei ordering one of the King's Guard to murder Tyrion. Luckily he survives, but in that time, his father returns to King's Landing, his enemies consolidate, and Tyrion finds himself without allies (and things only get worse from there...).
One of the greatest things about Tyrion as a character is that he doesn't care what other people think and he's willing to call others out on their faults. However, it’s that same personality that causes him to be hated by both commoner and nobility. As Machiavelli noted, a ruler must not be hated, and, in Tyrion’s case, he never seemed to try and prevent or lessen the animosity that others felt towards him. Otherwise he ruled just as Machiavelli said that a ruler should, attempting to be a just ruler, while toeing the line of morality when need be. Unfortunately, while his few friends appreciated him, and the nobility did begin to fear him, he was never able to achieve the popularity that would have allowed him to hold on to power.
 To that's how Tyrion Lannister fits in with Machiavelli. Stayed tuned for how well Francis Underwood, the anti-hero of the acclaimed miniseries House of Cards fits the Machiavellian model...

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[1] Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 84.

[2] Ibid., 39.

[3] Ibid., 118

[4] Ibid.,  84

[5] Dustin Ellis Howes, ‘Creating Necessity: Well-Used Violence in the Thought of Machiavelli’, Symploke 20 (2012), 184.

[6] Machiavelli The Prince, p.  84

Why Thomas Hobbes loves Stannis Baratheon.

Hi Everybody! In what I hope will be the first of many posts dealing with how different political theories and concepts appear in popular culture, I'll examine how the story and characters of the popular book and TV series Game of Thrones illustrate concepts relating to political theory.  Before I begin, I must warn that these posts will assume a knowledge the television series and/or books up to the end of season two. For those of you who haven't reached that point yet, proceed at your own risk, there be spoilers ahead.

For many, our knowledge of Thomas Hobbes and his famous work Leviathan comes down to one or two paragraphs in our high school history textbooks. When describing the Enlightenment, the textbooks would bring up two thinkers, Hobbes and Locke. Locke was the liberal who believed in natural rights, while Hobbes was the thinker who had a dim view on human nature and believed in absolute monarchs. Like many things in those textbooks, this is a greatly simplified view. I'll explain Locke in a future post,  but for now let's focus on Hobbes.

To understand Hobbes, one must first understand his views on the state of nature. A common subject of discussion during the Enlightenment, the state of nature was a hypothetical state where mankind dwelt before forming societies. For Hobbes, the state of nature was a place in which life was 'nasty, brutish, and short'. This stemmed from the fact that in the state of nature there was only one natural right given to mankind, and that was every man had the right to do anything he wanted in order to survive. The problem was, one's right to preservation often overlapped with the rights of others. For example, if there was only one apple to eat in the middle of the barren desert and me and my friend both wanted to eat it, we would both be justified in killing the other to gain the apple. Naturally, this is a fairly sorry state to live in, and many condemned Hobbes' views as being overly pessimistic. His response was that one could clearly the state of nature in the native tribes of the new world (he obviously failed to understand the native peoples of North and South America had many thriving societies), the conflicts of the kings of Europe (or the kings of Westeros), or even the fact that people lock their doors at night. To get out of that situation, he argued, people make contracts with others, in which they agree not to murder each other. However, the question then becomes, who will enforce these treaties?
For Hobbes that's where the government comes in. To be clear, Hobbes wasn't necessarily opposed to representative government, he just thought it was waste of effort, and that mankind would need a strong ruler (i.e absolute monarchy) to keep them in line. That's where Stannis comes in.

 (Image Credit: Game of Thrones Wiki)

 The middle child of the Baratheon line, Stannis believes firmly in law and order above all else. Its for that reason that he chops of the fingers of the smuggler Davos even after he saved Stannis and his garrison at Storm's End from starving. Davos had broken the law and needed to be punished even though without him Stannis and his men would probably have been forced to eat the furniture. It also explains why Stannis continues to claim the Iron Throne as his, even though its clear that nobody really wants him to be king, aside from Davos and the creepy Melisandre lady. The way he sees it, the Iron Throne belongs to him by right of his being the late King Robert's brother and Prince Joffrey being illegitimate. The interesting thing is, he's right. According to the laws of succession, Stannis does have the strongest claim to the throne. He recognizes it, Ned Stark recognized it before he got his head chopped off (I warned you about spoilers), but nobody else likes the idea.

According to Hobbes, when people set up a government they transfer all of their rights to the sovergien and he has total power over them forever. While Hobbes expects the king to rule in a fair manner, he also affords him the ability to do whatever he has to do  in order to hold onto power. With that in mind, Stannis, although nobody's favorite, would probably make a fine king. Unlike some of the other rules, he has a strict sense of honor and never really behaves in a brazen or impulsive manner. His actions are carefully weighed and he listens to the council of the wise Davos, all traits that  you want in an administrator. The worse thing that he's done was his murder of his brother Renly with that creepy shadow baby of Melisandre's (which left an entire generation of HBO viewers traumatized). While not legal, the action did save his army from fighting a battle in which the odds were stacked against them, so Hobbes probably would have viewed it as an legitimate exercise of his sovereign power. In addition, Stannis is a leader. At the Battle of the Blackwater he personally leads his men in the attack, thereby proving that, while dull and cold, he's no coward. Stannis might not have flair, but he is grounded in reason and logic, which would probably make him a successful king. For that, he serves as an excellent example of Hobbes' political theory. Under Stannis, Westeros would be safe and peaceful. Unfortunately for Hobbes, his theory has one major flaw, and another king of Westeros perfectly illustrates it...

 

 (Photo Credit Game of Thrones Wiki)

The problem with giving a single person absolute power, is that you will, on occasion, end up with a king like Joffrey aka the character in Game of Thrones that everyone, and I mean everyone, hates. I would cite the old saying that power corrupts, but Joffrey was a jerk even before he was crowned, so I'll have to stick with the other classic adage "Joffrey is a jerk." A criticism commonly given to Hobbes' theory is that if mankind is so driven by power and self-interest, why would you give a person complete and absolute power? For Hobbes, it was better to be ruled over by a cruel leader than deal with the state of nature. For myself, I'd rather take my chances beyond the Wall than live under a king who pays an assassin to kill a 10 year old crippled child, orders the death of the entire city because some mud is thrown at him, and flees during the middle of a battle. In fact, the only real check on his power seems to come from the hand of everyone's favorite character, Tyrion. In fairness, Hobbes does say that it is permissible to rebel against a government that is coming to kill you, and seeing how many people Joffrey has promised to kill, I imagine that I'd be fighting him for my life before too long, but its still a pretty crummy situation.

 It's interesting that Hobbes' background, he lived through the English Civil War and was later forced into exile, is in many ways similar to the conflict in Westeros. In both cases, you have a long war in which quite a few people claim sovereignty, and many looked fondly upon the earlier years in which things, while not great, were stable and orderly. In the TV series, Robb Stark asks Talisa Maegyr, what she would have him do instead of fighting Joffrey, posing the question of whether it would it be better to lay down his arms so that no one else would die and the kingdom would have peace. While we never hear Talisa's answer, Hobbes probably would have answered yes, given the struggles that he witnessed. A government at its most basic form is designed to provide security and protection, on that most political writers are agreed. However ,with Hobbes' plan of government you have the potential for decent kings like Stannis, who obey the law, but there is nothing you can do about tyrants like Joffrey. It's for that reason, that you don't see many politicians or political scientists quoting Hobbes. No matter how dim one's views of human nature, anything is better than living under Joffrey.