My favourite insight: "Due to the combination of competitive jurisdictions and the Christian sanctification of the Roman synthesis—single spouse marriage, suppression of kin-groups, law as human, consent for marriage, testamentary freedom, no cousin marriage—European Christian civilisation put the central Homo sapien advantage—non-kin cooperation—on steroids. The resulting development of institutional capacity is why European states ended up dominating the planet."
I hope for an equally succinct insight into the determinants of institutional capacity.
"They especially do not seem to want to examine the dynamics of bureaucratisation—except as an employment-provider—either in Rome or in contemporary Western societies."
That may be the most superfluous treatment imaginable. Which is fine by me, it leaves wide open what I want to write about!
It is annoying how often people try to parallel the 'decline of the West' in the present day to the fall of Western Rome without seriously considering Diocletian's reforms. The shift from the Principate to the Dominate was a huge change in Roman imperial policy, but for some reason criticising large state bureaucracies isn't popular right now.
This is quite concerning, because I think it is clear to most modern citizens that we have let our bureaucracies grow too large. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much appetite amongst our elected representatives to properly reign in this unnecessary proliferation of busy work in the public service.
The modern decline of the West is mostly self-inflicted by the deliberate choice to move industrial capacity en-masse to developing countries with only empty promises of service/knowledge economies as replacements. Obviously Romans didn't have the capacity to do such a thing.
Is the promised service economy actually an instance of bureaucratic proliferation? Look at "policy" jobs, explosion in consulting and mundane subjects gaining full-scale academic standing... See what it takes to get even an unskilled job: a course in holding a Stop/Slow sign, a ladder-usage license!
Some movement away from manufacturing was inevitable: it was going to move to where labour was both cheap and productive enough. But some was also dysfunctional policy and regulation.
But a lot of the growth in management and consultancies is clearly parasitical.
Not all manufacturing is equal - compare rustbelt smokestacks vs microchip foundries. Most of the world's supply of chips comes from the now-precarious Formosan location. Absolutely unforgivable for USGov to allow such strategic and commercially valuable industries to move offshore. Given the current German Wagenkrise its a wonder why the country didn't invest in such a high tech industry. Even closer to home look at how persistently Australian govts have refused to value-add onshore and expatriate raw resources cheaply.
Australia is always going to have an uphill battle with manufacturing: too dispersed. Mass bulk works better for our location and population patterns than more complicated economies of scale. Niche manufacturing has more of a chance. But State Governments rationing land use for revenue reasons do not help.
While I don't have the knowledge base to assess the validity of the material, there is a hilarious and telling concordance between the Roman history laid out and the very authorship and historiography covering it. Can you see it?
The rise in bureaucracy through the Dominate looks like a classic instance of elite overproduction... As does the historical-punditry-complex which produces books just like this one. Too many wannabe-intellectuals come up with some contrived insight, selectively recruit the historical record to fit their desired conclusions, and bingo - another book deal. Was it Guns Germs & Steel that kicked off this model? Its become a sort of intellectual grift in an era where too many PhDs chase too few tenures.
Over-supply of under-developed and misdirected intelligence.
I am a bit cautious about elite over-production thesis in the modern world. It is clearly a thing in past societies, but in more commercially and technologically dynamic societies, there is simply more capacity to sop up people. See Yascha Mounk’s critique of the application to the contemporary US.
Is the elite overproduction in the USA really becoming an issue when it comes to the levers of society, versus simple financial success?
I think we've done good with the latter but we're experiencing a logjam in the former. In other words, its more about the leaders (controllers) in society, not individual success.
interesting article, but you don't except in passing seem to be reviewing the book mentioned.
On the claim that empires are just resource extraction, the ultimate rebuttal is American Independence. Contrary to their propaganda, the Americans didn't win it on the battlefield; instead the new British govt had realised that the Americas *cost* more money to protect than they were worth, and that it would be more profitable to trade with an independent American nation.
Comparing Brexit to Henry's Reformation instead of to Rome abandoning the island in the 3rdC AD? Hmm, interesting. The thing is Harry took out the bureaucratic structures left behind - the monasteries - but no such pruning has happened since Brexit.
I've said time and again that the EU is just the latest instance of the European (Franco-German?) penchant for empire, and all of the control freaking it entails.
This post is a great substantiation of how it is and how it will predictably play out, this time at 21st century speeds.
Brexit may turn out to be much more prescient than anyone presently conceives. Not to say that the UK doesn't have its own issues with commerce, national economy, and personal freedom, but they seem to pale in comparison with the rest of Europe.
The UK and the US may have to come for the continent's rescue again.
This is a superb review. I always respected Heather for his prior writings on Late Antiquity but this review makes it sound like the man has become totally addled by Brexit derangement syndrome. A damn shame.
Lorenzo may be flaked out on his sofa too full of Christmas cheer to respond, but I do recall him saying that Heather’s co-author appears to have made this particular book worse. However, beyond that I don’t know any further detail, so when Lorenzo reappears he can comment further.
I read Peter Heather’s book on the fall of the Western Empire when it came out. While I preferred Ward-Perkins’ book, it was still a fine work of history.
I am currently reading Heather’s book ‘Romans and Barbarians’. It is very good.
Much of the sins in ‘Why Empires Fail’ seem to have come from John Rapley, though the Brexit analogy is very bad, it was surprising to see the collapse in silver mining and the Roman pandemics mishandled and the book does lean too hard on evidence of rural prosperity and too little on the scale of the bureaucratisation and the implications thereof.
The analysis of contemporary economic conditions is that mixture of superficial competence and deeper innumeracy that you get from too much Wallerstein “world-system”, derivations of dependency theory and misconstrued centre-periphery analysis.
My favourite insight: "Due to the combination of competitive jurisdictions and the Christian sanctification of the Roman synthesis—single spouse marriage, suppression of kin-groups, law as human, consent for marriage, testamentary freedom, no cousin marriage—European Christian civilisation put the central Homo sapien advantage—non-kin cooperation—on steroids. The resulting development of institutional capacity is why European states ended up dominating the planet."
I hope for an equally succinct insight into the determinants of institutional capacity.
I did not know anyone still had those 1950's ideas about empires being of economic importance. Reminds one of Raul Prebisch. :)
"They especially do not seem to want to examine the dynamics of bureaucratisation—except as an employment-provider—either in Rome or in contemporary Western societies."
That may be the most superfluous treatment imaginable. Which is fine by me, it leaves wide open what I want to write about!
It is annoying how often people try to parallel the 'decline of the West' in the present day to the fall of Western Rome without seriously considering Diocletian's reforms. The shift from the Principate to the Dominate was a huge change in Roman imperial policy, but for some reason criticising large state bureaucracies isn't popular right now.
This is quite concerning, because I think it is clear to most modern citizens that we have let our bureaucracies grow too large. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much appetite amongst our elected representatives to properly reign in this unnecessary proliferation of busy work in the public service.
The loss of self-governing cities at the local authority level was profound.
The modern decline of the West is mostly self-inflicted by the deliberate choice to move industrial capacity en-masse to developing countries with only empty promises of service/knowledge economies as replacements. Obviously Romans didn't have the capacity to do such a thing.
Is the promised service economy actually an instance of bureaucratic proliferation? Look at "policy" jobs, explosion in consulting and mundane subjects gaining full-scale academic standing... See what it takes to get even an unskilled job: a course in holding a Stop/Slow sign, a ladder-usage license!
Some movement away from manufacturing was inevitable: it was going to move to where labour was both cheap and productive enough. But some was also dysfunctional policy and regulation.
But a lot of the growth in management and consultancies is clearly parasitical.
Not all manufacturing is equal - compare rustbelt smokestacks vs microchip foundries. Most of the world's supply of chips comes from the now-precarious Formosan location. Absolutely unforgivable for USGov to allow such strategic and commercially valuable industries to move offshore. Given the current German Wagenkrise its a wonder why the country didn't invest in such a high tech industry. Even closer to home look at how persistently Australian govts have refused to value-add onshore and expatriate raw resources cheaply.
Australia is always going to have an uphill battle with manufacturing: too dispersed. Mass bulk works better for our location and population patterns than more complicated economies of scale. Niche manufacturing has more of a chance. But State Governments rationing land use for revenue reasons do not help.
While I don't have the knowledge base to assess the validity of the material, there is a hilarious and telling concordance between the Roman history laid out and the very authorship and historiography covering it. Can you see it?
The rise in bureaucracy through the Dominate looks like a classic instance of elite overproduction... As does the historical-punditry-complex which produces books just like this one. Too many wannabe-intellectuals come up with some contrived insight, selectively recruit the historical record to fit their desired conclusions, and bingo - another book deal. Was it Guns Germs & Steel that kicked off this model? Its become a sort of intellectual grift in an era where too many PhDs chase too few tenures.
Over-supply of under-developed and misdirected intelligence.
I am a bit cautious about elite over-production thesis in the modern world. It is clearly a thing in past societies, but in more commercially and technologically dynamic societies, there is simply more capacity to sop up people. See Yascha Mounk’s critique of the application to the contemporary US.
https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/there-is-no-surplus-elite-in-america
I am much more worried about toxic colonisation of institutions by bad ideas and networks of people pushing them.
Is the elite overproduction in the USA really becoming an issue when it comes to the levers of society, versus simple financial success?
I think we've done good with the latter but we're experiencing a logjam in the former. In other words, its more about the leaders (controllers) in society, not individual success.
interesting article, but you don't except in passing seem to be reviewing the book mentioned.
On the claim that empires are just resource extraction, the ultimate rebuttal is American Independence. Contrary to their propaganda, the Americans didn't win it on the battlefield; instead the new British govt had realised that the Americas *cost* more money to protect than they were worth, and that it would be more profitable to trade with an independent American nation.
Comparing Brexit to Henry's Reformation instead of to Rome abandoning the island in the 3rdC AD? Hmm, interesting. The thing is Harry took out the bureaucratic structures left behind - the monasteries - but no such pruning has happened since Brexit.
Still, glad I read it.
I've said time and again that the EU is just the latest instance of the European (Franco-German?) penchant for empire, and all of the control freaking it entails.
This post is a great substantiation of how it is and how it will predictably play out, this time at 21st century speeds.
Brexit may turn out to be much more prescient than anyone presently conceives. Not to say that the UK doesn't have its own issues with commerce, national economy, and personal freedom, but they seem to pale in comparison with the rest of Europe.
The UK and the US may have to come for the continent's rescue again.
This is a superb review. I always respected Heather for his prior writings on Late Antiquity but this review makes it sound like the man has become totally addled by Brexit derangement syndrome. A damn shame.
Lorenzo may be flaked out on his sofa too full of Christmas cheer to respond, but I do recall him saying that Heather’s co-author appears to have made this particular book worse. However, beyond that I don’t know any further detail, so when Lorenzo reappears he can comment further.
Thank you.
I read Peter Heather’s book on the fall of the Western Empire when it came out. While I preferred Ward-Perkins’ book, it was still a fine work of history.
I am currently reading Heather’s book ‘Romans and Barbarians’. It is very good.
Much of the sins in ‘Why Empires Fail’ seem to have come from John Rapley, though the Brexit analogy is very bad, it was surprising to see the collapse in silver mining and the Roman pandemics mishandled and the book does lean too hard on evidence of rural prosperity and too little on the scale of the bureaucratisation and the implications thereof.
The analysis of contemporary economic conditions is that mixture of superficial competence and deeper innumeracy that you get from too much Wallerstein “world-system”, derivations of dependency theory and misconstrued centre-periphery analysis.
>a higher tax share of GDP implies a higher level of public debt
So the "starve the beast" crowd was onto something after all? Hmm.
What a superbly researched and argued piece of writing. One of the best pieces I have read over the past 12 months. Congratulations.