Political Political Theory: An Inaugural Lecture

IT is a question, said David Hume, “whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another and, whether every form . . . may not become good or bad, according as it is well or ill administered,” administered well by men of virtue—that is, people of good character, wisdom, and high principle—or administered badly by fools and knaves who know or care nothing for justice and the common good. “Were it once admitted,” Hume continued, “that all governments are alike, and that the only difference consists in the character and conduct of the governors, most political disputes would be at an end, and all zeal for one constitution above another, must be esteemed mere bigotry and folly.” Hume imagines people who take that view adopting the maxim of Alexander Pope in the Essay on Man: “For forms of government let fools contest / Whate’er is best administer’d is best.” Institutions or the character of those who inhabit them? Should students of politics make a study of the one or the other? Both, surely, would be the obvious answer. They should understand something of political virtue and the demands that the requirements of good government make on the character of those who take on responsibility for public affairs, even if it is no more than the ethic of responsibility that Max Weber recommended. But maybe there is a special reason for studying institutions: to understand the ways in which institutional forms can be designed so as to outwit and outflank what Hume called “the casual humours and characters of particular men.”