Very interesting piece. How do you think Western societies have ameliorated this problem (even though, as you point out, "no particular state structure would entirely prevent" the ability of the guardians to overthrow the sovereign)? Seems like both nationalism and capitalism help, since the former raises the political costs of disobeying the sovereign (who can now rile up a restive public to violently oppose ambitious Generals) and the latter both gives the Sovereign and his civilian backers funds to buy off ambitious Generals and raises the costs of disruptive coups (which again may make the public opposed to the guardians). Do you think there are other developments that help the sovereign?
I think there's a few things that liberal democracies have going for them besides what you mention that I don't really address here—that are probably worthwhile addressing in the future. One being a citizen-soldier conception of the military. I think it provides extremely strong norms that prevent this form of behavior. It's fairly central to a modern volunteer force that their civil servants before any other consideration, which I think heads off the problem of personal interests a bit.
I'd probably also say that the modern bureaucratic nature of State security helps quite a bit. Power isn't *as* centralized in the military in a modern State, you have the Intelligence services, and fairly robust domestic Law Enforcement that fragment the apparatus of violence enough to make it a much riskier proposition to attempt a coup.
I still don't think there's *really* a way to prevent a coup if someone was really committed enough however.
Very interesting piece. How do you think Western societies have ameliorated this problem (even though, as you point out, "no particular state structure would entirely prevent" the ability of the guardians to overthrow the sovereign)? Seems like both nationalism and capitalism help, since the former raises the political costs of disobeying the sovereign (who can now rile up a restive public to violently oppose ambitious Generals) and the latter both gives the Sovereign and his civilian backers funds to buy off ambitious Generals and raises the costs of disruptive coups (which again may make the public opposed to the guardians). Do you think there are other developments that help the sovereign?
I think there's a few things that liberal democracies have going for them besides what you mention that I don't really address here—that are probably worthwhile addressing in the future. One being a citizen-soldier conception of the military. I think it provides extremely strong norms that prevent this form of behavior. It's fairly central to a modern volunteer force that their civil servants before any other consideration, which I think heads off the problem of personal interests a bit.
I'd probably also say that the modern bureaucratic nature of State security helps quite a bit. Power isn't *as* centralized in the military in a modern State, you have the Intelligence services, and fairly robust domestic Law Enforcement that fragment the apparatus of violence enough to make it a much riskier proposition to attempt a coup.
I still don't think there's *really* a way to prevent a coup if someone was really committed enough however.