Editor's Introduction: Land, Power, and Democracy

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12219
• Author: Christopher England

Editor’s Introduction:

Land, Power, and Democracy

By CHRISTOPHER ENGLAND*

Today, it is hard to imagine that as recently as the 1990s many intellec-

tuals believed that we were on the cusp of the “universalization of

Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”

(Fukayama 1989: 4). Now that Western democracies themselves seem

to be slipping away from liberalism, the author of that statement,

Francis Fukuyama, acknowledges that his “end of history” thesis was

flawed. After the fallof the Soviet Union, all the vectors ofglobal history

pointed to the triumphant ascent of communism’s chief rival. It never

occurred to Fukuyama, however, that democraciesmight contain within

themselves the mechanisms for their own destruction. Fukuyama now

admits that “[t]wenty-five years ago, I didn’t have a sense or a theory

about how democraciescan go backward” (Tharoor 2017).

Classical Republicanism and Land

Though current events hint at the insufficiency of modern political sci-

ence, they might, perhaps, have redeemed some currents of traditional

political thought. Thinkers who adhered to the tenets of “classical

republicanism” took for granted that democracy was a fragile and

ephemeral form of government. From Ancient Greece through to the

Renaissance and the American Revolution, intellectuals assumed that

differences in social and economic power would slowly erode the

rough equality that democracy was predicated on. The poor would

seek out the rich for a living, and, after becoming dependent, make

themselves the tools of the wealthy, as the plebs had once sought out a

Caesar. The wealthy, in turn, would use their resources to manipulate

*PhD in U.S. History from Georgetown University. Experience includes: fellow at

the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, instructor at the University of Wisconsin at

Madison, and researcher at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Email: Christopher.

England@Wisconsinhistory.org.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, No. 1 (January, 2018).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12219

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C2018 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.