I skipped past a point in
Government On Avalon. When Vickery objects that the choths have no government, Liaw asks, "'What is government?'" and, when Vickery replies, "'...legitimate authority...'," Liaw resumes control of the conversation, stating that legitimacy derives from tradition and authority from force. That government is the institution that is legitimized in its use of force is a familiar theme in Anderson's works (see POLITICAL LEGITIMACY IN THE THOUGHT OF POUL ANDERSON by Sean M. Brooks,
here) but what is Liaw's point?
Although government is legitimized in the use of force, Parliament is still debating. But the Khruaths also debated - and the most senior Wyvans threatened to call the majority of choths to attack the three that had refused to contribute to the latest defense measures. The three yielded. Thus, if government is legitimized force, then the choths have provided a more effective government than the Parliament of Man.
In any case, Vickery is shaken by the disclosure that Liaw had threatened civil war.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! I really should have quoted that bit from THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND in my "Political Legitimacy" essay. And I agree with Liaw's summation of what human philosophers and historians said about gov't and legitimacy.
Btw, I'm a bit surprised you've said nothing about Matthew Vickery's occupation before he became a politician. I think he was some kind of financial or economic analyst.
Sean
Sean,
A credit analyst which Daniel Holm thinks is useful in the "wonderland" of interspecies economics. I don't seem to have mentioned it on the blog - although I have found quite a lot of repetition about these characters!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I had been wondering about Matthew Vickery's former occupation partly because of what Roan Tom hypothetically said at the beginning of "A Tragedy of Errors," about one of the results of the fall of the Empire: "No more information-collatin' services, so nobody to keep track o' what's happening amongst those millions of suns." A smooth and reasonably accurate flow and exchange of information would be crucial for an economy to WORK, whether on one planet or across the stars. So I assume Vickery's work used to be like that.
Sean
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