Can nation-states self-stabilize? From Aristotle through Adam Smith to Hans Kelsen

Abstract

ABSTRACT From Greek city-states to the modern nation-state, the fate of every form of civil government turns on this question ‘Can it self-stabilize?’ Adam Smith’s approach to lawmaking appears in ‘Of Taxes’ in Book V of the Wealth of Nations. Smith reduces his economic reasoning reduces to tax ‘maxims’. He supplies variables to guide and govern members of a parliamentary assembly in lawmaking. I show that Smith’s productivity analytics (my term) also serve a useful purpose when lawmakers consider a proposal to intervene in ‘natural distribution’. Are Smith’s productivity analytics useful to investigators (like Aristotle) or theorists (like Hans Kelsen)? The Politics and Reine Rechtslehre / Pure Theory of Law are works that draw attention to revolutionary changes in the form of civil government. (This should be distinguished from regime change in which case one group of politicians ousts another.) If the productivity analytics are relevant to studies of revolutionary change, this suggests that for every political science that searches for answers to the question ‘can this government stabilize itself’ a social science may be, with advantage, uncovered.