Ibn Khaldun's Theory of Dynasty Formation and Disintegration

[sbarrera]

Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) was a scholar of the Middle Ages whose work includes a description of how a dynasty's power wanes over successive generations, even as its wealth and culture grow. The parallels with S&H are unmistakable, and in fact the authors reference him in The Fourth Turning. I thought he deserved his own thread and I'm just going to start it off with a couple of blog posts I published recently.


A REALLY GOOD HISTORY BOOK FROM ABOUT SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO
 May 27, 2022  Steve

I recently finished The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, a book which had been part of my tsundoku for some time and which I finally got around to reading in connection to generations theory research. Khaldun’s work is actually referenced in The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, in the chapter on archetypes in history. I might have remembered this, but it was only when I rediscovered the fact that I felt compelled to pull The Muqaddimah off my shelf to read it and find the connections.

Khaldun has his own theory of a generational cycle in politics, or at least a generational progression. It’s basically the idea that as the generations pass, the authority of a dynasty declines and eventually disappears altogether. The founding generation establishes and consolidates the authority, and the next generation continues to benefit from it while beginning the process of constricting it. The third generation is just living in the shadow of that authority, even as the dynasty is in its most materially prosperous phase. The fourth and last generation of the dynasty is dissolute and wastes the legacy of the previous generations; at that point the dynastic authority disintegrates.

The parallels to the turnings theory of Strauss & Howe, which also has a four-part cycle and theorizes four generational archetypes, are plain. There’s also a similarity to the cycles of government identified in ancient times by Polybius. It’s fascinating to think that Polybius was writing fifteen hundred years before Khaldun, and Khaldun was writing over six hundred years before our time, and yet these parallels are there, even with modern thinking. It’s like these different scholars writing in different eras are all discovering the same fundamental truths.

Khaldun’s work is comprehensive in its scope (he’s what you would call a polymath) and reminds me a bit of Aristotle, just in the breadth of what he covers and the systematic way he goes about categorizing and explaining things. His work is also reminiscent of Herodotus, in that he writes about historiography and the importance of applying a discerning intellect to the study of history, lest one simply repeat the misinformation that is frequently passed down as historical fact.

While he does echo these ancient Greek philosophers, he is also plainly a denizen of the medieval age. He takes for granted the validity of his religion, Islam, and believes in spiritual reality and supernatural powers (he has a whole section railing against sorcery and its danger to religion). His model of physics is based on the four elements, and his model of biology and medicine is the medieval one of the four humours corresponding to those elements. We might think of these views as scientifically backward, but he’s simply working with what was known in his time, before the advances of the modern era.

What’s truly remarkable about Khaldun’s work is his discourse on social and political science. He has this conceptual framework around which he constructs a theory of how and why civilization forms, and its sources in religious and dynastic authority. In his view, religion forms dynasty and dynasty forms civilization, which sort of marks him as a theocratic medievalist. But you could think of this view as simply the idea that government must be rooted in some kind of moral ground in order to establish its definition of justice.

In his treatise, Khaldun repeatedly invokes the same concepts as he describes civilization in general, and the difference between simple desert civilization and what he calls sedentary civilization with its wealth and cities, basically describing a rural-urban divide. Let’s see if I can do a good job summarizing his theory.

In order for humans to live together cooperatively in a society they need some sort of “restraining influence” to prevent them from simply predating on one another. This influence can come from religion or it can come from the “royal authority” of a ruler. The royal authority of a ruling dynasty derives from “group feeling,” which is like social cohesion within a population, creating mutual esteem and loyalty. At first a dynasty has “desert attitude,” meaning a simple way of life and qualities of toughness and courage. This enables it to prevail over its enemies and establish its rule. But subsequent generations of the dynasty lose the desert attitude as the dynasty develops “sedentary culture.” The dynasty prospers economically, its cities grow in wealth and population and become advanced in the sciences and crafts, but all of this is at the expense of group feeling. Eventually the dynasty falls to some other one which has the desert attitude and group feeling that enable it to achieve military superiority.

It’s clear why Strauss & Howe would have referenced Khaldun, since his analysis has similarities to their turnings theory. You can also see how Khaldun anticipates the future thinking of Western philosophers. While reading The Muqaddimah and encountering his ideas, it occurred to me that the Age of Enlightenment might as well be considered to be the time when Western philosophy finally caught up to Ibn Khaldun. Honestly, encountering these ideas in a book written in the 14th century makes me reconsider the whole concept of a rift between the “medieval” and “modern” ages. It also make me wonder how Khaldun would see our world today, if he were to somehow be here to observe it.

I found The Muqaddimah to be a very easy read. Khaldun writes with confident authority and with common sense, and his thinking is very clear. Credit must go to the translator, Franz Rosenthal, for transforming Khaldun’s Arabic into straightforward English. I’m very happy to add The Muqaddimah to my “Read” bookshelf, from where I’m sure I will keeping referring to it as I continue my studies of generations and history.

[sbarrera]

Blog post #2:

THE CRISIS ERA IN TERMS OF KHALDUN’S THEORY OF DYNASTY FORMATION
 May 29, 2022  Steve

I recently posted about The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, a remarkable book on world history that was written in the 14th century, but has many ideas about political and social science that fit right in with modern philosophical views. In my post I couldn’t help but wonder what the author would say about the state of the world today, were he to somehow be here to observe it. He was a pretty successful guy in his time, as I understand it, and to time travel him to our mess of an era would probably be rude, but I guess if it was just for a consultation and then he got sent back home it would be OK.

So how he would describe the state of our civilization today? He would obviously be amazed at all the advanced technology, and at the population level and degree of urbanization across the planet, which he would have thought was unachievable because of the inherent limitations of “sedentary culture.” He also, I imagine, would be surprised by the prevalence of democratic government. While he mentions the Greeks and Romans in The Muqadimmah, I don’t recall that he ever acknowledges their systems of government in ancient times. He may not have even been aware of them.

If he actually was aware of the nature of ancient Greek and Roman government, he would certainly recognize them as the antecedents of our modern democratic systems. If not, their existence would be a real eye-opener for him. Either way, I think he could still find a way to frame his understanding of our government in terms of his theory of dynastic formation. He would say something to the effect that we had invested royal authority in a representative body by means of cleverly crafted laws. Assuming he had access to all the history between his time and now, he would also note that the laws were often found faulty and had to be revised, and sometimes broke down altogether in periods of incredibly destructive warfare. He might wonder if we really knew what we were doing.

He would probably be disappointed with the relative statuses of Christianity and Islam today. In The Muqaddimah he frequently refers to the European Christians as a people, but does not have much to say about them except to acknowledge that they live up to the north of the areas he is mainly interested in, which are Spain, North Africa and the Middle East (he uses different names), that is, the Muslim world. He is writing during the Islamic Golden Age, after all. If he were here today, he would have to face the reality that European Christians have successfully spread their culture to new lands across the seas and are generally richer and more powerful than the nations of the Islamic world.

Looking at the United States today, he would probably observe a decline in religious organization, and note that religion no longer acted as a restraining influence. He would then observe that the royal authority of the representative government was also in decline, and would probably attribute that to the generational distance from the time of the global war which had established the current dynasty. He would recognize the richness and diversity of our sedentary culture as a sign of a civilization in its final disintegrative phase.

Does it even make sense to describe the government of the U.S. as a “dynasty?” Well, it might, in order to shoehorn Khaldun’s theory into the modern era. The current dynasty in the U.S. could be understood as the institutional framework that came into existence in the aftermath of World War II, when there was strong group feeling in the country, and trust in big institutions. As the generations have passed that group feeling and trust have eroded, and the royal authority of the government has eroded accordingly. The dynasty (that is, institutional framework) founded four generations ago is now disintegrating; hence the reeling sense of chaos that pervades our society.

I think that the way Khaldun would describe our state is something like what follows. The absence of religion (shared values) as a restraining influence (ordering principle) means that royal authority (rule of law) is required to establish order. For a new dynasty (institutional framework) to form, a new faction must arise which has the group feeling (solidarity, consensus) and desert attitude (courage, willingness to sacrifice) to achieve superiority and establish its royal authority (recognized right to rule). Applying this model to the ongoing partisan conflict between the red zone and blue zone factions in our society, about which I’ve blogged a great deal, it’s clear that the winner of the conflict will be whichever faction most successfully marshals these qualities of solidarity and courage. That is, whichever faction has the strongest group feeling.

Seen in this light, that each faction has a social media bubble, where a consensus on facts and values is continuously reinforced, makes perfect sense. It’s an effort to sustain group feeling during the conflict, since losing that group feeling means granting superiority to the other faction. It’s really that simple.

Which faction is currently favored in the conflict? A few years back I would have speculated that the red zone faction, rallying around former President Trump, had a stronger group feeling. They really seemed to have a greater solidarity of purpose than the blue zone faction, split between its progressives and moderates. But after the failed coup attempt in early 2021, my sense is that the strength of their faction just wasn’t quite enough to achieve superiority, and now they are on the defensive. However, I would note, as Khaldun might put it, that the red zone has been more clever at manipulating the laws of royal authority to favor their faction.

I’d like to think that Ibn Khaldun would agree with my interpretation of modern events in light of his historical model. I bet that if we did snatch him out of time to come observe our era, he wouldn’t want to go back just yet – not until he saw how events in the rest of this phase of civilization unfold.

[sbarrera]

To summarize: Khaldun relies heavily in his discourse on his concept of "group feeling," which I take to mean "social cohesion." He's speaking strictly about monarchical dynasties, as though that were the only form of government in existence. But the concepts he uses to describe a dynasty could be applied more generally to any institutional framework, and his concept of "royal authority" could be taken to mean "trust in institutions."

So by his theory, royal authority and group feeling (social cohesion and trust in institutions) are strong when a dynasty is founded, and then fade away with the passing generations. So I take it that after the founding, the dynasty is in a First Turning, and as the turnings progress, each new generation loses more of the group feeling Eventually the dynasty disintegrates and is replaced by a rival. This is a new founding event; this is what happens in the Fourth Turning. 

Again, Khaldun is talking about royal dynasties emerging out of tribal groups, but you could extend his thinking to different forms of government, for example the U.S. Constitution going through its transformations in the recent Crisis Eras.

Khaldun also states that "prestige lasts at best four generations," and details how this happens. I quoted him on generations in a different post, and will repeat the quote here.

Quote:The builder of the family's glory knows what it cost him to do the work, and he keeps the qualities that created his glory and made it last. The son who comes after him had personal contact with his father and thus learned those things from him. However, his is inferior to him in this respect, inasmuch as a person who learns things through study is inferior to a person who knows them from practical application. The third generation must be content with imitation and, in particular, with reliance upon tradition. This member is inferior to him of the second generation, inasmuch as a person who relies upon tradition is inferior to a person who exercises independent judgment.

The fourth generation, then, is inferior to the preceding ones in every respect. Its member has lost the qualities that preserved the edifice of its glory. He despises (those qualities).

The four generations can be defined as the builder, the one who has personal contact with the builder, the one who relies on tradition, and the destroyer.

In order, that would be the Hero, the Artist, the Prophet and the Nomad.

[pbrower2a]

So... the founders are nomads who take over the decrepit, depraved community in which the potential leaders wallow in "wine, women, and song", kill off such people because they are no longer needed, and establish their own dynasty. The new dynasty begins in austerity, recognizing that the "wine, women, and song" (OK, orthodox Islamic societies aren't havens for wine, but there are plenty of other distractions such as ornament, gems, fine silks, and the like. The founders find those seductive but scary, for they know why they were able to overthrow the previous kings. Their sons find them occasional diversions from the austerity that they do not fully understand, and might find them good for divide et impera. It is obviously far more difficult to plot overthrow of the dynasty if otherwise capable of doing so when one pays attention to the music coming from the oud and the lyrical poetry chanted or sung in its presence. Grandsons have largely lost their distinction from the populace, and great-grandsons who have never met the founders are fully assimilated into the ways of superficial indulgence yet gross neglect of the security of the State.

Personal austerity is one way to be above the social depravity and lassitude. Surely you have seen my thread on dictatorial leaders and suchlike (including mobsters and drug kingpins, and one pop musician. They take little time to go from the austerity that they may have known in childhood to the overweening indulgence that marks them as powerful figures. There may be ways to preserve the institution, such as deeding it to a charitable trust upon death. So it was with Carl Zeiss, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and (apparently) Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. If one is Hermann Goering, Nicolae Ceausescu, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Qaddafi, (or Carlos Lehder, John Gotti, Donald Trump, or Michael Jackson, then there might be practically no transition from being a non-entity to being a self-indulgent creep.

The United States is not and never has been a dynasty, and it has never been close. ibn-Khaldun might find a social cycle more than a leadership cycle here in the Good Old US of A, which has generally done well at mitigating tendencies toward depraved, self-indulgent leadership.

[sbarrera]

(08-25-2022, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: So... the founders are nomads who take over the decrepit, depraved community in which the potential leaders wallow in "wine, women, and song", kill off such people because they are no longer needed, and establish their own dynasty. The new dynasty begins in austerity, recognizing that the "wine, women, and song" (OK, orthodox Islamic societies aren't havens for wine, but there are plenty of other distractions such as ornament, gems, fine silks, and the like. The founders find those seductive but scary, for they know why they were able to overthrow the previous kings.  Their sons find them occasional diversions from the austerity that they do not fully understand, and might find them good for divide et impera. It is obviously far more difficult to plot overthrow of the dynasty if otherwise capable of doing so when  one  pays attention to the music coming from the oud and the lyrical poetry chanted or sung in its presence.  Grandsons have largely lost their distinction from the populace, and great-grandsons who have never met the founders are fully assimilated into the ways of superficial indulgence yet gross neglect of the security of the State.

Personal austerity is one way to be above the social depravity and lassitude. Surely you have seen my thread on dictatorial leaders and suchlike (including mobsters and drug kingpins, and one pop musician. They take little time to go from the austerity that they may have known in childhood to the overweening indulgence that marks them as powerful figures. There may be ways to preserve the institution, such as deeding it to a charitable trust upon death. So it was with Carl Zeiss, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and (apparently) Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. If one is Hermann Goering, Nicolae Ceausescu, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Qaddafi, (or Carlos Lehder, John Gotti, Donald Trump, or Michael Jackson, then there might be practically no transition from being a non-entity to being a self-indulgent creep.

The United States is not and never has been a dynasty, and it has never been close. ibn-Khaldun  might find a social cycle more than a leadership cycle here in the Good Old US of A, which has generally done well at mitigating tendencies toward depraved, self-indulgent leadership.

It's a stretch, I know, to apply Khaldun's ideas to a modern society with its democratic forms of government and complex industrial capitalist economy. But it's hard (for me) to resist given that he speaks of a progression of four generations, and describes a process by which "royal authority," which I equated with institutional authority, is established and subsequently decays. This is obviously similar to S&H theory.

Certainly there's a great hope that by its nature a Constitutional Republic is protected from the effect of the "leadership cycle," where a leader's inheritors end up with lesser qualities than their forefathers. Wasn't that part of the intent of the founders of the United States? To avoid this flaw in monarchical government? But still Khaldun's idea of "group feeling" being a prerequisite for government of any form to have authority seem to apply even to the Good Old US of A.

[Eric the Green]

(08-26-2022, 10:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote: It's a stretch, I know, to apply Khaldun's ideas to a modern society with its democratic forms of government and complex industrial capitalist economy. But it's hard (for me) to resist given that he speaks of a progression of four generations, and describes a process by which "royal authority," which I equated with institutional authority, is established and subsequently decays. This is obviously similar to S&H theory.

Certainly there's a great hope that by its nature a Constitutional Republic is protected from the effect of the "leadership cycle," where a leader's inheritors end up with lesser qualities than their forefathers. Wasn't that part of the intent of the founders of the United States? To avoid this flaw in monarchical government? But still Khaldun's idea of "group feeling" being a prerequisite for government of any form to have authority seem to apply even to the Good Old US of A.

I'm not sure what to think about this. Cycles run in various ways. 

The USA is not a dynasty, but it does have an elected king, and a virtual aristocracy that has been allowed to grow for 40 years of neoliberalism. Although in the Keynesian era it was a much-more equal society, so decisions by the voters rather than inherited power was a factor at times.

I think S&H, especially Strauss, seemed to think the 4 archetypes followed in a sequence of declining competence in the generation coming of age, from the civic heroes down to the nomads. It is plausible, especially in terms of institutional health, national competence and such. But if culture and awakenings are given equal weight as social moments, which they didn't usually do, then from that point of view the cycle starts with prophets and declines to the artists. 

Although the Awakening can also be attributed in part to artists as well as prophets, and the Crisis in part to nomads as well as civics. So it may be more complicated than the comparison with dynasties suggests, and the generations at any time they saw as three of them in a particular line-up.

And I don't think dynasties have a history of continual decline, fall, and a new dynasty either. It's more complicated than that too. It held true with Persia, but after all Persia is not a very competent society to begin with. Look what they've got now! In the UK and European dynasties, good and bad rulers came along rather unexpectedly, I think.

[pbrower2a]

(08-26-2022, 10:19 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-25-2022, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: So... the founders are nomads who take over the decrepit, depraved community in which the potential leaders wallow in "wine, women, and song", kill off such people because they are no longer needed, and establish their own dynasty. The new dynasty begins in austerity, recognizing that the "wine, women, and song" (OK, orthodox Islamic societies aren't havens for wine, but there are plenty of other distractions such as ornament, gems, fine silks, and the like. The founders find those seductive but scary, for they know why they were able to overthrow the previous kings.  Their sons find them occasional diversions from the austerity that they do not fully understand, and might find them good for divide et impera. It is obviously far more difficult to plot overthrow of the dynasty if otherwise capable of doing so when  one  pays attention to the music coming from the oud and the lyrical poetry chanted or sung in its presence.  Grandsons have largely lost their distinction from the populace, and great-grandsons who have never met the founders are fully assimilated into the ways of superficial indulgence yet gross neglect of the security of the State.

Personal austerity is one way to be above the social depravity and lassitude. Surely you have seen my thread on dictatorial leaders and suchlike (including mobsters and drug kingpins, and one pop musician). They take little time to go from the austerity that they may have known in childhood to the overweening indulgence that marks them as powerful figures. There may be ways to preserve the institution, such as deeding it to a charitable trust upon death. So it was with Carl Zeiss, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and (apparently) Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. If one is Hermann Goering, Nicolae Ceausescu, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Qaddafi, (or Carlos Lehder, John Gotti, Donald Trump, or Michael Jackson, then there might be practically no transition from being a non-entity to being a self-indulgent creep.

The United States is not and never has been a dynasty, and it has never been close. ibn-Khaldun  might find a social cycle more than a leadership cycle here in the Good Old US of A, which has generally done well at mitigating tendencies toward depraved, self-indulgent leadership.

It's a stretch, I know, to apply Khaldun's ideas to a modern society with its democratic forms of government and complex industrial capitalist economy. But it's hard (for me) to resist given that he speaks of a progression of four generations, and describes a process by which "royal authority," which I equated with institutional authority, is established and subsequently decays. This is obviously similar to S&H theory.

I have seen it applied to business entities in which the founding owners can get away with all sorts of stuff so long as they turn a profit for shareholders. The founders make great sacrifices to establish a firm and often are never rich enough to indulge themselves like sultans until they are too old for wine, women, and song... or sports cars. Their kids find themselves putting in work to make the business succeed, and are middle aged before they can live like sultans. They are able to get the Maserati at age 45. The grandkids are sent off to college to study business administration because at age 18 to age 25 they would be bulls in a china shop. Hope that they outgrow a lust for vehicular speed before they are able to drive. Great-grandchildren get to know the founders when the founders are very old, if at all. Because they never know any hardships in life they are unable to restrain themselves economically. Those are often the ones around when the company goes bankrupt while they simply 'play office'. Business ownership is often dynastic.     

Quote:Certainly there's a great hope that by its nature a Constitutional Republic is protected from the effect of the "leadership cycle," where a leader's inheritors end up with lesser qualities than their forefathers. Wasn't that part of the intent of the founders of the United States? To avoid this flaw in monarchical government? But still Khaldun's idea of "group feeling" being a prerequisite for government of any form to have authority seem to apply even to the Good Old US of A.

We do not have dynasties for the Presidency. The Presidency was an altogether new institution in history, and the closest analogies are the elected "kings" of ancient Judaea and Israel and doges of some Italian city states. We do not have Presidencies for Life. I have no idea whether FDR would have run for a fifth term of office had he lived to 1948. 

It is questionable whether the constitutional monarchs have more than ceremonial power. Should Queen Elizabeth II leave any memoirs we might have a great trove of history. 

...the Founding Fathers were thinking of their own time and not deep into the future. They might be surprised to find that the United States of America is now one of the oldest existing political systems on Earth. Until 1975 the oldest had been the Empire of Ethiopia (about 700 years ending in 1975). Next was the Hanoverian dynasty in the UK. Fourth and fifth are the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Helvetic Republic in some order. They would be surprised to find that their project is about as durable as the Qing Dynasty of their time already, and that the United States will have the duration of the Romanov dynasty in 2088 (should the USA last that long, and it would be unwise to bet against the USA); some people reading this might be around then. Durability was not an objective, but the USA has it. 

At the time of the founding of the United States, the Capetian monarchy in France, the Holy Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice were very old, yet all would be gone in 30 years. Ottoman Empire? The arguable successor of the Byzantine Empire (through absorption) would be gone in less than 150 years.

Creating a good system that promotes competence at the top is one way to get staying power. Dreadful as Donald Trump was, he may soon lose all relevance in American politics, with putative successors being rejecte4d almost automatically by (one hopes!) a wiser electorate than existed in 2016.   

Our technologies from the telephone to the automobile to electric power and lighting to the Internet -- have all had consequences, not all of them good. I see the telephone as the perfect tool of the rude person. The mobility that the automobile gives us makes us much less community-oriented than we used to be, especially when we have excellent roads for going to retailers, entertainments, and celebrations outside of our communities. We pay less attention to the Little League and Pop Warner games of our neighbors' sons and more to the often-bloated personalities of professional sports. Electric lighting gives us the ability to stay awake into ungodly hours and (until COVID-19 broke that) 24-7 commerce. The glories and deficiencies of the Internet are obvious to us all.

We adapt here in America. Maybe a few tweaks to our educational system will make improvement of the youth more impo9rtant than preparing someone for a low-paying, dead-end job. Maybe we will expand the length of formal education so that most people will know howe to get the most out of life -- including the technologies.

[pbrower2a]

Obviously a democracy succeeds to the extent that people vote for the best even if those Best are unlike themselves in education, vocational achievements, and (ideally) a stronger moral compass. There are far more shoplifters than there are attorneys, but as a general rule the attorneys are typically the strongest leaders in a democratic society. After a few decades we typically find some patterns , like recognizing that those who either have long careers in elective office (like Joe Biden) or appear as shining stars quickly without problems (like Barack Obama) are usually the best choices. I pick Obama and Biden for examples of this because they are so extreme as types. Business success means little in doing the public business.

Democratic politicians succeed with persuasion and not command. Our system is so designed that our President has few powers with which to command much; the President must persuade. Businesses, whether a mom-and-pop diner or General Motors, are empires. The chief operating officer has a clear line of command, and anyone who fails at his job or gets in the way will be fired. The President cannot fire a Senator or a federal judge, or tamper in state or local politics. Government employees have civil-service rules that ideally separate them from responsibility for electoral results.

The struggle to the Presidency is a competitive contest more subtle than a succession of jousts. It is usually more effective.