In 1527, a group of peasants in ostensibly Christian Sweden brought to their king’s attention a critical grievance. Gustavus Wasa’s subjects held him responsible for the well-being of the realm. As a king, Gustavus’s subjects believed that it fell to him to secure the safety and well-being of his realm. It was his job to protect the rights of his subjects, to dispense justice, and, if the good farmers of Dalarna had their way about it, the weather itself. King Gustavus, the sources tell us, did not appreciate being held responsible for what was really the province of the almighty. Even King Canute, after all, could not command the oceans.
Today we consider ourselves fortunate to live no longer in the thrall of such vain superstitions. As initiates in the Mysteries of Science, we look to our temporal rulers to deal with things they are more competent to handle, like the job market, our own personal happiness, unrest in the cities, peace in the Middle East, and global climate change. The year 2008, which saw the victory of Barack Obama in an electoral victory of legendary proportions, marks one of the true watersheds in human history. This was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
But thus always has it been. As much as we might want to distinguish ourselves from those who came before, we cannot seem to shake free from a concept of politics that at certain fundamental levels remains religious and magical. Even if the old Mandate of Heaven appears silly to us, distinguishing it from how moderns themselves approach public life proves unsettling in its difficulty. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; the same holds true for nearly anything else too complicated to explain. We know that The Economy and The Government and The Market exist, but we do not really know how they work, being as they are mysterious forces beyond mortal comprehension.
If the complex is also the magical, then those responsible for the complex are our magicians. If elections are referenda on the worthiness of the person or party in power, it is because we task them with the unpleasant labor of mediating between us and what seems uncontrollable. We have a vague sense that our leaders are responsible for economic prosperity, but scarcely anybody can explain how. All most people need to know, in my experience, is who was in charge when the economy did well, and who ran the joint when it went into the toilet. Never mind the sheer complexity of the forces at work in such things. What we want to know is who was in charge, and to whom we ought to assign credit or blame.
The actions of elected leaders, or course, do play in important role in what happens in the world: actions do have consequences. But the arcana of these affairs remain elusive to most. The point is not that the world is too complicated for human action to affect it, it is that no honest person can honestly say they know how this relationship works. Good enough for us remains the knowledge that somebody was responsible. We do not know how this works, but find assurance in knowing that somebody else knows. If one sect of priest-magicians cannot provide a good job market, we throw them out and bring in a new sect.
Less separates our politics from those of the ancient city-states than we might think. The separation of the supernatural from the secular is a modern innovation, and our forebears sensed a strong connection between the actions of their rulers and the happiness of the gods. The Romans retained the office of rex sacrorum responsible for seeing to the kingly sacrifices even after the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the charge leveled against Socrates was not “free thinking” per se, but undermining the credibility of the civic cults. It was less the monotheism of Christians that bothered pagan authorities and more their refusal to participate in the cults of their cities. In a world in which people thought that the misdeeds of rulers would anger the gods, public policy takes on a different importance. If the rains dired up, the harvest failed, and your armies vanquished, it meant that kings and priests had failed in their callings.
And this appears to mirror in certain respects the ways in which we approach these problems today. Nobody understands how the president can influence the unemployment rate, but if he can and fails to do so, we want to know why. If he cannot follow through, it must be because he did not try hard enough – see the famous Green Lantern theory of the presidency – or because the heavens have found him unworthy. This came strongly to the fore when President Trump withdrew American consent to the Paris Climate Accord. The agreement itself had no practical effect, but to judge from the reaction, you would think that the Roman Senate had decided to go to war without properly considering the auspices of the sacred chickens. The press chastised him not for a policy decision, for nobody had really made any decision, but for refusing to sacrifice to the appropriate cults.
If we cannot reliably find the motivations for why voters and political actors behave the way they do, it is because we look in the wrong places. Voters are not utilitarian automatons, and they actually do not worry excessively about policy prescriptions. At bottom, what we want are leaders who can protect us from the complex and the unknown. We want a pre-modern priest-king who can please the gods and provide a bountiful harvest. We have tricked ourselves into thinking that we want a hyper-qualified professional, when what our hearts really want is a shaman to appease the deities. For only then can we provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless, and only then will the rise of the oceans begin to slow and our planet begin to heal.