The purpose of this short essay is to discuss the nature of power and its centralization within an individual ruler or a collective ruling body. In particular, I would like to clear up some misconceptions regarding "absolute power," especially with regards to centralized bureaucratic states (both historical and modern). I believe that much of popular media paints a very misleading picture of these regimes, giving impressions of "absolute control" which in fact never existed (nor could ever exist). I will first lay out the underlying theory behind my views, and then apply the theory to the specific case of North Korea, which is perhaps the most infamous of modern "absolutist" regimes.
I. General Thoughts on Political Centralization and its Inherent Limitations
In the political context, the term “centralization” refers to the amassing of power within a single entity. Following Max Weber, I define “power” (macht) as the ability to enforce one’s own will in the face of resistance, such that an all-powerful (omnipotent) being would be able to carry out any action that he pleases in accordance with his own will, while a totally powerless being would be totally dependent on the mercy of other, more powerful beings. Centralization is a dichotomous process; every act of increasing the power concentrated within a single entity, whether that entity be a collective body (such as the ancient Indian gana-sanghas, the Roman Senate, or the English Parliament) or a single individual (such as an Indian maharaja, a Roman dictator, or an English monarch), necessarily means that certain other entities have less power for themselves. We can understand this better by considering all human societies as existing somewhere on a spectrum between total decentralization and total centralization. On one end of the spectrum, a totally decentralized society would be one where there is absolutely no concentration of power. This hypothetical society must necessarily have a perfectly equal distribution of power, such that every individual has no more or less power than anyone else, and this society can thus be labelled as a perfect anarchy. On the other end of the spectrum, a totally centralized society would be one where there is a complete concentration of power in the hands of a single person, such that one individual possesses maximum freedom to do as he wills, while all other persons are totally subject to the will of that one individual. Such a society can be labelled as a perfect autocracy.
I hold that neither perfect anarchies nor perfect autocracies are possible in practice, and that neither have ever existed (nor could exist) in human history. Even in the most primitive tribal societies, where there is no concept of “state” and no concept of private property, there still exist differentials of power. These power differences may take many forms, and are often rooted in seniority and/or familial ties; a youngster may be subject to the authority of clan elders, for instance, or a newly-wed wife may be subject to the authority of her overbearing mother-in-law. The reality of such power differences antedate even the evolution of modern human beings, for even our closest evolutionary cousins – the chimpanzees – demonstrate dominance hierarchies within their own primitive, pre-state societies.
However, if the concept of a “perfect anarchy” where every single individual possesses exactly equal power is a ridiculous fantasy, the idea of a “perfect autocracy” where a single individual holds a monopoly on power is just as ludicrous. It is physically impossible for any one individual to completely dominate a large state with a population numbering in the millions, for reasons that should be obvious. Due to various limitations, including limited time, limited skills, limited ability and capacity for work, the limited ability of the human brain to store and process information, and the limited capacity of human interpersonal relationships (the typical human is only capable of maintaining complex relationships with about 150 individuals at any given time), every autocrat has no choice but to rely on a bureaucratic apparatus to carry out the majority of administrative tasks associated with day-to-day governing. This bureaucracy must necessarily possess, as a whole, far more power than the autocrat himself. In such a system, the autocrat can maintain his position of supremacy only to the extent that he can prevent the bureaucracy (and other crucial institutions, notably the military) from forming a coalition against him. However, even an autocrat who enjoys a relatively loyal bureaucracy and army is not “all-powerful”, for the autocrat is constantly dependent on the latter to actually execute his will. The recent events in Zimbabwe (in November 2017) demonstrate how even a “well-established” autocrat like Robert Mugabe, who had ruled his country for many decades, can be overthrown in an instant when prominent factions conspire against the ruler.
II. The Case of North Korea: The Nature of Power in Centralized Bureaucratic Autocracies
Kim Jong-un, the so-called “Supreme Leader” of North Korea, is generally perceived in one of two ways by mainstream media and by the masses at large:
1. The first view, and the more common of the two, is that Kim Jong-un is a deranged despot who wields absolute authority over North Korea without any real checks on his power, thus putting North Korea’s neighbors at the mercy of his whims. This view is epitomized by Trump calling Kim Jong-un names like “madman” and “rocketman,” with the implication that Kim Jong-un’s personal attributes are the root cause of international tensions involving North Korea (which is itself based on the assumption that Kim Jong-un actually wields absolute power within North Korea).
2. The second view, which is less common, is that Kim Jong-un is not a “madman” but actually a “calculating genius,” and that his actions represent an effective survival strategy for the North Korean state. This view has appeared in several Western media sources, including the Chicago Tribune, The Hill, and Foreign Policy, as well as in this YouTube video.
What both of the above views have in common is that they both assume that Kim Jong-un is an all-powerful “absolutist” ruler, and that North Korea’s domestic and foreign policy is a simple function of whatever Kim personally decides. However, such an assumption betrays a ridiculously naïve, cartoonish understanding of the North Korean regime, and is borne out of the astonishing ignorance of history and political sociology by both liberals and conservatives. Because the liberal/conservative media loves the image of a “big, bad, evil dictator” that it can use to sell simplistic narratives to its semi-sentient viewership, the idea that Kim Jong-un possesses “absolute authority” and is the ultimate cause of North Korea’s actions inside and outside its borders (regardless if these actions are borne out of “madness” or “brilliance”) seems to be almost taken for granted.
In contrast to the two views presented above, I am very skeptical of the claim that Kim Jong-un is an all-powerful ruler whose personal intentions and desires direct North Korean policies. I instead propose that North Korea should be understood as a *bureaucratic enterprise* where administrative officials formulate and execute policies “behind the curtain” of the formal state, which is represented by Kim Jong-un and his dynasty. In my view, Kim Jong-un does not serve primarily as the head of the North Korean administration, but rather as a “front man” through which the bureaucratic apparatus can legitimize its control over state affairs.
We can better conceptualize the position of the bureaucracy in modern dictatorships like North Korea by turning to Max Weber, who wrote at length on the phenomenon of bureaucratization and limitations of an autocratic ruler’s power with regards to his own administrative staff. One of the great tropes of Western political history is that the period between the 16th and 18th centuries saw the emergence of strong “absolutist” states in many countries of Europe, including France, Austria, Denmark, Prussia, and others. It is certainly true that this period saw central governments expand their powers vis-à-vis local power structures, but the growth in power of the central government should not be simply equated with the growth in power of an autocratic monarch. On the contrary, as Weber astutely observes, it was precisely in the centralized “absolute” monarchies where the monarch was most dependent on the bureaucratic apparatus, and therefore, the relative power position of the bureaucracy in absolutist regimes was stronger than in non-absolutist regimes. To quote Weber directly from Economy and Society, Chapter XI, pp.993-94 (all emphasis is mine):
The apparent contradiction described in the above excerpt – how a constitutional ruler with more formally “limited” authority could exercise greater influence over an administration than an absolutist ruler with formally unlimited power – may require some additional commentary and explication. On the one hand, many rulers throughout history aspired to concentrate as much power as possible into their own hands, which necessitated eliminating, emasculating, or controlling competing elite groups; some examples of this phenomenon include Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s use of the oprichniki to subjugate the Russian boyars and confiscate their property, or Frederick William’s kidnapping and impressment of the children of Prussian nobility. On the other hand, such a weakening of competing elite groups necessarily means that the bureaucracy (by which we mean the non-elected officials who are employees of the state and who are dependent on the latter for their livelihoods) would monopolize access to the ruler and leave him with no choice but to rely on their superior expert knowledge for the formulation and execution of policy. The ruler must rely on his bureaucracy both for the information needed to make a sensible decision, and for the actual execution of that decision. The lack of important social actors outside of the bureaucracy in an absolutist system means a lack of checks and balances on the bureaucratic apparatus, which means that the bureaucracy largely has a free reign within the state (provided that they do not disturb the prevailing regime, which they have no incentive to do because they themselves are the prime beneficiaries of it). While Louis XIV may have claimed l'état est moi, for various highly centralized “absolutist” states it would perhaps be more accurate to say l'état est le bureau.
Likewise in North Korea, it stretches credulity to believe that Kim Jong-un can simply formulate whatever policy he pleases and execute whatever action he pleases, as if he were playing some video game and all North Korean elites were simply mindless robots with no political interests, acumen, or will of their own. While information regarding the inner workings of the North Korean government is quite scarce, there have been some revelations by regime insiders which point to a reality very different from the cartoonish depiction seen on mainstream media. For example, a former North Korean government official named Jang Jin-Sung has explicitly stated that "Kim Jong-un has very little power" and that he is largely a symbolic puppet or figurehead. The most powerful entity in North Korea is perhaps the so-called Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), consisting of North Korea's elite bureaucrats. According to Hwang Jang-yop, the most high-ranking North Korean official to ever defect, the most influential figures of the North Korean bureaucracy all belong to the OGD; the organization has been described as "the only entity that actually matters when it comes to decision-making or policy-making". Of course, the official ideology of the North Korean state elevates the Kim family to a virtually divine status, but this certainly does not mean that the Kim family rules North Korea as all-powerful demigods. On the contrary, it is in the interests of the entrenched bureaucratic elites to use the public figure of Kim Jong-un for the purpose of legitimacy, while exercising power behind the scenes (where they also remain beyond reproach). We can draw parallels with many other cases throughout history where certain influential actors or organizations constituted the "real power beyond the throne" but never actually took action against the official ruler, since it was in the interests of those actors or organizations to retain a weak, puppet ruler on the throne.
I. General Thoughts on Political Centralization and its Inherent Limitations
In the political context, the term “centralization” refers to the amassing of power within a single entity. Following Max Weber, I define “power” (macht) as the ability to enforce one’s own will in the face of resistance, such that an all-powerful (omnipotent) being would be able to carry out any action that he pleases in accordance with his own will, while a totally powerless being would be totally dependent on the mercy of other, more powerful beings. Centralization is a dichotomous process; every act of increasing the power concentrated within a single entity, whether that entity be a collective body (such as the ancient Indian gana-sanghas, the Roman Senate, or the English Parliament) or a single individual (such as an Indian maharaja, a Roman dictator, or an English monarch), necessarily means that certain other entities have less power for themselves. We can understand this better by considering all human societies as existing somewhere on a spectrum between total decentralization and total centralization. On one end of the spectrum, a totally decentralized society would be one where there is absolutely no concentration of power. This hypothetical society must necessarily have a perfectly equal distribution of power, such that every individual has no more or less power than anyone else, and this society can thus be labelled as a perfect anarchy. On the other end of the spectrum, a totally centralized society would be one where there is a complete concentration of power in the hands of a single person, such that one individual possesses maximum freedom to do as he wills, while all other persons are totally subject to the will of that one individual. Such a society can be labelled as a perfect autocracy.
I hold that neither perfect anarchies nor perfect autocracies are possible in practice, and that neither have ever existed (nor could exist) in human history. Even in the most primitive tribal societies, where there is no concept of “state” and no concept of private property, there still exist differentials of power. These power differences may take many forms, and are often rooted in seniority and/or familial ties; a youngster may be subject to the authority of clan elders, for instance, or a newly-wed wife may be subject to the authority of her overbearing mother-in-law. The reality of such power differences antedate even the evolution of modern human beings, for even our closest evolutionary cousins – the chimpanzees – demonstrate dominance hierarchies within their own primitive, pre-state societies.
However, if the concept of a “perfect anarchy” where every single individual possesses exactly equal power is a ridiculous fantasy, the idea of a “perfect autocracy” where a single individual holds a monopoly on power is just as ludicrous. It is physically impossible for any one individual to completely dominate a large state with a population numbering in the millions, for reasons that should be obvious. Due to various limitations, including limited time, limited skills, limited ability and capacity for work, the limited ability of the human brain to store and process information, and the limited capacity of human interpersonal relationships (the typical human is only capable of maintaining complex relationships with about 150 individuals at any given time), every autocrat has no choice but to rely on a bureaucratic apparatus to carry out the majority of administrative tasks associated with day-to-day governing. This bureaucracy must necessarily possess, as a whole, far more power than the autocrat himself. In such a system, the autocrat can maintain his position of supremacy only to the extent that he can prevent the bureaucracy (and other crucial institutions, notably the military) from forming a coalition against him. However, even an autocrat who enjoys a relatively loyal bureaucracy and army is not “all-powerful”, for the autocrat is constantly dependent on the latter to actually execute his will. The recent events in Zimbabwe (in November 2017) demonstrate how even a “well-established” autocrat like Robert Mugabe, who had ruled his country for many decades, can be overthrown in an instant when prominent factions conspire against the ruler.
II. The Case of North Korea: The Nature of Power in Centralized Bureaucratic Autocracies
Kim Jong-un, the so-called “Supreme Leader” of North Korea, is generally perceived in one of two ways by mainstream media and by the masses at large:
1. The first view, and the more common of the two, is that Kim Jong-un is a deranged despot who wields absolute authority over North Korea without any real checks on his power, thus putting North Korea’s neighbors at the mercy of his whims. This view is epitomized by Trump calling Kim Jong-un names like “madman” and “rocketman,” with the implication that Kim Jong-un’s personal attributes are the root cause of international tensions involving North Korea (which is itself based on the assumption that Kim Jong-un actually wields absolute power within North Korea).
2. The second view, which is less common, is that Kim Jong-un is not a “madman” but actually a “calculating genius,” and that his actions represent an effective survival strategy for the North Korean state. This view has appeared in several Western media sources, including the Chicago Tribune, The Hill, and Foreign Policy, as well as in this YouTube video.
What both of the above views have in common is that they both assume that Kim Jong-un is an all-powerful “absolutist” ruler, and that North Korea’s domestic and foreign policy is a simple function of whatever Kim personally decides. However, such an assumption betrays a ridiculously naïve, cartoonish understanding of the North Korean regime, and is borne out of the astonishing ignorance of history and political sociology by both liberals and conservatives. Because the liberal/conservative media loves the image of a “big, bad, evil dictator” that it can use to sell simplistic narratives to its semi-sentient viewership, the idea that Kim Jong-un possesses “absolute authority” and is the ultimate cause of North Korea’s actions inside and outside its borders (regardless if these actions are borne out of “madness” or “brilliance”) seems to be almost taken for granted.
In contrast to the two views presented above, I am very skeptical of the claim that Kim Jong-un is an all-powerful ruler whose personal intentions and desires direct North Korean policies. I instead propose that North Korea should be understood as a *bureaucratic enterprise* where administrative officials formulate and execute policies “behind the curtain” of the formal state, which is represented by Kim Jong-un and his dynasty. In my view, Kim Jong-un does not serve primarily as the head of the North Korean administration, but rather as a “front man” through which the bureaucratic apparatus can legitimize its control over state affairs.
We can better conceptualize the position of the bureaucracy in modern dictatorships like North Korea by turning to Max Weber, who wrote at length on the phenomenon of bureaucratization and limitations of an autocratic ruler’s power with regards to his own administrative staff. One of the great tropes of Western political history is that the period between the 16th and 18th centuries saw the emergence of strong “absolutist” states in many countries of Europe, including France, Austria, Denmark, Prussia, and others. It is certainly true that this period saw central governments expand their powers vis-à-vis local power structures, but the growth in power of the central government should not be simply equated with the growth in power of an autocratic monarch. On the contrary, as Weber astutely observes, it was precisely in the centralized “absolute” monarchies where the monarch was most dependent on the bureaucratic apparatus, and therefore, the relative power position of the bureaucracy in absolutist regimes was stronger than in non-absolutist regimes. To quote Weber directly from Economy and Society, Chapter XI, pp.993-94 (all emphasis is mine):
The apparent contradiction described in the above excerpt – how a constitutional ruler with more formally “limited” authority could exercise greater influence over an administration than an absolutist ruler with formally unlimited power – may require some additional commentary and explication. On the one hand, many rulers throughout history aspired to concentrate as much power as possible into their own hands, which necessitated eliminating, emasculating, or controlling competing elite groups; some examples of this phenomenon include Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s use of the oprichniki to subjugate the Russian boyars and confiscate their property, or Frederick William’s kidnapping and impressment of the children of Prussian nobility. On the other hand, such a weakening of competing elite groups necessarily means that the bureaucracy (by which we mean the non-elected officials who are employees of the state and who are dependent on the latter for their livelihoods) would monopolize access to the ruler and leave him with no choice but to rely on their superior expert knowledge for the formulation and execution of policy. The ruler must rely on his bureaucracy both for the information needed to make a sensible decision, and for the actual execution of that decision. The lack of important social actors outside of the bureaucracy in an absolutist system means a lack of checks and balances on the bureaucratic apparatus, which means that the bureaucracy largely has a free reign within the state (provided that they do not disturb the prevailing regime, which they have no incentive to do because they themselves are the prime beneficiaries of it). While Louis XIV may have claimed l'état est moi, for various highly centralized “absolutist” states it would perhaps be more accurate to say l'état est le bureau.
Likewise in North Korea, it stretches credulity to believe that Kim Jong-un can simply formulate whatever policy he pleases and execute whatever action he pleases, as if he were playing some video game and all North Korean elites were simply mindless robots with no political interests, acumen, or will of their own. While information regarding the inner workings of the North Korean government is quite scarce, there have been some revelations by regime insiders which point to a reality very different from the cartoonish depiction seen on mainstream media. For example, a former North Korean government official named Jang Jin-Sung has explicitly stated that "Kim Jong-un has very little power" and that he is largely a symbolic puppet or figurehead. The most powerful entity in North Korea is perhaps the so-called Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), consisting of North Korea's elite bureaucrats. According to Hwang Jang-yop, the most high-ranking North Korean official to ever defect, the most influential figures of the North Korean bureaucracy all belong to the OGD; the organization has been described as "the only entity that actually matters when it comes to decision-making or policy-making". Of course, the official ideology of the North Korean state elevates the Kim family to a virtually divine status, but this certainly does not mean that the Kim family rules North Korea as all-powerful demigods. On the contrary, it is in the interests of the entrenched bureaucratic elites to use the public figure of Kim Jong-un for the purpose of legitimacy, while exercising power behind the scenes (where they also remain beyond reproach). We can draw parallels with many other cases throughout history where certain influential actors or organizations constituted the "real power beyond the throne" but never actually took action against the official ruler, since it was in the interests of those actors or organizations to retain a weak, puppet ruler on the throne.
