Fluir nº1 - Renascimentos - 2018
Figure 6 - Lodovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice. Portrait by6 -
Bernardino Castelli (Museo Correr - Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12041366)
conceivable that globalization, European unification
and the modern economy have rendered the old nation-
states less necessary, except to their leaders.
As illustrated by the selection process for the Doge in
the above table, the Venetians went to extraordinary
lengths to prevent government capture by families and
the other special interests of their age. Their success,
the alternative experience of their European peers and
the challenges of modern politics all strongly suggest
they may have been on to something. Classical Athens,
that rare completed experiment in democracy,
succumbed to factions with famously unfortunate
results. No system can fully eliminate corruption but
modern Western democracies sometimes appear to
have been refined for maximal corruption and conflicts
of interest.
The Venetian mandatory requirement for a personal
face-to-face participation in government activities is an
intriguing approach to reduce alienation from the
political process. It could potentially provide ordinary
citizens an opportunity to actively prevent corruption
rather than unwittingly abetting it by voting for
established parties once every four years. Because it is
mandatory there is a small price in individual freedom
but such an engagement could be a vital tool in a world
where many people have too much spare time or are
deprived of the socialization provided by work.
Any modern implementation of the principles of the
Venetian Republic would be very different from the
mechanics of the original. For example, to give an
entire population a reasonable probability of
meaningful political participation there would have to
be many more committees. But modern governments
are also far more complex, having taken on board
health, education, transport etc. Most such committees
would be local or regional but the resulting
decentralization could diffuse separatism and promote
ownership. Modern IT and communications could
facilitate many of the processes – thought face to face
activities in small groups should be retained.
The End
In 1797 Napoleon gave Venice the option to avoid
destruction and a bloody death by committing suicide.
The Great Council, or the half of its members that had
not fled, met for the last time and approved the sensible
option by 512 to 20 votes (5 abstentions). A few tears
were shed in that room for the end of a singular
thirteen-hundred-year enterprise.
Venice has attracted almost every European romantic
genius, artist or thinker from the eighteenth century
onwards. All wrote their thoughts. Venice's political
system initially got mixed reviews. French philosophers,
relying on histories of poor scholarship, described it as
a sinister aristocratic dictatorship. But these
philosophers were advocating radically new
scientifically-based republics; they would have been less
than human if they had dwelt on the achievements of a
republic that had been in existence since the end of the
Roman Empire. Recent historians, using the vast
documentary evidence available in a bureaucratic state
that was never sacked or destroyed by natural disaster,
have been much more impressed, notably S. Finer's
scholarly The History of Government from the Earliest
Times.
The Venetian Republic was infinitely more than its
political system but everything else was enabled by it.
No one disputes the merit of Venice's art and
architecture. The time has come to explore one final
legacy; its revolutionary political system.
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