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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FUNERARY PRACTICES AND POLITICAL SUCCESSION: THREE REGIME TYPES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE BY JOSEPH A. FORD CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2016 Copyright © Joseph A.Ford 2016 All Rights Reserved Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: Theory of the Politicization of Death Practices .......................................................... 10 Chapter II: Monarchical Britain 1307-1837 ................................................................................ 28 Chapter III: The Soviet Union ...................................................................................................... 67 Chapter IV: The United States of America ................................................................................... 95 Chapter V: Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 151 Appendix: List of Obsequies ...................................................................................................... 161 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 170 iii List of Tables TABLE I……OBSEQUIES OF ENGLISH AND BRITISH MONARCHS 1307-1837...161 TABLE II…..OBSEQUIES OF THE LEADERS OF THE SOVIET UNION ………......164 TABLE III….OBSEQUIES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES ……..165 iv List of Figures FIGURE I. MODEL OF LEGITIMATION OF SUCCESSION THROUGH DEATH PRACTICES………………………………………….26 v Acknowledgments Thanks to my advisor, John Mearsheimer, for unfailing encouragement and good counsel throughout my time at University of Chicago. Nathan Tarcov’s detailed critiques, his insights into Machiavelli, and his decades of friendship have kept me on track and inspired. The empathetic nature of Charles Lipson, along with his good humor and sound advice, has been invaluable to me. I am enormously grateful to Jorge Dominguez for his confidence in me. John Thomas III, John Stevenson, Morgan Kaplan, and all the participants in the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security and the Program on International Security Policy gave me guidance and support when I needed it. Thanks to Kinga Kosmala, Katherine Hill Reischl, Steven Clancy, Eric Houle, Valentina Pichugin, and Maria Yakugovich for teaching me the Russian language. I benefitted greatly from the help of the instructors at Samara State University and the London School of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where I loved what I learned. I am deeply indebted to Kathy Anderson and Brett Baker for their generous help. vi Introduction This dissertation asks why in some countries death practices of rulers are politicized whereas in other countries this occurs with much less frequency. I answer this question in regard to three important types of political regimes, non-elective monarchical systems (the most common form of monarchy), Communist systems, and the modern representative democracy referred to henceforth simply as “democracy.” I use “politicization” to refer to techniques aimed at obtaining, securing or increasing support among the population or segments of the population for rulers or rivals for authority. I argue that the answer to my question lies in the system of succession employed in these regimes. Specifically, I claim that when succession occurs immediately upon the death of a ruler that ruler’s death practices will be highly politicized. This occurs as a mechanism to ensure the legitimacy of the deceased ruler’s successor. When, however, rotation in office occurs due to elections I follow the established literature in arguing that popular selection rather than death practices confer legitimacy. Of course in democracies succession sometimes also occurs upon death rather than via elections. In this case I argue that the mechanism of the theory applies just as much as it would in a monarchy or Communist country. In other words, the issue is not the process of succession most widely practiced in different regimes, but the process practiced in the case of any given transfer of power. Therefore, the independent variable of this study is the process by which succession occurs in any given transfer of power. Although I have divided this study by regime type, regime type is not an independent variable in this study, but merely a set of conditions that tend to lead to a particular process of succession. 1 This study employs three variables in a way that goes against the manner in which each variable has been treated in the existing literature. Although political succession is often the subject of political science research, here I employ the process of political succession as the independent variable. Likewise, while there is a great literature on political legitimacy, here I employ political legitimacy merely as an intervening variable; in other words, I claim that different processes of political succession must be legitimized in different ways. This in turn answers the question of this dissertation, “Why are death practices sometimes politicized and sometimes not?” Although death practices, especially European practices, have been the subject of extensive social and cultural history, the question of why and under what circumstances they are politicized has yet to be clearly addressed in a comparative form. The use of death practices to legitimize succession arises out of the lack of a clear mechanism connecting the accession of new rulers who are not popularly elected to the will of the people. It is not enough merely to declare a blood line or the decision of the Party as decisive proof of the legitimacy of a new ruler. Even loyal citizens will expect some assurance of continuity and competence. In monarchical and Communist regimes this is demonstrated in large part through death practices. This same logic applies when a democratic ruler dies in office, but, of course, this occurs much less frequently. This may seem strange or mystical, but this is true only from the point of view of the overly strict definitions of rationality that dominate Western political science.1 1 For example, see Robert O Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 379- 414; James D Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review 90, no.4 (December 1996): 715-735; Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, "The Rational Design of International Institutions," International Organization 55, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 761-799. 2 This leads to the question of how death practices are used to convey a political message. I argue that the first element of this political message is the amount of lavishness of these practices. This lavishness is meant to convey a message about the deceased. In the case of deceased rulers the message is that the deceased deserves to be honored because of his greatness during life. Although this supposed greatness involves supposed personal qualities, it conveys, first and foremost, a message about the deceased’s qualities as a ruler. Of course the idea that because someone receives great honors in death they deserve them is more or less a logical fallacy. This fact however does not make this kind of symbolic argumentation unpersuasive. For one thing, the use of symbols and practices can obscure the blatant character of political messages. To give an example, at Henry VIII’s funeral the effigy was dressed in the same “purple mantle, and robes of crimson velvet, adorned with miniver and ermine” as had bedecked the effigies of Henry V and Henry VII. 2 In this way the funeral created a visual image that both attracted through its elegance and conveyed a specific political message. This was not an attempt to hypnotize so much as to orient the observers and to make the message esthetically pleasing. It must be admitted that this is not an attempt to persuade in the sense of an academic research paper, but this does not make it irrational. I argue instead that lavishness in this context is a form of persuasion that appeals to cultural standards both of elegance and of fairness. By elegance I mean the presentation of argument in a way that is esthetically pleasing and includes many visual and auditory elements other than mere speech. In reference to fairness I mean that such display implicitly argues that the deceased deserves to be honored because obviously people do not dress scoundrels in expensive clothing 2 Jennifer Woodward. The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570-1625 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, Rochester, NY, USA: Boydell Press, 1997), 90. 3 and place them in expensive and elaborate coffins and