Surely everyone knows of the quote that democracy lasts only so long until the people figure out they can vote themselves money from the public trough. Except that I can’t think of an example.
Weimar Germany is the closest. The hyperinflation of the early 20’s caused at least partially by handing out money to striking workers surely contributed to the fall of democracy by instilling lack of faith in it, but the actual fall didn’t occur till at least 10 years later, arguably due to the Great Depression which was not caused by government handouts.
Actually, the Depression was pretty much over in Germany before Hitler came to power.
I recall a Heinlein quote from Time Enough for Love: “One of the chinks in the armor of any democracy is that when the plebs find out they can vote themselves bread and circuses, they do – until there is no more bread and no more circuses.” Which puzzled me when I first read it, because I can’t think of a single real-life example – not even the Roman Republic, which was definitely not destroyed by having too-democratic or too-generous a state. Nor the Athenian (or any other Greek) democracy, which ticked along just fine for centuries until the Romans took it over.
There are some theories that the lower classes in Athens voted for war very often because that was how they made their money. They were the ones who were the rowers, at least initially, and therefore they weren’t going to make any money unless Athens was at war with someone. The hoplites were landowners who would have had a reason to fight defensively but less of a reason to start wars overseas. Also, didn’t Athenian democracy pretty much end in 404 when they surrendered to the Spartans?
Not exactly. Athens was ruined as a superpower and temporarily placed under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, but a revolution restored the democracy, which continued until the Macedonians (not the Romans, sorry) suppressed it in 322 B.C. It was later revived, at least in form.
(For a fascinating fictional treatment of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath in Athens, see The Last of the Wine, by Mary Renault. 'Ware gayness!)
I hate to be pedantic but I think you might want to consider broadening the definition of a handout. It might not have literally a handout for doing nothing but at the very least they would have been using the state to line their own pockets with money.
(Covered in this thread.) The quote in question is spurious, according to Snopes:
In an e-mail that circulated in 2000, this is attributed to “Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough [sic])” in 1787 in a book or essay called “The Fall of the Athenian Republic.” The person referenced actually appears to be Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Wikipedia says:
Bartleby’s attributes only one actual quotation to Tytler:
Very different from the UL version. Also wrong. Tytler should have known that many states of classical Greece were real democracies – governed by what amounted to an elite citizen caste, perhaps, but generally not by a “single will.”
The 2000 e-mail covered by Snopes, BTW, links the pseudoquote to an argument that the results of the 2000 election signalled American democracy was entering the final meltdown stage of the Tytler cycle.
The problematical doom-portending results being, not that Bush became president, but that Gore won the popular vote.
The bread-and-circuses problem in the late Roman Republic was one facet of a larger political dysfunction. Urban mobs loyal to whoever offered them the most boodle were an auxiliary to politically ambitious generals whose troops were more loyal to them than to the Senate, but the former couldn’t have outright overthrown the Republic without the latter.
Well, then what you’re talking about is corruption, which can be the instrument not just of “the people” but of particular special interests (who will tend to portray themselves as being what the people want, but that’s abother story).
In any case, modern liberal democracies (be they republics or constitutional monarchies) have been around for relatively little time, and those that have fallen have tended to do so through invasion or insurrection or extremist takeover (not so much voting themselves money, but voting themselves power to crush the faction they did not like)
Not by handouts, but there are some who claim that Urokagina, last king of Lagash in Sumer effectively ruined that city-state by alleviating taxes. It’s been argued that he came into power not by inheriting the throne but as the result of a tax revolt. Certainly he is immortalized in inscriptions for lowering the taxes on the commoners – which was unheard of in that era. This, claim his modern detractors, resulted in the underfunding of the army, and allowed the neighboring Ummaites to invade. (Others think that the loss of the aristocracy caused a drain on knowledge and talents that caused the downfall).
How much of this is clear and how much is due to modern and partisan interpretation, I do not know: