Courts and Courtiers

Richard Ostrofsky
(May, 1999)

Regardless of the specific system and institutions of government, the

current political ideology or the prevailing interests, there is one political
structure that appears in every age, every society and indeed every level of
society. I have in mind what I would call a court (princely, rather than the
judicial). A prince surrounded by courtiers (his senior henchmen and
potential successors and rivals) is recognizable always and everywhere as a
basic feature of any human political landscape.
The word is interesting in itself. In either its judicial or its princely
sense, the English word court is a shortening of the Latin cohort, a small
body of armed men, about as many as would fit in the enclosed garden
(“courtyard”, we would call it) of a wealthy Roman’s house. The same word
is used for the pursuit of amorous favors or for the currying of favor of any
kind, and also for the architectural facilities where favors are sought and
granted.
Recalling that the Latin for garden is hortus (whence horticulture, a
fancy word for gardening), the etymology is clear: A powerful man (or
woman, not infrequently) sits or strolls in the garden of a palatial home,
attended by a small group of lesser powers and senior officials.
Some of their time is spent in partying and dalliance, and generally in
mounting a show of wealth and cultural splendor. Much of it too is spent
discussing “affairs of state” and other “public business”, and in hearing and
giving judgment on petitions and cases-at-law (once the institutions of law
have been invented). Both at work and play, however, maneuvering for rank
and influence and favor is the courtier’s essential business and game.
Court is the gathering of a highly select group of people, to measure,
deploy, defend or (if possible) augment their personal sway, in the orbit of a
“prince” (the numero uno) who holds the balance of power amongst them,
and is therefore able to suppress their quarrels and keep a relative peace.
For the courtiers themselves are not mere hirelings although, of course,
they have servants who are. Typically, each has a power base of his own,
where he himself is nucleus of a lesser court, a prince on his own estates, in
his own castle.
One reason for calling them to the central court is to deploy their
experience and influence in “public” affairs; the other is to keep them out of
mischief and under surveillance. Back home, on their own lands, among
their own people, treason is easier. At court, they can be kept occupied with
the prince’s business and with the pleasures of courtly life. They can be kept
under surveillance by his spies and by one another. Their families will also
keep them busy, and will make good hostages for their loyalty.
From the courtier’s perspective there are also certain advantages:
notably a more diverse and interesting social life, the chance of arranging
advantageous marriages for your children and alliances for yourself, indeed,
the chance for advantageous dealing of all kinds, so long as you stay
reasonably loyal, and keep your head on your shoulders. Above all, in an
age before the Internet and even the telephone, court was the place for
governing conversation. It was the place where one had to go to express
one’s viewpoint and preferences, and claim your say in the decisions being
made.
Considering its ubiquity, it is surprising how little attention has been
given to the role and nature of courtly life in the discourse of political
science. But what is noteworthy for us is that “court” is primordially and
etymologically a space that is neither public nor private in any modern
sense. In the first instance, it is the public area of a prince’s household. By
extension, it is the group that a powerful individual keeps around himself,
wherever the maintenance of power takes him. The collective business at
court is public business, by definition. The prince’s interest in keeping his
courtiers loyal or, at least, not rebelliously dissatisfied, be might be a
pragmatic definition of this “public” interest.
Courts today are probably more dispersed spatially than was feasible
before this century, and their membership is less hereditary: Blood lines and
even wealth are still useful, but no longer indispensable requirements for
membership. The modern court is more open to talent, diligence and a
clever choice of loyalties than formerly, and more permeable to “upstarts”
who become too important to ignore.
The simplest way to domesticate any special interest, to signal readiness
to negotiate with it and co-opt its principle spokespersons into the power
structure is to invite it to what is still recognizably a court – a power-
brokering club and system that Saint-Simon and Louis the Fourteenth, or
Odysseus and Agamemnon, would have understood perfectly well.
When we speak of “democratic” government, this permeability is largely
what we mean. I am not being cynical here. This is the way human
governments work, the way they have always worked and, probably, the
only way they can work. Anyone who wants to think seriously about the
problem of political accountability to a public” interest must begin by
understanding why this is so.