Iâve been fascinated with a certain pattern of power dynamics that I notice throughout history where âthe topâ and âthe bottomâ seem to align against âthe middleâ. I call it the Crown and the Commons dynamic.
To understand how this works, letâs break down the three key players in this historical drama:
Power usually flows through the Court. The Crown typically governs by way of these intermediaries, and the Commons are managed or represented by them. But when the Court grows too powerfulâtoo obstructive, too independentâthe Crown flips the arrangement. It reaches past the Court to align directly with the Commons, using that alliance to weaken or bypass the middle layer entirely.
The Crown doesnât need to uplift the Commons entirely; just enough to secure their loyalty while undercutting the Court. Itâs a stabilizing maneuver: buy peace from below to avoid pressure from the middle.
Crucially, this is not about revolutionaries using popular support to seize power, but rather an existing power consolidating its position.
Perhaps the clearest historical example of the CrownâCommons dynamic appears in the final century of the Roman Republic. The tribune of the plebs, an office originally established to represent and protect the interests of the common people, had long served as a mechanism for representing the Commons, but over time it became a power base for ambitious elites like the Gracchi brothers and Marius, who used it to circumvent senatorial control. Julius Caesar took it to completion. Caesar leveraged it not just to advance reform, but to claim extraordinary powers with the backing of the people.
As dictator, Caesar implemented land redistribution, debt cancellation, and colonization schemes for veterans and the poor. He staged lavish games and spectacles, reinforcing his image as a benefactor of the people. He even introduced the acta diurna, an early public gazette, to publish laws and official announcements, ensuring that the public was directly informed, not just the Senate.
His support among the people allowed him to override senatorial opposition, pass laws unilaterally, and maintain military loyalty, not just as a general, but as a champion of the peopleâs will. He used that support to legitimize his authority while systematically disempowering the aristocratic class.
His rule marked the final breakdown of the Republic: a Crown constructed with the help of the Commons, against the Court.
We see this structure echo across history: sovereigns already in power, facing resistance from institutional intermediaries, turning to the Commons to break the Court.
After the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte didnât just rise from chaos; once in power, he locked in authority through popular acclaim, holding plebiscites, and dismantling revolutionary institutions. He replaced a republican elite with a bureaucracy largely drawn from the people, establishing his legitimacy by bypassing both pre-revolutionary aristocratic tradition and post-revolutionary republican institutions, and instead directly appealing to and securing the mandate of the people.
Henry VII of England, following the Wars of the Roses, faced a powerful and disloyal nobility. He used financial bonds, legal mechanisms, and administrative reforms to constrain their independence, while elevating commoners and gentry into key roles within his government. The result was a centralized and loyal state apparatus, built from below to weaken the traditional Court.
Joseph II of Austria, the âenlightened despot,â abolished serfdom, curbed the Church, and promoted religious tolerance, all in defiance of the aristocracy and clergy who had traditionally mediated imperial power. His reforms were unpopular with elites but aimed at ruling more directly over a modernized Commons.
And perhaps the most dramatic case is Mao Zedongâs Cultural Revolution. By the 1960s, Mao already sat atop the Chinese state, but the Communist Party had developed a powerful internal bureaucracy. Mao feared he was being sidelined by the very machine he had built. His response: unleash the masses. By mobilizing youth into Red Guards and directing them to attack professors, local officials, and party functionaries, Mao destroyed the Court from above, using the Commons as a political weapon to reassert personal control.
In each case, the structure is the same. The Crown is not seeking power, it already has it. What it seeks is to maintain or consolidate that power by removing intermediary checks. And the most effective way to do that, time and again, is to reach down to the Commons and rise above the Court.
This CrownâCommons dynamic didnât disappear with emperors and monarchs. It persists, often in subtler forms, within the modern American federal government, particularly through a persistent trend towards the centralization of power at the federal level at the expense of state autonomy. This erosion of federalism effectively weakens the âCourtâ of state governments, drawing authority upward to the âCrownâ of the federal government while claiming popular legitimacy.
One of the clearest examples of this process is the 17th Amendment, which transferred the power to elect U.S. senators from state legislatures to the general public. This was more than a procedural change. It weakened the states (the Court), those intermediary bodies meant to represent local interests, and strengthened the bond between the federal government (the Crown) and the national electorate (the Commons). A multi-layered system became flatter and more centralized. (I wrote more about this in my post on The 17th Amendment Killed Federalism).
Later, FDRâs New Deal took the same logic further. Facing economic catastrophe and elite paralysis, Roosevelt launched a suite of federal programs that bypassed state governments, cut through legislative gridlock, and directly served workers, farmers, and the poor. He spoke directly to the public via radio. He used executive agencies to deliver aid without waiting on Congress. And when the Supreme Court resisted, he threatened to restructure it entirely. It was a modern Crown wielding mass legitimacy to sideline old constraints.
This trend continues today, as presidents increasingly govern by executive order, often asserting a direct mandate from the people by virtue of their election victory. This allows them to bypass legislative or bureaucratic resistance (the Court) by appealing directly to the public (the Commons).
The dynamic remains: the Crown bypasses the Court by invoking the Commons, not in theory, but in practice, through the very design of governance.
This dynamic isnât just political, it shows up in economic systems too. The structure is more general: an alliance between the top and the bottom to contain the middle.
Economically, this often looks like strategic redistribution.
This helps explain the shape of the modern welfare state where we redistribute just enough to keep the working class loyal to the existing system, while preserving elite control and dampening pressure for more radical economic change, especially from the middle class.
In democratic systems, you donât need to suppress the middle class, just outvote them. If the Commons are large and pliable enough, modest concessions can buy the votes needed to preserve the existing order, while circumventing the demands of âthe Courtâ entirely.
This isnât about right or wrong. Sometimes the Commons benefit, sometimes theyâre just used. The Court might be corrupt and need breaking, or this pattern could just signal creeping centralization and hollowed-out institutions.
But the dynamic is inevitable: when that middle layer, the Court, gets too strong or starts getting in the way, the Crown turns to the Commons.