Inexplicable failure

The link below is to a peculiar article in an on-line academic journal. The authors do make a few interesting points, but within a context that frequently made me gasp. I sincereky wonder whether the article is Chinese propaganda! And yes, even some TDS have been incorporated into the "peer reviewed" paper... 

First, some of the interesting points. The authors argue that pre-modern state formations weren't necessarily worse than modern polities. Even an undemocratic regime can have the long-term consent of the governed. This is predicted by something the authors call Collective Action Theory. "Good government" in the ancient world included public works, free distribution of food for the needy, large-scale infrastructure and "joint production", by which the authors presumably mean that the patrician class wasn't exploiting the plebeians. They must have exploited the slaves, though - one of the good regimes mentioned in the article is the Roman polity from Caesar to Marcus Aurelius.

Other examples of good regimes discussed in the article include early Ming China, the Mughal Empire under Akbar the Great, and the Republic of Venice. The most sensational finding is that good governments don't last much longer than bad ones. On average, both types of regime last about one century and a half, with good governments surviving only a decade more than bad ones. Also, the collapse of a good government is usually much worse than that of a bad one. However, this seems to be true by definition: since good regimes invest heavily in infrastructure and a kind of welfare state, they are bound to collapse more dramatically than a regime which never cared about such things in the first place. 

However, somewhere here, the article goes seriously off rails. It claims that good regimes fail because the ruling elite (or is it the actual ruler himself) for "inexplicable reasons" experience a "moral failing". Inexplicable? Moral? And this from modern and presumably secular historians! At times, the authors sound like Confucian preachers, extolling the virtues and bemoaning the vices of emperors. They actually blame the decline of Rome on the bad morality of Commodus! I suppose he lost the Mandate of the Stoa, whatever. 

When discussing Venice, the authors write that the Doges could no longer be effectively impeached.

Hmmm... 

Yes, they mean Donald J Trump. For *inexplicable* reasons, the current God-Emperor of MAGA is a moral failure, presumably being a clear and present danger to the social contract between ruler and ruled. To their credit, the authors do begin their odyssey through the morally failed American political landscape with Watergate and the Nixon presidency, but this simply makes their position even more, shall we say, inexplicable. Surely there are structural reasons for America's slow decline as a good government since the 1970's? Also, what if voters chose Trump in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that he can restore the "joint production"? 

As for the one and a half century which is the average life span of any regime (impeachable or not), if the current US regime was established after the Civil War, 2020 is indeed near its end point. If it was established by McKinley, I suppose we still have a few decades, and I suppose moral failings, to go... 

Moral collapse and state failure: A view from the past