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Doug Thompson

@dithomps.bsky.social

Political theorist. Rewriting the global history of political thought from the perspective of bureaucrats, 3000 BCE to the present. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/douglas-i-thompson/home

248 Posts493 Follower379 Folgt
Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · 3w ago

The earliest surviving Egyptian papyrus is the daily logbook of a bureaucrat named Merer (ca. 2550 BCE). Merer supervised the production of limestone for the outer shell of the Great Pyramids at Giza. Many of the “great achievements of civilization” have indeed “come from government bureaus.”

Cato Institute@cato.org · 3w ago

"The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus." — Milton Friedman. They were driven by individual liberty and free markets. And they always will be.

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · 12mo ago

So much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier. Interdisciplinary research and even simply reading are truly transformative.

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought. This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought. This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 12mo ago

I need folks to know "classics are classic for a reason" re: creative work is not the great argument you think it is, mostly because it leaves entirely unexamined the *reasons* some things persist in culture, of which "quality," subjective in any event, is only one reason and often not the main one.

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Democratizing “reconstruction” moments only happen in the US when the anti-democratization party is totally excluded (1865, 1932) or when the parties are *both* internally split on “race.” Neither is true in 2025. So what’s the path forward?

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Until now, the basic structure of how the US Constitution "works" has been "refounded" 4 times. We are now *very* far into the 5th "refounding." Dr. McMillan Cottom is right. There is no easy path toward quickly & peacefully reversing this. Why? Let's look at the other "refounding" moments. (1/)

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Until now, the basic structure of how the US Constitution "works" has been "refounded" 4 times. We are now *very* far into the 5th "refounding." Dr. McMillan Cottom is right. There is no easy path toward quickly & peacefully reversing this. Why? Let's look at the other "refounding" moments. (1/)

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · last yr.

I’m going to be very honest and clear. I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for *me*.

Kevin Elliott@kjephd.bsky.social · 2y ago

@jamellebouie.net's recent columns advance the view that the US Constitution extends far beyond the brief formal text & those informal & unwritten pieces are central to the character of the constitutional order. I just published an article detailing a similar view, but develop it a bit differently:

Folk Constitutionalism, or Why it Matters How Ordinary People Think about the Constitution

A truly inclusive democratic politics must be understandable, or cognitively tractable, for ordinary people busy with the rest of their lives. This extends not only to everyday politics and policy,...

doi.org

Graham Hubbs@grahamhubbs.bsky.social · last yr.

Looking forward to reading about Mesopotamian bureaucracy here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Note from the Editors | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

Note from the Editors - Volume 23 Issue 2

cambridge.org

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

*Every* large-scale human society *ever* recorded has required significant amounts of organized daily administrative labor to function at all. *Most* of the history of political thought is therefore about this labor, its organization, and the public goods that it alone can produce. (8/)

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg.bsky.social · last yr.

🎯🧵"Beginning the history of political thought at the actual beginning (and not half-way through, as we usually do) opens up a whole new vista on the entire 5,000+ record of human political ideas. Crucially, it restores bureaucracy as a central theme of history of human political reflection."

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Delighted to see my article, "The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory," in print in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social. It is my favorite thing I've written, and I hope you'll read it. Like most people, I learned in school that political theory began in Athens in the 5th c. BCE. This is wrong. (1/)

Bonnie Honig@bonniehonig.bsky.social · last yr.

Inaugurating Mesopotamian school of Political theory (obscured til now by philhellenism), calling for a proper focus on bureaucracy (elided til now because… slavery), noting the centrality of writing to labor, and vice versa, this (un)timely, frame-shifting essay is BIG. Bravo @dithomps.bsky.social

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Delighted to see my article, "The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory," in print in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social. It is my favorite thing I've written, and I hope you'll read it. Like most people, I learned in school that political theory began in Athens in the 5th c. BCE. This is wrong. (1/)

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

Delighted to see my article, "The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory," in print in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social. It is my favorite thing I've written, and I hope you'll read it. Like most people, I learned in school that political theory began in Athens in the 5th c. BCE. This is wrong. (1/)

The abstract for the article titled "The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory: Administrative Labor in the 'Other Half' of the History of Political Thought," which reads: The earliest works of political theory precede Athenian democracy—the traditional starting point of Anglophone histories of political thought—by over two millennia. More time passed between the first written accounts of government in Mesopotamia and the birth of Plato than has passed between Plato’s life and ours. And yet this “other half” of the history of political thought has barely registered in the academic field of political theory. This article seeks to “reset” the starting point of the field back to its earliest origins in ancient Sumer. In doing so, the article expands political theory’s recent “rediscovery” of bureaucracy by calling for a new research agenda that will recover questions of public administration as a major thematic throughline in the 5,000-year global history of human political ideas. For while the ancient Athenians enslaved their public administrators and wrote almost nothing about them, the analogous actors were free and highly valued in ancient Mesopotamian political culture. It was these scribal administrators who invented the world’s first literature and written political thought. In their writings, they valorized their own administrative labor and the public goods that it alone could produce as objects of enchantment and wonder. Revealing public administration to be an integral part of large-scale human societies from the very beginning may help to counter oligarchic rhetorical claims in contemporary democracies that the “administrative state” is a recent alien imposition.
Perspectives on Politics@poppublicsphere.bsky.social · last yr.

VOLUME 23 ISSUE 2 IS NOW OUT!! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Featuring work by: @zachdickson.bsky.social‬, @chriswratil.bsky.social, @dithomps.bsky.social‬, @maxvejares.bsky.social, @tamirmoustafa.bsky.social‬, @nerminallam.bsky.social‬ & more!

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

86 percent of the US population (almost 300 million people) live in metropolitan areas. To dominate them all militarily is impossible. www.census.gov/library/stor....

Some Metro Areas’ Population Gains Reversed COVID-19 Era Trends

New Census Bureau population estimates show 88% of U.S. metro areas gained population between 2023 and 2024.

census.gov

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

The LA metro area population (12.8 million) is larger than 45 US states. The LA metro area GDP ($1.3 trillion) is greater than all but 16 *nation-states*. Mobilizing a single infantry battalion and a loose collection of ARNG companies is a major constitutional escalation AND a sign of weakness.

Doug Thompson@dithomps.bsky.social · last yr.

The LA metro area population (12.8 million) is larger than 45 US states. The LA metro area GDP ($1.3 trillion) is greater than all but 16 *nation-states*. Mobilizing a single infantry battalion and a loose collection of ARNG companies is a major constitutional escalation AND a sign of weakness.

Thomas Zimmer@thomaszimmer.bsky.social · last yr.

Essential we hold two thoughts in our head at the same: There is no doubt the Trumpists want an authoritarian police state, and the situation is acutely dangerous. But being lawless does not make Trump omnipotent. Obscuring that distinction is an act of defeatism that only serves the regime.

Andrew S. Kelly@askellyphd.bsky.social · last yr.

One upside to having 75% of Medicaid beneficiaries (~71 million people) receiving their benefits through a managed care company is that those managed care companies are big, powerful interests with similarly big economic stakes in making sure people understand these proposed cuts.

Lauren Rivera@larivera.bsky.social · last yr.

Many Medicaid recipients do not know they receive it because Medicaid is called different things in different states. The public narrative of Medicaid focuses on a distant other, but 40% of US children and 60% of nursing home residents receive Medicaid. Just SOME of the names by state are below:

Justin Zimmerman@jztidecat.bsky.social · last yr.

This was YEARS in the making but my first solo authored publication is out. I do more than rant on social media. I also study situational trust! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cooperating through distrust: seeking remedies to state and community violence

This article focuses on a crucial issue in Black politics: the spectrum of trust. Building on Monica Bell’s theory of situational trust, I explain how community members in three South Side Chicago ...

tandfonline.com

Steven Klein@stevenklein.bsky.social · last yr.

What is the philosophical basis of European integration? My former PhD student Alec Dinnin on Ortega y Gasset's support of European unification as a response to World War II and an antidote to democracy, now out in MIH www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Democratic Catastrophes and European Unification in Ortega y Gasset’s Postwar Political Thought | Modern Intellectual History | Cambridge Core

Democratic Catastrophes and European Unification in Ortega y Gasset’s Postwar Political Thought

cambridge.org