War, Reshuffles, and the Narrow Path of Prerogative

A prime minister resigns in Kyiv; the president announces a reshuffle; senior figures in law enforcement are to be replaced; and the departing minister is promised, we are told, a “new and important” post. Of the details I am not informed beyond these few lines, yet even such scant notice is enough to raise an old question that never grows stale: when a ruler moves the great officers of state in time of war, is this the sober exercise of power held on trust, or the first step toward arbitrary dominion disguised as vigor and reform?

When I wrote on government, I took as my first principle that men are by nature free, equal, and independent, and that no one comes into the world with a right to command another without that other’s consent. Political power is, in its origin, nothing but a joint agreement to leave the state of nature, and to set up a common authority to protect our lives, liberties, and estates. The officers of that authority – ministers, generals, judges – are but instruments of a trust. To change them is not in itself a breach of that trust. Yet it is often the way breaches begin.

In the Second Treatise I gave the name “prerogative” to that power which the executive sometimes must use to act for the public good, without, or even contrary to, the letter of standing law, when sudden necessity will not wait on forms. Such power, I argued, is not a separate right of the prince, but a gap the people knowingly leave, so that their government may not be lame and useless in emergencies. It is therefore always subordinate to the end for which it is allowed: the safety and prosperity of those who consented to it.

A wartime reshuffle, taken simply as such, falls within that sphere. The enemy does not schedule his assaults according to the calendar of parliaments; men must sometimes be removed, promoted, or reassigned with a speed the law did not foresee. That the president of Ukraine publicly announces these changes, rather than contriving them in secret, is some small mark that he acknowledges the people as the original judges of his conduct, and not merely as instruments of his designs. To declare a new post for the departing minister likewise shows that this is not open punishment, but an ordering of service.

Yet the bare fact of change tells us little. The same outward act – a leader shaking up ministers and law enforcement – may be, in one case, a faithful pruning of dead branches, and in another, the beginning of uprooting every check upon will. The decisive questions are of a different sort: do the known laws still govern? Are the courts and prosecutors free to apply them, or are they bent to secure the ruler’s friends and harry his enemies? Do these moves tend to place more power in one hand without answer to an impartial judge, making that hand judge in its own case?

Here our information fails us, and I must withhold any charge of usurpation. I see no report that the constitution of Ukraine is overturned, that elections are cancelled, or that law is silenced. I see only that senior officers are to be changed, and that this occurs while the country resists foreign force. In such a posture, I cannot say that the exercise of prerogative is unjustified merely because it is swift or far‑reaching. But I can say, as I once paraphrased it in the Second Treatise, that prerogative is rightful only so long as it plainly serves the people’s good, and ceases to be so the moment it is turned against their properties and freedoms.

If, therefore, this reshuffle leads to more faithful execution of known laws, more vigorous defense against aggression, and more secure enjoyment of civil interests by Ukrainians, it is power well used, though dangerous in its nature and always revocable. If it should, by a long train of abuses, result in courts that punish inquiry, police that protect impunity, and officers who answer to one man rather than to the law, then what today is tolerated prerogative will tomorrow be seen as the first step of arbitrary power. Between these two paths there is all the difference between government and domination, and men, as God’s workmanship, are bound to mark it well.