Qfyilyi

The Triumvirate is a political regime dominated by the powerful individuals. It is, in effect, a three-man directorate with dictatorial powers that share in the governing of an empire. Each are meant to be equal in status and authority, and meant to keep the other person in check.

In reality, this is often not the case. The most famous of these alliances was the Triumvirate between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Each of them were treacherous and egomaniacal, and the agreement ended after Crassus got himself killed. Caesar and Pompey turned on each other which ended up in a civil war for control of Rome. The second was between Augustus, Mark Antony, and Lepidus. This also ended up in civil war which led to the death of the Roman republic.

The pattern being set is that the rule of three tends to end in backstabbing treachery, as one individual always wants more power. There needs to be some mechanism that re-balances power so that no two members of the group can become more powerful tha the last one. Is there a way that this political system could be made to function over the long term without devolving into backstabbing treachery?

The way to start is to ask why people back stab. The answer is, mostly, to gain power and status.

The problem with any kind of monarchical government (regardless whether it's an old-fashioned hereditary kingship or a dictatorship or whatever) is that whoever is on top stays on top, and everyone else is secondary and stays secondary. The only way to power is to knife the people above you in the back, and the only way to retain power is to knife the ambitious people below you before they knife you.

The huge advantage of governments that have a regular, planned turnover of leaders is that ambitious people have a path to power that doesn't involve the same amount of backstabbing. It a huge advantage of democratic forms of government, but many oligarchic governments also share this feature. Note that this doesn't rely on would-be leaders in these sorts of governments being nicer than in autocracies -- it just requires that they see playing the political game as giving them a better chance at power than carving a bloody trail to the top would.

As long as people are people, there will be ruthless people seeking power. As long as your government doesn't have a succession plan which gives ruthless people a peaceful path to power, they will follow a non-peaceful path. And it doesn't sound like there's a peaceful path to permanent ultimate power for anyone in your state -- including the triumvirs themselves.

When you say "triuvirate" what you specifically mean is "three individuals." But trimvirates exist all over the place. For example, the U.S. triumvirate of the executive, legisltive, and judicial branches. Similar triumvirates exist in most democracies or republics.

The problem is when you start talking about three individuals. The "system" or government is not an intelligent thing. It has no intrinsic power or authority. A code of laws can be drawn up that theoretically constrains three individuals holding equal but in aggragate ultimate power — but that's really meaningless since the power and authority is held by the individuals — not the laws.

Winston Churchill said, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Democracy is considered the worst form of government because government by consensus (or "the crowd") is unweildly as too many people must be convinced to get anything done.

But it's better than the rest because convincing an individual is easy compared to convincing a crowd. And one strong-willed personality can corral two weaker-willed personalities no matter how equal their governmental authority or power is. ("Does the NRA have pictures of you golfing with Satan?" quips one of my favorite movies...)

So, to invoke Newton's Third Law, the only way to force a triumvirate of individuals to behave is to create an external force that polices their behavior and forces them to behave. Of course, you wouldn't have a triuvirate anymore.

Which is a long and fancy way of saying it can't be done with individuals. The closest you can get is to involve groups of people such that at least one of the three legs of power is painfully difficult to bring under individual control. AKA, democracy.

Triumvirate as an individuals' agreement is highly unstable. Triumvirate as a political system is realistic.

As @JBH correctly laid out, a simple agreement to share power between three individuals wont work. What may work, however, is a political system that gives each of the three individuals a power which other two can't steal.

US is the most prominent example of three individual branches of government working together (or, sometimes, against each other). If we give more power to the Speaker of the House and to Chief Justice, we can see it as a triumvirate.

In a historical setting, we can imagine three bases of power, say, nobility, military and clergy, each represented by a leader, and three leaders forming a triumvirate. There were no real precedents for that which lasted as a long term setting, but I think it's possible if a country get used to it.

One simple solution is to include the concept of mob rule, IE the people acquiesce to be governed by a Triumvirate, however should the Triumvirate fail (either in a way written into whatever passes for a constitution in your country or simply in the eyes of the people) then the Triumvirate can and will be violently deposed (and probably beheaded) and a new Triumvirate installed. A simple rule for the failure of a Triumvirate might be: “If any one of the Triumvirs accuses the others of attempting to supplant them, all three must be removed from power”.

If the concept of Triumviracy is upheld but individual Triumvirates are subject to being replaced by a ‘democratic’ (One mob, one vote) process, then it is in the best interests of individual Triumvirs to make the system work. If you consider political systems like the rule of the British Monarchy (Technically a Monarchy, held together by a series of Gentleman’s Agreements that the People will do whatever the Monarch asks as long as the Monarch doesn’t ask them to anything) then this seems almost sane.

Now: this doesn’t exclude the possibility of other ambitious types actively trying to get rid of the current ruling triumvirate, but it does give your three rulers powerful incentive to keep each other alive and functioning.

It sounds to me like what you’re talking about is a legal division of power between technical equals. The two big examples of this in the Roman Empire were the Tetrarchy and the later empire, when different emperors ruled the Eastern and Western halves of the empire. Unlike the triumvirates, there was a lot more stability between these groups, and they existed as separate entities for decades. Within a world-building context, that suggests to me that such power-sharing arrangements can last at the scale of decades. I’m not sure there’s a good example of this lasting for centuries, but I could look for some if that would help!

I’m not sure that the triumvirates are the best example of long-term, stable power-sharing: the the First Triumvirate was an alliance between powerful men, each of whom had a legal position from which they derived their powers (Caesar was senator, consul and then proconsul, Pompey and Crassus were senators, prefects and then consuls) but primarily it was an agreement to work "behind the scenes" to achieve their mutual aims. Not surprisingly, once those aims diverged, the triumvirate fell apart. So I think this comes under the general category of competing power centers within a single executive (e.g. Honorius and Stilicho).

The Second Triumvirate was a legal entity, but it was more similar to the Tetrarchy or the division of the Roman Empire: initially, it was pretty clear that Antony was dominant over the other two members, but eventually they decided to maintain different spheres of influence with Octavian taking the west and Antony taking the east. It only lasted for a single decade, however, and so probably isn't the best example for your needs.

I think that your question cannot be answered because you are starting from an ungrounded assumption. There is no stable form of government; it's human nature. There will always be someone or a faction or an elite vying for power, trying to prevail over the others. Even democracy is not stable, no matter how complex and sophisticated the system of check and balances is, it will always be on the verge of being toppled. The real democracy is the one that requires a perennial fight to be preserved. If you see no fight than it's the moment to wonder why.

The problem with the Roman triumvirates was that each person did not have a constitutionally enforced, distinct and different source of authority. When you take Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus for example, they started out with spheres of influence that was just coincidental. Caesar had the support of the peasantry, Pompey had the support of the military, and Crassus had the support of the nobility. The problem was that any one of them could at any point make another one irrelevant if they also gained the support of one of those factions. Just by dying, Crassus's power was left to be dissolved into Caesar's and Pompey's spheres of influence. Then when Caesar conquered Gaul he threatened Pompey's favor with the military.

Imagine instead if each man had to be elected by a respective portion of a nation's population. If Rome decided that they would have elections where one triumvirate was decided by each of these 3 distinct groups, then the power would not pass if one was ousted; so then, not only do you take away the motivation to oust a your fellow triumvirates, but doing so would anger that portion of the population whom elected and favored that person likely resulting in the election of a new triumvirate that would be more anti-you for having tried to do so.

So, the result in ancient Rome would have been that when Crassius died, a new triumvirate favored by the lords would have taken his seat, and when Caesar conquered Gaul, it would have given him the opportunity to run for future elections for triumvirate of the military, but he could not hold the seat of triumvirate of military and triumvirate of the commoners at the same time; so, either way he'd be forced to share his power with someone else favored among one of these groups.

If Rome's original triumvirate had been a legal system of governance, it would have likely become a very stable one.