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How would you define democracy? Is it simply a good way of choosing governments? Or is it something more, and if so, what?
A definition of “democracy” is something which has eluded agreement among philosophers, social scientists, jurisprudentialists and politicians since the coining of the term among Ancient Athenians. The stepping point for definining democracy lies, perhaps, not so much in those diverse sources but in etymology.
Establishing such a definition is prima facie unproblematic. The word derives from the Greek “demos” and “kratos” and was first employed in around late 6th century BC - a new name to distinguish a then novel method of rule from other familiar methods. Indeed, “democracy” is still perhaps best understood by contrast with such other methods of rule as aristocracy (rule of the best), oligarchy (rule of the few), monarchy (absolute rule by a monarch), tyranny, despotism and dictatorship; so something of the substance of democracy can be gleaned from in what it does not consist. “Democracy” is something of a “hurrah word”, a label for any system with some degree of popular participation which is admired by the utterer; a “Humpty Dumpty” word. (‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less” ). Nations with minimal popular participation catch onto the theme, labelling themselves democratic, or adopting words with similar resonance (witness for example the East German Democratic Republic or the People’s Republic of China). “Democracy” is an emotive word of intuitive appeal.
“Demos” translates to “people”; “kratos” is generally translated to “rule”. So, at first glance, the term means popular government, or rule by the people. Or perhaps “of” the people”. Or then again perhaps “for” the people. Or “popular rule”. Yet those two elements of the simplistic definition of democracy as “popular government” warrant further dissection; and in the fruits of that examination lie the root of the diversity of opinion on democracy, from the ancient Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Plato) through classic liberals (Mill, Rousseau) to modern jurisprudentialists (Dworkin, Rawls, Weale). Who constitute “the people”? Strictly males of Athenian parentage, as in ancient Athens (which, if such a definition be accepted, was the closest approximation to direct popular self-rule ever witnessed) or, as in most modern “democracies”, all adults of sound mind who are not incarcerated (and moot point at what age one becomes an ‘adult’)?
The interpretation (of, or for, or by) is vital; the middle, for example, is as conducive to benevolent dictatorship as to popular participation. The third demands popular self-representation, simply unworkable in the modern age of the massive nation state engaging in international relations. To take one such interpretation lends “democracy” an entirely different complexion than to take another; and within any interpretation lie different suggested, and sometimes practised, modes of realising the interpretation. As a result, from some ideas of “democracy” one could conclude that that “democracy” is indeed simply a way of choosing governments – good or otherwise. However, a combination of all three interpretations is what the word democracy evokes to the modern liberal mind; a compromise in which the will of the majority of the people, as expressed through elected representatives who are accountable, responsible and responsive to the whole of the people, prevails.
“Democracy” in the modern era in the context of the nation state in practice means “representative democracy”. Indeed, such was not so very different in ancient Athens; as Held points out that the Greek form of democracy, admitted to be the most close approximation to genuine rule by the people in taking a direct form, had such ‘defects’ (if such genuine rule be taken as the paradigm) as to render it not too indistinct from representative democracies. For the fully-Athenian-blooded males who constituted the demos, politics was either a career opportunity or a platform for self or public entertainment, a platform for rhetoric. Modern politicians in representative democracies are hardly incomparable! Again, akin to the functions of modern civil services, most of the everyday work was done by officials, albeit elected (as the British are not). Daily governing, in what we would now call foreign and domestic policy, was undertaken by a small elected assembly accountable to the large general infrequent meeting of the demos. The democracy lasted but around two centuries. It was characterised in some aspects by an absence of the due process which modern democrats would conceive of as indispensable to democracy. The popular assembly could banish anybody who was becoming too powerful. There were severe penalties including death for seemingly relatively trivial offences (in the case of Socrates, for blasphemy and corruption of the young). The main distinction between that ‘direct democracy’ and modern democracies was the absence of a figurehead; all were ‘pares’ (though some ‘more equal’ than others), without the ‘primus’. In common with modern democracies were thevalues specifically associated with democracy; freedom (then meaning freedom of self-government) and equality: Every citizen (albeit within that narrow definition of a “citizen”) counted as one and only one in voting, each vote being of equal weight; and each had equal eligibility for election to office, then as now.
Vitally, in modern liberal democracies, the “people” are inclusively defined; generally, all free adults of sound mind are entitled to a vote and – a cornerstone of democracy – each vote is, in theory, of equal worth. Triumphed by such philosophers and theorists as Mill, Wollstonecraft and Rousseau, moral equality (to be reflected in equality of weighting of votes) is taken as a given among modern liberal theorists of all ilks. Through an electoral system the masses select a workable few to represent them. The winning party is responsible not merely to its supporters but to the whole of the population. Thus the “tyranny of the majority”, the potential for which in a democracy was highlighted by De Tocqueville, is theoretically avoided.
There are a many practised and proposed electoral systems – predominantly First Past the Post as in Britain and a variety of Proportional Representative systems most closely associated with other European states, scrutiny of which is outside the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that the system employed is vital to the accuracy of representation and therefore to the quality of the democracy and the extent to which the resulting government is indeed the result of people “choosing” a political party for government. For example, the British method of election to the Second Chamber (the existence of the first being a whole different issue) distorts the reflection of votes into officers, rendering the concept of “one person, one vote, each vote of equal worth” imperfect. The Prime Minister him or herself is unelected by the population at large. The party winning the simple majority has historically usually won a numerical minority of the popular vote; for example the Labour Party was elected in 2001 by a mere 44%. So, to address whether democracy is a way of popular “choosing” of governments, as opposed to having governments thrust upon them, is to consider the intricacies of that electoral system. Further, as Wolff points out, the very notion of that people “choose” governments presumes their motivation; “voter apathy” often suggests otherwise.
For Schumpeter, however, such considerations as the numbers who vote and their motivations in voting matter not. Democracy is that "institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote" It is indeed purely instrumental. It does not necessarily produce some desirable end state, and it is consistent with any outcome. It is simply a…way of choosing governments and not necessarily a good one at that. (It is noteworthy that Hitler had as democratically legitimate a right to rule as any other elected leader). Schumpeter however concluded that liberal democracy and rule by the few representative elite are far from inconsistent if, and only if, behind diverse individual wills lies a certain homogeneity. Indeed, Marx condemned ‘representative’ systems in industrialised ‘democracies’ on just these grounds; all supposedly competing parties were but variations on the same capitalist theme; the façade of democracy and popular involvement operated to shade the truth of the oppression of the proletariat which invariably accompanied capitalist systems).
Held warns that democracies are prone to lack of firm leadership; given the possibility of being ousted on election, leaders depend on popular favour and will act to sustain that popularity. Posner by contrast advocates that democracy consists precisely in the pragmatic response to popular will; the ‘quality’ of government is irrelevant if it so responds, for democracy is only a method of choosing government. Posner derides “deliberative democrats” who believe that there is to be found and strived for some overriding “common interest”. There is, in short, no such thing as the “will of the people” about whom liberal theorists agonise; there is just a multitude of individual “goods”. (The infamous words of Prime Minister Thatcher come to mind: “there is no such thing as society; there are only individuals”). This contrasts with the Platonic proposition that the “good” is definitively not the sum total of the wishes of the uneducated mob but is objectively definable. Yet even if ruling is an art form which best left to the experts in that field, elected representatives surely are those experts? In democratic politics, what is good is in the eye of the beholder.
Fortunately the beholder’s gaze is shaped by their upbringing and they vote to sustain the liberal values the ‘democratic’ institutions of that upbringing have promoted – thereby producing the very homogeneity that Schumpeter posits enables representative democracy and elitism to operate in compatibility.
Because humans are conceived of in that same history of liberal thought as egoistic, and power as corruptive, a system of checks and balances on the exercise of power, to ensure that rule is indeed exercised in the interests of the governed not the governors, is seen to be vital for an effective democracy. So too are the liberties that enable expression of that will and the reciprocal duties and responsibilities which inhibit governors and governed alike from encroaching on those liberties of others. In turn a system of law for enforcement of these liberties and responsibilities – but a system in which those who make and those who apply the law, given human egocentricity, are distinct bodies - are important.. The “Separation of powers” is imperfect (the Lord Chancellor in the United Kingdom and the President in the United States are the paradigmatic examples of figureheads straddling the functions of executive, bureaucracy and legislature) but the principle holds fast and valued. Laws, once formulated, are – again, albeit in imperfect fashion – uniformly applied across a population whose every member is equally valued. Such is the emphasis on “justice” – the entirely of the system of application and enforcement of the law – that it is almost more important that it is seen to be done than actually done, and system of appeal and tight regulation and discipline of law enforcers and crucial to its maintenance.
Most vital of all is the context in which all of the above are valued; a culture in which education and information, to enable informed judgment, are prized, initiative unstifled, freedoms and diversity cherished, producing what Weale and others refer to as a distinct “political morality”. It is this context and these institutions, propagating each other, which are the essence of democracy. Democracy, it would seem, lies largely in its trappings, the culture in which it flourishes and which promotes (and to a greater or lesser extent exhibits) the values of freedom, liberty, choice and the community borne of a shared way of life even within the multiculturalism which the diversity cherished by democracy breeds. Part of that morality is voting itself; it is this context and these institutions, propagating each other, which are the essence of democracy. From this perspective, democracy is not just a way of choosing a government; the casting of the vote is but a manifestation of the culture. Democracy is, in Dicey’s famous dictum, “a way of life”.
ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Norman, R: The Moral Philosophers: An Introduction to Ethics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990
Forbes, I and Smith, S, Politics and Human Nature, Frances Pinter, London 1983
Posner, R, Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2003
Weale, A, Democracy
Axtmann, R, Liberal Democracy into the twenty-first century: Globalization, Integration and the Nation-State, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996
Barry, N P, An Introduction to Modern Political Theory, 2nd edition, MacMillan, London, 1989
Ware, A,Political Parties and Party Systems, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996
Lijphart, A, Democracy in Plural Societies, Yale UniversityPress, New Haven and London, 1977
Mackie, J L, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth, 1977.
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