Democracy and Its Critics

1.2 Ch. 2 : Toward the Second Transformation: Republicanism, Representation. And the Logic of Equality

To help us understand how the amalgam we call democracy came about, I am going to describe four of its most important sources.These four sources are classical Greece, a republican tradition derived more from Rome and the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and Renaissance than from the democratic city-states of Greece, the idea and institution of representative government; and the logic of political equality.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

That Greek democratic ideas have been more influential than their institutions is ironic, since what we know of their ideas comes less from the writings or speeches of democratic advocates, of which only fragments survive, than from their critics.

— Democracy and Its Critics writing

In the Greek vision of democracy, the citizen is a whole person for whom politics is a natural social activity not sharply separated from the rest of life, and for whom the government and the state—or rather the polis—are not remote and alien entities distant from oneself. Rather, political life is only an extension of, and harmonious with, oneself. Values are not fragmented but coherent: for happiness is united with virtue, virtue with justice, and justice with happiness.

— Democracy and Its Critics life

Thanks to events in Britain and America, the eighteenth century also saw the development of a strain of radical republicanism that was in some respects at odds with the older tradition.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

The members believe that no single member, and no minority of members, is so definitely better qualified to rule that the one or the few should be permitted to rule over the entire association. They believe, on the contrary, that all the members of the association are adequately qualified to participate on an equal footing with the others in the process of governing the association. I am going to call this idea the Strong Principle of Equality.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

Like the idea of democracy in early classical Greece and again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe and America, anarchism presents a novel vision of human possibilities, a society in which the major institution of organized coercion has disappeared. It would be easy and convenient to dismiss that vision as utterly impractical if it were not for the familiar fact that the revolutionary ideas of the impractical visionaries of one epoch sometimes become the orthodoxy of the next.

— Democracy and Its Critics time

In sum, the following judgments seem reasonable: 1. In the absence of a state, highly undesirable forms of coercion would probably persist. 2. In a stateless society, some associates might in any case acquire sufficient resources to create a highly oppressive state. 3. A degree of social control sufficient to avoid the creation of a state appears to require that an association be highly autonomous, very small, and united by multiple bonds. 4. Creating such associations on a significant scale in the world today appears to be either impossible or highly undesirable. These judgments support the conclusion that it would be better to try to create a satisfactory state than try to exist in a society without a state.

— Democracy and Its Critics society

Although the anarchist critique of democracy is unconvincing, it is important to recognize its strengths. As we saw, several of its assumptions are widely shared, among others by advocates of democracy. Moreover, in portraying the possibility of society without a state, anarchism reminds us that, as a form of social control, coercion by law is marginal in most societies most of the time and in democratic orders always.

— Democracy and Its Critics time

What the anarchist critique tells us is that all states have been, are, and perhaps always will be imperfect. The best states exist not in the universe of Platos perfect forms but in the universe of the best attainable. And anarchism offers a criterion for evaluating states in the universe of the best attainable states.

— Democracy and Its Critics universe

In a dialogue with a thoughtful anarchist, a democrat might also add something like this:In my view, the best possible state would be one that would minimize coercion and maximize consent, within limits set by historical conditions and the pursuit of other values, including happiness, freedom, and justice, Judged by ends like these, the best state, I believe, would be a democratic state.

— Democracy and Its Critics happiness

The idea of guardianship has appealed to a great variety of political thinkers and leaders in many different guises and in many different parts of the world over most of recorded history. If Plato provides the most familiar example, the practical ideal of Confucius, who was born more than a century before Plato, has had far more profound influence over many more people and persists to the present day, deeply embedded in the cultures of several countries, including China, where it offers a vigorous though not always overt competition to Marxism and Leninism for political consciousness.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

Demo: But in my judgment most people understand their own interests better than your guardians are likely to! Aristo: A base and baseless dogma. But if youll allow me. Id like to proceed. Even if ordinary people adequately understood their own interests, they would still not be fully qualified to govern. Since it would be utterly useless if people knew the right ends--whether their own interests or some other good--but failed to act to achieve them, those who govern should also possess a strong disposition actually to seek good ends.To be qualified to govern, rulersmust actively attempt to bring it about.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

Lofty as guardianship may appear as an ideal, its extraordinary demands on the knowledge and virtue of the guardians are all but impossible to satisfy in practice. Despite the example of the Republic of Venice and a few others that an advocate might offer as proof that guardianship is a genuine historical possibility, it cannot be reasonably defended, I think, as superior to democracy either as an ideal or as a feasible system in practice

— Democracy and Its Critics knowledge

It is true that a democratic regime runs the risk that the people will make mistakes. But the risk of mistake exists in all regimes in the real, and the worst blunders of this century have been made by leaders in nondemocratic regimes. Moreover, the opportunity to make mistakes is an opportunity to learn. Just as we reject paternalism in individual decisions, because it prevents the development of our moral capacities, so too we should reject guardianship in public affairs, because it will stunt the development of the moral capacities of an entire people. At its best, only the democratic vision can offer the hope, which guardianship can never do, that by engaging in governing themselves, all people, and not merely a few, may learn to act as morally responsible human beings.

— Democracy and Its Critics hope

To live together in an association, then, people need a process for arriving at governmental decisions: a political process.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

The persistence and generality of the assumption of intrinsic equality in systematic moral reasoning could be attributed to the existence of a norm so deeply entrenched in all Western cultures that we cannot reject it without denying our cultural heritage and thereby denying who we are.

— Democracy and Its Critics culture

This is simply that, when the idea of democracy is actively adopted by a people, it tends to produce the best feasible political system, or at any rate the best state taken all around. In this view, many of the philosophical justifications offered for democracy may be true. But they speak to political ideals rather than directly to human experience. A hardheaded look at human experience, historical and contemporary, shows that among political societies that have actually existed, or now exist, those that most nearly satisfy the criteria of the democratic idea are, taken all around, better than rest.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

Democracy—rule by the people—can be justified only on the assumption that ordinary people are, in general, qualified to govern themselves. For it seems self-evident that people ought not to govern themselves if they are not qualified to do so.Yet the assumption that people in general—ordinary people—are adequately qualified to govern themselves is, on the face of it, such an extravagant claim that critics of democracy have rejected it ever since the philosophical idea and practice of democracy appeared among the Greeks over two thousand years ago.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

If the good or interests of everyone should be weighed equally, and if each adult person is in general the best judge of his or her good or interests, then every adult member of an association is sufficiently well qualified, taken all around, to participate in making binding collective decisions that affect his or her good or interests, that is, to be a full citizen of the demos.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

Democracy means literally, rule by the people. But what does it mean to say that the people rule, the people is sovereign, a people governs itself? In order to rule, the people must have some way of ruling, a process for ruling. What are the distinctive characteristics of democratic process of government?To answer these questions it is useful to proceed in three stages. First, since democracy is a political order it is useful to set out the assumptions that justify the existence of a political order. Second, we need to specify the assumptions that justify a democratic political order.Third, we need to describe the essential criteria of a democratic political order and indicate how these follow from the assumptions.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

One might object, I suppose, that enlightenment has nothing to do with democracy. But I think this would be a foolish and historically false assertion. It is foolish because democracy has usually been conceived as a system in which “rule by the people” makes it more likely that the “people: will get what it wants, or what it believes is best, than alternative systems like guardianship in which an elite determines what is best.

— Democracy and Its Critics people

The argument for the Strong Principle of Equality would appear to support the conclusion that everyone subject to the laws should be included in the demos, Everyone? Not quite: not children, for example, the Presumption of Personal Autonomy applies to adults. As we saw earlier, Athenian democrats did not find it anomalous that their demos included only a minority of adults.

— Democracy and Its Critics children

Advocates of guardianship contend that any process by which ordinary citizens rule is unlikely to achieve the public good, since ordinary citizens lack both the necessary knowledge and the necessary virtue. However, even advocates of democracy sometimes argue that no process is sufficient to ensure that the public good the public interest, the good of all, etc. will be achieved.

— Democracy and Its Critics knowledge

Inevitably, whenever democratic ideas are applied to the real world, actual democracy falls significantly short of ideal standards.

— Democracy and Its Critics world

Finally, then, what can we reasonably conclude as to the limits and possibilities of democratization, particularly in a world that does not stand still, where the limits and possibilities may be changing as profoundly as they did when the nation-state supersedes the city-state as the locus of democracy? And what about the nondemocratic governments that now prevail and may continue to prevail in a majority of countries of the world?

— Democracy and Its Critics art

A political order that met the four criteria described in the last chapter would be fully democratic in relation to its demos. But the demos might include all the members or range downward to an infinitesimally small proportion of them. In the extreme case, would we want to say the political order was a democracy? If not, what requirements can we lay down, and how would we justify them? The problem is difficult, and democratic theory and ideas have by no means provided a satisfactory solution. The problem is, in fact, twofold. 1. The problem of inclusion: What persons have a rightful claim to be included in the demos? 2. The scope of its authority: What rightful limits are there on the control of a demos? Is alienation over morally permissible?

— Democracy and Its Critics war

Locke and Rousseau appear to have advanced two different principles on which a claim to citizenship might be grounded. One is explicit, categorical, and universal, the other is implicit, contingent, and limiting: Categorical Principle: Every person subject to a government and its laws has an unqualified right to be a member of the demos i.e., a citizen. Contingent Principle: Only persons who are qualified to govern, but all such persons, should be members of the demos i.e., citizens.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

The only defensible ground on which to exclude children from the demos is that they are not yet fully qualified. the need to exclude children on this ground was of course perfectly obvious to early democratic theorists.The example of children is sufficient to show that the criterion of competence cannot reasonably be evaded, that any reasonable bounding of a demos must, by excluding children, necessarily exclude a large body of persons subject to the laws, and that any assertion of a universal right of all persons to membership is a demos cannot be sustained. It might be argued, however, that children constitute a comparatively well-defined and unique exception. Thus, once a distinction is allowed between children and adults, all adults subject to the laws must be included.

— Democracy and Its Critics children

The categorical principle might then be restated as follows: Modified Categorical Principle: Every adult subject to a government and its laws must be presumed to be qualified as, and has an unqualified right to be a member of the demos. There are, however, at least two sources of difficulty with the modified categorical principle. First, the boundary between childhood and adulthood presents some difficulty.Thus the modified categorical principle runs the risk of circularity by defining adults as persons who are presumed to be qualified to govern. A second source of difficulty with the modified principle is caused by the presence in a country of foreigners who might be adult by any reasonable standards, who are subject to the laws of the country in which they temporarily reside, but who are not thereby qualified to participate in governing.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

Schumpeters solution to the problem of composition of the demos is unacceptable, because it effectively erases the distinction between democracy and a nondemocratic order dominated by a collegial elite.

— Democracy and Its Critics democracy

A categorical principle of inclusion that overrides the need for a judgment is to competence is also unacceptable, for it is rendered untenable by such cases as children, feeble-minded persons, and foreigners of temporary residence, Insofar as Locke and Rousseau advanced a categorical principle, their defense of it is unconvincing., However, evidence suggests that they recognized these objections and never intended their argument to be taken as a rejection of the priority of a criterion of competence.

— Democracy and Its Critics children

Because a judgment on competence is contingent on weighing evidence and making inferences as to the intellectual and moral qualifications of specific categories of persons, a decision based on competence is inherently open to question. To be sure, a reasonable argument may be presented in behalf of a particular judgment as to the proper boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. But the exact location of any boundary is necessarily a highly debatable judgment, and from Aristotle onward the practical judgments of political philosophers have tended to reflect the prejudices of their times.

— Democracy and Its Critics war

In adopting the Strong Principle of Equality, we have already takes considerations like these into account. That principle, and the assumptions from which it is derived, provide reasonable grounds for adopting a criterion that approaches universality among adults. It is not only very much less arbitrary than Schumpeters solution but far more inclusive than the restricted demos that was accepted, implicitly or explicitly, in the classical polis and by Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, or Mill. The fifth and final criterion for the democratic process is, then, as follows: The demos must include all adult members of the association except transients and persons proved to be mentally defective.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

A political process that meets only the first two criteria, I have suggested, might be regarded as procedurally democratic in a narrow sense. In contrast, one that also meets the criterion of enlightened understanding can be regarded as fully democratic with respect to an agenda and in relation to a demos. At a still higher threshold, a process that in addition provides for final control of the agenda by its demos is fully democratic in relation to its demos. But only if the demos were inclusive enough to meet the fifth criterion could we describe the process of decisionmaking as fully democratic.

— Democracy and Its Critics light

Now I take it for granted that, in the real world, no system will fully meet the criteria for a democratic process.

— Democracy and Its Critics world

The flaws in majority rule pointed out by Critic do great damage to the contention of majoritarians that the democratic process necessarily requires majority rule in all collective decisions. However, from the unassailable proposition that majority rule is imperfect—perhaps indeed highly imperfect—we cannot move directly to the conclusion that it should be replaced by an alternative rule for making collecting decisions. Before arriving at that conclusion, we would want to know whether a generally superior alternative can be found. As we shall see, the alternatives to majority rule are also deeply flawed.

— Democracy and Its Critics age

A possible defect in almost any process for making decisions is that it may fail to achieve desirable results. Even a just process might sometimes produce an unjust outcome. A process might in principle meet all the requirements set out in the last chapters as fully as may be humanly possible. Yet might it not in some circumstances lead to morally undesirable results? The possibility suggests two fundamental objections to the democratic process. 1 It may do harm. 2 It may fail to achieve the common good.

— Democracy and Its Critics time

Critic: But you do admit that the democratic process hardly exhausts all claims to substantive justice. As you just said, there are other claims, too. If so, isnt it perfectly reasonable to ask that these claims be protected in some way from being violated by decisions made through the democratic process? Advocate: Whether its reasonable to ask for limitations on the democratic process depends on whether you can supply an alternative. That points to a third mistake. Unless you can specify a feasible alternative process that is more likely to produce just outcomes it is wrong to contend that a process for making collective decisions is defective solely because it may lead to unjust outcomes.

— Democracy and Its Critics justice

The supposed failure of the democratic process to guarantee desirable substantive outcomes is in important respects spurious. We need to reject, as Advocate does, the familiar contrast between substance and process. For integral to the democratic process are substantive rights, goods, and interests that are often mistakenly thought to be threatened by it.

— Democracy and Its Critics failure

Viewed in this way the democratic process endows citizens with an extensive array of rights, liberties, and resources sufficient to permit hem to participate fully, as equal citizens, in the making of all the collective decisions by which they are bound. If adult persons must participate in collective decisions in order to protect their personal interests, including their interest as members of a community, to develop their human capacities, and to act as self-determining, morally responsible beings, then the democratic process is necessary to these ends as well. Seen in this light, the democratic process is not only essential to one of the most important of all political goods—the right of people to govern themselves—but itself a rich bundle of substantive goods.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

A persons interest or good is whatever that person would choose with fullest attainable understanding of the experience resulting from that choice and its most relevant alternatives.

— Democracy and Its Critics understanding

It is misleading to suggest that there is one universally best solution to the problem of how best to protect fundamental rights and interests in a polyarchy.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

To the extent that a people is deprived of the opportunity to act autonomously and is governed by guardians, it is less likely to develop a sense of responsibility for its collective actions. To the extent that it is autonomous, then it may sometimes err and act unjustly. The democratic process is a gamble on the possibilities that a people, in acting autonomously, will learn how to act rightly.

— Democracy and Its Critics time

When one begins to search for general solutions, ones doubts about their utility are likely to grow stronger.

— Democracy and Its Critics doubt

Like the majority principle, the democratic process presupposes a proper unit. The criteria of the democratic process presuppose the rightfulness of the unit itself.

— Democracy and Its Critics self

In the real world, then, answers to the question, what constitutes a people for democratic purposes? are far more likely to come from political action and conflict, which will often be accompanied by violence and coercion, than from reasoned inferences from democratic principles and practices. For as we have seen, in solving this particular problem democratic theory cannot take us very far. Democratic ideas, as I have said, do not yield a definitive answer. They presuppose that one has somehow been supplied, or will be supplied, by history and politics.

— Democracy and Its Critics politics

Polyarchy is a political order distinguished at the most general level by two broad characteristics: Citizenship is extended to a relatively high proportion of adults, and the rights of citizenship include the opportunity to oppose and vote out the highest officials in the government. The first characteristic distinguishes polyarchy from more exclusive systems of rule in which, though opposition is permitted, governments and their legal oppositions are restricted to a small group, as was the case in Britain, Belgium, Italy, and other countries before mass suffrage. The second characteristic distinguishes polyarchy from regimes in which, though most adults are citizens, citizenship does not include the right to oppose and vote out the government, as in modern authoritarian regimes.

— Democracy and Its Critics men

A country is very likely to develop and sustain the institutions of polyarchy • if the means of violent coercion are dispersed or neutralized; • if it possesses an MDP society; • if it is culturally homogeneous, or if it is heterogeneous, is not segmented into strong and distinctive subcultures, or, if it is so segmented, its leaders have succeded in creating a consociational arrangement for managing subcultural conflicts; • if it possesses a political culture and beliefs, particularly among political activists, that support the institutions of polyarchy; • and if it is not subject to intervention by a foreign power hostile to polyarchy.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

Even if we grant that political parties are oligarchical, it does not follow that competing political parties necessarily produce an oligarchical political system.

— Democracy and Its Critics art

By asserting the existence of a dominant minority, these theories divert us from a realistic assessment of the true limits and potentialities of democracy in the modern world. Either they offer ill-founded hope for an apocalyptic revolutionary transformation that will lead us into the promised land of perfect freedom, self-realization, and full acceptance of the equal worth of all human beings; or else they offer us no hope at all and counsel us, directly or by implication, to give up the ancient vision of a society in which the citizens, possessing all the resources and institutions necessary to democracy, govern themselves as free and equal citizens.

— Democracy and Its Critics hope

Insofar as the idea and practice of democracy are justified by the values of freedom, human development, and the protection and advancement of shared human interests, the idea and practice of democracy also presuppose three kinds of equality: the intrinsic moral equality of all persons; the equality expressed by the presumption that adult persons are entitled to personal autonomy in determining what is best for themselves, and following from these, political equality among citizens, as this is defined by the criteria for the democratic process.

— Democracy and Its Critics freedom

Whatever form it takes, the democracy of our successors will not and cannot be the democracy of our predecessors. Nor should it be.

— Democracy and Its Critics success

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