Democracy and Its Critics

"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."

"In the Social Contract (1762), Rousseau still clung to the older vision of a people wielding final control over the government of a state that was small enough in population and territory to enable all the citizens to gather together in order to exercise their sovereignty in a single popular assembly. Yet less than a century later the belief that the nation of the country was the "natural" unit of sovereign government was so completely taken for granted that in his Considerations on Representative Government John Stuart Mill, stating in a single sentence what to him and his readers could be taken as a self-evident truth, dismissed the conventional wisdom of over two thousand years by rejecting the assumption that self-government necessarily required a unit small enough for the whole body of citizens to assemble. Even Mill, however, failed to see fully how radically the great increase in scale would necessarily transform the institutions and practices of democracy. At least eight important consequences have followed from that epochal change in the locus of democracy. Taken together they set the modern democratic state in sharp contrast to the older ideals and practices of democratic and republican governments. As a result, this modern descendant of the democratic idea lives uneasily with ancestral memories that unceasingly evoke the mournful plaint that present practices have fallen far away from ancient ideals. (Never mind that ancient practices themselves hardly conformed to ancient ideals.)"

"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."

"More specifically, and giving greater content to these two general features, polyarchy is a political order distinguished by the presence of seven institutions, all of which must exist for a government to be classified as a polyarchy.1. Elected officials. Control over government decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials. 2. Free and fair elections. Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively uncommon. 3. Inclusive suffrage. Practically all adults have the right to vote in the election of officials. 4. Right to run for office. Practically all adults have the right to run for elective offices in the government, though age limits may be higher for holding office than for the suffrage. 5. Freedom of expression. Citizens have a right to express themselves without the danger of severe punishment on political matters broadly defined, including criticism of officials, the government, the regime, the socioeconomic order. and the prevailing ideology. 6. Alternative information. Citizens have a right to seek out alternative sources of information. Moreover, alternative sources of information exist and are protected by laws. 7. Associational autonomy. To achieve their various rights, including those listed above, citizens also have a right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent political parties and interest groups."

"James: What you and most other advocates of assembly democracy don't seem to recognize is how swiftly your own argument turns against you. I've already agreed that, as the number of citizens grows larger the opportunities for them to participate directly in decisions must necessarily decline. This is because, if nothing else has an upper limit, time does. Elementary arithmetic shows that if ten citizens were to meet for five hours-a long time for a meeting!-the maximum equal time each may be allowed for speaking, for parliamentary maneuvers, and for voting is thirty minutes. Small committees are the perfect example of participatory democracy, or at least they can be Even so, as most of us know from experience people who have other things to do would not look forward to attending many five-hour committee meetings a month. But you and Rousseau aren't talking about committees. You're talking about governing a state for heaven's sake! Jean-Jacques: Well, not only states. Other organizations and association might also be democratically run. James: That is so, of course. But let's go back to the arithmetic of participation. Once you go beyond the size of a committee, the opportunities for all the members to participate necessarily decline rapidly and drastically. Look. If the length of the assembly meeting remains at five hours and the number of citizens goes up to no more than a hundred, then each member has three minutes. At three hundred members you approach the vanishing point of one minute. The number of citizen. who were eligible to attend the assembly in classical Athens was twenty thousand. according to one common estimate; the best guesses of some scholars are two or three times that with just twenty thousand, if time were allocated equally in a five-hour meeting each citizen would have less than one second in which to participate! Jean-Jacques: Now, James, I can do arithmetic. I'm aware of calculations like these. But aren't they misleading? After all. not everyone wants to or has to participate by actually speaking. Among twenty thousand people there aren't twenty thousand different points of view on the issue, particularly if the citizens assemble after days, weeks, or months of discussions going on prior to the assembly. By the time of the meeting, probably only two or three alternatives will seem worth discussing seriously. So ten speakers, say, with about a half hour each to present their arguments, might well be plenty. Or let's say five speakers with a half hour each; that would leave time for brief questions and statements. Let's say five minutes for each intervention. That would allow thirty more people to participate. James: Bravo! Notice what you have just demonstrated. Thirty-five citizens actively participate in your assembly by speaking. What can the rest do? They can listen, think, and vote. So, in an assembly of twenty thousand, less than two-tenths of 1 present actively participate and more than 99.8 percent participate only by listening, thinking, and voting! A great privilege, your participatory democracy."

"Turning first to theory, it is hardly debatable that the likelihood of polyarchy in a country depends on the strength of certain conditions. The problem is to determine what those conditions are and how variations in them affect the likelihood of polyarchy. The most relevant patterns of development are these:1. In a country with a nonpolyarchal regime, favorable conditions develop and persist. Therefore it is highly likely that a transition to polyarchy occurs, that the institutions of polyarchy are consolidated, and that the polyarchal system persists that is, is stable. Thus, Given favorable conditions: then a nonpolyarchal regime (NPR) → stable polyarchy 2. In a country with a nonpolyarchal regime favorable conditions do not develop or are weak Therefore it is highly unlikely that a transition to polyarchy takes place and highly likely that a nonpolyarchal regime persists. Thus, Given unfavorable conditions: then NPR → NPR 3. In a country with a nonpolyarchal regime, the conditions are mixed or temporarily favorable. If under these conditions polyarchy develops, the likely possibilities are: 3.a. Polyarchy breaks down within a short time (less than twenty years), a transition to a nonpolyarchal regime occurs, and a nonpolyarchal regime persists: Given mixed or temporarily favorable conditions: then NPR → polyarchy → NPR 3.b. As in 3.a. except that the nonpolyarchal regime also breaks down, another transition to polyarchy occurs (redemocratization), polyarchy is consolidated and it persists: Given mixed or temporarily favorable conditions: then NPR → polyarchy → NPR → polyarchy 3.c. As in 3 b. except that polyarchy is not consolidated, and the system oscillates between polyarchy and nonpolyarchy: Given mixed or temporarily favorable conditions: then NPR → polyarchy → NPR → polyarchy → NPR → etc."

"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 succeeded 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."

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

"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."

"The discussion between Traditionalist, Modernist, and Pluralist breaks off, leaving us with three questions. First, in determining the common good, whose good ought to be taken into account? The answer, it should now be evident, is that in a collective decision the good of all persons significantly affected by the decision should be taken into account. Clearly, however, to apply that answer in practice is enormously complicated by the existence of pluralism within democratic countries, the existence of pluralism among democratic countries, and the existence of persons outside a democratic country who are seriously affected by decisions taken within the country. Second, how can the common good best be determined in collective decisions? Pluralism also compounds the difficulties of finding a satisfactory solution to this question. While we have concluded that the democratic process is best for arriving at binding collective decisions, a large political society (a country, to be more concrete) includes different associations and political units or types of units, each of which may lay a competing and conflicting claim that it is a proper democratic unit, and perhaps the only proper democratic unit, for making collective decisions on the matter in question. [...] Third, a question to which an answer has proved highly elusive: What is the substantive content of the common good? Once again, the search for an answer is complicated by the pluralism of modern democratic countries, where diversity sometimes appears to reduce common interests almost to the vanishing point or, Modernist might argue, to it. I want to show in the next chapter why in my view this answer, though tempting, is mistaken."

"The last chapter left us with three central questions: (1) In determining the common good, whose good ought to be taken into account? (2) How can it best be determined in collective decisions? (3) What, substantively speaking, is the common good? As to the first I argued that in a collective decision the good of all persons significantly affected by the decision should be taken into account. [...] As we haven seen throughout this and the preceding chapter, pluralism compounds the difficulties of finding a satisfactory solution to the second question because, among other things, it requires us to consider how we are to determine which unit (or type of unit) is proper for making democratic decisions. [...] The unit ought to govern itself by the democratic process. The unit ought also to be justifiable as a relatively autonomous democratic unit, in the sense that it satisfies the criteria for a democratic unit set out in chapter 14. As to the third question, it should now be evident that it seems to me misguided to search for the good exclusively in the outcomes of collective decisions and ignore the good that pertains to the arrangements by which they are reached."

"The criterion of enlightened understanding, I suggested, could now be interpreted to mean that persons who understand their interests in the sense just given possess an enlightened understanding of their interests. Following this line of thought, I now propose that an essential element in the meaning of the common good among the members of a group is what the members would choose if they possessed the fullest attainable understanding of the experience that would result from their choice and its most relevant alternatives. Because enlightened understanding as essential also to the meaning of the common good. Still further, the rights and opportunities of the democratic process are elements of the common good. Even more broadly, because the institutions of polyarchy are necessary in order to employ the democratic process on a large scale, in a unit as large as a country all the institutions of polyarchy should also be counted as elements of the common good."

"The democratic process, I have argued, is superior in at least three ways to other feasible ways by which people might be governed. First, it promotes freedom as no feasible alternative can; freedom in the form of individual and collective self-determination, in the degree of moral autonomy it encourages and allows, and in a broad range of other and more particular freedoms that are inherent in the democratic process, or are necessary prerequisites for its existence, or exist because people who support the idea and practice of the democratic process are, as a plain historical fact, also inclined to five generous support to other freedoms as well. Second, the democratic process promotes human development, not least in the capacity for exercising self-determination, moral autonomy, and responsibility for one's choices. Finally, it is the surest way (if by no means a perfect one) by which human beings can protect and advance the interests and goods they share with others."

"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."

"It would be a mistake, [...] to conclude that the economic order of democratic countries with MDP [modern, dynamic, pluralist] societies poses identical problems for democratization or requires identical solutions. Nonetheless, it is possible to suggest some common elements of a satisfactory solution."

"The theoretical vision of democracy focuses on men as citizens—more lately men and women as citizens. By contrast, the standard theoretical interpretation of the economy so rigorously extolled in classical and neoclassical economics focuses on men and women as producers and consumers of goods and services. To be sure, the democratic perspective cannot ignore the elementary fact these citizens are also producers and consumers; and implicitly or explicitly the standard economic perspective recognizes that producers and consumers exist in a political system of some kind, ideally perhaps as citizens in a democratic order. Yet each perspective gives central emphasis to one aspect rather than the other. [...] Thus are the first small seeds of discord between democracy and capitalism scattered by the winds of doctrine. What consumers are free to spend depends on their income, and if they are distributed unequally, then how can citizens be political equals? And if citizens cannot be political equals, how is democracy to exist? conversely, if democracy is to exist and citizens are to be political equals, then will democracy not require something other than a market-oriented, private enterprise economy, or at the very least a pretty drastic modification of it?"

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

"Dahl's theory leads to a way of reconciling a limited form of judi­cial guardianship with democracy, but it rejects any broad form of judicial policymaking. In this respect, Dahl's political theory provides a foundation for a theory of judicial review similar to that found in John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust, a work which Dahl himself cites. Judicial review is justified when it is properly used to maintain the democratic process; it is not justified as a substitute for a democratic policymaking process. Thus, giving the judiciary the authority to strike down laws that violate rights of free speech or free assembly does not necessarily contravene the democratic ideal. However, permitting unelected judges to make substantive policy decisions under the guise of constitutional or statutory interpretation clearly raises serious problems for democratic theory."

"My best, clearest, and most complete formulation is, I believe, in Democracy and Its Critics."

"Now my depression deepens much more than it ever did when reading Mill, for now we see one of the best minds in American political theory quite unwittingly confirming the worst things that have been said by critics of the kind of theory he practices."

"On reading Dahl's muted encomium to polyarchy, his term for representative government, I have the same sinking feeling. Although he begins his discussion of "the democratic process" with a reference to Aristotle, this firmly establishing his argument along the practical/utopian continuum, even the ideal "criteria for a democratic process" are already a long way from what the Greeks called "democracy," since they have nothing to do with direct popular rule, or popular participation of any kind. These criteria include, at a minimum, the opportunity for something called "effective participation," which is defined as the adequate and equal (my emphasis) opportunity for "expressing preferences," including "adequate and equal opportunities for placing questions on the agenda...," and voting equality. This is the democratic process "narrowly" construed. Later Dahl added to this narrow sense two broader criteria: first, what might be called equal opportunity for enlightenment, and second, "final control of the agenda by the demos." Aside from voting equality, none of this is remotely within the realm of possibility in polyarchies as presently constituted, and Dahl is aware of this. [...] The institutions of polyarchy (in a nutshell, competitive elections and civil liberties), he says later, should then be thought of as the necessary but not sufficient precondition to "the highest feasible attainment of the democratic process." However, nothing Dahl says thereafter leads the reader to think that the feasibility level of this attainment, in any degree, is very high."

"Here, clearly "democracy" has become some kind of flattering verbal gloss applied to every invocation of what began as the distinct conception, polyarchy; and to every mention of the actual nations that most of Dahl's readers live in. If you have followed Dahl's descent from the ideal to the real closely, you won't expect very much from that gloss; and you won't get it."

"To begin with, as the defense of "democracy" against "its critics" descends very quickly to the "real world" of polyarchy, the many contemporary critics of polyarchy who conceive themselves not as critics of democracy but as its advocates receive short shrift at best. Plato, Lenin, and MacIntyre are handily dispatched; Milbrand, Bachrach, Domhoff, Cohen and Rogers, Mansbridge, and Barber, to name just a few of polyarchy's well-known critics, are virtually ignored. Dahl's treatment of C. Wright Mills is indicative: once again an empirical democratic theorist trots out the criticism that "elite theorists" fail "to provide much evidence on the chain of control from these elites to the outcomes—for example, beliefs, agendas, or government decisions—over which they presumably dominate." If elites, whoever or whatever they are, do not dominate over beliefs, agendas, and government decisions, then why can't the criteria for the democratic process be met? If contribution to the agenda, for example, is random, then surely we have "equal opportunity;" that is what the phrase means. Contrarily, in the absence of equal opportunity what else have we but elite domination?"

"Traditionally, both critics and supporters of majority rule, from Madison to Marx, assumed that absolute majoritarianism inevitably meant domination of the well-to-do by the working class, or debtors, or the poor, or however the "bottom part" of society might be defined. But that is no longer the case. Generalized need has been replaced by marginalized need, and electorates as a whole, through their representatives, now seem to respond sluggishly or not at all to the needs of the marginalized. [...] In some polyarchies, then, unalloyed majoritarianism may well favor the needs of the well-to-do against those of the marginalized. Dahl ignores this difficulty. It is indicative that neither "race" nor "poverty" appears in his Index, nor anywhere in his text: this in 1989. "Pluralism" for him, as for empirical democratic theory generally, takes on an abstract quality, as when he makes it a condition of stable polyarchy that "the conflictive potentialities of subcultural pluralism (must be) maintained at tolerable levels." Tolerable for whom?"