Democracy

Ross Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134790685
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Democracy surrounds us like the air we breath, and is normally taken very much for granted. Across the world democracy has become accepted as an unquestionably good thing. Yet upon further examination the merits of democracy are both paradoxical and problematic, and the treasured values of liberty and equality can be used to argue both for and against it.In the historical section of the book, Ross Harrison clearly traces the history of democracy by examining the works of, amongst others, Plato and Aristotle, Hegel and Marx. Informed by facts and detailed knowledge of these famous thinkers, Harrison provides a clear and cogent justification of democracy.

CHAPTER I
Self-rule

Philosophy tends to think about things which, otherwise, would seemto be so totally obvious that they were not worth thinking about. Given the manifest and pressing problems of life, to spend time deciding whether tables and chairs really exist or whether people have feelings can seemlike being trapped in the difficult and tedious business of trying to answer the questions of a small childwho should have gone home long ago. Showing how the answer can withstand full intellectual scrutiny is not easy; nevertheless the answers themselves seem to be totally obvious and generally agreed. We agree that there are tables, chairs and other people. Similarly, we agree that democracy is a good thing and that the political system inside which we currently operate is a democratic system. Democracy surrounds us like tables and chairs and the air we breathe, normally totally taken for granted. Right across the world, in obviously different political systems, the form of government is taken to be democratic and democracy is unquestionably taken to be a good thing. Except then as mere speculative play, further examination of democracy and of its value might seem to be idle or naive.

The very variety of systems that call themselves democratic, however, seems to raise a philosophical problem in the way that the existence of tables and chairs does not. Furthermore, in cases like democracy, what the term actually refers tomore obviously depends on whatwe think that thing to be than in cases of tables or stones. For, just as what people are actually doing depends in part on what they think they are doing, so, in part, which political system a group of people are actually in depends upon which system they think themselves to be in. Furthermore, what they think about it cannot just be told by examination of the word that they use; it also depends upon what sort of actions they think this word legitimates or makes possible as well as the reasons why they think that the system is of value. On the recent reunification of Germany a country which many thought not to be democratic, the DDR, disappeared. Yet this country had ‘democratic’ in its official name. Both it and the country it joined thought themselves to be democratic; yet theywere clearly quite different kinds of country. Both liberal and socialist systems use the same word, but in the different systems it legitimates or explains different types of behaviour. Hence it is not obvious that they are referring to the same thing by the same word.

The same word is used in these quite different systems and languages because, as a word, it has a long history. ‘Democracy’ is a Greek word meaning ‘rule by the people’. It is natural, therefore, to start an examination of democracy by starting with the Greeks. This, however, is not just because theword isGreek. Many scientific terms areGreek but this does notmean that a history of these sciences should startwith the Greeks. The importance of the Greeks is that, as well as the word, the Greeks invented the idea and the practice. Some of the ancient Greeks for some of the time actually lived in a political system which both they and independent commentators described as democratic. This last fact should cause more surprise and commentary than it normally does, living as we do in a world in which democracy surrounds us like air. For, after the Greeks, the practice of democracymore or less vanishes for twomillennia. In the intervening period, generally speaking, societies were not democratic, did not think themselves to be democratic, and, in so far as they thought about democracy at all, thought democracy to be a thoroughly disreputable thing. So, once we introduce an historical dimension, the apparent agreement between widely spatially and culturally separated systems vanishes. It is only in the twentieth century and some fewprevious isolated political societies that democracy has been thought to be a good thing and people have thought, often in a completely unquestioning manner, that they lived in societies which could be called democratic.

With the introduction of an historical dimension and the disappearance of agreement, comes also the disappearance of obviousness. Democracy can no longer be assumed to be like air when it is found to be much more temporally specific or relative than air. The question inevitably arises whether democracy is after all such a good thing. This question reinforces the question of whether the apparent agreement about democracy between different political systems might be more than superficial. Once we consider these two questions, we have also to consider the question ofwhat exactly democracy is. However tedious or idle intellectually puzzling questions about tables, chairs and other minds might be, these questions about democracy have a real grip. If we try to answer them by looking at what people have formerly thought, we find thatmost people have not only disagreed with each other but also with what we presently think. They cannot all be right; and if we decided (democratically) by taking the majority view, we would lose the vote. So the problem of the value and meaning of democracy, once raised, cannot just be brushed aside. In the rest of this chapter, as a prolegomenon to the detailed historical and analytical treatment which follows, a first attempt will bemade to sketch, in a highly outline fashion, some of the problems.

Let us start with a direct analysis of the possible meaning of the word ‘democracy’ itself. As mentioned, the word is originally Greek, which explains why it appears in the same form in so many different languages. The meaning of it in Greek is that the people (the demos) rule; it is rule by the people. Now ruling is an activity whichmust have an object as well as a subject. If the people rule, theymust rule something. Yet the only possible object of rule is the people who form the state or political system being considered. Hence the rulers in a democracy, the people, are also the ruled, namely the people again. So the meaning of the word ‘democracy’ can be given most perspicuously as being that the people rule themselves. This gives three terms to look at: the people, ruling and themselves (that is, the people again under another description). Each termhas problems in itself, and the combination of the three generates some more.

To begin with the people or the demos. This has an ambiguity, more pronounced in Greek than in English, between meaning the people as a whole (that is, everyone) and the most common basic group of the people (that is the normal person or, aswe say in English, the common people). In Greek this meant that commentators and objectors to the system could move easily from a description of it as rule by the people as a whole to rule by a particular group of the people, namely the poor, low, vulgar mass of the people. Democracy could then be understood as the rule of this vulgar mass over the beautiful, rich and good. As a specific problem in Greek thought, this will be discussed in the next chapter. However, it relates to a more general problem in democratic theory: the domination of the minority by themajority.

The ambiguity of ‘demos’ sounds a warning that a phrase like ‘the people’ does not necessarily and uncontentiously refer to everyone. In fact, even if ‘the people’ is taken to refer to everyone, there still remains a problem about which set of people is meant. For as long as there is more than one state in the world, what ismeant by the people being the rulers of a state is not that all the people in the world are but, rather, the people which belong to that particular state. This means that any theory, or state, has to lay down some criterion of membership so that it can distinguish between the people who do, and the people who do not, belong to that state. Furthermore, this cannot just be the simple criterion of all the people who happen at any one time to be in the geographical area controlled by the state. All states must be able to allow for visitors, so that it can recognise itsmembers even when they are abroad and recognise that some people in its area are not fullmembers. This part of the general problemof what ‘the people’ refers to is not so easily soluble as might appear at first sight. However, in what follows it will be ignored and ‘the people’ taken tomean ‘the people belonging to the particular state being discussed’.

Another dimension of the problem of what the people refers to arises once we considerwhat is involved in ruling. Suppose we think of ruling as being an exercise of power. For someone to exercise power is for their wishes to be effective. So someone is a ruler if it is the case that what happens happens because it is accordance with their wishes. If, then, the people rule, this means that the people’s wishes are effective. However there are two ways in which we can understand the idea of someone’s wishes being effective. In the first, the expression of the wish causes its fulfilment. In the second what is wanted happens, but its happening does not depend upon the expression of the wish. If the people rule in the first sense, then what happens happens as a result of their wishes being expressed. So we need a mechanism, such as voting, which links the expression of the wishes with the result. If the people rule in the second sense, what happens must still happen because it is in accord with their wishes; but themechanismwhich achieves this need not depend upon their wishes being expressed; for what happens does not have to be caused by the wishes being expressed. On this second account the people rule, or have power, if they get what they want; even if the reason why they get what theywant is because of the benevolentmanagement of a third party.

In the first of these options, which is the one most familiar to us, the people rule if there is a mechanism connecting the expression of their wishes withwhat actually happens. The normal suchmechanismis voting. Yet, if we understand the people’s wishes being effective in this familiar way, we again run into problems about what ismeant by ‘the people’. The natural thing is to assume that ‘the people’means all the people; so that the people’s wishes are effective if they all participate in the mechanism; that is, if they all vote. However, two problems immediately arise. First, if people are offered any kind of free choice about voting, they will normally not all vote. Second, and independently, those that vote will normally not all vote the same way. It is only if absolutely everyone votes and if absolutely everyone agrees that there are no problems. Then, assuming that their expressed wishes determine what actually happens, the people can be said to rule because, for each of them, thewish they have is effective; hence, for all of them, their wishes are effective. Yet for everyone to vote and everyone to agree is obviously a highly abnormal case. It is also an uninteresting one. All the real questions of power and government start when people are being forced to do thingswhich they otherwise would not wish to do. Once these questions arise, as happens if there is disagreement and themajority view is followed, then it is problematic how, even if they all vote, it can be said that the people rule. For if ‘the people’means all the people, and if thewishes of amajority of the people are the oneswhich are effective, then it is not the case that the wishes of all the people are effective, for the wishes of the minority are not.

If, in the normal case of majority decision just described it is nevertheless said that the result is the wish of the people (as it usually is), then the reference of the termthe people is starting to depart frombeing all the people. Or, if it is still held that it refers to all the people, then the meaning of ruling is no longer that an expressed wish is effective because it has been expressed. A quite different idea is starting to emerge whereby thewishesof the people as awhole are represented by the expressed wishes of another group, which is smaller than the people as a whole. This group is is the majority. The wishes of the majority are now taken to express the wishes of the people as a whole. Yet this seems to be obviously problematic or paradoxical. Theminority explicitly disagreewith the decision. It seems perverse, therefore, to say that their wishes are being represented and are effective, and yet theminority are part of the people as a whole.

The same problemcomes up, if in a less severe or obviously paradoxical form, if not all the people vote. For the decision which results, even if it is effective, only represents the wishes of those who vote. The non-voters, although part of the people, do not have wishes which are connected with the result. So, again, a part of the people (the voters) represent the whole. So, again, it stretches themeaning of the termto describe the result as being a decision by the people. Of course, what happensmay be exactly what the non-voters want; and, indeed, knowledge that this will happen may be exactly why they don’t vote. However, if we take their getting what they want as a reason for saying that the non-voters’ wishes are nevertheless effective, then we are shifting to the second way of understanding the idea of being effective, whereby a wish is effective if the wished-for result occurs independently of the wish being expressed.

On the normal way of understanding power and effective wishes, therefore, there are problems in saying that the people rule, even if there is a voting procedure and absolutely everyone is entitled to vote. For unless they actually do all vote and do all agree, then the wishes expressed by some of these votes are going to be effective in a way that other wishes (expressed or not expressed) are not; and if the result is still taken to be a decision of the people, then ‘the people’ is being understood in a different, or representative, sensewhereby one part of the people is taken to represent the people as a whole. The decisions of this group are being taken to be the decisions of the people as a whole.

There is a way of putting this whichmaymake it seemless paradoxical. This is to query the original assumption that ‘the people’ naturally refers to all of the people, as if it was just a collective noun which picked out a group of similar individuals as the expressions ‘the animals’ or ‘the petitioners’ might. Rather, it might be supposed, ‘the people’ should be taken as a singular term referring to a special kind of individual or entity, which was not to be identified with a collection of people. This special individual, the-people-as-a-whole (or, perhaps, the spirit of the people) makes decisions when certain actual people do certain things, such as vote in elections or whatever. Another advantage of this way of looking at it is that it alleviates the problem of reflexivity which seems to arise once we consider as well the third term, the ‘themselves’ in the expression ‘the people rule themselves’. Forwe could take the people as ruler as being this super-special entity and the people as ruled as being the collection of all the individual people. Since these are not identical, there is no longer a problem in how it could be meaningful to say that one of them rules the other. Such a special entity also alleviates the problem of partiality which seems to arise when a part of the people (themajority or the voters) decide for the whole. So, if ‘the people’ is thought of as some kind of super-singular person, then many problems are eased.

However, this easing is only at the cost of creating a cloud of new problems. For nowwe have a newtype of entity, whose nature, desires and conditions of identity are all deeply uncertain. There is a metaphysical problem about whether such a thing could exist at all. There are practical problems about how exactly its will should be determined (which we would have to do if the point of democracy is to put the will of this strange entity into effect). Furthermore, even ifwe introduce this newspecial kind of entity, we are still faced with problems of representation; that is, ofwhy the desires or decisions of some actual people should be taken to be the decisions of ‘the people’. For there still remains the question of which actual decisions of which actual people are going to be taken to represent or constitute the decisions of the super-entity.

Most decisionsmade in any country of familiar ormodern size can only be taken by relatively fewpeople, and these decisions, if they are decisions of government, will then be taken to apply to the actions of all the people in the state. Everyone, that is, will bemade to obey them. If these decisions are nevertheless taken to be decisions which are made democratically, or in some sense by the people, then clearly some doctrine of representation has to be relied on whereby the decisions of a few people can be taken to represent the decisions of the whole. So, if modern states are democracies at all, then they are clearly representative democracies; and one problem to be considered is whether this expression is not a contradiction in terms, so that once representation starts, democracy ends. However, it follows from the preceding paragraphs that representation is not just a problemfor large or modern democracies. There is a problem of representation however small or direct the political unit is. For as soon as people disagree, something like representation will be required.

Solutions to this problemhave to explainhowthedecisions of one group of people (such as the majority) may be taken to be decisionsmade by the people as a whole. One way to attempt a solution is to weaken the connection between the actually expressed wish of someone and the idea that these wishes are (in some sense) effective in decision. One way that this could be done is by moving to the second way described above of understanding power, or of wishes being effective; whereby someone’s wishes are effective if they get what they want, whether or not this is brought about by the direct expression of the wish. On this way of understanding power, there will be democracy, or rule by the people, if the rule gives the people what they want. The problem of representation will then be alleviated, because any intervening body (themajority, a particular political party or whatever) could make the actual or effective decisions, providing only that these decisions led to the people getting what they wanted. The representatives would then be those people, or that group, which had sufficient knowledge about what the people wanted.

This solution, however, has obvious problems. There is the problem of whether getting what you want in thismanner is really an exemplification of power (or ruling). There is also still the problem of what happens when the people’s wishes diverge. For, however benevolent the intervening body might be, if people’s desires diverge, it will not be possible to satisfy them all. The benevolent body will have to choose to satisfy some rather than others. This means that the ones not satisfied do not get what they want, and hence do not rule, even in this second way of understanding power. So the same problem recurs.

On this second way of understanding power there is a natural, if somewhat drastic, solution to this problem of divergence of desire. This is to adopt an account of desire whereby everyone comes out as really having the same desires. Some theory of human nature is relied on to tell what people (qua people) are like; that is, what they really desire. These real desires, which are part of human nature as such, will diverge in particular cases from the expressed or felt desires. This, however, is no longer a problem; nor is the corresponding diversity of apparent desires. For these conflicts are only in, or among, the apparent desires. The real desires can be taken to be the same for everyone. Hence they do not conflict. Hence, if the intervening benevolent entity knows what these real desires are, it can arrange for these desires to be satisfied. Hence everyone will be satisfied, or getwhat they (really) want. Hence all the people will have power (in the second sense). Furthermore, if the benevolent entity knows better what these real desires are than individual people taken at random, then there is every reason for putting decisions of thebenevolententity into effect rather than the expressed wishes of the people. For if people do not know what they really want, then to follow their expressed wishes would not be to satisfy their real desires. Hence, the representative status of the intervening body would be fully justified and the worstmethod to rely on if one wants to be fully democratic (to give the people power or make their wishes effective) is elections.

Starting, therefore, from a position in which elections can seemto be the paradigmatic expression of democracy, we can reach a position in which elections are incompatible with democracy. This goes some way towards explaining the great variety of systems, noted at the beginning, all of which describe themselves as being democratic. It is also something that will emerge whenwe examine the history of democratic theory in the first part of this book. For this history can be seen as falling into two general traditions which differ on democracy as much as they differ on various associated notions, such as freedom. In oneof these traditions, which could be called the classic liberal tradition fromHobbes and Locke to Rawls and Nozick, people are the best judges of their own wants. They are free when these wants are realised. Freedom is something which individuals can ideally have on their own, and is only limited by others and the state. The wants of different people are varied and incompatible. So the state has the role of holding the ring between these incompatible desires; its main task is, as far as possible, not to get in the way of the realisation of these preexisting wishes. This tradition stresses voting, and elections are taken to be one way of holding the ring.

In the other tradition, by contrast, which links Rousseau (on one way of looking at him) to Hegel, Marx and the later idealists, wants are not just taken as given by expressed desires. People may be mistaken about their real interests. Freedom consists not in the arbitrary play of desire but in achieving what is really wanted....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface, Principally on History
• Chapter I: Self-rule
• Chapter II: The Greeks
• Chapter III: The Negative Liberal Tradition: Hobbes and Locke
• Chapter IV: Rousseau
• Chapter V: Revolutions, Liberty and Law
• Chapter VI: Benthamand the Mills
• Chapter VII: Reason in History: Hegel and Marx
• Chapter VIII: Foundations
• Chapter IX: Knowledge
• Chapter X: Autonomy
• Chapter XI: Equality
• Chapter XII: Threading some Paradoxes
• Chapter XIII: An Impartial Conclusion
• Notes