Democracy For Beginners

Robert Cavalier, Reuben Negrón

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781934389362
• eBook ISBN: 9781939994042
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

With all the talk about "democracy" these days, it's surprising how little time is spent concentrating on the concept of democracy itself, its history and justification as a form of political governance. Democracy for Beginners looks at democracy's rich evolution in its varied forms, and at some of the challenges democracies face today.Beginning with the rise of democracy in fifth-century Athens and ending with an exploration of what the future might hold — for example the notion of "e-democracy"—Democracy for Beginners is an important resource for understanding the foundation on which our country stands. Readers will become familiar with ideas advanced by democracy's advocates and architects, and by its critics, from Plato to contemporary social choice theoreticians.Democracy for Beginners is the perfect introduction to the United States of America's founding principles.

Themes from the British Utilitarians

This tension between modern views and ancient values was addressed from another angle in the legislative writings of the 19th century British utilitarians. Seeking to overcome the debates and subtleties of many moral philosophers, the utilitarians placed an emphasis on weighing the consequences of an action or policy on the amount of pleasures or pains brought about by those consequences.

This formed the basis of the Principle of Utility which noted that those actions or policies that brought about more good (pleasure/happiness) or less evil (pain/unhappiness) are to be approved on a somewhat objective basis.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) applied this principle more broadly to democratic theory.

For Bentham, the institution of democracy provides a balance between the public and its politicians by forcing the self-love of the legislator to heed the interests of his constituency. In this, Bentham was following an earlier writer, Beccaria: “the legislator…erects his edifice on the foundation of self-love, and contrives, that the interests of the public shall be the interest of each individual.” All very modern, this.

Here are some quotes from Bentham’s reflection on democracy: “To render the conduct of rulers conducive to the maximization of happiness, it is not less necessary to employ, in their case, the instrument of coercion that in the case of the rulees…“ (Constitutional Code). To insure that such coercion occurs, “two words, viz. democratical ascendancy, will, in principle, suffice…“ (Plan for Parliamentary Reform).

What does this mean? It means that, say, a person on City Council needs to ensure that he or she is attending to the needs of the constituents. If he or she doesn’t meet these needs, forget about getting elected again. This, in turn, will certainly dash any chances of running for Mayor (the ‘democratical ascendancy’ that all politicians seek).

And how can it be that the people (the constituents) know what is best? Well, as Benthan famously said:

“It is not every man that can make a shoe; but when a shoe is made everyman may tell whether it fits him without difficulty. Every man cannot be a shoemaker but any man may choose his own shoemaker.”

If the trash is suddenly picked up every two weeks instead of every week, you can smell the difference. You don’t have to be an expert in public works to know that something is wrong with this policy.

Bentham saw how this state of affairs could be conveyed to the councilman:

“The Public Opinion Tribunal is to the Supreme Constitutive what the judiciary is to the Supreme Legislative…. Public Opinion may be considered as a system of law, emanating from the body of the people…. To the pernicious exercise of the power of government it is the only check; to the beneficial, an indispensable supplement.”

—Constitutional Code

So here we once again see how a modern idea of democracy functions. And we have a glimpse of the role that modern pubic opinion might play in the democratic process.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a utilitarian like Bentham. But he expanded the notion of “happiness” to include those more subtle pleasures in life like the enjoyment of reading and listening to music (which are hard to quantify in terms of pluses and minuses—+ 1.4 for Bach, -2.7 for Bon Jovi?).

Like Bentham, he was concerned with improving society and is famous for his support of women’s rights.

In On Liberty (1859), he fought rigorously against restrictions of expression (in speech or action)—such censorship and censoring is counterproductive. It’s no longer just the tyranny of kings that one needed to watch out for, but the crowd itself—in its attitudes toward woman, homosexuality, different religions, and different peoples.

“Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them….”

As long as the thoughts and actions of an individual (e.g., a lesbian who writes books about being a lesbian or a Muslim who criticizes the Koran) do not directly harm others, society should exercise self-restraint. Democracies should tolerate life-experiments. Individuals can grow through this process (even changing their minds)

and others can come to understand—or argue with more awareness against—these choices and words.

Mill’s position has—along with Locke’s and the arguments of the Federalist Papers—become part of the expanding sphere of civil liberty.

Such freedom, Mill believed, encourages individuality and is an indispensable ingredient for human flourishing and social progress.

But for others, this freedom is a license to infest culture with corrupting ideas and beliefs (mostly dealing with sex and unusual behavior and strange ideas). This counts as a real threat in the minds of many and serves as a source of our culture wars, both nationally and globally.

In the 1830s a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), traveled to America to observe this new democracy and to compare it to the Europe he knew. He published his observations under the title Democracy in America.

“Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. I readily discovered the prodigious influence that this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society; it gives a peculiar direction to public opinion and a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to the governing authorities and peculiar habits to the governed.

“I soon perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less effect on civil society than on the government; it creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that this equality of condition is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.”

But de Tocqueville also anticipated the problem of “atomism,” of free and equal citizens isolated and socially weak. To address this, he noted the importance that Americans placed on all kinds of associations (Moose Lodges, bands, Knights of Columbus, charities, etc.). And he praised local autonomy such as could be found in the New England town meeting (which seemed to combine elements of ancient citizenship and modern individuality).

In the late 1800s another visitor to the United States, James Bryce (1838-1922), sought to update de Tocqueville’s observations in a series of volumes called The American Commonwealth (1888).

By now American politics had settled into more or less a two party system and this formed the basis for much activity at the local, state, and national levels. Bryce shrewdly noticed the growing role of public opinion taking hold in the United States (not unlike what Bentham had imagined):

“Behind and above [the Political Parties] stands the people. Public opinion, that is, the mind and conscience of the whole nation, is the opinion of persons who are included in the parties, for the parties taken together are the nation; and the parties, each claiming to be its true exponent, seek to use it for their purposes. Yet it stands above the parties, being cooler and larger minded than they are; it awes party leaders and holds in check party organizations. No one openly ventures to resist it. It determines the direction and the character of national policy. It is the product of a greater number of minds than in any other country, and it is more indisputably sovereign. It is the central point of the whole American polity.”

At times critical, at times supportive, Bryce’s work was admired by both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Born the same year de Tocqueville died, John Dewey (1859-1952) became known for his contributions to a philosophy of democracy, one based upon American Pragmatism. For pragmatists like Dewey, emerging social conditions require creative (useful/workable) responses.

Society is seen as dynamic, with new and novel problems constantly emerging.

“...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Understanding Democracy
• In the Beginning
• A Word About Virtue
• Islamic Perspectives
• Consequences of the Natural Law Theory of Aquinas
• Reformation
• Hobbes, Locke, and The Negative Liberal Tradition
• The American Revolt Against King George
• The Rights of Man
• Property and Commerce
• Writing the Constitution
• The Federalist Papers
• Original Intent?
• Themes of the Ancients and the Moderns
• Party Politics
• Themes from the British Utilitarians
• A Rational Foundation for Democracy
• The Concepts and Problems of Democracy
• Democracy As A Decision Procedure
• Social Choice Critiques of Democracy
• Political Frameworks: The Liberty/Equality Equation
• Political Frameworks: The Progressives
• Political Frameworks: The Libertarians
• Political Frameworks: The Communitarians
• Fact of Pluralism
• Two Models of Democracy: Thin and Strong
• The Market
• The Forum
• Jürgen Habermas
• “Open and Informed” Conversations
• Citizenship Theory
• Reflective Equilibrium
• Civic Virtues
• Strong Democracy and Citizen Forums
• Applying Deliberative Democracy
• Envisioning A Strong Democracy
• Combining Lukensmeyer and Fishkin
• Community Conversations: Bringing Deliberative Democracy to the Neighborhood
• E-Democracy: The Early Days
• E-Democracy Takes Hold
• Transnational Democracy
• Twenty Global Problems and Twenty Years to Solve Them…
• One Example: Climate Change
• Conclusion