Setting the rules of the game: philosophizing and making rules about democracy
Imagine being asked to act as a lawmaker and draft a constitution. You can determine the basic rules of how people live in a community. Whatever you decide will be entrenched in a binding legal document that is very difficult to change. You have the chance to create the rules of the game – the basic rules that would prevent all those things that you find unacceptable today.
No doubt, you would think of various individual, social, and civil rights to include in the constitution. But here comes the million-dollar question: Would you make this community a democracy? Most people living in a contemporary democratic society would hastily answer that yes – of course a just society should be a democracy! Is the answer as self-evident as the indignant reaction suggests? For better or for worse, it doesn’t seem so.
The historical debate over democracy
For one thing, for most of human history, democracy has not been the self-evident answer to the question of how to organize a community. We are used to thinking that democracy was born in ancient Athens and gradually revived in the 18th century. This means that for the vast majority of the past, the world was not organized democratically. Even worse, during those times, democracy was not held in high regard. It was associated with fears of anarchy, chaos, and social dissolution. The idea that not everyone is capable of making sound decisions and that some people should not be entrusted with political power has been prevalent for extremely long periods.
Even the much-lauded Athenian democracy excluded the majority of the population: not only slaves and women, but also people of foreign descent could not participate in the Athenian demos. Political membership was restricted to roughly 1/10th of the entire population. And even in that crippled form, the Athenian democracy was heavily criticized by many of the city’s prominent citizens as deeply flawed, allowing the easily manipulated masses to determine the community’s future. Plato himself was infamously anti-democratic and suggested that, ideally, communities should be ruled by philosopher-kings. The idea that communities should be ruled by enlightened leaders was shared by many.
The distrust of democracy went on for most of human history. Only very recently has the rule of the people become the prevailing political ideal. Nowadays, it’s easy to dismiss this past as affected by unenlightened, pre-modern thinking. Is it though? What about women’s voting rights? In Europe, which prides itself on its democratic tradition, women could not vote until the beginning of the 20th century – in the case of Switzerland, women did not get to vote in federal elections until 1971 (and in one canton’s elections, until 1991!). And what about colonization, with the political domination of European colonizers over the colonized people? In a line of argumentation reminiscent of the Platonic critique, the colonizing states claimed that non-whites were not mature enough for democratic self-rule. The western democratic states did not seem to believe that the people could rule themselves. A system of enlightened domination was broadly seen as justified.
Philosophical conflicts
So, for most of human history, democracy as we currently understand it wasn’t particularly popular. But the historical argument does not mean much by itself. No-one who believes in democracy would be swayed by the fact that in the past, people did not share this belief. It’s easy to counter that those people were wrong.
Much more important is the fact that democracy is not self-evident philosophically. A conscientious law-maker will not be deterred by the fact that some previous laws were different, and that past communities were mostly not democratic. After all, the need for new laws implies the necessity of change. However, we do expect lawmakers to take into account the anticipated impact of their legislation. What if we could reasonably expect that, in a community, the introduction of democracy would have grave destabilizing effects, generating violence and upheaval? What if we could safely predict that a democratic regime would systematically make bad decisions, significantly deteriorating the life of the people, while another system of governance would have a significantly better effect? And what if a community itself did not want to be ruled democratically, and preferred some other political system? What’s a lawmaker to do? If democracy is to be entrenched in constitutions, there should be some reasons – and these reasons should be strong enough to hold even in these hard cases.
Democracy as a means to an end
Unsurprisingly, philosophers have undertaken a defense of democracy – and aspired to guide conscientious lawmakers. Some of their arguments are instrumental: they suggest that democracy is a means to good ends. One such argument is that democracies tend to have more positive results than non-democracies. As the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has famously asserted, “No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.” Moreover, several indexes suggest a strong correlation between democracy and the protection of important individual rights, such as freedom from torture, freedom of expression, and the right to a fair trial. It makes sense: since democratic governments depend on the people for their re-election, they have an interest in keeping the people satisfied.
Another argument suggests that democracy leads to making better decisions. What is distinctive of democracy is that everyone has the opportunity to make their views known. There is a public debate, in which people exchange information and express their views. Everyone has a partial perspective of society, and everyone’s views are inescapably influenced by her own experiences and circumstances. In the context of the democratic debate, however, people can actually hear the views of others and the problems that they are facing. This leads to more informed and therefore better decisions.
The logic behind these instrumental arguments is simple. Conscientious lawmakers should opt for democracy, because democratic societies tend to be more just than non-democratic ones. Democracy helps protect individual rights and contributes to making better decisions, leaving everyone better off.
Democracy as a distinct good
Apart from being a means to good ends, democracy has also been defended in non-instrumental terms. One of the greatest achievements of humanity is the idea that all humans should be treated as free and equal persons. Democracy is regarded as realizing this claim of individuals to freedom and equality in the political realm. In democracy, no-one is expected to simply obey the rules of someone else. Everyone participates as an equal in the decision-making procedure, and everyone’s vote influences the end result. The rulers and the ruled are the same people.
This line of argumentation suggests that we should not only value democracy because it leads to good results. Democracy is also valuable because it realizes the freedom and equality of individuals, treating them as self-determining persons and not expecting them to live their lives according to rules made by someone else.
A question that’s still open
Should the conscientious law-maker, then, include democracy in the constitution? The arguments above provided some good reasons to think that they should. But the philosophical question persists. If we look at the instrumental argument closely enough, we can see that it doesn’t fully address the lawmaker’s concerns. What if we have reasons to believe that introducing democracy in a particular community will not lead to the protection of rights, or to better decisions? What if we have reasons to believe that, on the contrary, under specific circumstances, introducing democracy will leave everyone worse-off? In this case, the instrumental arguments do not have much to say in favor of democracy.
What about the argument for freedom and equality? Indeed, democracy contributes to freedom and equality, by promoting political equality and giving everyone a say in the decision-making. Still, other things are also needed to respect freedom and equality. Individuals have basic human needs that require satisfaction. Poverty, social discrimination, and marginalization all undermine the claims of individuals to freedom and equality. So does unequal access to rights and social provisions. The question that has been puzzling our law-maker is whether, in certain circumstances, when democracies make bad decisions – and it’s naïve to think that they never do – some alternative regime might be overall better. And even when that’s not the case, it may still be that the majority of the people in certain communities do not want to be ruled democratically. How to deal with this question? Should democracy be introduced when a political community does not want it? And when a democratic community no longer wants democratic rule, should democracy be replaced by another regime? Should democracies be allowed to democratically end themselves, or should their preservation be protected, even against the will of the people?
A question that at first sight seemed obvious becomes really complicated when you think about it more. Can it be just to impose democracy on a people that does not want it? And can it be just to simply abolish it, when it is not wanted? The riddle seems impossible to solve, and any conscientious law-maker would feel at a loss. It may be that there is no right answer, or that the answer cannot be determined in advance without taking into account the particular circumstances. But this is what constitutional rules are supposed to do. This is why their protection is so strong. And this is why it would be important to include democracy in a constitution: to grant it this special protection. So what should the law-maker do? Should democracy still be imposed by constitutional rules?
Law-making and philosophizing
At this point, you might protest that the question has been misleading all along. Democracy is not given to communities by some external law-maker. It is conquered by the people after long histories of struggles for political equality. And whatever philosophers may say for or against democracy, these struggles show that democracy is valuable for the people. Of course, if we asked some of them if they would still prefer democracy if they knew that it would lead to horrible results, we can assume that they would probably say no. But this seems to be beside the point. The point is that the people want democracy and they want democracy to work. That’s why they expect lawmakers to provide institutional protections for democracy. And that’s why people lacking political rights, or lacking the opportunity to exercise their political rights in a way that matters, struggle for democracy.
Philosophers like to play the role of imaginary law-makers. They try to understand which is the right way to institutionalize society; what is just and what is unjust; how the people should live. Doing that, they act a little bit like Plato’s philosopher-kings. And that has a positive impact. After all, people often ask themselves these questions. Reading the work of various philosophers can provide them with important insights on how to act. Reading philosophy also trains everyone in autonomous and critical thinking. The social value of philosophizing is irreplaceable.
The thought experiment about democracy, however, reminds us that intellectuals are often behind, and not ahead of, claims to social change and a better future. Philosophers have been questioning whether democracy is desirable at all times and why. The people have been asking for democracy – and have been protesting when the democratic systems that we currently have fail to realize a truly democratic society. So, probably, the thought experiment could serve to re-orient philosophers toward a different question: that of how to make democracy work.
