Democracy and Its Critics

“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.”

“Citizens are more heterogeneous body than the Greeks thought desirable. In many countries, in fact they are extraordinarily diverse. […] These diversities inevitably disrupt the harmony envisioned in the Greek ideal; political conflict, not harmony, is the hallmark of the modern democratic state. […] Greek democracy was inherently limited to small-scale systems. … Consequently the Greeks were finally united not by themselves but by their conquerors, Sagarpur”

“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.”

“The transformation of democratic theory and practice that resulted from its union with representation has had profound consequences.[...] Modern democratic governments have not been created by philosophers or historians familiar with Greek democracy, the republican tradition, or the concept of representation. Whatever independent influence ideas like these may have had, and however complex the interplay of ideas and action may be, we know that democratic theories are not self-fulfilling.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The criteria for a democratic process, ... do not specify a decision rule.”

“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.”

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

“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?”

“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.”

“A person's 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“When one begins to search for general solutions, one's doubts about their utility are likely to grow stronger.”

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

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

“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.”

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