Normative Democratic Theory Research Paper

1. Foundational Questions

To fix ideas, the term ‘democracy’ refers very generally to a method of group decision making characterized by a kind of equality of input among the participants. That equality may be the mere formal equality of one person, one vote in an election for representatives to an assembly, or it may be more robust, including equality in the processes of deliberation and coalition building. ‘Democracy’ may refer to any of these political arrangements. Normative democratic theorists attempt to determine which one of these kinds of arrangements is desirable, ethically speaking, and in what contexts. For instance, Joseph Schumpeter (1956) argues, with some force, that the first highly formal kind of democracy is highly desirable while the second is dangerous. On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1967) is apt to argue that the first kind of democracy is akin to slavery while only robustly egalitarian democracies have political legitimacy. To evaluate their arguments we must decide on the merits of the different principles and conceptions of humanity and society from which they proceed.

2. The Justification Of Democracy

We can evaluate democracy ethically along at least two different dimensions. We can evaluate a group decision-making method in terms of the outcomes of using it and compare the values of those outcomes with those of other possible methods of political decision making. We can also evaluate democracy in terms of qualities that are inherent in the method itself. We can ask whether there is something inherently fair about making democratic decisions on matters on which people disagree.

3. Instrumental Values

The instrumental values often attributed to democracy can be broadly classed into two categories: the quality of the resulting legislation and the impact of democracy on the characters of the participants. John Stuart Mill (1991) argued that democratic ways of deciding tend to be superior to non-democratic ways on account of the fact that they produce superior legislation in three distinct ways. Strategically, democracy is thought to produce superior outcomes to other forms of rule just because it forces decision-makers to take into account the interests, rights and opinions of most people in society. Since democracy gives some political power to each, more people are taken into account than under aristocracy or monarchy.

Epistemologically, democracy is thought to be the best decision-making method on the grounds that it is generally more reliable in helping participants discover the right decisions. Since democracy brings a lot of people into the process of decision making, it can take advantage of many sources of information and critical assessment of laws and policies. Democratic decision making tends to be more informed than other forms about the interests of citizens and the causal mechanisms necessary to advance those interests. Furthermore, the broad-based discussion typical of democracy enhances the critical assessment of the different moral ideas that guide decision makers.

Regarding its effects on character, many have noted with Mill and Rousseau that democracy tends to make people stand up for themselves more because it makes collective decisions depend on them more than monarchy or aristocracy do. Hence, in democratic societies individuals are encouraged to be more autonomous. In addition, democracy tends to get people to think carefully and rationally more than other forms of rule because it makes a difference whether they do or not. Finally, some have argued that democracy tends to enhance the moral qualities of citizens. When they participate in making decisions, they have to listen to others, they are called upon to justify themselves to others and they are forced to think in part in terms of the interests of others. Some have argued that when people find themselves in this kind of circumstance, they come genuinely to think in terms of the common good and justice. Hence some have argued that democratic processes tend to enhance the autonomy, rationality, and morality of participants. Since these beneficial effects are thought to be worth-while in themselves, they count in favor of democracy and against other forms of rule.

Some argue in addition that the above effects on character also tend to enhance the quality of legislation. A society of rational, autonomous, and moral decision makers is more likely to produce good legislation than a society ruled by a self-centered person or small group of persons who rule over slavish and unreflective subjects.

More detailed knowledge of the effects of political institutions can be used to discriminate in favor of particular kinds of democratic institutions or modifications of them. For instance, in the United States, James Madison (1788) argued in favor of a fairly strong federal government on the grounds that local governments are more likely to be oppressive to minorities. Of course, the soundness of any of the above arguments depends on the truth or validity of the associated substantive views about justice and the common good as well as a causal theory of the consequences of different institutions.

It is also the case that many theorists argue against any kind of democracy on instrumental grounds. Hobbes (1968) argues that democratic institutions are inferior to monarchical government on the grounds that they are more likely to breed destabilizing dissension among subjects. Plato (1974) argues that democracy is inferior to various forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and even oligarchy on the grounds that democracy tends to undermine the expertise necessary to properly governed societies. Some recent thinkers have argued in favor of giving over complete control over society to the market, on the grounds that democracy tends to produce serious economic in-efficiencies. More modest versions of these arguments have been used to justify modification of democratic institutions.

4. Instrumentalism

Instrumentalists argue that these instrumental values of the democratic process are the only bases on which to evaluate democracy or compare it with other forms of political decision making. The standards one uses depend on one’s conception of a just and good society. For example, libertarian instrumentalists such as Friedrich Hayek (1960) argue that democracy is desirable only to the extent that it protects liberty and private property.

5. Noninstrumental Values

Few theorists deny that political institutions must be at least in part evaluated in terms of the outcomes of having those institutions. Some argue, in addition, that some forms of decision making are morally desirable independent of the consequences of having them. A variety of different approaches have been used to show that democracy has this kind of intrinsic value. The most common of these come broadly under the rubrics of liberty and equality.

6. Liberty

Some argue that the basic principles of democracy are founded in the idea that each individual has a right to liberty. Democracy, it is said, extends the idea that each ought to be master of his or her life to the domain of collective decision making. First, each person’s life is deeply affected by the larger social, legal, and cultural environment in which he or she lives. Second, only when each person has an equal voice and vote in the process of collective decision making will each have control over this larger environment. Thinkers such as Carol Gould (1988) conclude that only when some kind of democracy is implemented will individuals have a chance at self-government. Since individuals have a right to self-government, they have a right to democratic participation. This right is established at least partly independently of the worth of the outcomes of democratic decision making. The idea is that the right to self-government gives one a right, within limits, to do wrong. Just as an individual has a right to make some bad decisions for himself or herself, so a group of individuals have a right to make bad or unjust decisions for themselves. Here we can see the makings of an argument against instrumentalism. To the extent that an instrumentalist wishes to diminish a person’s power to contribute to the democratic process for the sake of enhancing the quality of decisions, he or she is committed to thinking that there is no moral loss in the fact that our power has been diminished; but if the liberty argument is correct our right to control our lives is violated by this.

One major difficulty with this line of argument is that it appears to require that the basic rule of decision making be consensus or unanimity. If each person must freely choose the outcomes that bind him or her, then those who oppose the decision are not self-governing. They live in an environment imposed on them by others. So only when all agree to a decision are they freely adopting the decision.

The trouble is that there is rarely agreement on major issues in politics. Indeed, it appears that one of the main reasons for having political decision-making procedures is that they can settle matters despite disagreement. Hence it is hard to see how any political decision-making method can respect everyone’s liberty.

7. Democracy As Public Justification

One distant relative of the self-government approach is the account of democracy as a process of public justification defended by, among others, Joshua Cohen (1998). The idea behind this approach is that laws and policies are legitimate to the extent that they are publicly justified to the citizens of the community. Public justification is justification to each citizen as a result of free and reasoned debate among equals. Citizens justify laws and policies to each other on the basis of mutually acceptable reasons. Democracy, properly understood, is the context in which individuals freely engage in a process of reasoned discussion and deliberation on an equal footing. The ideas of freedom and equality provide guidelines for structuring democratic institutions.

The aim of democracy as public justification is reasoned consensus among citizens. However, a serious problem arises when we ask about what happens when disagreement remains. Two possible replies have been suggested to this kind of worry. It has been urged that forms of consensus weaker than full consensus are sufficient for public justification and that the weaker varieties are achievable in many societies. For instance, there may be consensus on the list of reasons that are acceptable publicly but dis-agreement on the weight of the different reasons. Or there may be agreement on general reasons but disagreement about particular interpretations of those reasons. What would have to be shown here is that such weak consensus is achievable in many societies and that the disagreements that remain are not incompatible with the ideal of public justification.

8. Equality

Many democratic theorists have argued that democracy is a way of treating persons as equals when there is good reason to impose some kind of organization on their shared lives, but they disagree about how best to do it. On one version, defended by Peter Singer (1973), when people insist on different ways of arranging matters properly, each person in a sense claims a right to be dictator over their shared lives. However, these claims to dictatorship cannot all hold up. Democracy embodies a kind of peaceful and fair compromise among these conflicting claims to rule. Each com-promises equally on what he or she claims as long as the others do, resulting in each having an equal say over decision making. In effect, democratic decision making respects each person’s point of view on matters of common concern by giving each an equal say about what to do in cases of disagreement.

One difficulty is that this view relies on agreement much as the liberty views described above. What if people disagree on the democratic method or on the particular form democracy is to take? Are we to decide these latter questions by means of a higher order procedure? And if there is disagreement on the higher order procedure, must we also democratically decide that question? The view seems to lead to an infinite regress. Another egalitarian defense democracy asserts that it embodies the equal consideration of the interests of the citizens of a society when there is disagreement about how best to organize their shared life. On this account, equal consideration of interests requires that individuals’ judgments be taken into account equal when there is disagreement. Respect for each citizen’s judgment is grounded in the fallibility of everyone’s judgment as well as the generally recognized tendency of the moral judgments of persons to be biased towards their own interests. Each citizen would have good reason to think that his or her interests were not being given the same weight as others if he or she had less decision-making power than the others. On this account, since each person has a pre-eminent interest in being recognized as an equal member of the community, only equality in decision-making power is compatible with equal consideration of interests. The principle of equal consideration of interests also implies limits to what can be up for democratic control and so the infinite regress noted above is avoided.

9. Democratic Citizenship

A vexing problem of democratic theory has been to determine whether ordinary citizens are up to the task of governing a large society. There are three distinct problems here. First, Plato argued that some people are innately more intelligent than others and that those persons ought to rule. Second, others have argued that a society must have a division of labor. If everyone were engaged in the complex and difficult task of politics, little time or energy would be left for the other essential tasks of a society. Conversely, if we expect most people to engage in other difficult and complex tasks, how can we expect them to have the time and resources sufficient to devote themselves intelligently to politics?

Third, since individuals have so little impact on the outcomes of political decision making in large societies, they have little sense of responsibility for the outcomes. Some have argued that it is not rational to vote since the chances that a vote will affect the outcome of an election are nearly indistinguishable from zero. Worse still, Anthony Downs (1957) has argued that almost all of those who do vote have little reason to become informed about how best to vote. On the assumption that citizens reason and behave roughly according to the Downsian model, either the society must in fact be run by a relatively small group of people with minimal input from the rest or it will be very poorly run.

These observations pose challenges for any robustly egalitarian or deliberative conception of democracy. Without the ability to participate intelligently in politics one cannot use one’s votes to advance one’s aims, nor can one be said to participate in a process of reasoned deliberation among equals. So, either equality of political power implies a kind of self-defeating equal participation of citizens in politics or a reasonable division of labor seems to undermine equality of power.

Plato and Hobbes argued against democracy in any form on these grounds. Some modern theorists of democracy, called elite theorists, have argued against any robustly egalitarian forms of democracy on these grounds. They argue that high levels of citizen participation tend to produce bad legislation designed by demagogues to appeal to poorly informed and overly emotional citizens. They look upon the alleged apathy and uninformedness of citizens evidenced in many empirical studies in the 1950s and 1960s as highly desirable social phenomena. Joseph Schumpeter’s assertion that the ‘democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter 1956, p. 269) still stands as a concise statement of the elitist view. In this view, the emphasis is placed on responsible political leadership. Political leaders are to avoid divisive and emotionally charged issues and make policy and law with little regard for the fickle and diffuse demands made by ordinary citizens.

An approach that is in part motivated by the concerns above but that attempts to avoid elitism is the interest group pluralist account of politics. Robert Dahl’s early statement of the view is very powerful. ‘In a rough sense, the essence of all competitive politics is bribery of the electorate by politicians… The farmer… supports a candidate committed to high price supports, the businessman…supports an advocate of low corporation taxes… the consumer…votes for candidates opposed to a sale tax’ (Dahl 1959, p. 69). In this conception of the democratic process, each citizen is a member of an interest group with narrowly defined interests that are closely connected to their everyday lives. On these subjects citizens are supposed to be fairly well informed and interested in having an influence. On this account, democracy is not rule by the majority but rather rule by coalitions of minorities. The account ensures that individuals can participate roughly as equals to the extent that it narrowly confines the issues with which each individual is concerned.

A third approach inspired by the kinds of problems above may be called the neoliberal approach to politics favored by public choice theorists such as James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (1965). Against elite theories, they contend that elites and their allies will tend to expand the powers of government and bureaucracy for their own interests and that this expansion will occur at the expense of a largely in-attentive public. They argue against the interest group pluralist theorists that the problem of participation occurs within interest groups more or less as power-fully as among the citizenry at large. Only some interest groups are likely to succeed in organizing to influence the government. Hence only some interest groups will succeed in influencing government and they will do so largely for their own benefit while spreading the costs to others.

Neoliberals argue that any way of organizing a large and powerful democratic state is likely to produce serious inefficiencies. They infer that one ought to transfer many of the current functions of the state to the economic market and limit the state to the enforcement of basic property rights and liberties. These can be more easily understood and brought under the control of ordinary citizens.

But the neoliberal account of democracy must answer to two large worries. First, citizens in modern societies have more ambitious conceptions of social justice and the common good than are realizable by the minimal state. The neoliberal account thus implies a very serious curtailment of democracy of its own. More evidence is needed to support the contention that these aspirations cannot be achieved by the modern state. Second, the neoliberal approach ignores the problem of large private concentrations of wealth and power that are capable of pushing small states around for their own benefit and imposing their wills on populations without their consent. The assumptions that lead neoliberals to be skeptical about the large modern state imply equally disturbing problems for a neoliberal society.

A considerable amount of the literature in political science and the economic theory of the state are grounded in the assumption that individuals act primarily and perhaps even exclusively in their self-interest narrowly construed. The problem of participation and the accounts of the democratic process described above are in large part dependent on this assumption. While these ideas have generated interesting results and have become ever more sophisticated, there has been a growing chorus of opponents. Against the self-interest axiom, defenders of deliberative democracy and others claim that citizens are capable of being motivated by a concern for the common good and justice. They also claim, with Mill and Rousseau, that such concerns are not merely given prior to politics but that they can evolve and improve through the process of discussion and debate in politics. They assert that much debate and discussion in politics would not be intelligible were it not for the fact that citizens are willing to engage in open-minded discussion with those who have distinct morally informed points of view. Empirical evidence suggests that individuals are motivated by moral considerations in politics in addition to their interests. Accordingly, many propose that democratic institutions be designed to support the inclination to engage in moral and open minded discussion with others.

Once we approach the idea of citizenship from a moral point of view and we recognize the importance of a division of labor, the question arises of what the appropriate role for a citizen in a democracy is. If we think that citizens are too often uninformed, we should ask two questions. What ought citizens have knowledge about in order to fulfill their role? What standards ought citizens’ beliefs live up to in order to be adequately supported? Some have proposed that citizens know about their particular sectors of society and not others. We have seen that this view has a number of difficulties. Christiano (1996) proposes, along with others, that citizens must think about what ends the society ought to aim at and leave the question of how to achieve those aims to experts. This kind of view needs to answer to the problem of how to ensure that politicians, administrators, and experts actually do attempt to realize the aims set by citizens. And it must show how institutions can be designed so as to establish the division of labor while preserving equality among citizens. But if citizens genuinely do choose the aims and others faithfully pursue the means to achieving those aims, then citizens are in the driver’s seat in society.

It is hard to see how citizens can satisfy any even moderate standards for beliefs about how best to achieve their political aims. Knowledge of means requires an immense amount of social science and knowledge of particular facts. For citizens to have this kind of knowledge generally would require that we abandon the division of labor in society. On the other hand, citizens do have first-hand and daily experience with thinking about the values and aims they pursue. This gives them a chance to satisfy standards of belief regarding what the best aims are. Still the view is not defensible without a compelling institutional answer to the question of how to ensure that others are genuinely pursuing the means to achieve the aims specified by citizens.

10. Legislative Institutions

A number of debates have centered on the question of what kinds of legislative institution are best for a democratic society. What choice we make here will depend heavily on the kind of underlying ethical justification of democracy, our conception of citizenship, and our empirical understanding of political institutions and how they function. The most basic types of formal political representation available are single-member district representation, proportional representation, and group representation. In addition, many societies have opted for multicameral legislative institutions. In some cases, combinations of the above forms have been tried.

Single-member district representation returns single representatives of geographically defined areas containing roughly equal populations to the legislature and is present most prominently in the USA and the UK. The most common form of proportional representation is party-list proportional representation. In a simple form of such a scheme, a number of parties compete for election to a legislature that is not divided into geographical districts. Parties acquire seats in the legislature as a proportion of the total number of votes they receive in the population as a whole. Group representation occurs when the society is divided into nongeographically defined groups such as ethnic or linguistic groups or even functional groups such as workers, farmers, and capitalists and returns representatives to a legislature from each of them.

Many have argued in favor of single member district legislation on the grounds that it has appeared to them to lead to more stable government than other forms of representation. The thought is that proportional representation tends to fragment the citizenry into op-posing homogeneous camps that adhere rigidly to their party lines and that are continually vying for control over the government. Since there are many parties and they are unwilling to compromise with each other, governments formed from coalitions of parties tend to fall apart rather quickly. The post-War experience of governments in Italy appears to confirm this hypothesis. Single-member district representation, in contrast, is said to enhance the stability of governments by virtue of its favoring a two-party system of government. Each election cycle then determines which party is to stay in power for some length of time. Charles Beitz (1989) argues that single-member district representation encourages moderation in party programs offered for citizens to consider. This results from the tendency of this kind of representation towards two-party systems. In a two-party system with majority rule, it is argued, each party must appeal to the median voter in the political spectrum. Hence they must moderate their programs to appeal to the median voter. Furthermore, they encourage compromise among groups since they must try to appeal to a lot of other groups in order to become part of one of the two leading parties. These tendencies encourage moderation and compromise in citizens to the extent that political parties, and interest groups, hold these qualities up as necessary to functioning well in a democracy.

In criticism, advocates of proportional and group representation have argued that single-member district representation tends to muffle the voices and ignore the interests of minority groups in the society. Minority interests and views tend to be articulated in background negotiations and in ways that muffle their distinctiveness. Furthermore, representatives of minority interests and views often have a difficult time becoming elected at all in single-member district systems, so it has been charged that minority views and interests are often systematically under-represented. Sometimes these problems are dealt with by redrawing the boundaries of districts in a way that ensures greater minority representation. The efforts are invariably controversial since there is considerable disagreement about the criteria for apportionment. In proportional representation, by contrast, representatives of different groups are seated in the legislature in proportion to citizens’ choices. Minorities need not make their demands conform to the basic dichotomy of views and interests that characterize single-member district systems so their views are more articulated and distinctive as well as better represented.

Another criticism of single-member district representation is that it encourages parties to pursue dubious electoral campaign strategies. The need to appeal to a large, diverse, and somewhat amorphous sector of the population can very often be best met by using ambiguous, vague, and often irrelevant appeals to the citizens. Thus, instead of encouraging reason-able compromise, the scheme tends to support tendencies towards ignorance, superficiality, and fatuousness in political campaigns and in the citizenry. It encourages political leaders to take care of the real issues of politics in back rooms while they appeal to citizens by means of smoke and mirrors. Of course, those who agree in the main with the elitist-type theories will see nothing wrong in this; indeed, they may well champion this effect. Proportional representation requires that parties be relatively clear and up-front about their proposals, so those who believe that democracy is ethically grounded in the appeal to equality tend to favor proportional representation.

Advocates of group representation such as Iris Marion Young (1993) have argued that some historically disenfranchised groups may still not do very well under proportional representation. They may not be able to organize and articulate their views as easily as other groups. Also, minority groups can still be systematically defeated in the legislature and their interests may be consistently set back even if they do have some representation. For these groups, some have argued that the only way to protect their interests is legally to ensure that they have adequate and even disproportionate representation.

One worry about group representation is that it tends to freeze some aspects of the agenda that might be better left to the choice of citizens. For instance, consider a population that is divided into linguistic groups for a long time, and suppose that only some citizens continue to think of linguistic conflict as important. In the circumstances, such schemes may tend to be biased in an arbitrary way that favors the views or interests of those who do think of linguistic conflict as important.

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