Democratic Dialectic

This week's readings dealt with, among other things, democratic consolidation. That is how to get parties to resolve conflicts following democratic norms within the state. Democracy is according to Linz and Stepan the "only game in town" when it comes to resolving disputes. Nobody can seriously challenge the government, ignore its commands, overthrow it, or secede from the government as part of a disagreement.

Democracy has a dialectical nature, this week’s and last week’s readings make clear. The people must control the government, and the people obey the government. Linz and Stepan’s article has parallels with Przeworski’s selection from Week III and Almond Verba from Week IV. Przeworski's definition of democracy is partly that democracy replaces violence with competition. Almond Verba made what was to me an ingenious and novel argument that the people must care about government, but they also can’t care too much. If you care too much about the result of an election or policy battle, you might not want to accept the result and possibly develop hostility towards democratic norms and procedures.

The dialectical nature of democracy has a danger which the readings did not touch upon. Increasing democracy can come at the expense of individual liberty. The more power we give the state, even if the state is responsible to the people, the less personal freedom we have in our individual lives. Friedrich Hayek argued in the Road to Serfdom that socialism is incompatible with democracy because giving the state the authority to control the economy means alienating more power to unelected bureaucrats. “Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies. They cannot produce agreement on everything – the whole direction of the resources of the nation – for the number of possible courses of action will be legion...even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility.” We can vote how often and for how many people we want, we also as the readings in these class make clear, we have to obey the decisions at some point. Linz argue to the contrary that democratic consolidation requires some degree of state control. A completely free market is not compatible with consolidated democracy, because the state must be able to enact at least some of the demands of the citizenry and be able to enforce said demands. Hayek himself was no advocate of laissez-faire; “The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition.” Accordingly, I see individual liberty and social/economic regulation as part of the democratic dialectic. There has to be a sensible balance toward limits on government and limits on the market.

I see another reason however to worry about the willingness to grant more state power under democracy, lack of trust. Successful individualism is not based on avarice. An individualistic society involves trusting others to be competent to run their own lives. Individualism is important for democracy because that trust can then be extended to government, where we trust others to be competent to make decisions over us just as they can for themselves. Pericles originally made this argument in his funeral oration. “The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.”

Democratic consolidation to me relies on a tension between individualist and egalitarian moral values. Of all the factors given by the political scientists, this is the most personal and most visible in daily life. I assert my rights against the state and society, to participate in and to be unmolested by the state, and I have to accept and from time to time defend the rights of others. A society without this mutual trust and values is one where we turn to the collective judgement of the state to resolve our conflicts. Instead of working things out privately, we sue each other in court. Thus the "road to serfdom" is paved by distrust and disagreement. We find ourselves bound to the dictates of unelected bureaucrats because we don't trust each other to do what we think they should. A healthier or truly consolidated democratic society should involve the humility and benevolence of accepting that I don't always know what is good for others and trust them to do it themselves. We don’t need to build this into a mathematical model of democracy; we should practice it as individual citizens.