Democracy

6. Other consequences

The idea of utilitarianism as a mere preference-satisfying machine, in which antecedently given preferences are satisfied, has often been criticized. One alternative is to treat the values more objectively. Democracy can then be shown to be good in terms of these independently specified consequences. Such was the approach of J.S. Mill (1861) and more recent defenders such as William Nelson (1980). Democracy is justified as a form of education or development; it is taken to be a political system in which individuals are made to think for themselves and are therefore improved. Even if the decisions they make are not the best decisions, it is better for individuals if they try and take part in such decisions.

Another consequence which might justify democracy is the supposed promotion of dynamic economic activity; as opposed to the sluggish effects supposedly emanating from more centralized planning and control. Yet even if democracy does correlate with such beneficial economic circumstances, it is not clear that this by itself can be used as an argument for promoting democracy. Jon Elster (1986) identifies the questionable role of such arguments based on indirect effects. For it may be that these other effects only happen if people are attached to democracy for more direct reasons (such as thinking that it is a just form of government). If people were only to support democracy because they thought that it encouraged economic dynamism, then the democracy would not work, and so the economic dynamism would not follow either.

This relates to another familiar problem with starting from antecedent preferences and then taking democracy to be a sort of market mechanism in which these preferences are traded. If people only act through self-interest, trying to get their antecedently given preferences fulfilled, then it is not obvious why they should vote at all. For the advantages of voting will come to them if the others vote and their own vote seems to be merely a cost. At the national government level, it is exceedingly unlikely that any one vote will be decisive. So they would be better off not voting at all.

One answer to all of these problems is to dispense with the idea of democracy being a mechanism for satisfying antecedently given preferences. Instead of taking these as given, democracy should be held as a device in which people develop and discover their views about what is right. And, in thinking about what is right, they should think about what is right for the group as a whole, and not just themselves. People should therefore participate in a form of decision making in which they share their ideas, discuss together and, with luck, eventually reach general agreement.

The form of arguments people can use in such discussions is naturally constrained, as people seeking agreement should look as if they are appealing to general principles rather than merely appealing to self-interest. The condition of publicity (that is, of what can be said publicly) imposes constraints. If people think from the general point of view rather than in terms of their own individual interest, the forms of reasoning and the antecedent judgements will be different. Discussion rather than voting becomes the central feature of democracy, and it is important that people can meet and talk together before decisions are made.

These ideas promoting discussion and participation have several presuppositions. They presuppose that people will be better able to work out the truth (about what is good for the group) by working in groups rather than individually. This may be the case if they are all independently motivated by the same desire to discover the truth. It is less obviously the case if there are deep conflicts of interest (such as capital against labour; or country against town; or this world against the next). The supposition is that group discussion leads to more rationality; but in some circumstances group dynamics merely increase and inflame passion, so that people behave badly together in a way that they never would separately.

The values considered at the start of this discussion – namely, liberty and equality – now reappear; only now not as the consequence of democratic activity but as its prerequisites. For if discussion is to reach the right answer, it needs to start with roughly equal power between the discussants. Otherwise discussion will be forced in the interests of the stronger. Hence the idea that democracy needs circumstances of roughly equal wealth (held by Montesquieu and Rousseau). Hence the Marxist criticism that Western liberal democracy works on the fiction of an idealized equality when the real situation is one of greatly unequal economic power. Hence John Rawls’ argument (1971) that political parties should be paid for by the state to avoid the economically powerful buying votes (see Rawls, J. §2). Hence also the objections of feminist theorists. If men and women are antecedently in a situation of different power, then the supposed equality of democracy will only result in most of the power remaining with the men. Discussion, yes: but only if the forum is subject to powerful antecedent control and regulation. Otherwise we return to the bad old world of bargaining between antecedently given preferences from which this optimistic espousal of discussion was meant to save us.