Democracy

2. The value of democracy

Once we have an idea of democracy, the next question is why, or whether, it is of value. The Greek historians identified the original introduction of democracy with the advance of liberty and equality. Since both liberty and equality are usually thought to be of value, this would seem to be a natural answer to the question. Democracy is of value because it produces liberty and equality. With dictatorship or other forms of special leadership, a particular person or group has more power than others. By contrast, in democracy everyone is equal. Everyone has the same (political) power. So democracy is egalitarian as compared with other forms of government or decision making.

Similarly for liberty. A democracy introduced by the overthrow of a dictator increases political liberty. People have been freed from the control of the dictator. Hence democracy promotes liberty. There are several connected terms here: liberty, freedom, autonomy. However, whichever term is used, this argument seems to work. Consider autonomy. It means, literally, self-rule. Yet this is exactly what happens in democracy, as opposed to other forms of government. The people rule themselves.

However, as always, further inspection makes matters less obvious. Suppose decisions are made by majority vote and someone is in the minority. This person is outvoted and so their wants will not be put into effect. Therefore we can question whether in this (democratic) situation, this person is really autonomous. They are being made to do something which they do not want to do. Hence they are not really autonomous. Similarly for equality. Not everyone is treated equally when majority decisions are adopted, because only the views of some people (the majority) are put into effect. The minority’s views are disregarded. Hence they are not treated equally. The winner takes all, and hence winners and losers are not equally treated.

If a community is divided into two parts living in mutual antipathy, this becomes even more obvious. The majority community could, by democratic vote, bear heavily down on the minority community, restricting or removing things it holds to be of fundamental value. In such circumstances the members of the minority community could hardly be said to be at liberty; nor could it be said that they were being equally treated. Hence the phrase, used by Tocqueville (1835) and taken over by J.S. Mill (1859), ‘the tyranny of the majority’. The initial contrast between democracy and dictatorship has now been left behind. If democracy is really the dictatorship of the majority, then it is not so obvious that democracy promotes freedom and equality.