America

ROBUST ELECTIONS – SHODDY NOMINATIONS

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In the American mid-terms, candidates who “should” have been rejected were elected and others who “should” have been elected were rejected. Incumbents cannot take voters for granted. That’s democracy: do the people’s work or get thrown out. In Brazil, Bolsonaro was thrown out.

Striking in the mid-terms was that extremist candidates were rejected. The voters corrected mistakes that had been made in the previous nominations. That makes sense. Voters turn out in large numbers to make up a broad cross-section of the population. Common sense prevails.

Not so in nominations. America relies mainly on primaries. Turn-out is typically low, whereby the decision is in the hands of relatively small numbers of self-selected voters. In such circumstances, fanatics are more likely than others to participate and hold the swing vote. That gives extremist candidates an advantage, and also forces other candidates to take extremist positions in order to secure nomination. A main reason, for example, that the National Rifle Association has disproportionate influence in American politics is that it can mobilize its militants to participate in primaries in sufficient numbers to get candidates to commit to pro-gun policies. That’s how it comes about that gun regulations are in demand in the population but do not get implemented in law. It is also in this way the Donald Trump has been able to exercise his malign influence in the Republican Party, a spell that broke in the these elections.

Also remarkable in the mid-terms was that the elections were carried out correctly and peacefully, and that outcomes have been respected. Elections have enormous authority because they are grounded in a rock-solid theory. We know what “free and fair” elections are and how they are conducted. It is therefore not possible in an established democracy to disrespect the outcome of correct elections. Donald Trump tried but failed. It was the robustness of the election system that saved America from his attempted coup d’état. Bolsonaro flirted with non-acceptance of an election loss but was unable to carry through.

We have no similar theory for nominations, no recipe for “free and fair nominations.” As a result, nomination processes are all over the place. It is for want of solid theory that we can make ourselves believe that nominations by primary elections, with their inevitable bias, are a “democratic” way of doing it. We are in need of guidance for how to do it better. The absence of such guidance from a theory of nominations is a big shortcoming in the political science of democracy.

Candidates who stand for election are tested. We have seen that on dramatic display in America. Candidates who seek nomination are not similarly tested. That also we have seen on dramatic display in America, where in many places it gave candidates an advantage at the stage of nomination to be truth deniers and conspiracy peddlers. 

For more detailed analysis, see How Democracies Live

VOTING MATTERS!

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American elections. High drama. After Tuesday, America will move in one or other direction. Americans increasingly see themselves as belonging to tribes which are each others’ enemies. If that is their world, they better use their vote. The outcome will be decided by who does not vote.

Look elsewhere to see the importance of the mundane business of voting. Last week in Brazil, the sitting president was ousted by a vote of 50.9% for his opponent. It is not a cliché to say of that election that every vote counted. In Britain in 2016, by 52% of the vote in a referendum, it was decided to leave the European Union. Older voters voted to leave, younger ones to stay. But the young did not turn out in sufficient numbers to save the day. Had as many of the young as the old voted, Brexit would not have happened and young Britons would have held on to their future in an open Europe.

Voting is not in high regard. Many do not bother to participate. Young people in particular tell each other that it does not matter, it’s all the same. Political scientists recommend models of democracy in which voting is secondary, such as “participatory democracy” or “deliberative democracy.” Theorists of “rationality” rubbish the vote because it does not bring the voter any “utility.”

But voting is THE core instrument of democracy. It gives citizens not only voice but also power. It is by the vote that citizens can threaten their representatives to deselect them (as just happened in Brazil) and thereby hold their use of power under control.

In How Democracies Live, I issue a warning against the reinvention-of-democracy literature. “Since democracy as we know it has run into trouble, let’s just consign it to the scrap heap of history and start all over with something new and better.” That is to underestimate what we have achieved, such as in the forceful instrument of the vote, and also to “give succor to the autocrats in Beijing and Moscow who boast superiority for autocracy precisely because they are able to claim that western democracy has proved impotent.” My recommendation is that we resolve to salvage democracy, not to reinvent it.

WHY DEMOCRACY? TWELVE ADVANTAGES IN SUMMARY

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In twelve recent posts, I have listed the Twelve Advantages of Democracy. Those advantages, taken together, are my answer to the Why Democracy? question. They are powerful advantages, the reasons people take to the streets and risk their lives for the blessing of living under democratic order, as currently in Iran.

There is a divide between regimes that are (more or less) democratic and those that are (more or less) autocratic. The difference is not in perfection or beauty. Democracy is often messy and always unfinished. Autocratic regimes can be impressive in strength and performance. But there is a difference for the people who live under the respective regimes.

If your country is democratic, you are

  • less at risk of tyranny
  • more likely to possess rights
  • more likely to enjoy autonomy
  • more likely to be protected by rule of law
  • more likely to experience political equality
  • more likely to handle citizenship duties
  • more likely to benefit from effective governance
  • more likely to live in an environment of prosperity
  • less at risk of suffering poverty
  • more likely to live in peace
  • more likely to experience managed disagreement
  • more likely to enjoy a culture of tolerance.

These are real, practical and tangible advantages of real democracy as we know it. There is nothing abstract or theoretical about it; this is the way things play out for real men, women, children and families in today’s world. If you live under an autocratic regime, the risks and likelihoods all fall differently. You are then more at risk of tyranny, and so on. If you have a choice, your best bet by far is democracy.

Still, the advantages are only probabilities, not certainties. Democracy does not guarantee any of it. The theoretician Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, observing American democracy in the 1830s, warned of possible “soft despotism,” a kind of tyranny under a surface of democratic forms. The Greek philosopher Aristotle warned, as have many others, of the danger of mob rule. In his city of Athens, the world’s first democracy only lasted about two hundred years.

Today’s democracies are not always impressive. In Britain, the home of the Westminster Model, rather than effective governance we are in a long run of misrule. In the United States, the home of the American Constitution, the ability to managed disagreement and tolerance is going lost.

None of that negates the advantages of democracy. It only suggests that we are not alert enough to what democracy does for us to stand guard over the democracies we have. If we allow them to wither, as in Athens, we will soon enough know what we have lost.

For more detailed analysis, see How Democracies Live.

WHY DEMOCRACY? FIFTH ADVANTAGE

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The fifth advantage of democracy: equality. At the ballot box, every citizen is equal: rich and poor, capitalist and worker, black and white, man and woman. Each has a vote, and no more influence than sits in the vote, and all votes count the same. Then and there, for a moment, power is equalised. The logic of equality is commanding. To the degree that there is political equality, the agenda of public policy is likely to reflect the balance of opinion and of interests in citizenry. To the degree there is political inequality, special interests will be able to distort the agenda of public policy.

But there is an uneasy coexistence of political equality and economic inequality. Near to a century ago, Justice Louis Brandies of the United States Supreme Court warned, dramatically: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” That was at a time of economic crisis combined with extremes of inequality in wealth, much as our own time. But it turned out he was wrong. Democracy in America survived, much thanks to political responses in the policies of the New Deal to excesses of economic inequality. Economic inequality is a strong force in society, but so is political equality.

Could economic inequality reduce political equality to irrelevance? It would seem that the answer in the first instance is, no. Where democracy is established and has taken hold, the fact of economic inequality does not in itself turn political equality into an empty shell of formality. There are still equal rights and equality before the law. However, it would also seem that economic inequality combined with other conditions could make political equality redundant. In an elegant book on economics and politics titled Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, published in 1975, the economist Arthur Okun gave the relevant condition the name of “transgression.” Economic inequality is not necessarily a threat to political equality by its mere existence, but becomes a threat if economic power is allowed to transgress from markets into politics.

The crude mechanism of transgression is corruption. If money is allowed to buy policies, political equality is reduced to a pretence. The sophisticated mechanism of transgression, however, is to use economic power to usurp political power in ways that may not be technically corrupt or illegal but which nevertheless destroy the impact of political equality. The increasing sway of private money in American politics is of this kind.

For more detailed analysis, see How Democracies Live.

On democracy and equality/inequality, see What Democracy Is For.

On the danger to democracy in America, see Is American Democracy Headed for Extinction?

NEW ThatsDemocracy.com

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This is to announce the return of ThatsDemocracy.com

I have just published How Democracies Live (Chicago University Press). I will draw on the book to discuss the whys and hows of democratic government.

In a series of initial posts, I will seek to answer the question “why democracy?” There are better ways, it is being suggested. Democracy is a mess. We need to take the detractors seriously and answer the why-question in some detail.

We who believe in democracy must speak in its defence. We should encourage confidence, reform and better democratic quality. That, briefly, is the mission of this blog.

We have seen the unthinkable: an attempted coup d’état against the democratic order in America. In China, the crackdown on liberty is hardening by the day. In Europe, Russia is waging a barbaric war on a people’s right to live in freedom. Be in no doubt, democracy is under attack.