Democracy

Democracy originated in ancient Greece. The Greek words demo kratia mean rule or power (kratia) of the common people (demos). For the Greeks, to live in a democracy was to live in a political community (polis, or city-state ) characterized by popular rule. Ultimate sovereignty or empowerment was intended to be shared equally among all freeborn citizens of a community. Viewed this way, democracy had—and continues to have—two core meanings. First, it refers to a kind of power or authority exercised equally by all the people of a political community. Second, it refers to a form of government or a particular kind of rule, in contrast to other forms of government such as monarchy, aristocracy , dictatorship, or oligarchy .

Democracy is most often viewed as a form of government based on the principle of majority rule. Majority rule is simply a principle of voting, however; popular sovereignty designates that all citizens may participate equally in authorizing public decisions. Ultimately, the justification for democratic rule or government depends on arguing for the validity of popular power.

The democratic notion of popular power comes largely from the government of the city-state of Athens during the fifth century b.c.e. In Athens, all freeborn members of the community regularly participated in public assemblies that deliberated on fundamental questions of war and peace, the distribution of political goods, and the initiation of public projects. Furthermore, the citizens served on juries and in governmental offices. Positions were determined by lottery, not election, because election was considered to be an aristocratic principle. While citizens could expect to serve in government or on a jury at some point in their lives, the central political activity was the process of debate and decision-making in the assembly, known as the ecclesia. Here, all citizens—whatever their wealth or status—had the opportunity to propose policies or decide by majority vote on the arguments of other citizens. This form of democracy excluded women and slaves from citizenship, however—an exclusion that would not be addressed until the eighteenth century, when political thinkers began to view democratic popular sovereignty as a matter of equal human rights, rather than membership in a political community.

Early arguments against democracy have continued into the twenty-first century. The Greek philosopher Plato (428–348 or 347 b.c.e.) argued that democracy depended on the rule of the lowest of the passions and would lead to arbitrariness in legislation. He further claimed that political rule was a technical skill, and that democracy falsely assumed that all citizens were equally capable of judging good laws when in fact only some had this capability. Although Plato's student, Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.), was more generous in his assessment, he also believed that democracy tended toward arbitrary decisions of the majority. Furthermore, because Aristotle felt that democracy represented the rule of the poor over the wealthy, he thought it would result in unjust downward distribution of wealth. He also objected to giving sovereignty to those citizens who were unable to deliberate on public matters or who lacked self-control to act ethically. Both philosophers assumed that the equal claim of citizens to govern their own political community conflicted with the fact that human beings were fundamentally unequal in political ability, moral character, and wealth.

This negative view of democracy was not systematically challenged until the eighteenth century, with the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712–1778) Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754) and his Social Contract (1762). In the first work, Rousseau demonstrates that social and political inequality result from laws and custom rather than from human nature. In Social Contract, he argues that every person is equally capable of participating in policy discussions and of legislating on behalf of the whole political community.

Rousseau proposed a model for creating a democratic authority in which all people can participate as citizens: the general will. For Rousseau, the general will arises when citizens mutually and equally agree to create an authority that will decide on the laws to be imposed on the political community. What renders this authority democratic is that all of the people are full and equal participants who regularly assemble and debate legislation. In this political community, all of the citizens who voted on the laws would be the same people as the subjects who obeyed those laws. Consequently, all citizens would be equal as well as free. Such a democratic authority would seek to attain the common or public good, because the only laws it would consider would have to apply to all of the people as equals. Rousseau insisted that large inequalities of wealth or power in society would necessarily diminish, because such inequalities would undermine the equality of influence that each citizen exercised in the assembly. Having refuted many of the arguments of anti-democratic critics, Rousseau claimed that through a republican form of government based on the general will, democracy as the rule of the people, or popular sovereignty, would be fully realized.

Critics of Rousseau have often claimed that, whatever the merits of his account of democratic authority, his argument depends upon a small community in which citizens can regularly meet in face-to-face discussion. Defenders argue, however, that this claim does not alter the fact that Rousseau provides one of the few arguments justifying democracy in its root meanings: as popular power and rule of the people.

democracy as a matter of rights

From the eighteenth century into the mid-twentieth century, democracy came to be argued not simply as a matter of legitimate popular power but also as a matter of individual rights. Democratic citizenship was now derived from the claim that human beings have certain inalienable rights regardless of the society in which they live. Among the many arguments of this kind, the most influential include the Declaration of Independence (1776), arising from the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), arising out of the French Revolution (1789–1799). In the latter document, Rousseau argued that every citizen not only should have a "right to participate personally, or through his representative," in the general will, but also that all human beings have a natural right to "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression." Therefore, a democratic nation had to secure for its members not only political rights of participation, but also basic human rights, such as the demand for due process and a presumption of innocence in legal proceedings, the rights of free speech and association, and the right to be free of governmental interference in private life. Both of these sets of rights had to be embodied in a constitution limiting the reach of government while ensuring participation for all citizens.

One consequence of connecting the notion of democracy as popular power or sovereignty with the new concept of constitutionally guaranteed civil and political "rights" was that democracy could now be practiced in a large nation-state , not just in a small community of citizens meeting face to face. One new question this idea raised, however, was whether popular rule required more active forms of citizen participation than merely electing representatives to a congress or parliament. A second consequence was that this democratic ideal provided groups and classes in all European nations with grounds to demand political equality as the equal right to vote in elections for parliaments and governments. This struggle for universal suffrage encompassed more than voting rights, however; it also included a demand for equal standing and dignity for all people as citizens of a democratic state. It was the beginning of a struggle to achieve social and economic equality, including redistribution of wealth and the abolition of unequal social status based on birth, education, race, or gender. For this reason, many of the famous classical liberals of the nineteenth century, such as John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), resisted allowing the lower classes to have full voting rights.

jean-jacques rousseau (1712–1778)

In his writings, considered unconventional at the time, Franco-Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocated a restoration of humankind's emotional and passionate side, which he felt had been lost in modern society. His ideas helped usher in an era of nineteenth-century romanticism in both literature and philosophy.

Rousseau was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, although his mother died in childbirth and his father later placed him in the care of a pastor. At the age of thirteen, he became an engraver's apprentice but, when his father remarried, Rousseau left Geneva and found a new protector in the Baronne de Warens, who sent him to Turin where he studied music and religion. By the time he was thirty, Rousseau had settled in Paris and joined a group of intellectuals dubbed the "Philosophes," whose ideas were published in the French arts, sciences, and crafts Encyclopédie.

Rousseau first gained recognition for his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), in which he argued that "progress" in the arts and sciences had corrupted man and given governments more authority at the expense of individual liberty. He also argued that sincere friendships could not exist in a material society because such a society turned on jealousy, fear, and suspicion.

His writings also influenced modern educational theory. In one essay Rousseau advocated tending to a child's emotions before trying to teach academic subjects.

Curiously, as suffrage was extended to all genders and classes in most industrial countries—and as constitutional democracies came to be characterized by competing parties, representative institutions, and periodic elections—most

liberals came to embrace democracy as a way to contain popular sentiments. Moreover, instead of enhancing direct participation, modern political parties created a buffer between politicians and citizens. Indeed, in what became known in the twentieth century as "modern liberal democracies," the fundamental struggles over democratic rights centered less around direct participation and more around the attempts of labor parties (and some liberal parties) to expand the principle of political equality into social equality. Thus, parties of the labor classes (or in America, parties of both the working and middle classes) sought to introduce numerous social services such as public housing, national health care, national pensions, equal access to higher education, and income supports. Social services were now viewed as democratic rights, similar to the right to vote or the right to associate or utter one's opinion in public. Opponents of this extension of democratic rights sought to limit the expansion of government-provided social services. They maintained that the market, not democratic governments, should decide the distribution of goods and income.

modern concepts of democracy: elitism and participation

As mass politics became the norm in the mid-twentieth century, an influential group of theorists shifted the definition of democracy so that it might be made compatible with rule by the elite. The most famous statement of this "new" theory of democracy comes from the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: "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 1950, p. 269). Under this new definition, "the reins of government should be handed to those who command more support than do any of the competing individuals or teams" (Schumpeter 1950, p. 273). This definition sounds innocent enough, but in the name of providing a "realistic" notion of democracy it abandons as outdated three of the essential features of the concept: political equality, the self-government of citizens, and any notion of a common good. It also substitutes a static competition among the elite for the dynamic conflict of groups and classes trying to expand political rights into social rights. Above all, it believes that citizens are too irrational to participate in directing their government, instead treating democracy as a means to cultivate political leaders through elite competition. This definition was later modified by pluralist theorists of democracy, who agreed that most democratic politics involved the competition between members of the elite, but added that interest groups also influenced the decision-making process. In both cases, civil rights of free speech, free assembly, privacy, and the political right to vote were seen simply as means to help promote competition.

Proponents of this elitist concept of democracy justified it by claiming that it was realistic and efficient. There would always be a division of labor between professional politicians and citizens, they argued, and so the best solution would be to cultivate competition among members of the political elite. Citizens, to be sure, could still exercise some control over government by voting parties out of government. Apart from that, however, they claimed that most citizens would rather spend their lives pursuing their own private goals rather than participating in politics. This elitist conception evolved into the contemporary standard definition of democracy. It also is the model to which politicians, commentators, and political scientists typically refer when they describe the process of "democratization " in foreign countries.

Critics have questioned whether participation in periodic voting for representatives and competing parties, combined with constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, is enough to call a regime a democracy. Popular rule seems to have been reduced to the occasional veto of candidates and parties by voters. This limited sovereignty denies citizens the opportunity to develop the political skills that are necessary to enjoy political freedom. Worse yet, this model allows those with superior political resources to have greater influence on political decisions than do ordinary citizens.

To overcome these defects, participatory critics of the elitist democracy have proposed a variety of alternative models to recover democracy as popular power over government. One proposal is to extend democracy into the workplace, giving employees control over management and management decisions. A second proposal is to make local government more democratic by creating local neighborhood assemblies in which citizens can meet, discuss, and come to agreement on proposals to solve local problems. A third proposal has been called deliberative democracy and involves reviving the role of public opinion. This approach seeks to turn public opinion from a passive, reactive process that is managed by parties and governments to an active debate in which the strongest arguments prevail. A fourth approach is to strengthen the representation of groups that are regularly excluded from majority decisions, including those that have been marginalized due to race, ethnicity, or gender. A fifth approach is to view popular sovereignty or power as something that cannot be embodied in government at all; rather, it must be continually asserted through public protests seeking to extend the rights of citizens. More recently, the organization of citizen networks through the Internet has produced new forms of democratic political involvement. Thus, modern democratic politics is characterized by an unresolved tension between democracy's original meaning as demokratia, or popular power and rule, and the organization of modern democratic states in which there is a division of labor between rulers and the ruled.

john stuart mill (1806–1873)

English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill promoted liberal, empiricist ideas throughout nineteenth-century Britain through his essays and books. Mill was one of the most influential social thinkers of the nineteenth century.

Mill was born in London and educated by his father, historian and economist James Mill, and his father's good friend, the utilitarian theorist Jeremy Bentham. As a child he learned Greek, French, and Latin and read English history books. He also studied political economy, philosophy, chemistry, and law.

Around 1822 Mill began working as a junior clerk at the East India Company. He worked his way into management and stayed until the 1850s. In his spare time Mill penned essays for local papers.

In 1865 Mill won election to Parliament and served one term. He was considered a radical because he supported compulsory education, birth control, women's suffrage, the right of labor to organize, and the idea that the people should own all natural resources.

Probably Mill's best known work is On Liberty (1859). This treatise promoted and defended freedom of the individual over the state's right to enforce control through lawmaking. Mill favored the harm principle, which held that citizens should be free to do whatever they want as long as it does not harm others.

Although competition between professional politicians and parties for the popular vote characterizes what modern democracy, the justification for this form of government still rests on its original definition: the authority exercised by equal citizens when they deliberate and direct the government in light of their best understanding of the public good at that moment. Therefore, one should be skeptical when commentators, politicians, or political scientists claim that the West has achieved "democracy," or that "democratization" has been achieved in other countries when states are able to change governments through mass elections. Competitive party democracy with limited constitutional government and specified civil rights still protects freedom more than authoritarian regimes do. At best, however, modern democracy represents the unceasing struggle engaged in by citizens to achieve popular rule.

See also: Liberal Democracy; Oligarchy; Popular Sovereignty; Republic.

bibliography

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"Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789." In The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, ed. Lynn Hunt. Bedford: St Martin's, 1996.

Dunn, John, ed. Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Peter Breiner