Democracy
Democracy
Democracy as a form of government
The term democracy indicates both a set of ideals and a political system—a feature it shares with the terms communism and socialism. “Democracy” is harder to pin down, however, than either “socialism” or “communism”; for while the latter labels have found in Marxism an ideological matrix, or at least a point of reference, democracy has never become identified with a specific doctrinal source—it is rather a by-product of the entire development of Western civilization. No wonder, therefore, that the more “democracy” has come to be a universally accepted honorific term, the more it has undergone verbal stretching and has become the loosest label of its kind. Not every political system claims to be a socialist system, but even communist systems claim to be democracies. Since World War ii, “democracy” encompasses everything; as stated by a UNESCO report: “… for the first time in the history of the world … practical politicians and political theorists agree in stressing the democratic element in the institutions they defend and in the theories they advocate” (United Nations … 1951, p. 522).
One reaction to this state of affairs has been to avoid using the term. As has been forcibly stated, “… discussions about democracy … are intellectually worthless because we do not know what we are talking about” (Jouvenel 1945, p. 338 in 1948 edition). The alternative is, of course, to dissect the term as analytically as possible.
Scope and meaning
Democratic legitimacy
Democracy is, to begin with, a principle of legitimacy [see alsoLegitimacy]. So conceived it is both the minimal and the sole common denominator of any and all democratic doctrine. From the democratic viewpoint nobody denies that power is legitimate only when it is derived from the authority of the people and based upon their consent. Nobody questions that democracy is the opposite of autocracy. But this agreement is short-lived and indeed rests on fragile foundations. For democracy as a legitimizing principle lends itself to two diverging interpretations: (1) that the consent of the people can be a mere presumption, an untested assumption; or (2) that there is no democratic consent unless it is verified through ad hoc procedures (which exclude, notably, consent by sheer acclamation). And these opposing views are related to an even more fundamental disagreement over the very meaning of the term people—a hazy notion indeed.
“The people” can be understood as a singular term (in fact, peuple, Volk, and popolo are singular nouns in French, German, and Italian) or as a plural, that is, as a single entity or as “everybody.” And, clearly, it is only the latter notion that calls for a legitimacy ascertained by means of reliable procedures; for “the people” conceived as an entity, or as an organic whole, easily combines with a legitimacy assumed on the sole basis of acclamations and plebiscitary approbations. Therefore, on the grounds of democracy conceived merely as a principle of legitimacy, any and all governments can easily claim to be democracies simply by switching from verified consensus to presumed consensus. By itself, then, popular consent does not suffice to qualify any particular political system as a democracy. Such qualification is given only by the procedures of consent—and these are controversial.
The normative focus
From a normative standpoint the definition of democracy strictly derives from the literal meaning of the term—“power of the people.” We may say that the ought of democracy amounts to the etymology of the term. There are, however, three different normative approaches: oppositional, realistic, and perfectionistic (or Utopian). Used as an oppositional concept, democracy indicates what ought not to be; realistic normativism points to what could be; while Utopian normativism presents the image of the perfect society that must be. Moreover, since the normative attitude is basically future-oriented, it is easily converted into “futurism” in the sense that “democracy” becomes a long-range projection unrelated to current deeds. The use of undemocratic means to achieve democratic ends finds its justification precisely in this attitude.
The descriptive focus
A descriptive standpoint leads to definitions that bear little resemblance, if any, to the normative definitions of democracy. A concern with what democracy is in the real world seldom, if ever, makes reference to the notion of people. As Dahl puts it, in actuality democracies are “poliarchies” (1956, pp. 63–89). And the standard definition provided by most authors describes democracy as a system based on competitive parties, in which the governing majority respects the rights of minorities. The discussion is focused on the concepts of representation, majority rule, opposition, competition, alternative government, control, and the like—hardly ever on the notion of a self-governing people. Even descriptively, however, the approaches can be quite different: structural, procedural, or behavioral. These are not clear-cut distinctions, for both the structures and the procedures of democracy are meant to elicit and to enforce a given behavior. Yet procedures are not necessarily related to institutional structures; and moreover the behavioral definition may be incompatible with the structural and procedural definitions, as we shall see.
The typological focus
Democracy is also one type of political system among others, and from this viewpoint the problem becomes to define the properties that distinguish it from nondemocratic polities. When the issue arises, the attempt is often made to qualify democracy with reference to an ought rather than to the is. Clearly, however, the identity of a political system cannot be ascertained on normative grounds. It can only be assessed on factual grounds, that is, with reference to the possibility of verification provided by a descriptive account.
Another source of confusion lies in the intermingling of three different standards. At times democracy is taken to include all the political systems falling short of outright dictatorships. This identification is purely negative; the standard is very low, and we are thus confronted with an unspecific type. However, since no political system has a definite form at the moment of its inception, this minimal standard of democracy may aptly indicate its “initial” type. In other instances the standards are higher, and democracy is identified positively by the existence of developed representative institutions and by the establishment of “constitutional government” [seeConstitutions and constitutionalism; see also Friedrich 1937]. Since this is the more frequent case, as well as the meaning in which the term democracy is more frequently used, we may speak of it as the medium or normal type. Finally, when we use a high standard and refer to maximum achievement, we are confronted with a strict meaning of democracy, according to which the term denotes an advanced type.
According to the minimal standard, roughly half of the world may be included in the realm of democracy; according to the medium standard the number of democratic countries dwindles; and according to the high standard a mere dozen or so countries have achieved a satisfactory degree of democracy. And it requires little effort to imagine how easily the label “democratic” can be turned into “undemocratic,” and vice versa, simply by switching from one standard to another.
The dimensional focus
A distinction must also be made between small-scale and large-scale operations, between microdimensions and macrodimensions. Microdemocracy applies to face-to-face relationships, i.e., to small groups. Macrodemocracy applies whenever a collectivity is too large and/or spatially too scattered to allow any direct interchange among its members and any kind of face-to-face relationships. The distinction implies that a macrodemocracy is not some kind of enlargement of a microprototype. Their respective properties have very little, if anything, in common, at least in the sense that voluntary associations and small political units provide no clues for understanding a modern political democracy. They are perhaps the most essential inner nourishment of a democratic political system, but they can neither replace it nor dispense with it. In particular, they provide no model for macrodemocracy. It may be argued that no definite line can be drawn between small and large, which are indeed relative concepts; nonetheless the fact remains that micro- and macrodemocracy are inversely correlated: the greater the geographical extension of democracy, the less its intensity as a real experience of shared decision making.
Secondary meanings
From the time the term demokratía was coined in the fifth century b.c. until roughly a century ago, democracy was used as a political concept. Tocqueville was struck, however, by the social aspect of American democracy, and we thus speak of “social democracy”; Marxism has popularized the expression “economic democracy”; and guild socialism, particularly the Webbs’ book, Industrial Democracy (1897), has given currency to the label “industrial democracy.” These are the major secondary usages of the term democracy; and since we shall be concerned mainly with the primary political usage, they will only be briefly considered.
Social democracy
“Social democracy” is generally conceived as an endogenous state and style of the society and should therefore not be confused with “socialist democracy,” which is a policy enforced by the state upon the society. The expression social democracy usually points to the democratization of the society itself, as expressed by its manners and customs, and particularly by the belief in what Bryce called “equality of estimation,” that is, equal treatment and equal respect for every man. Social democracy may thus be defined as an ethos and a way of life characterized by a general leveling of status differences. By implication it may also indicate a “multigroup society” in which a lively network of microdemocracies sustains and implements political macrodemocracy.
Economic democracy
Since political democracy is primarily concerned with political and juridical equality, and since the expression social democracy denotes equality of status, it follows that concern for the equalization of wealth may be called economic democracy. In this generic and obvious sense then, the label denotes a democracy whose primary policy goal is the redistribution of wealth and the equalization of economic opportunities. So conceived, economic democracy presupposes political democracy—indeed, it is meant to be the ultimate feedback of a democratic form of government.
However, in the Marxist sense—which is by far the prevalent association of the expression—“economic democracy” does not presuppose political democracy; it replaces it. This follows from the materialistic conception of history, i.e., from negation of the autonomy of politics. In the Marxist approach political democracy has no value in itself, for it is only a superstructure of bourgeois and capitalistic oppression, and “political” democracy is thus reduced to “capitalistic” democracy. But once the domain of politics disappears from our purview, there remains little, if anything, that one can say about democracy in constructive terms. One can oppose the “false” existing democracies, but what can one propose for the sake of rebuilding a “true” democracy? Therefore in the Marxist meaning “economic democracy” is only an oppositional concept, and a distorted one at that, for it is not really the obverse of capitalist democracy but merely the obverse of capitalist economy. In other terms, in this context, democracy only means an economic system, and one based on the assumption that politics can be taken out of politics.
Industrial democracy
“Industrial democracy” is a narrower but more constructive term for pinning down the problems associated with the idea of economic democracy. Basically, industrial democracy is democracy within industrial plants. In many ways it is an adaptation of the Greek formula to an industrial society: it is a microdemocracy in which the member of the political community, the polítes, is replaced by the member of an economic community, the worker. In its ultimate form, industrial democracy calls for self-government by the workers in a plant—a direct self-government which could or should be crowned at the national level by a “functional democracy,” that is, by a political system based on functional representation [seeRepresentation]. In practice, the ideal of industrial democracy has materialized only at the microlevel in a number of schemes concerning the workers’ participation in management: “codetermination” in Germany and Austria, workers’ councils and “self-management” in Yugoslavia, and institutionalized practices of joint consultation between management and trade unions in various other countries (reviewed, for example, in Clegg 1960).
To sum up, nobody will deny the importance of social democracy as a vital basis of a democratic polity; and it is usually conceded that economic equalization and industrial democracy are valuable goals. Nonetheless, all these conceptualizations are secondary in that they presuppose, explicitly or implicitly, a political democracy. In other words, these democracies are not sovereign. In particular, if the over-all political system is not a democratic system, economic equality has little meaning and industrial democracy can be eliminated overnight. This is the reason why democracy is first and foremost political democracy, with the understanding that “the importance of the democratic political method lies mainly in its nonpolitical by-products” (Frankel 1962, p. 167).
People’s democracy
The labels “people’s democracy,” “progressive democracy,” “Soviet democracy,” and the like, pose a special problem. The difficulty is not simply that they point to a cluster of manifold elements but that the components of the cluster are so slippery that they defy analysis. A communist democracy is a “politico-economic” democracy, a “macro–micro” democracy, and a “supra–infra” democracy. It is almost impossible, therefore, to classify a people’s democracy in terms of the distinction between the political and extra-political meanings of democracy. The notion is clearly derivative, however, and may be considered in this sense as another secondary meaning of democracy.
For one thing, the expression “people’s democracy” was coined and launched only after World War ii, as a transparent response to the “goodness” of the word democracy. The derivative nature of the notion is also revealed by its thinness. The range of any discourse about the communist-type democracy is basically confined to a normative context and leans particularly on normative–futuristic democracy. In any case, it remains refractory to empirical verification, since the communist theory bypasses both structural and procedural arguments and draws exclusively on a behavioral definition of democracy that cannot be disproved. It follows that the theory of communist democracy does not succeed in showing how this democracy is meaningfully related to the facts. All in all, by no criterion can the systems labeled “people’s democracy,” “Soviet democracy,” etc., be differentiated from nondemocratic political systems [seeCommunism].
Democracy as a form of government
Greek and modern democracy
Greek democracy, as practiced in Athens during the fourth century b.c., was the closest approximation to the literal meaning of the term. One could argue, in effect, that the Athenian demos had more kratos (power) than any other people since. At the same time Greek democracy represents the maximum conceivable enlargement of a microdemocracy. When the demos gathered, the Athenian system actually operated as a “town-meeting” democracy in which some thousands of citizens expressed their ayes and nays.
To be sure, when the demos was assembled “democracy” consisted largely of decisions made by acclamation. But the town-meeting aspect was only the impressive part of the system. Its most effective part resided in the mechanism that made “all command each, and each in his turn all,” as Aristotle concisely put it; i.e., the exercise of power was effectively and largely shared by means of a rapid turnover of officials. The sharing in the exercise of power was also effective in that it occurred at random, for most officials were chosen by lot. On both counts—the collective “self-governing” and the individual “governing in turn”—Greek democracy was a direct democracy based on the actual participation of the citizens in their government.
Modern democracy is entirely different. It is based not on participation but on representation; it presupposes not direct exercise of power but delegation of power; it is not, in short, a system of self-government but a system of control and limitation of government. While Greek democracy can be defined literally as a “government of the people over the people,” modern democracy cannot, for the people who are governed are not the same people who govern. Therefore, we should not be misled into believing that present-day “electoral participation” resembles the real participation of the Greek citizen and even less that the devices we call “direct democracy” (referendum, initiative, etc.) can bridge the gap between the Greek and the modern formulas.
Greek and modern democracy are also entirely different in respect to political freedom. In fact, only the modern form can be called “liberal democracy.” The vagueness of the term liberalism and the multifarious aspects of freedom make this a controversial topic, with some authors flatly denying that men of antiquity were free (for example, Fustel de Coulanges 1864) and other scholars (recently, Havelock 1957) affirming the contrary. Yet there is at least one sense, and a very real one, in which we can follow Benjamin Constant in contrasting ancient and modern liberty (1819). The freedom of the citizen of the polis consisted in his part of sovereignty. Moreover, his freedom was not conceived as liberty for each individual rooted in, and protected by, “personal rights.” The individual as such, “each body,” was absorbed in the collective “Allbody,” that is, the polítes was called to exist for the polis; whereas we are likely to hold the opposite, that the state exists for the sake of the citizens. And while this does not imply that the Greeks called freedom what we consider oppression, it does point to the fact that their liberty was entirely dependent upon the existence of a diffuse and relatively small political community (hardly a “state” in our sense of the term) in which the liberty of the individual could still be entrusted to his share in the exercise of sovereignty [seeFreedom].
It is fairly obvious that the Greek type of democracy is inapplicable to modern conditions. Modern political societies are large societies, and the greater the number of the people involved, the less their participation can be effective and meaningful. Furthermore, the modern nationwide state confronts us with spatial or extensional impossibility, for real self-government cannot occur among absentees; it requires a demos to be present in person on the spot. Finally, it should not escape our attention that the “directness” of a democracy is strictly related to political primitivism: the government of all in turn is, in effect, the counterpart of a low degree of distinctiveness, explicitness, and specialization of the political functions.
It would seem that we are confronted with a paradox. To the Greeks democracy, literally understood, was a possible form of government. To us, instead, literal democracy is an impossible form of government. The query is: Why did we reinstate—after two thousand years of oblivion and disrepute—a term whose original and literal meaning calls for a blatant impossibility?
It does not suffice to reply that we give the Greek term a different meaning. Names are important in themselves, and the fact is that all over the world the common man of the twentieth century understands the word democracy very much in the same way as did the citizen of ancient Athens: its utterance elicits similar behavior, similar expectations, and similar demands. Nor can the issue be evaded simply by saying that the choice of the term democracy was unfortunate. For the word has gained acceptance not despite but because of its Utopian bent. It is not a coincidence that while the Greeks coined the term democracy to describe a possible form of government, we have revived a term that prescribes an impossible form. In the modern world, then, “democracy” is first and foremost a normative word: it does not describe a thing, it prescribes an ideal.
The ideal
Westerners have lived under democratic systems long enough to have reached the phase of democratic disillusionment. They are therefore likely to underestimate the impact of ideals and especially the force of the democratic “illusion”—no matter under which apocalyptic banner—in the rest of the world. Westerners are thus inclined to miss the peculiar temper of modern politics and—ironically enough—the fundamental change that Western rationalism has brought about in man’s attitude toward history.
Until the Enlightenment political forms were not conceived as future-oriented paradigms; for the paradigm was in the past, in a lost paradise, or in a state of nature. For millennia political theorists have been concerned with what could be. But from the French Revolution onward we have become concerned with what should be. Classical liberalism still belonged to an age of reasonableness in which men were content with regulating the tide; democracy, socialism, and communism were born, instead, out of a Promethean attitude, out of the ambition to swim against the tide. The difference between the names liberalism and democracy is hardly descriptive; it is normative. The latter label has absorbed the former one in large part because “democracy” has a Utopian potential that “liberalism” lacks [seeLiberalism].
In fact, by any other criterion the term liberalism would have been a more advantageous choice. It was not associated with a memorable failure, an experiment that had rapidly degenerated into both sectional government—the “rule of the poor against the rich,” as Aristotle realistically put it—and “mobocracy,” a lawless rule of the mob. Moreover, the term liberalism pointed to the very crowning of the long-sought ideal of a mixed and balanced form of government. Thus the current success of the name democracy draws on the same reason that accounts for its previous abandonment, namely, that “democracy” points to an extreme ideal—no less extreme qua ideal than “communism,” and so much so that in a purely normative context the two ideals can ultimately be joined.
This is not to say, of course, that “democracy” was deliberately reinstated because modern man has fallen into a Utopian mood. The adoption of the name democracy was also a response to the entry into politics of ever-growing masses. The small literate elites of former times could well dispense with miranda and credenda, to use Charles Merriam’s terms; but the more politics opens up to comparatively illiterate masses, the more miranda and credenda are needed to feed them no less than to mobilize and to manipulate them.
In a historical purview, then, it is the ought, the deontology of democracy, that comes to the fore. And a historical approach also helps to place the various forms of democratic normativism in perspective.
During the nineteenth century, the term democracy was mainly used in progressive circles as an oppositional ideal. As Louis Hartz points out, the image of democracy depicted by its early advocates was basically the negation of what they wanted to destroy (Chambers & Salisbury [1960] 1962, p. 27). Democracy so conceived is simply the reverse of absolutism, a polemical notion whose function is to oppose, not to propose. The utterance of “democracy” is a way of saying no to inequality, injustice, and coercion. But once the enemy is defeated the problem becomes to specify what ought to be, that is, to identify equality, justice, and freedom in a positive fashion. Faced with this problem democratic normativism splits: it can either adapt itself to the real world or consolidate itself into a future-oriented perfectionism.
Realistic normativism follows from awareness of the “opposite principle” (Herz 1951, pp. 168–189), or of the principle of the “opposite danger” (Sartori [1962] 1965, pp. 63–67). Its proponents realize that as an ideal is converted into reality, it must be continuously adjusted as it approaches fulfillment. Therefore, the more an actual democracy is maximized, the more its deontology must be minimized. If within an established democracy the democratic ought is maintained in its extreme form, it militates against the very system it has produced, that is, it produces “opposite” results.
Utopian normativism, on the other hand, maintains an oppositional attitude within an existing democracy. It refuses to admit that ideals have a countervailing function and will not allow the ideal to fade in victory. The normative attitude is to maximize ideals in their purity, in anticipation of a future in which the ought will finally overcome the is.
Theoretically, one can easily dismiss both oppositional and Utopian normativism. But the fact remains that we live in a time of explosion of expectations and in which the high tide of democratic perfectionism has yet to come in most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We are thus faced with an apparently insoluble dilemma. In order to make democracy succeed in the real world we have adopted a realistic normativism; but a realistic image of democracy, and often a disillusioned one, can hardly compete on a world-wide scale against the appeal of Utopia. A realistic normativism loses the dimension of the future, and this suggests that Western democracies may well lose control over the explosive potentialities of the democratic ideal.
The reality
The ought and the is of democracy are inextricably intertwined. A democracy exists only insofar as its ideals and values bring it into being. Therefore, to deal separately with the norms and the facts is an analytical device. It is a necessary device, however, for while the name democracy is fitting for prescriptive purposes, it can be very misleading for descriptive purposes. Only in the Greek world did the name and the thing coincide. In our world the descriptive meaning of “democracy” cannot be explained and derived from its literal meaning.
When we come to the how of democracy, a democratic polity is usually identified by the manner of selection of its leaders and by the fact (which is also a corollary) that their power is checked and restrained. As Schumpeter puts it, in a democracy “the role of the people is to produce a government,” and therefore “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” ([1942] 1962, p. 269). The emphasis here is definitely procedural. It is also procedural in all the definitions concerned with majority rule and minority rights [seeMajority rule]. On the other hand, when we deal with the institutional arrangements and agencies of “constitutional democracy” the emphasis tends to be structural. But in many cases the structural and procedural focuses are so tightly interlinked that we may well speak of a combined “structural–procedural” definition.
A neat distinction may be made instead between structural–procedural democracy, on the one hand, and the behavioral definition of democracy on the other. In this latter focus a democracy is identified by the activity of its leaders rather than by the manner of their selection. And the contention may follow that whenever one finds a “rule for the people” one finds a democracy.
No one denies that governing for the people is the very purpose of a democratic government; for nobody affirms that democratic structures and procedures are an end in themselves. The question is whether political altruism should be left to the gods or whether it should be secured precisely by structural and procedural means. Furthermore, the way in which the rulers happen to rule does not suffice to qualify a political system. A benevolent despotism remains a despotism no matter how benevolently the despot happens to behave. By the same token, ruling for the people is “demophily,” not democracy. For democracy is not merely a manner of governing; it is a form of government, a political system.
The distinguishing mark of “real” democracy—i.e., of democracy in the real world—is provided, then, by the means that are conducive to the end of governing for the people. The step from demophily to democracy is indeed a long step. It occurs after endless deceptions and failures, and it occurs only when leaders are forced to respond to the people by means of structural and procedural safeguards [seeRepresentation, article onrepresentational systems].
The standards
In order to define democracy as a type of political system it is essential to ascertain what democracy is not. This in turn presupposes clarification of the standards of democracy. For, depending on the standards, a political system may or may not be considered a democracy. Indeed, different standards have to be used, for democracy is not a static entity: democracy in the nineteenth century cannot be assessed like democracy in the twentieth, and a developed democracy is different from a developing democracy. The problem then is to make coherent use of the pertinent standard.
With reference to the developed and successful democracies of the Anglo–American or Scandinavian type, the standards are high. Here “democracy” denotes more than political machinery; it also denotes a way of living, a “social democracy.” In particular, these democracies have gone a long way toward the maximization of equality—equality of status, of opportunity, and of starting points. We may thus speak of “full” or advanced democracy to denote the maximum current achievement of democracy in the real world. In this sense, then, democracy is a polar type, just as totalitarianism is the polar extreme of dictatorship.
In areas in which democracy has never been stable or effective—including a number of European countries—the standard is considerably lower. In this instance a polity qualifies as a democracy because of its machinery rather than its achievement and is more of a political arrangement than a state of the society. This more limited political character is revealed by the fact that emphasis is laid less on equality and more on liberty—as is only natural, for liberty has a procedural priority over equality. The test is provided by free elections, a competitive party system, and a representational system of government. It would be unfair to require a more exacting standard; for only the successful functioning of the machinery over time allows democracy to strike roots in the society. Aside from the United States, hardly any country was a full democracy before World War I, not even Great Britain; and even currently the existence of constitutional government, as opposed to arbitrary government, still represents the highest performance of democracy in most of the world. It is fair to say, therefore, that the standard provided by a constitutional government that secures political freedom, personal security, and impartial justice is the average standard, i.e., that this is what democracy “normally” means.
Up to this point we are able to specify what democracy is: the border between a democratic and a nondemocratic political system is still definite. But no sooner do we apply the word democracy to most of the Third World, and in particular to the so-called developing nations, than the standard becomes so low that one may well wonder whether the word democracy is still appropriate. At this point we speak of democracy simply to indicate that a given political system is not an overt dictatorship, that is, a dictatorship that allows no freedom, no opposition, and no independence to the courts. Some scholars are inclined to go even further. Shils speaks of “tutelary democracy” ([1959–1960] 1962, pp. 60–68), thereby implying that the standard can be reduced to the sole condition that the ruling elite earnestly profess democratic beliefs and pursue the goal of future establishment of some kind of democratic structure.
From the point of view of the classification of political systems it appears that the category of “initial” democracy cannot be stretched to include tutelary democracy. For promises are not deeds, and an authoritarian method of achieving democracy has to surmount the additional difficulty that the means shape the ends. A tutelary democracy may be even less than a mere “behavioral” democracy; it is only a possible future, only a futuristic democracy. Yet, the notion of tutelary democracy has its merits. For one thing, to profess democratic ideals is better than nothing at all; that is, the notion has the merit of singling out the importance of a belief system, in contrast to the somewhat deterministic and mechanical view that democracy follows from a set of socioeconomic conditions. In the second place, to raise the problem of democracy in the context of formless or transitional societies has the virtue of stimulating our imagination.
The question arises: When we speak of Western experience, is the key term “Western” or “experience”? In other words, can there be a non-Western path to democracy? But it would be premature to venture into these speculations without first discussing the conditions of democracy.
The conditions
Conditions are usually divided into necessary and/or sufficient. But we really know so little about the conditions of democracy that in most cases the best we can do is speak of facilitating conditions.
Economic development. Recently the trend has been to relate the conditions of democracy to a given stage of socioeconomic development. For example, Lipset argues that “the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.” If the hypothesis is tested by the usual indexes of economic development, one finds that the average wealth, degree of industrialization and urbanization, and level of education is indeed much higher for the more democratic countries (Lipset 1960, pp. 45–76; Almond & Coleman 1960, pp. 538–544).
It has been pointed out, however, that if we look at specific cases rather than at over-all averages the correlation between democracy and economic development is weak, and that between the great extremes of wealth and sheer poverty is a large no man’s land where apparently any political system can exist (Eckstein 1961, pp. 38–40). Moreover, a correlation is not a causal link. And even assuming that some sort of causal link does exist between welfare and democracy, we may still wonder whether a country became democratic because it was prosperous, or prosperous because it was democratic. If we abide by the low standard of initial democracy, then England surely became a democracy, i.e., a constitutional government, before the advent of industrialization, prosperity, and literacy. On the other hand, if we judge by the advanced type, it is fairly obvious that there can be no equalization of wealth until a people becomes wealthy. It would seem, therefore, that economic growth is a condition for the growth of democracy —not for its establishment [seeEconomic growth, article onnoneconomic aspects].
Two more specific caveats are also in order. First, much of the available evidence is statistically biased, in the sense that our findings are narrowly confined to the variables that are susceptible to quantification, and measurability is not a criterion of relevance. In this respect the objection could be that indexes of economic development correlate meaningfully only with the temperature of politics. Granted that prosperity is likely to moderate the tensions of the class struggle and the intensity of ideology, “cool” politics facilitates any regime, and therefore prosperity may help to stabilize a dictatorship as much as a democracy.
The second caution is that much of the available statistical evidence is gathered under categories that hopelessly lack discrimination. For instance, a strong positive correlation has been found between stable democracy and degree of literacy (with the perplexing exceptions of Germany and France), and it is often argued that the most important single factor in promoting democracy is the degree of education. In itself, however, literacy is only exposure to communications; and this implies that literacy can be conducive to mass manipulation no less than to individual self-realization. It appears, therefore, that our faith in education rests on the hidden premise that what we really mean is “liberal education,” the kind that inculcates, among other things, liberal and democratic values. The problem is, then, whether a merely technological literacy, or a type of education that inculcates illiberal values, may not promote autocracy. And the statistical figures collected under the literacy category do not make the discrimination that we need most [seeModernization].
Intermediate structures. The foregoing reservations remind us of the view held by Tocqueville (1856), followed by Durkheim and recently restated, for example, by Kornhauser, that democracy presupposes the backbone of an “intermediate structure” of independent groups and voluntary associations (1959, pp. 76–90). Unquestionably, the support of a vital and active “infrastructure” of self-governing organisms and institutions is of great help. One may say that political macrodemocracy is safer and more authentic the more it reflects and presupposes an “infrademocracy.” Once again, however, one should be wary of considering this a necessary condition for any stage of democracy. The necessary condition (though in no way a sufficient one) should be stated in broader and less exacting terms, for example, by pointing to the fact that no modern democracy has yet succeeded until the development of a middle class bridges the gap between the populace and the state.
Leadership. Furthermore, the fact that we have developed a keen interest in the socioeconomic preconditions of democracy should not lead us to underplay the strictly political conditions of democracy—as Aron has recently underlined (Aron et al. 1960). Since the current emphasis on the prepolitical requisites of democracy is partly due to a research bias (because of research facilities and the greater facility of the research), it is all the more necessary to stress the importance of leadership. Leadership is a disturbing variable in two senses: it disturbs the social scientist because of its “subjective” elusiveness, and it has a disturbing effect on the “objective” data. On the first count the social scientist should eliminate it; but on the second count he cannot. Prolonged effectiveness gives legitimacy to a political system, whereas in a modernizing society no legitimacy can withstand prolonged ineffectiveness (Lipset 1960, pp. 77–90). The effectiveness of democracy depends first and foremost on the efficiency and skill of its leadership. This becomes even truer the less favorable the objective conditions [seeLeadership].
All in all, the conditions of democracy are still largely unknown. On the one hand, whenever our hypotheses can be tested empirically—as in the case of indexes of economic growth—the findings are somewhat circular, for we are told that the kind of soil that favors democracy is the soil that has been cultivated best. On the other hand, when we come to examine the specifically political conditions of democracy, our assumptions remain poorly verified. Although this follows from the intrinsic difficulties of the domain of politics, we surely could do better by formulating our queries with more precision.
Clearly the conditions of advanced democracy are not those of initial democracy, and the problem of implementing a political democracy is different from the problem of planting it. For instance, an open class system, an equalitarian value system, and an industrial society are necessary conditions neither for the take-off into democracy nor for normal democracy; in fact, these so-called conditions presuppose the successful performance of normal democracy and can be viewed, therefore, as consequences rather than antecedents. The rewarding query is, then, “which are the conditions for each standard?” and, conversely, “which level of democratization canned be attained under given conditions?”
The point is not simply that there is no one factor crucially associated with the success of democracy; the point is also that the cluster of factors has a historical dimension, in the sense that all the relevant factors have to be considered in a sequence, with reference to their order of succession, their tempo, and their timing. It would seem, in fact, that “objective” factors are less important in initiating a democracy than (1) the will of an efficient and capable leadership, and (2) regulation of the flow of demands in such a way that the political system can process it without getting overloaded. For what throws a political system off balance—and particularly a democracy—is a sudden im-balance between an outburst of expectations and the capacity for meeting them.
Prospects and alternatives
The ways of history are not infinite, but they are varied. And the prospects for democracy in most of the world are related to the search for new solutions or, better said, to the search for adaptations and substitutions. If the question is whether there are “alternative forms of democracy,” the reply can only be that this kind of new solution has not been discovered. But if the question is whether there are alternative ways of achieving democracy more quickly, this is surely pertinent and vital. In fact, the problem of the developing countries is to catch up, a matter of speed and short cuts. And there is no better evidence that economizing is possible and that elimination of steps is feasible than the evidence provided by the Western experience itself.
Let it be recalled that for a long time constitutional lawyers believed that bicameralism was an essential safety, and yet there are unicameral systems that do just as well. Likewise, we often claim that rotation in office is part and parcel of democracy; but there are political systems in which one predominant party competitively gains and keeps an absolute majority, thereby providing an instance of democracy without governmental turnover. In a similar vein we tend to think that the interplay between majority and opposition is the keystone of a democratic system, and only recently have we started to realize that the argument does not apply to any kind of opposition—indeed, the institutionalization of the opposition may not improve things at all, and an irresponsible and purely demagogic opposition is likely to wreck any democracy. This does not imply that there can be a democracy where dissent and contestation are impeded; it does suggest, however, that whenever the stakes are too high to allow a peaceful transmission of power to the opposer, we should explore the possibility of subsidiary forms and mechanisms of contest.
Finally, most people equate democracy with universal suffrage; and it is surprising how little attention is being paid to the tempo and sequence that enable a political system to process the entry into politics of hitherto excluded and far-removed masses, that is, to cope with the so-called crisis of participation. And this in spite of the evidence that a sudden, massive enfranchisement is either a sham or is likely to shatter any developing democracy. Universal suffrage, in fact, seems to be the one taboo that we are not prepared to break—again a confirmation of the extent to which we are fascinated by the word at the expense of the substance. To be sure, “people” means “all the people,” and therefore in a literal sense there is no democracy until “everybody” is given the power to vote. But in our macrodemocracies the power of each amounts to a powerless fraction of power; and therefore the substance of the matter no longer is that everybody should be equally entitled to self-government (by virtue of his vote), but that as many people as possible should not be misgoverned. Thus, as long as free elections do occur, the size of the electorate matters far less than the essential goal, namely, the establishment of a political system that makes a government responsive and accountable.
The foregoing considerations are meant only to suggest that we need to cross-examine our dogmas and to acquire a fresh vision. In matters of polity building, genuine invention is very rare and very slow, and the successful innovations have usually been accidental. Before speculating about “new solutions” we should reduce to a minimum the requirements of the solutions that have been tested. Democracy, as Woodrow Wilson said, is the most difficult form of government. We cannot hope, therefore, to export the “complete” Western type. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that the new states and developing nations cannot pretend to start from the level of achievement at which the Western democracies have arrived. In fact, no democracy would ever have materialized if it had set for itself the advanced goals that a number of modernizing states currently claim to be pursuing. In a world-wide perspective, the problem is to minimize arbitrary and tyrannical rule and to maximize a pattern of civility rooted in respect and justice for each man—in short, to achieve a humane polity. Undue haste and overly ambitious goals are likely to lead to opposite results.
Giovanni Sartori
[See alsoConsensus; Constitutions and constitutionalism; Delegation of powers; Elections; Liberalism; Parties, political; Representation. Other relevant material may be found inDictatorship; Political theory; Power.]
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