What Democracy Is . . . and Is Not
What Democracy Is… and Is Not
Introduction and Context
Ambiguity of Democracy: The term "democracy" has become a debased currency, used by politicians of varying convictions and creating ambiguity for scholars who often add qualifying adjectives. Robert Dahl introduced "polyarchy" to achieve greater conceptual precision, but "democracy" remains the prevailing term.
Recent Convergence: A wave of transitions from autocratic rule, beginning with Portugal's "Revolution of the Carnations" in 1974 and cresting with the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, has led to a common understanding of democracy.
Abandonment of Adjectives: There has been a silent abandonment of dubious adjectives like "popular," "guided," "bourgeois," and "formal" when modifying "democracy."
Emerging Consensus: A remarkable consensus has emerged on the minimal conditions polities must meet to be considered "democratic." International organizations monitor these standards, and some countries consider them in foreign policy.
What Democracy Is: Generic Concepts
Diverse Nature: Democracy does not consist of a single, unique set of institutions. There are many types, producing varied effects, contingent on a country's socioeconomic conditions, entrenched state structures, and policy practices.
Core Definition: Modern political democracy is defined as "a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives."
Regime/System of Governance: This refers to:
Patterns determining access to principal public offices.
Characteristics of actors admitted or excluded.
Strategies actors use to gain access.
Rules followed in making publicly binding decisions.
Institutionalization: These patterns must be habitually known, practiced, and accepted by most, if not all, actors. This is increasingly achieved through a written body of laws undergirded by a written constitution, though informal norms can also exist.
Regime Labels: "Democracy" is one such generic label, alongside autocratic, authoritarian, despotic, dictatorial, tyrannical, totalitarian, absolutist, traditional, monarchic, oligarchic, plutocratic, aristocratic, and sultanistic.
Rulers:
Persons occupying specialized authority roles, giving legitimate commands.
Distinguished from nondemocratic rulers by norms conditioning their ascent to power and practices holding them accountable.
Public Realm:
Encompasses collective norms and choices binding on society, backed by state coercion.
Its content varies across democracies based on distinctions between public/private, state/society, legitimate coercion/voluntary exchange, and collective needs/individual preferences.
Liberal Conception: Advocates for narrowly circumscribing the public realm.
Socialist/Social-Democratic Approach: Extends the public realm through regulation, subsidization, and sometimes collective property ownership.
Equally Democratic: Neither approach is intrinsically more democratic; they are just "differently democratic." Extreme actions in either direction (destroying basis for collective needs/legitimate authority or individual preferences/controlling illegitimate government actions) can undermine democracy.
Political Conflict: Differences over the optimal mix of public and private spheres provide much substantive content for political conflict in democracies.
Citizens:
The most distinctive element of democracies; all regimes have rulers and a public realm, but only democracies have citizens.
Historical Restrictions: Early democracies imposed severe restrictions on citizenship (age, gender, class, race, literacy, property ownership, tax-paying status).
Modern Inclusion: After protracted struggles, most restrictions were lifted. Today, eligibility is largely standard for all native-born adults, with some higher age limits for certain offices. Recent democracies (Southern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe) have avoided formal restrictions, unlike 19^{th} century American and European democracies.
Informal Restrictions: These still exist and highlight the importance of procedures.
Competition:
Not always seen as essential (classic democracies focused on direct participation and consensus).
"Factions": Since "The Federalist Papers" (James Madison, Federalist No. 10), competition among factions is accepted as a "necessary evil" for democracies on a more-than-local scale. Madison argued that faction causes are "sown into the nature of man," and remedies are worse than the disease.
Distinguishing Subtypes: Differences over preferred modes and boundaries of competition contribute most to distinguishing subtypes of democracy.
Electoralism Fallacy:
Equating democracy solely with regular, fairly conducted, and honestly counted elections is a fallacy, known as "electoralism."
Holding elections (even flawed ones) is not a sufficient condition for democracy; it's the "faith that merely holding elections will channel political action into peaceful contests among elites and accord public legitimacy to the winners" regardless of conduct or constraints.
Limitations of Elections: Elections are intermittent and offer only highly aggregated alternatives from political parties. Citizens influence policy between elections through interest associations, social movements, locality groupings, and clientelistic arrangements.
Modern democracy offers diverse competitive processes and channels for expressing interests and values (associational, partisan, functional, territorial, collective, individual).
Majority Rule:
Common image: decisions made by combining votes of more than half of those eligible and present (e.g., electorate, parliament, committee).
Qualified Majorities: For exceptional purposes (e.g., constitutional amendments), more than 50 percent may be required.
Problem of Numbers vs. Intensities: A stable majority can regularly harm a minority (e.g., threatened cultural or ethnic group).
Protecting Minority Rights: Successful democracies qualify majority rule through:
Constitutional provisions (bills of rights) placing matters beyond majority reach.
Requirements for concurrent majorities in different constituencies (confederalism).
Guarantees for autonomy of local/regional governments (federalism).
Grand coalition governments incorporating all parties (consociationalism).
Negotiation of social pacts between major social groups (neocorporatism).
Most Common/Effective Way: Everyday operation of interest associations and social movements, which reflect and amplify different intensities of preference, bringing them to bear on decision-makers. "In modern democracies, votes may be counted, but influences alone are weighted."
Cooperation:
A central feature: actors voluntarily make collective decisions binding on the polity.
Actors must cooperate to compete; they act collectively through parties, associations, and movements to select candidates, articulate preferences, petition authorities, and influence policies.
Deliberation: Democracy's freedoms encourage citizens to deliberate, discover common needs, and resolve differences without a supreme central authority. This emphasis on independent groups (as described by Alexis de Tocqueville in "Democracy in America") contrasts with purely competitive interest maximization.
Civil Society:
Refers to cooperation and deliberation via autonomous group activity.
Functions: Independent units of social identity and interest, by remaining independent of the state (and parties), can restrain arbitrary actions of rulers and form better citizens (aware of others' preferences, self-confident, civic-minded).
Intermediate Layer: Provides governance between individual and state, capable of resolving conflicts and controlling members' behavior without public coercion.
Mitigates conflicts and improves citizenship quality without relying exclusively on marketplace privatism.
Representatives:
Professional politicians do most of the work in modern democracies, orienting careers around key offices. Democracy would likely not survive without them.
Key Question: How representatives are chosen and held accountable.
Channels of Representation:
Electoral: Most visible channel, based on territorial constituencies, culminating in a parliament or presidency accountable to the citizenry.
Functional: Growth of government has increased non-elected agencies, leading to a vast apparatus of specialized representation based on functional interests (not territorial constituencies).
Interest Associations: These, along with social movements, have become the primary expression of civil society in stable democracies.
"Compressed Time": New democracies since 1974 face a bewildering array of parties, interests, and movements simultaneously seeking influence, creating challenges not present in earlier democratization processes.
Procedures that Make Democracy Possible
Indispensable Conditions: Specific procedural norms and civic rights are necessary. A polity failing to follow the "rule of law" regarding its own procedures is not democratic. These are necessary but not sufficient conditions.
Robert Dahl's "Procedural Minimal" Conditions (Polyarchy):
Control over government policy decisions is constitutionally vested in elected officials.
Elected officials are chosen in frequent, fairly conducted elections with comparatively low coercion.
Practically all adults have the right to vote.
Practically all adults have the right to run for elective offices.
Citizens have the right to express themselves without severe punishment on broadly defined political matters.
Citizens have the right to seek alternative sources of information; such sources exist and are protected by law.
Citizens have the right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including political parties and interest groups.
Schmitter & Karl's Two Additional Conditions:
Civilian Control over Unelected Officials: Popularly elected officials must exercise their constitutional powers without informal opposition or veto from unelected officials (military officers, entrenched civil servants, state managers).
This guards against "electoralism" by ensuring civilian control. Without it, militarized polities (e.g., contemporary Central America, excluding Sandinista Nicaragua) might be misclassified as democracies, as they have been by some scholars and U.S. policymakers.
Self-Governance/Autonomy: The polity must be self-governing and able to act independently of constraints imposed by an overarching political system.
Dahl and others assumed this for sovereign nation-states, but blocs, alliances, spheres of influence, and "neocolonial" arrangements make autonomy salient.
This is significant even if external actors are democratic (e.g., Puerto Rico) but critical if the polity lacks autonomy to alter or end the encompassing arrangement (e.g., Baltic states).
Principles that Make Democracy Feasible
Beyond Procedures: Lists of components and norms specify what democracy is but not how it functions. The simplest answer is "by the consent of the people"; the more complex is "by the contingent consent of politicians acting under conditions of bounded uncertainty."
Contingent Consent:
Representatives informally agree that winners will not bar losers from future office or influence.
In exchange, momentary losers respect the winners' right to make binding decisions.
Citizens obey decisions, provided the outcome remains contingent on their collective preferences expressed through fair, regular elections or open, repeated negotiations.
The "Democratic Bargain" (Dahl): The challenge is to find rules embodying contingent consent, not just consensus on goals. Its shape varies by society, depending on social cleavages, mutual trust, standards of fairness, and willingness to compromise. It is compatible with significant dissensus on substantive policy issues.
Bounded Uncertainty:
All democracies involve uncertainty about who will be elected and what policies they will pursue.
Evidence of Democracy: The possibility of change through independent collective action must exist (e.g., Italy, Japan, Scandinavian social democracies). If not, the system is not democratic (e.g., Mexico, Senegal, Indonesia).
Boundaries: This uncertainty is bounded. Not just any actor can compete or raise any issue; established rules must be respected. Not just any policy can be adopted; conditions must be met. Democracy institutionalizes "normal," limited political uncertainty.
Sources of Boundaries: Constitutional guarantees (property, privacy, expression) are part of this, but the most effective boundaries are generated by competition among interest groups and cooperation within civil society. Actual policy variation tends to stay within a predictable and accepted range.
Operative Guidelines vs. Civic Culture:
The authors emphasize operative guidelines based on rules of prudence, rather than deeply ingrained habits like tolerance, moderation, mutual respect, or trust in public authorities.
Critique of Civic Culture: Waiting for such habits to develop implies a very slow process of regime consolidation (generations), likely condemning most contemporary experiences to failure.
Contingent Consent Source: Contingent consent and bounded uncertainty can emerge from the interaction of antagonistic and mutually suspicious actors.
Civic Culture as Product: Benevolent and ingrained norms of a civic culture are better understood as a product of democracy, not a producer.
How Democracies Differ (Concepts Not Defining the Generic Definition)
These concepts have been associated with democracy but are not part of its generic definition. They are important for distinguishing subtypes or evaluating performance, but including them as generic definitions would mistake the American polity for a universal model.
Distinguishing Components (Not Defining Elements):
Consensus: Citizens may not agree on substantive political goals or the state's role.
Participation: All citizens may not actively and equally participate, though it must be legally possible.
Access: Rulers may not weigh all preferences equally, though individuals/groups should have equal opportunity to express preferences.
Responsiveness: Rulers may not always follow citizens' preferred actions but must be accountable for deviations.
Majority Rule: Positions or rules may not be decided solely by votes; deviations must be defended and approved.
Parliamentary Sovereignty: The legislature may not be the only or final authority. Other bodies making ultimate choices (executive, judicial) must be accountable.
Party Government: Rulers may not be consistently nominated, promoted, and disciplined by well-organized, coherent political parties, though absence can make effective government harder.
Pluralism: The political process may not be based on multiple, overlapping, voluntary, autonomous private groups. Monopolies of representation, hierarchies of association, and obligatory memberships imply closer state ties and less public/private separation.
Federalism: Territorial authority division may not involve multiple levels and local autonomies enshrined constitutionally, though some power dispersal is characteristic of democracies.
Presidentialism: The chief executive may not be a single person directly elected by the citizenry as a whole, though some authority concentration exists, even if collective and indirectly accountable.
Checks and Balances: Different branches of government are not necessarily systematically pitted against one another, though all forms of government (assembly, executive, judicial, even dictatorial in times of war) must be ultimately accountable to the citizenry.
Varied Virtues: Continental European arrangements (parliamentary, consociational, unitary, corporatist, concentrated) may have unique virtues for guiding polities through the autocratic-to-democratic transition.
What Democracy Is Not (False Expectations)
There's an understandable temptation to overload democracy with expectations, imagining it will resolve all political, social, economic, administrative, and cultural problems. "All good things do not necessarily go together."
Not Necessarily More Economically Efficient:
Rates of aggregate growth, savings, and investment may not surpass nondemocracies, especially during transition.
Propertied groups and administrative elites may react to perceived threats by initiating capital flight, disinvestment, or sabotage.
Long-term positive effects (income distribution, aggregate demand, education, productivity, creativity) may improve economic and social performance, but these are not immediate or defining characteristics of democratization.
Not Necessarily More Administratively Efficient:
Decision-making may be slower due to consultation with more actors.
Costs of implementation may be higher, requiring "payoffs" to a wider, more resourceful set of clients (though autocracies can also be corrupt).
Popular satisfaction may not be greater, as necessary compromises often displease many, and losers are free to complain.
Not Necessarily More Orderly, Consensual, Stable, or Governable:
This is partly due to democratic freedom of expression and ongoing disagreements over new, initially ambiguous rules and institutions.
Newly autonomous groups will test rules, protest, and seek renegotiation.
Antisystem Parties: Their presence is not surprising or a sign of democratic failure, provided they are willing to play by the rules of bounded uncertainty and contingent consent.
Governability: A challenge for all regimes. While autocracies may lose legitimacy, democracies can also lose the ability to govern, with publics becoming disenchanted.
Threat to Principles: A critical moment for democracy occurs when politicians, settling into consolidated roles, find expectations frustrated, rules disadvantageous, or vital interests threatened by majorities, potentially leading to undermining contingent consent and bounded uncertainty.
Not Necessarily More Open Economies:
Democracies offer more open societies and polities but not necessarily more open economies.
Historically, successful democracies used protectionism, closed borders, and public institutions for economic development.
Democracy and Capitalism: While long-term compatibility exists despite tension, the promotion of liberal economic goals (property rights, market clearing, private dispute settlement, freedom from regulation, privatization) does not necessarily further democracy consolidation.
State Intervention: Democracies need to levy taxes and regulate transactions, especially with monopolies/oligopolies.
Collective Rights: Citizens may decide to protect collective rights from individuals (especially propertied ones) and support public or cooperative ownership.
Neoliberalism vs. Political Freedom: Notions of economic liberty in neoliberal models are not synonymous with political freedom and may even impede it.
Conclusion: The Democratic Wager
Democratization does not guarantee economic growth, social peace, administrative efficiency, political harmony, free markets, "the end of ideology," or "the end of history."
These qualities are neither prerequisites nor immediate products of democracy.
What to Hope For: The emergence of political institutions that:
Can peacefully compete to form governments and influence public policy.
Can channel social and economic conflicts through regular procedures.
Have sufficient linkages to civil society to represent their constituencies and commit them to collective action.
Persistence and Expansion: The "democratic wager" is that such a regime, once established, will persist by reproducing itself within its initial confining conditions and eventually expand beyond them.
Capacity for Change: Unlike authoritarian regimes, democracies have the capacity to modify their rules and institutions consensually in response to changing circumstances, offering a better chance for eventual progress than autocracies.