What is “Distilled Populism”? (And Is It Dangerous?)

I cannot here defend the particular items I believe to be required for distilled populism. For complete arguments, please consult my new book. Here, I will simply enumerate. But it is important that one not set down a particular list of this type and then try to use it to defend the thesis of democratic harmlessness by noting that nobody who has advocated for precisely those elements has been terribly dangerous. For it could be that no well-known person has pushed all and only these items. We must rather say that all those who have advocated for no more than this list of propositions or any subset of them have been as harmless as the turtle dove. We can concede, though, that it is extremely hard to find advocates for, e.g., regular elections, free speech, and proportional representation, who have not also plumped for, e.g., equality of income or jobs for every able-bodied citizen). Nevertheless, we may insist that those who are good historical examples of distilled populists have never been violent rabble-rousers. Obviously, however, to make that case we need to have a better sense of precisely what distilled populism is.

So, here is a (coarsely put) list of items that I believe should be considered fundamental (i.e., ensconced in something like a constitution or other extremely difficult to repeal or amend norm) to anything that can correctly call itself an authentic democracy:

1. It takes as axiomatic that self-government is an intrinsic good. Thus, it will not move from a proposition allowing the people to demand, by fair plebiscite open to all, what they want from their government.

2. It allows for impairments or restrictions of political speech, assembly or association to be imposed only where they are consistent with recognition and enforcement of the paramount importance to democracy of activities that foster self-government. These activities include such items as (i) facilitating access to reliable political information, (ii) making voting easier or fairer, and (iii) creating opportunities to attain political office or interact with governmental officers and agencies.

3. Each person and each officially expressed desire of such person for social action shall be guaranteed equal treatment and equal protection of the law. No discrimination based solely on race, creed, gender, orientation, property accumulation or other such characteristic, when irrelevant*, shall be allowed by governmental or non-governmental entities, and all long-term residents having reached sixteen years of age shall receive an equal vote, have equal access to ballots and candidacy for government offices, and have abundant, reliable, cost-free information relevant to such ballots and offices available to them. Governmental elections shall be frequent within all political subdivisions.

[*Because of what votes actually are, voter knowledge, intelligence, goodness, or other such alleged "credentials" are irrelevant.]

4.  Consistent with the principles set forth above, elections shall be determined based on the fair and accurate count of voter approvals, where those receiving the most approvals win. But every significant subdivision of the people shall also have its proportionate say in the administration of government through the election of additional representatives, where (i) such subdivisions are mutually exclusive subsets of the populace determined by asking voters whom they would most like to represent them, and (ii) significance is determined solely on the basis of group size.

5. The amount of ultimate authority to make government policy wielded by each representative shall always be a strict function of the total number of voters that have approved of that representative. But individuals chosen to represent either an entire populace or a significant subdivision therein shall each be provided with fair and equal opportunity to speak and equally-weighted votes in committees. Deliberation and bargaining among representatives shall always proceed according to the best current science regarding what deliberative procedures are most likely and efficiently to produce concord; provided, however, that such procedures shall require that simultaneous approval votes on all alternatives—including no change to the status quo—must always be used in lieu of successive individual votes on amendments and final votes on enactment.

6. Governmental officers shall be subject to recall, enacted laws shall be subject to repeal by referendum, and certain types of judicial decisions shall be subject to reversal by votes of the relevant electorate.

7. Disparities in the ability to produce and disseminate campaign and other election-related materials based on wealth are to be kept to a minimum.

With these general criteria for distilled populism in hand, we can begin to compile a list of historically significant events that have either accomplished a substantial increase in democracy through implementation of one or more of these principles, or failed in an (at least apparent) attempt to do so. And with that list we can try to assess the level of any alleged dangers of this sort of populism. There have, of course, also been numerous successes. Wars of independence against colonial or other conquering powers are obvious examples of democracy-enhancing events, since successes have produced at least the possibility of achieving popular sovereignty in those territories. To those we could add the 19^th Century events of the Emancipation Proclamation in the U.S. and the Parliamentary Reform Acts is Britain. Increases in women’s rights have been secured in many parts of the world, and younger people have gained the franchise. In the U.S. alone, in addition to passage of the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, one could also count enactments of numerous state laws allowing for recall of representatives or referendums on statutes as successes. All these have been obvious enlargements of democracy.

But “success” is ambiguous. In the case of the English Civil Wars and the Russian Revolution, monarchies were (either temporarily or permanently) eliminated, but in the former case the quite democratic first Agreement of the People was never enacted, and in the latter case the Constituent Assembly, long sought by those Narodniks most committed to the listed principles was immediately dissolved by Bolsheviks. We may thus distinguish ultimate from subordinate successes. Authentic democracy advocates were surely pleased by the deposing of monarchs, the enactment of more democratic blueprints for government or the calling of representative conventions or other assemblies, but those who were not executed or exiled will not have been pleased by the longer-term consequences of dictatorships, anarchy, or even (as in the case of Burundi) genocide. Thus, democratic advocates may succeed in enacting an apparently democracy-enlarging law, but that change may produce no actual growth in self-governance or its possibility, making the entire process something such advocates would themselves consider a failure. Neither the Constitution imposed by the Montagnards during the French Revolution nor the one passed by referendum in 1992 Botswana produced any real increase in democracy. And again, both of those events were followed by massacres and dictatorships.

“Success” is ambiguous in another way too. One who does not share my view that every increase in democracy is an intrinsic good could well deem a clear “success” in the enlargement of democracy as a societal failure. That sort of divergence in the assessment of merits or demerits is ineliminable; every individual must operate according to basic axiological categories that cannot be discarded.  Thus, even where there is no question that there has been an ultimate “success” in the growth of populistic principles within some group, criticisms can be expected from those who disapprove of such enlargements.

How, then, can one make a case that the advocates and advocacy of authentic democracy are “nothing to be feared”? One tack is to take at their precise words those who are horror-struck by “excessive democracy.” That should provide evidence of what it is about “mob tyranny” that has concerned significant numbers of observers. With that information we can investigate whether democracy advocates have often been responsible for the production of the particular evils forecasted. Surely it is no surprise to discover that the belief that “the poor, uneducated, ravenous rabble” ought to have the same authority to make public policy as “more cultivated, dispassionate and public-spirited” members of the community has been controversial at all times. There should be little doubt that the indictments of democracy, whether coming from the Ancient Greeks or from the libertarians of today have often focused on the matters of the alleged ignorance, irrationality, covetousness, rapaciousness. And it is unsurprising that those promoting inalienable protections for one’s person and property seems a much safer than an advocate for letting all the people do (and take!) whatever they happen to want. But the fears have imagined specific results, so if we are to assess the reasonability of the epistocratic axioms, we must try to discover if those consequences have actually come to pass.

A quick look at some of the horrific events occurring in the aftermaths of the French and Russian Revolutions or of the Burundi Referendum of 1993, ranging from land seizures to rapes and disembowelments, shows distinct similarities to the dangers long prophesied by opponents of democracy. How, then, can one sensibly claim that no one ought to fear the advocates of populism? I propose we look more closely at a few “successes” and “failures” of democratic enlargements to see if the accusations bear scrutiny. Below I have given 11 well-known attempts—some broad some quite specific—to increase democracy in various times and places. I will in time also provide what I think should be taken as fairly obvious marks of intermediate “success,” and the actual intermediate and ultimate outcomes of those efforts. I will also include the means utilized by advocates to enact these changes. 

Group	Claimed Goals
Levellers	(First) Agreement of the People
Girondists	Condorcet Constitution
Socialist Revolutionary Party	All-Russia Constituent Assembly
Front for Democracy in Burundi	Multi-Party, Multi-Ethnic, Majority Rule Governance
19th Century American Suffragists & 20th Century ERA Backers	Equal Rights for Women
Abolitionists	Black Male Suffrage
German Social Democratic Party	Creation of a Democratic Republic
Western U.S. Progressives	Referendum and Initiative Petition
Western U.S. Progressives	Proportional Representation
Midwestern U.S. Progressives	A Non-partisan Unicameral Legislature
Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee	Fairer Access to Ballots for African Americans

No doubt this list will be seen as arbitrary and capricious, as it includes, along with a few seemingly random law changes in various jurisdictions (including subsidiary ones) a democratic election in the tiny central African country of Burundi, while ignoring such historic events as the casting off of colonial power in the United States, India or any South American or country. It is also heavily weighted with events that occurred in the US. I do not wish to insist there is anything particularly representative about this list. I claim only that it provides a fairly broad assortment of events covering many of the most common aspects of attempts at democratic reform. Those believing that the choice of different or additional events would provide countervailing evidence are of course welcome to specify such examples and make their arguments.

Stay tuned. I hope to take up the items in my own admittedly idiosyncratic list in future blog entries.