Fugitive Thoughts on the SEP entry on Democracy

1    I am a big fan of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I have learned a lot from it over the years and am generally very impressed by the quality of the content. 

2    I do have some problems with the article on Democracy, though. This, of course, is quite likely the result of my being more familiar with the matters discussed in that piece than I am with most of the others I have come across. After all, I’ve spent the last decade of my life reading and thinking about those issues. I do think, though, that, independent of my own background and interests, this particular article is somewhat more slapdash than others I have seen. (Just to give one random example of the latter, I recently read a great entry on Spinoza’s political philosophy, and, even though I did my Ph.D. thesis on Spinoza, I learned quite a bit from it.) And I want to stress that my admiration for SEP has been there whether or not I have generally agreed with the author(s) on specific subjects included in their entries. In my experience, the articles there have nearly always provided fine overviews of the most important controversies in philosophy—old and new. Furthermore, most of the articles can be read with immense benefit by both interested laypeople and experts in the field. In my opinion, it's simply an incomparable resource.

3   I also want to mention right off the bat (to any  suspicious readers in these parts) that I have nothing against the lead author of the article on Democracy or the positions he takes on most of the related issues. (And I promise that I am not looking for citations to my own work, most of which has been published in pretty obscure journals and one widely unread book.) While I have never met or corresponded with Tom Christiano, I have read some of the (excellent) stuff he has written on a number of the topics covered in this article, and I think his book on what he calls “public equality” is surely the most important work anybody is likely to find on that subject. So, while I do think the article probably follows his Constitution of Equality a bit too closely, I also think that book is quite good and that people interested in democratic theory could do a lot worse than making it the cornerstone of their study.

4   OK, my critique. One thing that is likely to be noticed right off the bat when looking at the “Democracy” entry at SEP, is that, with the exception of Locke, there is not much discussion of the major figures in the history of democratic theory. Plato, Hobbes, Mill and Rousseau do get a couple of mentions each as the article proceeds, but none of their views are considered in detail, and a number of key thinkers and works are entirely ignored. Furthermore, the development of the concept of democracy through history is largely passed over. Most scholars agree that democracy's roots go back to ancient Athens, but there’s no mention of Athenian versions here. Moving forward a bit, one book that I think should not have been missed is Marsilius of Padua’s extremely important 13th Century work, Defender of the Peace. (I note, in passing, that there is no separate SEP article on Marsilius, which I think is something that really ought to be remedied, whatever may or may not be done with the Democracy entry.) In his book, Marsilius not only devotes a lot of space to touting the benefits of democracy over monarchy and aristocracy, but also spends hundreds of pages discussing the importance of separating Church and State and arguing that all earthly power should be given to State—so long as it is a majoritarian jurisdiction. His opposition to Papal powers was quite vehement! 

     Of course, authors of articles of this sort will always have to leave out this or that scholar and may need to decide generally whether they want their pieces to be focused on history or contemporary debates. But it was surprising to me that, while the usual large array of contemporary works are cited, it isn't only the Athenians and Marsilius who are omitted. There is, e.g., no Jefferson, Madison, Tocqueville, Bryce, Kelsen, Lindsay, or Schmitt. There's also not a single word on the concept of federalism and the difficult problems it poses for majoritarianism. Clearly, a conscious decision was made not to focus too much on history, so more space would be left for discussion of contemporary debates. But when the best substantive arguments are also to be found among “the greats,” as I think is sometimes the case here, it’s not clear that readers benefit by such omissions on the substance front either. (I should say again, though, that Locke is an exception to the practice here: there's quite a bit of material on his views.)

     The idea of consent pops up here and there, mostly in connection with whether individuals have an obligation to abide by governmental edicts, but there’s not, as one might expect, a section devoted to the traditional idea that democracy is, more or less, an elaboration of what follows from the concept of consenting group members. “Majority tyranny” (a particular peeve of mine, see this paper) is referred to a few times, but is nowhere defined or even explained. We read that it should be distinguished from the problem of persistent minorities because where the latter is found, "it may be the case that the majority attempts to treat the minority well, in accordance with its conception of good treatment." It would seem to follow from that way of looking at things, however, that majority tyrannies, unlike many jurisdictions in which we find persistent minorities, cannot not treat minorities in accordance with their conception of good treatment. But that is an odd suggestion, since it seems clear that we can imagine tyrannical majorities that consistently believe they are treating all of their citizens very nicely.

5   The authors tell us at the outset that they want to engage in normative, rather than descriptive theory. Their interest is in “the moral foundations of democracy and democratic institutions, as well as the moral duties of democratic representatives and citizens.” I will come back to this choice to focus discussion on moral matters, but first I want to look into what they claim to mean by “democracy” throughout the piece. The authors here indicate that by this term they mean (a) in all and only democracies, group decisions are made collectively and are binding on all group members; and (b) the decision-makers must be considered equal in some more or less “thick” sense. That is, maybe all their votes in general elections should be equally weighted, or maybe they each should get some equal (and significant) time and/or vote strength in the business of actually making laws—not just voting for representatives: but there must be some sense in which each citizen is considered equal to every other citizen. They also note that they don’t want their definition to require that democracy is a good thing; they require that it be compatible with some other form(s) of government being preferable.

                    

  When we consider the aptness of this definition, it's important to understand that democracy is often distinguished from monarchy, oligarchy, and aristocracy. (Marsilius and Hobbes make these distinctions in detail, e.g.). But such comparisons might not make sense if democracy is defined at the outset as a decision-making procedure. After all, it wasn’t generally suggested back when the relative merits of those sorts of governments were being regularly and seriously assessed, that in monarchies only the monarch can vote; in aristocracies, only elites can vote, etc. On the contrary, what was being compared was RULE by monarchs, by elites, by the demos, etc. Now, I want to stress here that I absolutely agree that something like what is settled on by the SEP authors is how democracy should be understood. My objection is that I think this must be demonstrated: it can’t be simply assumed without immediately begging questions against those who support things like sortition (picking representatives by lot) or even, arguably, such proposals as term limits. For making democracy a selection method immediately and without any argument at all turns sortitionists and term-limit advocates into anti-democrats. Again, I myself think they are anti-democratic, but I don’t believe it’s right to shove them into that camp without argument.

 Consider the fact that sortitionists generally argue that random choices of rulers from the electorate is more democratic than picking rulers by plebiscite. Why? Because they think such a method will produce a government that is much more similar (say in class or race) to the citizenry at large than selecting representatives by election will. Any such claim will be immediately foreclosed without argument if one simply starts with a definition according to which democracy is made solely a matter of how governors are selected. While I repeat that I do think this is where one needs to land, I concede that it is not the traditional understanding (say by the Athenians or Hobbes) of “democracy,” and recognize that picking a different definition without argument is unfair to those who continue to approve of that understanding. (On the other hand, I believe what the SEP authors have provided here is a good initial definition of “majoritarianism.”) 

Interestingly, the authors write that “proposed justifications of democracy identify values or reasons that support democracy over alternative forms of decision-making, such as oligarchy or dictatorship,” but oligarchy, e.g., is most commonly defined as rule of a country by a small group of elites. Some would claim, reasonably, that it doesn’t matter at all how such a group is chosen. And it seems clear, particularly in today’s U.S., that a dictator could be elected by lots of methods the authors here would have to categorize as democratic. (One other thing I will mention is that, to the extent the discussion is focused on majoritarianism, as I think it mostly is in this article, I think space should have been given to such matters as the recall of public officials and fixed terms of office. There’s nothing at all on either subject.)

 As mentioned above, in a refreshing exception to the general neglect of historical figures, there is a discussion of Locke’s argument for majority rule. Unfortunately, it shines a light on the above-mentioned problem of a too-quick definition of democracy. The authors write, “Locke thinks that a people, which is formed by individuals who consent to be members, could choose a monarchy by means of majority rule and so this argument by itself does not give us an argument for democracy.” That, of course, is hard to square with a definition of democracy precisely as a decision procedure, something which would seem to be entirely consistent with rule by a monarch.

6   A very substantial percentage of this SEP article is devoted to epistemic justifications of democracy. The idea, as is nicely explained here, is that “democracy is generally more reliable than alternative methods at producing political decisions that are correct according to procedure-independent standards.” A lot of space is given to Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, and two other suggestions are given for democracy’s supposed superiority on the reliability front as well: “the effects of cognitive diversity” and “information gathering and sharing.” What is not discussed at all is what it is supposed to mean for a public policy decision to be “correct” in the first place. I, for one, think it would be entirely unsurprising for any electoral decision to be “correct” if a vote is (as I think it is) no more nor less than a matter of asking a person or group what they want.

 The lack of any discussion of what it means for a public policy to be correct seems to me to be a major defect of this article. It functions as an unargued assumption for some sort of objective list theory of well-being. And from there we can infer that it goes on to take votes to be inquires of a sort regarding what can be expected to produce the highest levels of group well-being. I think all of that is not only controversial, but simply wrong. For whatever it may be worth, much of my book is devoted to those matters.

 To see how important this is to current controversies in democratic theory, consider the following passage: 

[I]f we expect most people to engage in other difficult and complex tasks, how can we expect them to have the time and resources sufficient to devote themselves intelligently to politics?....[O]ne widely accepted estimate puts the odds of an individual casting the deciding vote in a United States presidential election at 1 in 100 million….Anthony Downs has argued that almost all of those who do vote have little reason to become informed about how best to vote. On the assumption that citizens reason and behave roughly according to the Downsian model, either the society must in fact be run by a relatively small group of people with minimal input from the rest or it will be very poorly run. 

 And such criticisms are said to support the Platonic idea that government by a race of wise and virtuous Guardians is superior to anything that democracy can offer. My point is that knowing what one wants doesn't seem particularly time consuming or difficult, so if that’s what’s actually expected of voters, it seems silly to suggest either that it’s a terribly imposing task or that some other expert(s) could do a better job.

7   I very much like the Christiano-based arguments against epistocracy found here, which are largely based on his original analysis of “public equality.” Again, I think this is a very interesting and important approach to political authority. But it does bring us back to the claim that normative assertions about democracy and governmental authority must be moral assertions. That claim may well be correct, and whether it is or not is certainly a thorny issue, but it’s another matter that I think requires argument, and none appears here. Another way of looking at whether we ought to have democracy and whether citizens ought to abide by democratically produced edicts—regardless of the sort of outcomes this style of government does or is deemed likely to produce, is to ignore morality in favor of an entirely different sort of value, the prudential sort. That is, we can leave the question of whether democracies are ethically preferable to other sorts of government arrangements, and instead consider only whether democracies are better for the populace. (And it’s important to recognize that such assessments may be made ex ante, as well as ex post, so every prudential value judgment need not be seen as an outcome assessment of resulting well-being. I talk about this issue a bit in a recent interview that can be found here.) 

      Again, in order to get an understanding of such judgments, one has to enter into questions about just what it is that makes--or is expected to make--a life go well (ex ante). And, as indicated above, that means getting into various theories of well-being. Is it a bunch of objective items, like, say, health, wealth, loving relationships, knowledge, etc. that makes everybody’s life better, (whether they know or agree with this list or not)? Or is well-being, as hedonists think, actually determined by the level of pleasure in some person’s or group’s life? Or is it, perhaps, a function of how many or what percentage of one’s desires get satisfied? In my work, I have argued that ex ante well-being is a matter of getting to freely choose what one wants. No doubt, I may be entirely wrong about this, but I don't think that’s  really relevant here. The main point is that where one comes down on the nature of well-being is likely to determine how one decides both the question of whether votes are likely to be “correct,” and whether democracy is a “good thing” or not. So, I don’t think one absolutely must take a position here on whether democracy is—or should be thought to be—morally good. Rather, it's possible to reasonably stick to the question of whether (and how one determines whether) democracy is good for persons or groups.

8    Now, independently of whether we decide democracy is generally (prudentially) good for a group of people, we may also wonder whether those who are in a democratic polity have a duty to obey appropriately passed laws. How one is likely to answer this, must, I suppose, be at least partially a function of where one stands on moral obligations generally. If one denies such obligations or is just skeptical about our knowledge of them, one may again turn to the (at least apparently) less mysterious questions involving whether one will generally be better off by obeying such laws. And this distinction may be relevant not only to any claimed duty to obey, but also to any ostensible duty to vote. (Indeed, it should be mentioned that the authors make even the question of “What sort of representative system is best?” a moral matter!)

  As indicated, in his book, Christiano has given what I consider an ingenious theory involving treatment of others to explain why such obedience makes us both morally better and better off. Unsurprisingly, he takes the same tack in this article as well. But, in any case, while the question of whether one ought to follow democratically derived laws certainly can be reasonably construed as a moral question, I again insist that it is not the only possible perspective here--even when one considers Christiano's own approach to the subject. And, in fact, much of the discussion of instrumental versus inherent reasons for claiming this or that with respect to democratic issues found in the SEP entry seems to me to confuse or conflate these matters to some degree because prudential and moral values are not carefully distinguished. I note here, e.g., that discussions of the merits of proportional representation would be considerably clarified by distinguishing the type of value being talked about. 

   On the other hand, I will concede that I’m not entirely sure myself whether or not to make civil obedience a moral matter. It is my view, e.g., that giving minorities appropriate voice (i.e., voice reflective of their numbers) in some sense ought to be done regardless of the outcomes generated by that approach. That is, it seems to me axiomatic or fundamental in some sense, just as the equality of persons (from which we derive majoritarianism in the first place) is axiomatic. That is, although I have no great arguments to give for these principles, I resist the claim that I need to have any if I am right that they are simply fundamental starting places--whether they are moral claims or not. To conclude, if these axioms are seen as moral claims, so be it, but whether or not that is actually the best way to look at this matter is simply not obvious to me.

9   There is some discussion here of the “all-affected” theory for determining which persons should be considered subject to a polity’s laws, and I entirely agree with the negative conclusions reached in the SEP article. In fact, in my view, any number of additional attacks might have been successfully leveled against that position. It just seems to me indefensible. I believe, however, that more could have been said here on behalf of a strictly geographical determination of who must comply, and generally, on such things as who should be allowed to vote considering matters of age, competence, and alleged moral depravity (or felony convictions). There’s a lot of good literature on this.

1   Moving on, the authors' discussion of Arrow’s theorem misses what I take to be an essential matter: whether the preferences in question are ordinal or cardinal. I won’t go into this here, but I devote a significant amount of space to it in my book. Those sorts of considerations (rightly or wrongly) result in my support for Approval Voting and the Single Non-Transferable Ballot. Whatever the value (if any) of my thoughts on the particulars of voting, my general sense is that this SEP article would be better without any discussion of them at all. Voting theory is pretty arcane, and I think technical matters of that type would probably have been better left to one or more separate articles put together by other experts (maybe from the world of political science). In any case, the material on voting theory here is pretty slim and skeletal, while the literature and number of controversies regarding such issues are mountainous and dense--as well as momentous in today’s political climate. I therefore think removing that material in its entirety would make space for more philosophy and history without much reduction in quality.

      In sum, fellow democracy researchers,