What Is Democracy?

Both etymology and history suggest that the primary meaning of democracy — certainly at least its original meaning — relates to a form of government. According to the classical tradition it is government by the many, as contrasted with government by one or a few. Other meanings, as implied for instance by Plato's description of the democratic man, were derived either by extensions of the original meaning to other applications than the political or by applying the term to attributes of existing democracies and their citizens. Herodotus defined it as the "rule of the many" (sometimes translated as "the multitude's rule") and also as a society in which "equality before the law" prevails and where the holder of political office "is answerable for what he does." The OED defines it as "government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them ... or by officers elected by them. In modern use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege."

One of the earliest formulations of the principle behind the more modern usage to which the OED refers was given a famous formulation by Colonel Rainborough in the Putney Debates, when he declared that "the poorest he ... hath a life to live, as the greatest he." Rainborough went on to say that "every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government." Spelled out in modern idiom, the ideals to which this leading Leveller was giving expression in mid-seventeenth-century England were those of the supreme value of the individual and of individual autonomy. These values were attributed to all individuals, without distinction; each must count equally. Moreover, the value, or the "dignity," as it is often called, of the individual demands that, in some sense, he shall be master of his own fate. What is ultimately best for him is for him to decide. Thus the twin democratic ideals of liberty and equality are both derived from the notions of human dignity and autonomy (which, in turn, they imply); and democracy is, in this sense at least, a profoundly individualistic doctrine.

Yet democracy's individualism merges easily with that third element of the democratic triumvirate of values, fraternity. Respect for the worth of each individual, the basic humanism of democracy, means that violence, and indeed all coercion, is considered evil, even when necessary. Decisions affecting the whole group should preferably be made by consensus. Authority should not operate in such a way as to put any member of the society at a political disadvantage because of his economic or social status. Communication should be full and free, regardless of rank and power.

The emphasis on communication is important and calls for some elaboration. Discussion has been said by some to be the essence of democracy. Thus A. D. Lindsay declares that "when men who are serving a common purpose meet to pool their experience, to air their difficulties and even their discontents, there comes about a real process of collective thinking." Again, he remarks, "Observe further that the moment we take discussion seriously, we are committed to the view that we are concerned not primarily to obtain or register consent, but to find something out."

Finally, we must add the element of human development. This idea, frequently articulated by John Dewey, is encapsulated in C. B. Macpherson's statement that the aim of democracy is "to provide the conditions for the free development of human capacities, and to do this equally for all members of the society." As the quotation implies, development may be thought of as so closely connected with liberty as not to require separate enumeration.

This democratic ideal of liberty-cum-equality-and-fraternity (including free and full discussion of common problems and interests), with roots deep in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is, in the popular sense of the term, idealistic; and it shares the vagueness that commonly attaches to ideals. As with ideals generally, it may be approximated in practice in varying degrees. Also it is applicable to all kinds of social relations outside of the realm of politics. At the same time, it has become more basic than the more precise and probably prior meaning of "government by the people." As applied to the polity, then, the definition of democracy as an ideal may be phrased as "government by the people, where liberty, equality, and fraternity are secured to the greatest possible degree and in which human capacities are developed to the utmost, by means including free and full discussion of common problems and interests."

The procedural definition, likewise beginning with "government by the people," renders this phrase more precise by relating it to a set of procedures rather than to certain values. An extreme version of this type of definition is found in the work of Y. Murakami. He defines democracy as "a social decision function consisting of and only of voting procedures." More precisely, he declares, "a social decision function F(D1, D2, ..., Dn) is called a democracy, if the function can be expressed only by voting operators — without any resort to negations and constants — and the function is nondictatorial, where nondictatorship is defined as follows: ... 'A social decision function F(D1 D2, ..., Dn) is called nondictatorial, if there is no individual whose preference is always adopted by the society.'"

A less technical but still fairly precise procedural (or operational) definition of democracy will be adopted here. It runs along the following lines. A democracy is rule by the people where "the people" includes all adult citizens not excluded by some generally agreed upon and reasonable disqualifying factor, such as confinement to prison or to an asylum for the mentally ill, or some procedural requirement, such as residency within a particular electoral district for a reasonable length of time before the election in question. "Rule" means that public policies are determined either directly by vote of the electorate or indirectly by officials freely elected at reasonably frequent intervals and by a process in which each voter who chooses to vote counts equally ("one person, one vote") and in which a plurality is determinative.

It will be noted that this definition includes majority rule in the sense of nonminority rule, which is to say that no specified minority can rule. It does not, however, include the requirement of rule by a bare majority (nor does it select from among various possible definitions of majority rule). In other words, it does not rule out a requirement that decisions can be made only by an extraordinary or "qualified" majority (nor does it rule out decisions by pluralities less than a majority). Some students of democratic theory would insist on bare-majority rule as part of the definition, insisting that it is implied by the equality or "one person, one vote" rule. This question will be treated more fully at a later point (Chapters Nine and Ten). Even at this stage, however, it is important to sketch the reasoning in support of the definition as stated. A Quaker business meeting is normally conducted on the basis of reaching decisions by what is called "the sense of the Meeting." Although this term includes a slight area of vagueness, it approximates a unanimity requirement. Everyone is entitled to have his say; and, if he feels strongly enough about the matter, he can generally exert a veto. Obviously the system works only where either substantive or procedural consensus is high. That is to say, either differences of opinion must not be very great or dissenters must place a high enough value upon the communal spirit that they will stand aside and not exercise their veto once it becomes clear they are destined to remain a hopeless minority. The point to be noted here is that this procedure is generally thought of not as undemocratic but as especially democratic. Nor is it confined to the business transactions of these "peculiar people," as the Quakers sometimes call themselves. On the contrary, families, committees, and other small groups with strong internal ties not infrequently accept similar procedures and consider that in showing this high regard for the opinion of each individual they are behaving very democratically.

Just as the requirement of a qualified majority (even unanimity, at the extreme) may not be looked upon as undemocratic, so also bare-majority rule under certain circumstances may seem undemocratic. Suppose, for instance, a bare majority comprises a fixed coalition. No group or individual not included in this coalition is ever on the winning side, in spite of the fact, let us assume, that their interests and preferences are sharply at odds with those of the winning coalition. "One person, one vote," under these circumstances, makes a travesty of the equality principle. From the point of view of the minority, at least, dictatorship is none the less so for being that of a majority. One must look beyond the forms, the procedures, to actual operation, at least in such an extreme situation. Similarly the unanimity rule might be considered undemocratic if a single individual or the same small group were able to exercise their veto power in such a way as to block all or most of the desires of the great majority.

The point of the last two paragraphs is not simply to defend the contention that it runs counter to general usage to stipulate a definition of democracy that entails the right of a bare majority to rule. The point is also, and even more significantly, that when a particular procedural definition runs afoul of some more general and substantive aspect of the democratic ideal, it is the former that tends to give way. Whatever may historically have come first, if we search our usages and our feelings, we shall find that it is to the democratic ideals of individual worth, autonomy, and equality that we appeal in case of doubt as to whether or not a particular practice is democratic. For certain purposes where precision is required, as in modeling, stipulative definitions, which must be procedural if they are to be precise, are valuable, indeed indispensable. But when the "democraticness" of a particular institution or practice is called into question, an appeal beyond procedures and stipulations to ultimate ideals is always in order and tends to be overriding. This is so because a stipulative definition is arbitrary; it is always open to the question Why? The search for an answer to that question leads inevitably to purposes, to ideals.

Similarly, the egalitarian and libertarian ideals of democracy may be used to justify more complicated definitions of democracy (especially of "liberal democracy") than that advanced here. Most of the contents of the American Bill of Rights, including especially the freedoms of expression and association, plus such other provisions of the Constitution as the Equal Protection clause and the limitation on suspending the writ of habeas corpus, are so closely related to the preservation of equality and liberty that a case can be made for including them in the definition of democracy itself. Some would go even further and incorporate in the definition the idea of competitive political parties as an institutional insurance that the right of association will be utilized to make certain that issues will be formulated and debated during the process of decision making, thus making effective the concept of "rule" by the majority. However, I here follow the simpler practice of excluding these corollaries of liberal democratic ideals from the formal or procedural definition of democracy, while reserving the right to override this definition by appeal to the substantive (ideal) concept whenever a democracy as here defined fails so substantially to approach its ideals that to call it "democratic" seems farcical. Certainly people's views as to what seems "farcical" will differ, being affected especially by their views of the possible. The proposed definition does qualify the word elected by the term freely, although it might be argued that this usage is redundant. In fact, it points to further problems. In what sense must citizens be "free" to vote if they choose? Legally free, to be sure. But suppose the government closes its eyes to physical coercion by groups of private citizens? Suppose the coercion is economic? Or suppose, instead, that large numbers of citizens are so apathetic that they do not exercise their franchise, whether from ignorance, conviction that their cause is hopeless, or sheer laziness? Or again, suppose they have not used their freedom of association to organize themselves effectively into competing political parties? These are hazy areas. If we say that "freely" in our definition means "legally free," then the uncertainty relates to the point at which we would say that the procedurally democratic polity was so far removed from the democratic ideal as to cease to deserve the name "democracy."

Problems also arise in connection with the requirement that votes should count equally. Suppose my vote and yours are each counted as one vote, but that my vote is one millionth of the number required to elect a representative in my district and that yours, in your district, is one hundred thousandth of enough to achieve the same objective. Are our votes equal? Are they made so by the fact that I may (can?) move to your district if I like? The United States Supreme Court has said no to these questions, but of course absolute equality in this sense can never be achieved. And suppose your vote is more influential because you are better educated, better endowed with brains, or with the qualities that produce political effectiveness? Suppose that inequalities of wealth enable certain groups to command highly disproportionate use of the means of communication and persuasion? And does it matter whether those inequalities of wealth were produced by inheritance, luck, superior ability, hard work, or greater thrift? Generally these questions indicate the existence of points (highly indeterminate) beyond which one would be inclined to appeal from a technical definition, whatever its terms, to the democratic ideal.

The practice of having both an ideal and a practical or technical definition, the first of which tends to be substantive and the second formal or procedural, is by no means uncommon. For instance, we might say of a university properly incorporated and authorized to grant degrees by the appropriate authority (in the United States, a state or the federal legislature), that even though it is technically a university, it is not "really" a university, because it has no graduate schools, or those it has are so poor that they are not worthy of the name, or for some like reason.

It is the substantive definition, or the underlying principle of democracy, that leads to its extension to other spheres than the political. Thus we speak of "social democracy," meaning a society in which the democratic virtues of equality and fraternity prevail. Liberty is of course also one of the democratic virtues. Other than democratic regimes and societies may prize liberty, but liberty for all, equally, is distinctly democratic; thus a society in which distinctions are not arbitrary or hereditary and in which even "earned" distinctions are not bases for sharp class divisions but rather where an easy fraternizing prevails among the various ranks of society is generally referred to as "socially" democratic, without reference to its form of government. And an individual in any society who manifests these characteristics is spoken of as a "democratic" person.