Issues of Democratic Theory

The following is the first two parts of section 1.1.1. (which deals w/ democratic theory proper). By tomorrow evening, I hope to finish this section (which will be the longest single section of Chapter 1), along w/ sections 1.1.2. (Theories of Democratization) and 1.1.3 (Democratic Consolidation). The numbers ([#]) are mainly for me, and correspond to paragraph numbers from the outline (discrepancies are due to re-organization).

1.1.1. Issues of Democratic Theory

[7] Early 20th century social science was marked by pessimism about the future of liberal democracy. Max Weber was concerned over the growing power of bureaucracy in daily life and the pressure of politicized class struggle in capitalist societies. Roberto Michels (1915) and Vilfredo Pareto (1897) argued that liberal democracy was little more than competition between alternating elites. While some, like Michels, eventually turned away from liberalism in despair, Weber and others attempted to reconcile liberal democracy with modern social forces by advancing an empirical model of democracy that focused on inter-party competition as a means to check bureaucratic excess and a forum for alleviating social demands. What made all these theories different from previous theories of democracy (liberal or otherwise) was a belief that direct, participatory democracy was impossible in the modern world and limited faith in the general citizenry.

[8] The most influential proponent of this new empirical theory of democracy was Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Writing at the height of the Second World War, he defined democracy as “that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions by means of competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (1976, p. 269). Schumpeter offered a forceful critique against what he called the “classical” theory of democracy, arguing that democracy should be understood as a method for arriving at political decisions, not as an expression of a “common good” or “popular will”, which he argued did not objectively exist. Instead, this much less lofty definition of democracy nevertheless protected against tyranny through the mechanism of inter-elite competition. Thus, Schumpeter was engaged in two activities: One, a defense of modern liberal democracy using minimalist criteria. Two, development of a descriptive or empirical theory of democracy meant to serve as criteria for distinguishing democracies from non-democracies.

[9] Characteristic of later works that adopted a Schumpeterian framework was an emphasis on political stability. David Easton’s (1953) development of systems analysis assumed stability as a desired norm in political systems. Using structural-functional analysis, Gabriel Almond and G. Bigham Powell (1966) treated political instability in the developing world as problematic. Early studies of political parties, such as Maurice Duverger’s (1962) groundbreaking work, assumed stable competition as a desirable norm. Despite substantial later modifications, the basic proponents of elitist theories of democracy are still adopted by mainstream comparative political studies: adopting of a minimal standard of democracy useful to distinguish democracies from non-democracies, a focus on elite-level competition, and on the desirability of some level of political stability.

[10a] Beginning in the 1950s, a group of empirical theorists known as “pluralists” reformulated the Schumpeterian thesis, arguing that democracy was marked by a greater degree of political competition than Schumpeter himself recognized. David Truman (1951) saw in democratic politics an interaction of organized interests, reinforced by cross-membership in numerous social organizations. In a similar vein, Robert Dahl (1956) argued that democratic societies were marked by a plurality of groups that gathered together in frequently changing coalitions of minorities. Such pluralist studies were marked by belief that political power was widely dispersed in liberal democratic societies, eliminating the danger that any group of elites could become permanently entrenched in power.

[10b] An important characteristic shared by pluralist and elitist democratic theorists was a rejection of formulations of “ideal-type” democracy in favor of “best-possible” approximations. That is, pluralist theorists were willing to accept that their model of democracy would not satisfy many of expectations a perfect, ideal democracy. But because they shared the elitist assumption that modern society made such ideal visions of democracy impossible, they were more concerned with exploring whether and how civil society exerted some degree of control over governing elites. The pluralists also shared a normative dimension, arguing that this minimal view of democracy was worth defending.

[16] Early critics of the pluralist position argued that, while the pluralist theory was more liberal than the original Schumpeterian formulation, it was still essentially an elitist theory of democracy. Scholars such as C. Wright Mills (1956) pointed out that power was not as widely dispersed as the pluralists believed, and that a “power elite” controlled political life. Others, such as Peter Bachrach (1967), pointed out that the pluralists did not pay enough attention to the effects social and economic inequalities had on political life in liberal democracies. If social and (especially) economic inequalities were reflected in political inequalities, then citizens exerted very little (if any) control over elites.

[11] Many of these early criticisms were incorporated into the pluralist model advanced by Robert Dahl’s seminal Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971). The most influential of the pluralists, Robert Dahl’s complex descriptive theory of liberal democracy (or “polyarchy”) still dominates the subfield of comparative politics. In Polyarchy, Dahl attempted to explain how the mechanisms of competitive politics made government responsive to the demands of citizens. For government to be responsive to citizens, liberal democracy requires mechanisms that ensure citizens have opportunities to formulate and express their preferences, while ensuring that all citizens’ preferences would be weighed equally. Essentially, Dahl’s formulation was a defense of representative democracy. But for representative politics to be both meaningful and legitimate, polyarchy requires eight “institutional guarantees” (Dahl 1971, p. 3) broken down into three broad dimensions: competition, participation, and civil liberties (see Sørensen 1998, p. 12-13).

[12] Competition. A central characteristic of polyarchy is free and open competition between plural political groups. Principally, this means frequent and meaningful elections between competing elite factions that represent clearly differentiated programs for government. Meaningful electoral competition also requires that individuals are free to form and join organizations (e.g. political parties), that these organizations are free to compete for popular support, and that individual citizens are eligible for public office. Public competition helps ensure public control over government by limiting the ability of any specific group of elites to consolidate power, since their control of public offices requires continued electoral support by citizens. And because pluralist society makes a permanent majority impossible, constant realignment of society’s many minorities encourages elites to continue appealing to diverse sectors of the electorate for support.

[13] Participation. Free and open political competition also demands a certain degree of active citizen participation, primarily through voting. For Dahl, this starts with universal (or at least near-universal) adult suffrage. But for participation to be meaningful, all citizens’ preferences must be equally considered; in the realm of competitive electoral politics this means the principle of one-man-one-vote. The right to “participate” also spills over into the dimension of competition, since it implies the right of individuals to run for political office and form or join political organizations. More importantly, participation is only meaningful if it is competitive. Otherwise, mere voting in one-party regimes would qualify as “democratic” participation.

[14] Civil liberties. Neither free and open competition nor meaningful citizen participation is possible without at least some minimal set of civil liberties. These include many of the obvious rights necessary for competition and participation outlined above. They also include some basic liberal rights, such as freedom of expression. Without institutionally secured freedom of expression, for example, individuals lack the practical ability to form and join political organizations, appeal to the public for electoral support, or even find alternate sources of information necessary for making educated voting choices. Civil liberties also ensure the ability for public political opposition, an essential element of democratic competition. Essentially, polyarchy is often understood two-dimensionally – focusing on competition and participation – with civil liberties as the set of conditions necessary to make the other two dimensions possible.

[17-18] Critics of this pluralist model argued that pluralists had too quickly dismissed popular participation. The first significant of these later critics was Carole Pateman, who argued that direct citizen participation was too essential an element of democracy. Following early political theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and J. S. Mill, Pateman (1970) claimed that participation was crucial for individual human development, as well as for fostering concern for community political life. Similarly, Benjamin Barber (1984) criticized pluralism’s “thin democracy” and argued that citizen participation in the local arena was not only desirable, but that mechanisms for direct popular control were entirely possible for political issues at this level. While conceding that national politics would likely continue to revolve around electoral politics, both Pateman and Barber believed participation could be extended to local arenas, which would transform the context of the national arena by giving individuals a stronger personal attachment to the larger polity.

[19] The pluralist model was also challenged by C. B. Macpherson (1962, 1977), who criticized pluralism’s reliance on “possessive individualism”. Arguing that liberalism’s assumption of egalitarian individuals did not hold in the real world, Macpherson viewed participation as a means to decrease inequality. Further, he called for a more radical transformation of liberal democracy by combining the system of political parties with a constellation of independent, participatory civic organizations. A different critique came from Jane Mansbridge (1983), who attacked liberal democracy’s focus on “adversarial” politics. In addition to the other benefits of popular participation, Mansbridge outlined a way in which participation could be used to reduce political conflict. Similarly, Carol Gould (1988) called for extending political participation into the social and economic realms as a means to foster democratic agency and encourage a disposition to reciprocity.