DEMOCRACY: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS BY JOSEPH CHIFFERS

It is a cliché to quote Winston Churchill on democracy, who described it as the worst form of government, except for all the others.  

The analysis tends to stop there.  It is rare in modern times to question the notion of democracy.

Aside from the bare notion of democracy, there is the question of who should have the franchise.

The purpose of this article is to scrutinise the above cliché, rather than to propose any specific form of government or reach any firm conclusion.

In the UK any citizen over the age of 18 is entitled to vote, unless they are disqualified.  The only persons disqualified are members of the Royal Family, members of the House of Lords and serving prisoners. 

A person may retain the right to vote even if they have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 and thus would potentially not be able to enter into contracts or deal with their own property.[1]

The justification of the cliché seems to be based on a blend of the maxim that ‘power corrupts’[2], with the liberalism of John Stuart Mill.  The latter essentially argued that individuals should be free to make decisions about their own lives, even if others could make better decisions for them.  This is despite Mill not being in favour of universal suffrage whereby voters had an equal vote.  Mill advocated allocating weight to votes according to the educational status of the voter.

Further, it is plainly obvious that universal suffrage is not an inexorable expression of the aforementioned; it is possible to have checks on power without universal suffrage, and it is possible to give individuals a degree of control over their affairs, without giving them the right to elect a government.

Indeed, in a large-scale society, the amount of practical influence that the vote gives an individual over their affairs is minimal.

In so far as democracy represents the ‘will of the people’, this is a somewhat nebulous concept.  Without compulsory voting, an election result may represent only the will of a minority.  Further, it is possible for there to be a majority against democracy itself.

On this subject, Rosseau referred to a majority decision as the ‘General Will’, which has an implied metaphysical status, and which apparently corresponds to freedom.  Where an election result differs from the specific vote of an individual:

“This only proves that I have made a mistake, and what I believed to be the General Will, was not so”.[3]     

In reality there can be no metaphysical claim to a General Will.  The electorate is psychologically heterogenous and may cast votes due to deception or ignorance.

Further, for several other reasons, the General Will can only amount to a political fiction[4].  Firstly, in a large-scale society, there are too many people to be gathered into a single assembly to make a collective decision.  Secondly, many important decisions need to be made too quickly for a vote to be taken.  Thirdly, once sovereignty is delegated under a representative democracy, then in practice it is lost; the ‘people’ are not sovereign in any concrete sense.   Fourthly, in practice a significant number of citizens do not express any ‘will’; consider for instance, the low voter turnout in local and national elections in the UK.    

The aforementioned observations are intended to show universal suffrage in a more pragmatic light.  They may in turn be used to prevent additional voting restrictions being viewed with instinctive revulsion because they offend against a sacrosanct principle. 

Aristotle argued for voting influence to be proportionate to property ownership, i.e. a winning vote would comprise the highest aggregate ownership of property. [5]  He considered pure majority rule to be unjust as the poor would simply seek to expropriate the property of the rich and divide it amongst themselves.  Equally he considered an oligarchy to be unjust, whereby only the wealthiest had influence. 

There are plainly flaws to this proposal; property ownership does not necessarily correlate with wisdom or virtue.  In modern western societies property ownership has been put out of the reach of many intelligent and diligent young people.  Further, property may be acquired or lost, unjustly. 

Nonetheless, it may be preferrable to a system where the long term unemployed [6] and the mentally incapacitated have the right to vote.  With respect to the former, Lord Beveridge who was influential in the founding of the modern welfare state, was opposed to voting rights for the long-term unemployed. 

Those in receipt of unemployment benefit are unlikely to vote for reductions in or restrictions to, such benefits, even if this can be objectively justified, in the same way that civil servants are unlikely to vote for a reduction to the size of the civil service, even when this could be objectively justified. 

This illustrates a more general principle, that an electorate may be motivated by selfish considerations rather than a sense of justice.

The counter argument to this, could be to state that there is no objective method for determining whether a vote is just and that attempts to restrict voting rights to prevent injustice, could be a mask for tyranny; the fairest solution is to simply implement majority approval, with the unavoidable consequences that many votes will be cast due to selfishness or ignorance. 

Yet the extent to which eligibility criteria for voting can be used as a mask for tyranny, will inevitably depend on the content of such criteria.  Any criteria will be imperfect in the same way that a system without them, will be imperfect.  Once it is accepted that there is no ‘General Will’ as adumbrated above, then one is merely appealing to pragmatic considerations and compromises.   

In support of this, Edmund Burke recognised, that a constitution cannot be derived from a priori principles to be made suitable for all peoples and all societies[7]; instead, it involves pragmatic compromises based on experience over the ages.

Indeed, there could be any number of eligibility criteria that could be adopted, all of which would be imperfect in practice.  For example, whilst there is a logic to the minimum voting age being eighteen, increases or decreases to this age could be logically justified.  Any minimum age must be to an extent, arbitrary, and when considering specific comparisons between individuals, unjust.     

To conclude, I am not suggesting any specific reforms and in practice, it is politically unrealistic for the cat to be put back in the bag i.e.  to introduce new eligibility criteria for voting. 

The sole purpose of this brief article is to invite the reader to think critically and realistically about democracy in practice.  It is obvious that there may be a majority decision for something that is plainly wicked and unjust; this can be mitigated by entrenched legal protections.

Yet, this only serves to demonstrate that the ‘will of the people’ is not necessarily just.  Further, when scrutinised, phrases such as ‘the will of the people’, or ‘the people are sovereign’ can be shown to be nebulous and devoid of any concrete reality.

NOTES

[1] https://www.mentalhealthlaw.co.uk/Voting_rights_for_detained_patients - this would not include offenders detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 who have committed offences, as per section 3A of the Representation of the People Act 1983.  Whether the person had capacity to enter into a specific contract would be fact specific. 

[2] Lord Acton « Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men

[3] Du Contract Social -  Book IV Chap 2 sec 8

[4] See, The Machiavellians – Defenders of Freedom – J Burnham 1943 Part V section 3

[5] On Politics Book IV Ch 3, 1318

[6] it is accepted that whether a person is culpable for their unemployment can be arguable and will vary from case to case; it is reasonable to infer that the longer a person is unemployed the more difficult this would be to justify.  This leads to the question of whether the long term incapacitated should vote as they rely on state assistance.  If such persons are disqualified from voting, then it could be argued that they are unable to prevent unjust changes in the law.  Nonetheless, there is a logic in restricting voting to the economically active.      

[7] Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 – Anodus Books 2019 version p27