UF (9) — Democracy and Freedom

Image credit.

On UF.

Democracy and Freedom

I am perturbed by the contempt for democracy widely advocated in libertarian circles.

As long as there is a state – and I cannot see it ever disappearing – there is a need for arrangements conducive to the processes of information exchange and negotiation between governance specialists and the population.

True enough, certain conceptions of democracy entail distressing problems.

Especially those which regard democracy as being manifested by large numbers of detailed demands supposedly embodying the will of the people or the will of a majority entitled to rule, such that government policies that implement these demands are deemed to represent ipso facto direct and authentic popular government.

This view preserves the idea of authoritarian government with discretion to rule in arbitrary fashion. The only difference consists in the half placatory, half flattering presumption that the role of the sovereign may be assumed by a majoritarian subset of the population.

However, this approach runs into insurmountable problems of a practical nature: how are millions of people to gather sufficient information and find ways of building consent so as to be able to act as direct rulers on an equal footing? This ambitious idea of democracy is as unlikely to succeed as it is prone to invite political agents to abuse power under the pretence of representing the sovereign populace.

Moreover, this idea of democracy gives rise to fundamental objections, particularly considering that no restrictions of power are envisaged by it at all, since the will of the people is posited to be the ultimate source of legitimacy.

But, in a differing, more convincing reading, it is precisely the ability to curtail power that constitutes the most basic virtue of democracy.

Machiavelli put his finger on it when he intimated that the common good is that which those with an interest in avoiding domination share.

Here we are dealing with a concern that can be meaningfully consented to by the broad population, as it is comprehensible to them in its essential meaning and can be adequately grasped in its implications, unlike the multifarious and innumerable acts of government unknown to the people, yet undertaken in their name.

We are looking at the hinge that joins democracy and freedom: as a means of protection against arbitrary rule, democracy becomes one of the procedures by which freedom is actualised.

Admittedly, this does not settle the issue of how precisely to shape democracy. No doubt, the critical observer will discover a host of shortcomings in ‘the real thing’. However, we must beware of absolute judgement.

Democracy? Deficient? Yes! But compared to what?

I believe, as a classic liberal, in assessing democracy one is faced with a similar kind of tension as when probing the essence and possibilities of the state. For, the state is both a condition for the attainment of freedom and the greatest threat to it.

Democracy presents her inspector with a similar prismatic glimmer of good and evil, being capable of serving as an important line of defence for liberty as well as an instrument of transgressing the realm of freedom. Which way democracy is apt to lean is a question of political competition. 

Written in March 2013.

German twin post.