The Dangers of Majoritarian Democracy

How to reconcile our peoples to living in open societies

by Pedro Schwartz
In my previous column, "Overcoming the Contradictionsof Liberal Democracy: Sociobiology and Social Engineering,"  I promised to proceed with the analysis of the paradoxes of liberal democracy. The first one I explained was that the institutions of the Great Society might prove to be neither natural nor rational and could therefore be resisted or even rejected in democratic societies. My conclusion was rather disturbing: in a nutshell, "man has been civilized very much against his wishes", as Friedrich Hayek said.

In this column I will discuss the following paradoxes that also make liberal democracy an unstable system, to wit:

• That the democratic vote may result in communal decisions that nobody wants.
• That the confusion of individual liberty with the enjoyment of sufficient means for self-fulfillment leads to the corruption of democracy.
• That what is considered the normal venue for popular sovereignty—the nation—may often be the source of stifling tribalism.

I. SOME IMPERFECTIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE

The fundamental question of politics

One of the ideas of Plato that Karl Popper most decidedly criticized was that the object of political philosophy consisted in answering the question, who should rule and how to educate those who would govern. For Popper this was the wrong question: one should rather ask, how to control government, how to set up checks and balances to divide power.1 Popper's main argument for this change of focus was the 'paradox of liberty'. If one tried to vest power on whoever was the best and the wisest, as Plato wanted, there was the danger that this person could turn out to be a tyrant. At its extreme, the popular vote could be self-destructive: what if the people democratically willed to be governed by a populist strong-man? This is not as rare as one could wish; remember Austria's vote for Hitler or Argentina's for Perón.

Here we have another paradox of the kind I am grappling with in these columns.2 The starting point of this vicious circle is the realization that a large enough body of men cannot organize itself to govern directly for the good of all. To achieve common aims, power has to be entrusted to a sufficiently small number of people. Even so, disorder would threaten if these rulers fought for power: sovereignty should be undivided. This makes it imperative to choose the sovereign well: hence the Platonic question. But what if the sovereign abused its powers? Long experience tells us how transient the qualities are that may have led to the choice of a sovereign, if choice there was. In the end, whoever exercises undivided sovereignty can impose his or her fickle will on those who selected her, or use power to exploit a minority with the connivance of the majority, or simply indulge in corruption.

It is indeed better to have a good woman or man at the helm, but in politics usually the worst get to the top. The emphasis should be elsewhere; it should lay on establishing strong enough barriers or checks to stop the prince from abusing his power. Contrary to what so many political thinkers and constitutional lawyers have said over the years, sovereignty should be divided. That is the only way to break what one could call 'the Leviathan paradox'.3

Imperfections of democracy

Many modern constitutions proclaim that sovereignty is ultimately vested on the people. In that case, the power of the people must also be divided if liberty is to endure. Democracy can therefore not be defined as the rule by majority vote. Neither does it imply that the vote of the majority is "an authoritative expression of what is right". 4 Fundamental to our living under a democratic constitution is that we accept the result of votes because we want our free institutions to function in their own limited way, even though we may not agree with this or that decision.

Read more at:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Schwartzmajoritarian.html