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I know it is sacrilege,
but that is all the more reason to say it, and say it loud:
Democracy is not the be-all, end-all, Holy Grail of politics
that many imagine it to be. It is one, but only one, of the
ingredients that make for good societies, and it is far from the
most important one. Why point this out? If democracy is a good
thing, why stir controversy by questioning just how good?
Because the widespread, quasi-religious devotion to democracy in
evidence today has some very nasty consequences.
Democracy means "rule by
the people." The people usually rule by electing representatives,
a process which is called, simply enough, representative
democracy. Sometimes, as in the case of a referendum on a
specific question, the people rule more directly, and this is
known as direct democracy. Actually, though, "rule by the
people" is a bit misleading, since "the people" are never
unanimous on any given question, and neither are their chosen
representatives. In practice, democracy is rule by majority
(i.e., 50% + 1), or even mere plurality (i.e., more than any one
other candidate but less than half) when three or more
candidates compete.
Long before any nation
had experienced anything even approaching universal suffrage,
people concerned with human liberty—thinkers like Alexis de
Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill—expressed concerns that the
fading tyranny of kings might merely be replaced by a "tyranny
of the majority." They worried that majorities might vote away
minorities' hard-won rights to property, freedom of religion,
freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. Majorities with
a hate on for certain minorities might even vote away their very
right to life.
History has given these
worries ample justification. Democracy by itself is no guarantee
of peace and freedom. Adolf Hitler's victory in democratic 1930s
Germany is only the most glaring example of popular support for
an illiberal, anti-human regime. The people of Latin America
have a long and hallowed tradition of rallying behind populist
strongmen who repay their fealty by grinding them (or sometimes
their neighbours) beneath their boot heels, all the while
running their economies into the ground. Their counterparts in
post-colonial Africa and certain parts of Asia have shown
similarly stellar political acumen.
As writers like Fareed
Zakaria (The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home
and Abroad) point out, in those parts of the world that have
successfully achieved a respectable degree of freedom and
prosperity (basically Europe, the Anglosphere, and Japan and
the Asian Tigers), sheer democracy has been supplemented—and
preceded—by institutions like the rule of law, including an
independent judiciary; secure property rights; the separation of
church and state; freedom of the press; and an educated middle
class. Indeed, instead of supplementing democracy, it is more
accurate to say that these institutions limit the things
over which the people can rule. It is enshrined in law and
tradition that neither the people nor their representatives
shall be above the law, violate the lives or property of others,
impose their religious beliefs on others, or censor the freedom
of the press. These checks on the power of the people have
created, in the most successful parts of the world, not just
democracies but liberal democracies.
According to Zakaria,
societies that democratize before having built up these liberal
institutions and the prosperity they engender are practically
doomed to see their situations deteriorate instead of improve,
often to the detriment of neighbouring countries, too. Liberty
is simply more important than democracy, and must come first. We
who are fortunate enough to live in liberal democracies would do
well to remember this when judging other nations, like China,
and urging them to democratize faster.
We would do well to
remember it when thinking about our own societies, too. Thinkers
like economist Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the
Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, argue
that even in the most liberal countries, democracy often works
against liberty. Economists have been saying for a few decades
now that political ignorance is an intractable problem that
undermines the beneficial effects of democracy. The argument is
that since a single vote has practically no chance of affecting
the outcome of an election (or a referendum), the average voter
has no incentive to become informed. Defenders of democracy have
replied that ignorance doesn't matter, since the ignorant
essentially vote randomly, and random ignorant votes in one
direction will be cancelled out by random ignorant votes in the
opposite direction, leaving the well-informed in the driver's
seat.
Caplan agrees that if
average voters were merely ignorant, their votes would cancel
each other out, and the well-informed would be in charge and
make good decisions. His central insight, though, is that voters
are not merely ignorant, but irrational to boot. Voters have
systematically biased beliefs, to which they are deeply attached,
and those biases do not cancel each other out.
Specifically, the average voter underestimates how well markets
work; underestimates the benefits of dealing with foreigners;
focuses on the short-term pain of job losses instead of the
long-term gain of productivity increases; and tends at any given
time to be overly pessimistic about the economy. These biases
lead voters to support candidates and policies that undermine
their own best interests.
The alternative to
democracy, Caplan emphasizes, is not dictatorship, but markets.
The market is not perfect, but it works a lot better than
politics, because in my daily life as a producer and a consumer,
I have an obvious incentive to be rational: my pocketbook. This
incentive is lacking when it comes time to go to the polls,
because of the aforementioned near impossibility that my vote
will determine the outcome. Given this asymmetry, we should
favour markets over politics whenever possible. For those things
that must be decided collectively, democracy may be the best we
can do, but we should strive to decide as many things as
possible privately, resorting to politics only when no other
option is feasible. In other words, we should recapture the
wisdom of the American Founding Fathers, rediscover the genius
of constitutionally limited democracy, and reclaim some
of the liberty previous generations fought so valiantly to
secure. If we don't, it might not be too much longer, in the
grand scheme of things, before the Western world ceases to be a
model worth emulating.
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