Sad but true
Democracy isn’t always and necessarily aligned with justice, progress, equality, women’s rights, freedom – it’s not always and necessarily aligned with anything except majority will. Majority will can be even more tyrannical than a military dictator.
Pervez Hoodbhoy’s critique of General Pervez Musharraf as a leader and as an author, in last month’s Prospect, is depressingly familiar. Of course we wish that Pakistan was a more liberal and democratic society…But simply repeating the same liberal pieties about instituting democracy and strengthening civil society won’t change the situation…There are certainly massive problems for women in Pakistan. Human rights activists suggest that a woman is raped in Pakistan every two hours. As Hoodbhoy points out, Musharraf’s government recently failed to enact a revision of the rape laws, which would make the burden of proof placed on the prosecution more realistic (a successful rape prosecution currently requires four male witnesses to the act). However, that climbdown came in the face of intense political opposition—the uncomfortable reality is that it was democracy that prevented the reform, not the dictator.
It’s important to keep in mind that democracy and majority will are not automatically on the side of human rights.
Nor are “indigenous cultures” always worthy of “respecting.” Heck, the indigenous culture of Pakistani villages promotes ideas like honor rapes.
Very true, OB. Liberty consists of the *protection* of the individual from the will of either despots or democratic majorities.
I think you’re confusing ‘mobocracy’ with democracy.
In the 1980s the miners in the UK were able to attract huge ‘street’ support. But in 1983 and 1987 the British electorate decisively rejected them.
Similarly in 1983 the Labour party under Michael Foot thought that the huge crowds and enthusiasm shown for speeches made by Footie presaged a democratic mandate for very ‘left’ policies. The enthusiasm of quite a few is not the same as a majority.
Nope. I mean democracy. There is no invisible shield that magically prevents majorities from voting to take away the rights of minorities or even despised majorities (think women, or slaves or untouchables who are not allowed to vote).
Yep, you’re right. There is no invisible shield. But I haven’t seen democracies voting to take away rights in the way you describe. Deep down, I prefer to take my chances in a democracy.
But the issue isn’t what you have seen, it is what is possible. But in any case, it has happened: I repeat: think women, think slaves, think Jews, think blacks in Mississippi in 1964.
You take your chances wherever you like, but that’s not what I was talking about.
Where have democracies voted to disfranchise women, Jews? I grant you blacks in the South, but the US democracy as a whole overturned this latter.
If you are going to cite Nazis in 1930s for disfranchising of Jews, you should note that the NSDAP vote in November 1932 was 37%, even in Jan 33 they were in a minority with the Nationalists and even in the April 33 Reichstag elections they only got a bare majority by banning the KPD. I don’t think constitutional coups count as democracy.
But I agree that it is best if there are constitutional guarantees.
Jeffrey,
Oh please, just look at the actions of Tony Blair in the UK regarding the invasion of Iraq…
In 2001 he secured a mere 40.7% of the votes cast, with a turnout of only 59.4% of the electorate (lowest post WWII).
And on that basis he helped George have his war…
In 2005 it got even worse, with a parliamentary majority secured with just 37% of votes, and a turnout only marginally better at 61.3%.
Hardly batting an eyelid, he’s been pushing for all sorts of controversial policies – almost all of them with a high cost to the taxpayer, usually on unelected consultants/advisers/etc – extensions to detention without trial, biometric passports & I.D. cards, more publically funded faith schools (including the Vardy foundation taking over city academies & promoting creationist nonsense), the slow destruction of the NHS in England & Wales by expensive PFI contracting-out of routine operations & diagnostic tests (which have resulted in even MORE work for the NHS thanks to a higher rate of botched ops/misdiagnoses by the private companies concerned – with the problems having to be fixed by the Primary Care Trusts), commissioning of new nuclear power stations, etc,etc,etc.
Now, of course, I’d never claim that any of that was equivalent to barring sections of the population from voting, but it’s a very long way from a truly representative democracy, now isn’t it?
If anyone out there is interested in representative voting systems, which can help to prevent this sort of thing:
http://www.fairsharevoting.org
“Where have democracies voted to disfranchise women?”
I didn’t say disenfranchise, I said take away rights – but all 19th century democracies kept women disenfranchised, as did Switzerland until whenever it was – some time in the grotesquely late ’60s.
“I grant you blacks in the South, but the US democracy as a whole overturned this latter.”
But it took a century – so during that century, the US democracy had done no such thing, so that hardly counts as an example of democracies not voting to take (or keep) away the rights of minorities.
Jeffrey, you only need to consider the death penalty and the support it still has in the public opinions in the US and many other democracies, even in countries where it has been abolished for years.
“But simply repeating the same liberal pieties about instituting democracy and strengthening civil society won’t change the situation”
Won’t it? I can’t see any alternative to the long, hard slog of just arguing for rights and building a constituency for them. Democracy may not be sufficient for protecting rights, but it is necessary. Only if you have a political climate in which the voices of individuals are valued, which is a climate born out of democracy, can the need for human rights make sense. Despots hate rights even more than populist democrats, because any idea that their powers over people have limits is a threat to their rule.
I suppose we could invade Pakistan and bring them human rights. That’s worked so well elsewhere.
Well I certainly don’t mean to say ‘despots are better’ – only that democracy, especially democracy without very strong safeguards for human rights (so strong that people like Bush can’t just brush them aside), is not necessarily connected to justice or equality or rights.
No, actually, we couldn’t invade Pakistan. It has some of those things that Iraq doesn’t have. We don’t invade places that have those things. We’re ascared to. We have more of the things, but we’re ascared anyway.
Now that I’ve thought about it further, I think that some aspects of justice, equality and rights are linked to democracy, but not others. There are certain rights that only make sense in a democracy: free speech, free elections, universal suffrage. They make democracies work better by making sure that the government is more likely to be accountable, representative and legitimate. The system of law is required to be just if it is to be legitimate, and making everyone equal before the law is a way of doing this. Making people equal before the law sets in motion a logic that requires equality in law-making
I can see that property rights as being non-democratic. Amy Chua’s book “World On Fire” describes developing countries where wealthy ethnic minorities have had their wealth nationalised by democratic governments appealing to the poorer majority. Rights of the libertarian kind grow out of property rights when individuals are defined as owners of themselves.
“Democracy” is just a mechanism. Under the influence of xenophobic nationalism, or religious zealotry, it is a tyranny like any other, if you are stuck as an ‘outsider’. Without either a] positive constitutional law guaranteeing rights *against* democratic vicissitudes, and b] an underlying culture of liberal pluralism and respect for what we choose to call ‘human rights’, ‘democracy’ has no particular merit, especially when seen from that ‘outside’ position — “so you’re a democracy, so what, you still bombed the sh*t out of us…”
Dave has the essential point here ….
“Under the influence of xenophobic nationalism, or religious zealotry … “
And Pakistan was created to be an “Islamic” state, away from nasty, secular “India”. Whist the majority of the population of Pakistan are in emotional thrall to the priests, you can expect no better.
But then, with priests in charge, you cannot expect any better, anywhere.
It’s actually a tricky one: at the root of this is a question of what democratically elected leaders are supposed to do. Should they represent the will of the electorate (that is, of the majority)? Should they represent the best interests of the electorate (not at all the same thing)? Do we elect ‘leaders’ or ‘representatives’? It’s not a question with an obvious answer.
There’s a paradox: rights aren’t always compatible with majority rule, but the only way to ensure that rights persist is by persuading the majority to accept them.
An important difference between Blair and Musharaff, surely, is that Blair can be voted out but Musharaff can’t. One of the undoubted problems with democracies is that they can elect poor leaders but at least they have the opportunity to correct their mistakes.
Edmund Burke put the matter of ‘representation’ to bed, in the way it is generally accepted in politics, in 1770-something, addressing the electors of Bristol [I could google the exact words, but why bother], he said, in essence, that when you elect him, you get the whole man, with reason and conscience, not just a machine for voting as you’d like him to. And if you don’t like it, try again next time…
Which is why, of course, the European political class abolished the death-penalty, when the masses have always been of a ‘string’em up’ disposition…
And I wonder, if they’d had opinion-polling in the 1860s, if a majority in the USA could have been found for giving a stuff about the slaves — to the point of war?
Also there is the question of leadership. I don’t want a Prime-Minister who makes reversals of decisions on the basis of focus groups or big embarrassing marches in London. Musharaff is an unelected benefactor of a military coup, but that said he has probably the toughest job in world politics and he’s not making too bad a fist of it.
Agreeing with Dave. For which reason I tend to oppose the introduction of referenda and the like in the Netherlands. We elect people, and those people are expected to answer for and be accountable for the policies they have a mandate to carry out.
Thing here is, I do not want some basic rights to be even in principle depending on the will of the majority. In my relatively comfortable surroundings, this goes for having the right not to have the government snooping around one’s bedroom, for freedom of speech issues, and so forth. For a whole lot of other people elsewhere, it goes for the right not to be married against their will, not to be raped, not to be murdered. Those issues should be simply outside of the areas on which democratic decisions can be made.
Dave, Nick, Merlijn
I agree – but how far should that leadership role go? Merlijn, you say ‘[elected leaders] are expected to answer for and be accountable for the policies they have a mandate to carry out’, which is well and good; but an election platfom is like a complex question. Blair was elected – does he then have a mandate for undermining basic principles of law, etc etc? If not, why not? Surely the voters of Britain elected ‘the whole man, with reason and conscience’?
I’m being rhetorical, obviously: Blair should not have taken election as a mandate to undermine habeus corpus, but the very fact he did so with the acquiescence of the House shows that the issue has hardly been ‘put to bed’.
outeast – at the risk of sounding disingenuous can I ask you what you’re referring when you say “undermining basic principles of law” ? Not that I disagree necessarily; I find that arguments on such matters sometimes rest on differences of emphasis.
So far we’ve been arguing that democracy and rights aren’t always compatible. But what if democracy needs rights to function? If a minority is to peacefully put up with the rule of a majority then they need to be certain that the majority won’t be able to wipe out certain fundamental freedoms. These rights allow the minority to continue with the essentials of their lifestyle. The alternative could be permanent civil war, the very thing democracy is supposed to prevent.
“The alternative could be permanent civil war, the very thing democracy is supposed to prevent.”
No it isn’t. Again, that’s just loading democracy with external associations that aren’t inherently or obviously part of it – that’s where the liberal pieties tend to come from. Arguably democracy is at least as likely to lead to civil war as to prevent it, and what political theorist claims it’s supposed to prevent civil war?
Democracy does need rights to function well (or ‘properly,’ as in ‘properly understood,’ as in ‘intelligent properly understood,’ cf Nigel Warburton on Grayling on sense of humour), but that’s my point. Democracy neither guarantees nor implies rights, so they have to be stipulated; it’s no good assuming rights are part of the democratic package, because they’re not.
“And I wonder, if they’d had opinion-polling in the 1860s, if a majority in the USA could have been found for giving a stuff about the slaves — to the point of war?”
Noooooooo. Absolutely not. Large majority would have been emphatically on the other side – even if the North had been polled separately. ‘Abolitionist’ was a dirty word in the 1860s. Enemies of Lincoln called him an abolitionist, and he denied it vigorously.
So, in sum, what we mean when we say “democracy”, and mean “hooray” thereby, is actually something like, “A constitutional state, with the rule of law, an acceptance of liberal norms of pluralistic debate, respect for human rights, democratic decision-making processes and guarantees against arbitrary violations of constitutional norms…”
Not so catchy, huh?
Precisely.
And that mere economy of language seems to result in oopsy situations like the Bush admin singing arias to democracy in the Middle East and then going all red in the face when Hamas wins and Hizbollah gains seats. ‘Uh…we said democracy, but we meant…uh…’
Whether the U.S population was for or against slavery makes little differance the civil war was not fourght over slavery,the main reason for the war were tariffs that the southen states considered onerous,leading them to secede from the union. The isue of protecting against the tyrany of the majority is slightly differant in the case of the U.S the second amendment provides an aditional safeguard that most democracies dont have.
I disagree with Richard.
The “States Rights” that the South desperately wanted to protect was the right to treat people as property – which was, I admit, also an economic issue.
Just because they dressed it up in fancy mock-constitutional clothing does not affect what they really wanted.
Well, woo-hoo for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms! Give me a home where the buffalo [used to] roam, and dozens are shot dead each day…
And BTW, of course the Civil War was about slavery. What it wasn’t, was about ‘abolitionism’. Without slavery, and the economic structures it supported, there would have been no issue over which to threaten secession. Slavery was a festering sore ever since the ‘federal ratio’ was inserted into the Constitution. That’s why Jefferson had tried to blame King George for it in the Declaration of independence….
OB wrote: “Arguably democracy is at least as likely to lead to civil war as to prevent it, and what political theorist claims it’s supposed to prevent civil war?”
I thought democracy, like any consultative process, was about resolving disputes peacefully and legitimately. I’m no expert in political theory, so consider it the hunch of an amateur. That’s one of the reasons I come on here – to test my hunches. Let the idea stand of fall on it’s own merits.
OB again: “Democracy neither guarantees nor implies rights, so they have to be stipulated; it’s no good assuming rights are part of the democratic package, because they’re not.”
Admittedly not all rights are part of the package, but doesn’t democracy imply the right of citizens to choose their government?
Democracy, in any definition, is not a consultative process – that would imply that there is a ‘higher’ body than ‘the people’ that condescends to ask them what they think, on the off-chance it might pay attention – and that’s not ‘democracy’. Even though it might be a working definition of how govt’s actually treat ‘the people’ in our existent representative systems…
You’re right, Dave. That was a slipshod use of language on my part. Let me replace “consultative process” with “decision-making process that includes all affected parties”. If anyone more articulate than me can think of a more elegant phrasing, then please help me out.
“I thought democracy, like any consultative process, was about resolving disputes peacefully and legitimately. I’m no expert in political theory, so consider it the hunch of an amateur.”
Neither am I! As I assume is obvious. For that matter, I’m no expert in anything. I’m a generalist, or dilettante, depending on who is handing out the labels.
Anyway, no, all democracy is about on its own is what it says: people-rule. The definition does imply that people rule is legitimate, of course, but peaceful? No. That’s just not part of the meaning.
That’s my point, really: that people tend to think ‘democracy’ includes all sorts of good and virtuous things as an automatic and even guaranteed part of the package, but it doesn’t. Caveat emptor. If you want the extras, you have to stipulate them – each one. They don’t just come with the hamburger.
I’d just like to be tedious and bang on again about “representation”, since it seems to be the real crux of the issue :-) We can discuss the abstract notion of “democracy” all we like, but it’s the practical application that seems rather more important to me.
Simply put, we aren’t being “represented” at all. We have a tyranny of a relatively small minority, but most people seem blissfully unaware as to the vast extent of the electoral con being played on us…
Fer instance, in 2005, the Conservatives actually beat Labour by c.50,000 votes in England, but ended up with 92 fewer seats!
Blair gained the support of only c.21% of the electorate.
Which compares rather unfavourably even with simple-majority referenda, sad to say.
I love the way we preach about the glories of our system to the rest of the world…if they bothered to do the numbers, they’d just sit back and laugh their heads off!
Ho hum.
As for a “decision-making process that includes all affected parties”, well under first-past-the-post systems, “all affected parties” certainly aren’t *included* much of the time, depending on the demographic of each constituency.
On t’other hand, at least we CAN do something about it:
The electoral reform society:
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
There. I’ll go away and do someting useful now…
I’m a generalist too, but I’ve been involved in electoral reform campaigns/issues since I was…11 or so, so it’s a bit of a personal hobby horse…
sorry.
I said I was no expert because I thought that in a previous post you implied that my opinion was invalid because it wasn’t backed up by a political theorist. If I’ve misinterpreted you, I apologise.
If you just define democracy as people rule, then you’re left with every form of government except theocracy or divine right of kings. That’s too broad to be helpful. If you mean the people as a whole, then I still maintain that it has to be peaceful. Using force as a way of deciding policy just leads to dictatorship or a Hobbesian state of nature, depending on how widespread is the access to arms.
Andy W, ? I don’t see anything that even implies that. Or was it on a different thread?
“If you just define democracy as people rule”
But it’s not my definition, it’s what the word means. If you want to make it mean other things, you have to specify which ones, because if you don’t, you can’t possibly know that other people mean the same thing by the word that you mean. Bush really needed to specify what he meant – ‘democracy except voting for Hamas’ perhaps – before he talked about it so much. This is (she said tediously for the tenth time) my whole point – that the word doesn’t mean the big array of nice things that people think it means, and that misunderstanding does a lot of harm; it makes messes. It’s a simple enough point. If your claim is that it works better to use the word as a vague unspecified hurrah-word – well, I disagree, that’s all.
“Using force as a way of deciding policy just leads to dictatorship or a Hobbesian state of nature”
But this is my point. Democracy can be coercive, it can be dictatorship, it can be a a Hobbesian state of nature.
I said in a previous post on this thread that democracy is supposed to prevent civil war. You replied: “what political theorist claims it’s supposed to prevent civil war?” That was the source of my inference.
“If you want to make it (democracy) mean other things, you have to specify which ones, because if you don’t, you can’t possibly know that other people mean the same thing by the word that you mean”
It was unclear to me precisely what you meant in a previous post by democracy when you wrote “people rule”. I wasn’t sure if you meant rule by anyone who happens to be a person – in which case it seemed so vague as to be meaningless – or the entire voting population. We seem to be agreed on the latter, which is the definition I’ve picked up from looking at a couple of books on my sheves. I find it impossible to imagine organising rule by, or on behalf of, the adult voting population without peace. Introducing force into it results in a group smaller than the voting population gaining power without the free consent of the people, or everyone just killing each other. When the former happens you have autocracy or oligarchy without regard to the wishes of the rest of the population. When the latter happens there isn’t an identifiable body politic to rule. To say that dictatorship or state of nature is democracy is to make the word meaningless.
I’m sorry to have forced you into tediousness. You’ll have to accept that I’m incorrigible on this one. I won’t say anymore. I’m boring you and my family are feeling neglected.
Ah – I see. I seem to have overlooked that one, even though I hunted more than once. Sorry! I think I was replying to the ‘supposed to’ – I was assuming you meant supposed by people with some sort of expertise in the matter.
You don’t want to say any more, but I’ll just say this one thing.
“I find it impossible to imagine organising rule by, or on behalf of, the adult voting population without peace.”
But the rule isn’t on behalf of the adult voting population, it’s on behalf of the majority of the voting population which does in fact vote. It’s not unknown for the losers to resort to violence. It nearly happened in DR Congo just in the past few weeks; the losing candidate didn’t abjure the possibility until yesterday.
It would be nice if democracy inherently made peace inevitable, but alas, alas, it doesn’t. I really think it’s best not to have illusions about this. Point is not that despotism is better, just that democracy isn’t nirvana.
Apologies to family!
Mobocracy is about right in ‘moral status auction’ issues!
But Andy Gilmour said
“Oh please, just look at the actions of Tony Blair in the UK regarding the invasion of Iraq… In 2001 he secured a mere 40.7% of the votes cast, with a turnout of only 59.4% of the electorate (lowest post WWII). And on that basis he helped George have his war… “
Andy, you seem to be framing the discussion to say that not having a majority opinion poll should prevent a government doing what it decides is right. I read that as being only for decisions that you disagree with, though.
Not so?
G.T.and Dave,although slavery was a part of the southen economy less than 1% of people in the south owened slaves, are you teling me that the sons of share croppers would fight so hard so that this privaliged 1% could keep their slaves,I would recomend you read some of the correspondence of these young men at the time of the war,slavery is never mentioned,they seem to mainly talk of states rights or our rights,and the northen soldiers never mention slavery they only seem to speak about putting down the rebellion Dave you are right the second amendment does little for the buffalo but it does guarantee the rights of a free people.
Like I said, it wasn’t about abolitionism, but it WAS about the sectional conflict almost entirely created by the economic division between the slave-states and the free. The fact that the slaveocracy successfully created a culture of ‘Southron manhood’ that induced poor dumb sharecroppers to throw themselves into combat to protect the economic sectionalism of their wealthy neighbours just demonstrates how effective at blinding people to their own interests cultural propaganda can be.
Southern life was predicated on slave-holding, it was a slaveholding society, even if most people didn’t own slaves. In at least half of ‘the south’, over 30% of the total population were slaves, over 50% in some cases. It didn’t matter who owned them, their existence was woven into the fabric of society.
chrisper,
my point is that a ‘democratic’ government without any sort of “representative” mandate can do just about what it likes in the UK. TB got the lowest share of the electorate since the 1832 reform act, I believe…?
I was merely giving examples of current “controversial” legislation. Whether I agree with them or not is irrelevant. I could have mentioned the ban on fox hunting, repeal of “section 28”, road pricing, regional assemblies…etc,etc.
my question to you is this – are you wholly comfortable offering up your taxes to such a tyranny of the minority? or are you prepared to do something about it?