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Series: Zeitgeist Zero Hour

Can we preserve democracy?

Chapter 3: Contemporary Liberal Representative Democracy

Originally published: June 24, 2019
Last edited: June 30, 2019
By Michio Suginoo

Picture

Introduction

How can we preserve our contemporary Liberal Representative Democracy?

In Socrates view, the majority rule, one of the fundamental principles of democracy, paradoxically gives rise to demagogues, and subverts democracy into tyranny. Is democracy doomed to defeat itself from within?

For liberal representative democracy, there are three other fundamental principles: equal civic rights, the rule of law, and freedom of expression. And the preservation of these three core principles, beyond the majority rule, is imperative for the preservation of our contemporary democracy, articulates Prof. Angie Hobbs, the Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at University of Sheffield. ( The rise of the demagogue - A warning from Plato, 2017) She further warns us of the hidden danger of the seductive and deceptive mantra chanted by demagogues: ‘the will of the people’. (Democracy: a philosophical puzzle, 2017)

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a Holocaust survivor and Jewish German thinker, based on her observation of how Adolf Hitler hijacked the post Weimar Republic democracy in Germany, left us her caveat.

In our contemporary liberal representative democracy, we as voters have responsibility to maintain vigilance to defend these three core principles of liberal representative democracy, by preventing ourselves from falling prey to demagogues’ deception and from cooperating with demagogues in incubating ‘fantasy’ about ‘the will of the people’.

Chapter 2, both Part 1 and Part 2, sought inspirations from the ancient wisdom of Aristotle in contemplating the preservation of democracy. When we turn to our contemporary setting, the social circumstances of our time are very different from those of Aristotle’s time in antiquity. The preservation of our contemporary democracy requires us to further incorporate specific circumstances of our time into our analysis in order to avoid anachronism. This chapter moves on to our contemporary setting and seeks inspirations for the preservation of our contemporary liberal representative democracy from these two intellects of our time.

Before we begin, let us go over the risk of anachronism.

Risk of Anachronism

Athenian, Roman, and our Contemporary Democratic Realities

Reflecting Aristotle’s wisdoms presented in Chapter 2, both Part 1 and Part 2, to contemplate the risk of anachronism in the context of democracy, we can compare the following three primary historical democratic achievements.
  • The classical Athenian democracy
  • The Roman Republic
  • Our contemporary liberal representative democracy

In the classical Athens, democracy meant direct democracy, which operated through direct participation in deliberative and judiciary processes in governance. Government positions were allocated in turn by random lot. The lot system eliminated the risk of corruption in the process of appointing officers: no ordinary one could manipulate the result of the lot; on the other hand, the election process can be manipulated through either bribery or favouritism.

The Athenian style direct participation democracy by lot in turn was operated in the size of its free citizen body in an order of 50,000 – 60,000 in 430 BCE before the Peloponnesian War, while after the war 22,000 - 31,000. (Cartledge, 2016, p. 224)

“A smaller citizen body after the ravages of the Peloponnesian War meant also a smaller pool from which to draw members of the Council of 500, whose service was restricted to a maximum of two annual—and not consecutive—terms per fully adult lifetime (thirty years old and above). Most Athenians will have had to serve on the Council in the Fourth century simply in order to fill the set deme and tribal quotas.”  (Cartledge, 2016, p. 224)

Naturally, as the number of citizens increases, it loses its effectiveness in guaranteeing direct participation: some people cannot have an opportunity to serve in the government during their lifetime. The larger the size of citizens, the more people cannot participate in governance. In addition, a full participation of the Athenian style democracy cannot be guaranteed in a geographically widely spread state: its citizens at remote areas would find difficulty in spending time and financial resource to travel to participate in the deliberative and judiciary processes. There is a limit in the geographical area as well as in the size of the citizen body, in which the Athenian style direct democracy can effectively operate.

The ever-expanding scale of the territory and the free citizen body of the Roman Republic definitely demanded a democratic system drastically different from Athenian democracy. Not only in number, but also in the geographical area of the coverage of its citizen body did the Roman Republic far exceed the Athenians.

In the Roman Republic, their most democratic constitutional achievement was a representative democratic system in the form of a mixed constitution, which allows elements of kingship (Consul), oligarchy (the Senate), and representative democracy (Tribunes and Assemblies) to co-exist and check and balance one another. Some intellects in antiquity—e.g. Cicero, Posidonius of Rhodes, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus—suggested that the Roman Republic sort of democratised the Spartan constitution for their own purpose to create their own (Rawson, 1969, pp. 104-105). Cut a long story short, in principle, they incorporated a stringent check and balance mechanism into their constitutional machinery. Nevertheless, in reality, the Roman election system gradually became infested by bribery and facouritism that perverted its voting process a priori.

Our contemporary democratic achievements are in multiple forms, but might be encapsulated in one simple term, liberal representative democracy: e.g. parliamentary representative system and presidential representative system. One notable difference from these two ancestors presented above is that our contemporary liberal democracy embraces human rights and civil rights of its own citizens in principle: in practice, whether it is practiced or not is a different matter though.


Aristotle's time and our time

Those Aristotle’s views presented in the two previous chapters were shaped under the social conditions of his time. There were more principles and guidelines in his original writing. Nevertheless, those which would suffer from anachronisms in our contemporary setting, are omitted.

Anachronisms would naturally arise from the differences in the social norms and conditions between Aristotle’s world and our time. Here are some illustrative examples:
  • On one hand, slavery was deemed a necessary social institution in Aristotle’s time. On the other, it is immoral to our contemporary consciousness, at least in advanced economies.
  • While the citizenship in antiquity was granted only to a narrowly defined group—such as gender—of locals, our time embraces universal suffrage.
  • In the Athenian democracy the citizens exercised direct participation in governance by lot  in turn—although Aristotle acknowledged a variety of forms of democracy in practice in other Greek city states. Our contemporary version is liberal representative democracy, but not direct one at all.
  • While the ancient Greek deemed small scale city-states as their notion of states, our contemporary states embrace a wide range of scale from Singapore to the United States.
  • While ancient intellects value freedom from the dominance by foreign states, our contemporary democratic mind tends to seek individual freedom.

In comparing these two different epochs—Aristotle’s ancient Greece and our contemporary reality—we need to be vigilant to avoid the risk of anachronism arising from difference in social norms and conditions between these epochs.

Now, let’s turn to our contemporary voices and better reflect our contemporary settings free from anachronisms.

In this attempt, the rest of the chapter seeks inspirations from the views of two intellects from our time and recent history: Angie Hobbs, the Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at University of Sheffield; and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a Holocaust survivor and Jewish German thinker.


Section 1: Angie Hobbs’ proposal


Dangerous Fantasy: ‘the Will of the People’

As a recap, the ominous transition from democracy to tyranny in Plato’s the Republic unfolds when a demagogue, in disguise of the champion of ‘the people,’ hijacks the democratic system through the majority rule, one of the operating principles of democracy.

Angie Hobbs (2017) warns us that the word, ‘the people,’ is dangerously deceptive. It devises an illusion of ‘a single homogenous people’; and ‘the will of the people,’ another illustion of ‘a single will of the single homogenous people’. These notions veil the very fact that any sizable society is an ecosystem of different people with different dispositions and diverse opinions. The people in reality are “a diverse collection of individuals” with “diverse wills”; thus, it is senseless to reduce it into one single notion of “the people”.

Nevertheless, demagogues abuse the word, ‘the will of the people,’ to craft a ‘fantasy’ as if they are representing the society. (Hobbs, The rise of the demagogue - A warning from Plato, 2017) The reality, on the contrary, is very different, according to Hobbs.

“Casual equivalence between ‘the people’ as a whole and all or some of the electorate are very dangerous: they imply that those who cannot vote, or those who can vote but did not vote, or those who voted on the losing side are not part of ‘the people’—perhaps not even properly persons at all.” (Hobbs, Democracy: a philosophical puzzle, 2017)

These notions actually lend themselves to demagogues themselves rather than to their constituency. The ‘fantasy’ grants a demagogue a license to instigate injustice on any minority, especially his/her dissidents, in the name of ‘the will of the people’. The abuse of the word, ‘the people,’ allows a demagogue to subvert democracy into tyranny, or a state of his/her dictatorship.

Three Other Principles of Liberal Representative Democracy

Our contemporary democracy is liberal representative democracy, very different from the ancient Athenian democracy, which was direct democracy. How can we preserve liberal representative democracy of our time?

Professor Hobbs prescribed a very succinct guideline to cope with the paradox of the majority rule in our contemporary context. She articulates that, apart from ‘the majority rule,’ the following three principles constitute the justice of our contemporary liberal representative democracy:
  • equal civic rights
  • the rule of law
  • freedom of expression

She stresses that these principles need to be applied to every single individual, regardless of majority rulings. And she inspires us to peacefully resist against any infringement of these three principles:

“The kind of liberal representative democracy that emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries is founded on notions of equal civic rights (themselves often founded on ideas of universal human rights) and supported by the rule of law and freedom of expression.  Some of the populists’ rhetoric and other actions (because speech acts are acts) have already done serious damage to these foundations and supports, and unleashed and emboldened some toxic views amongst the most extreme of their followers.  It is not too late to protect liberal democracy, but those of us who care about it are going to have to work hard in 2017 and beyond.  We need to disentangle the complicated web of understandable economic grievances from the yearning amongst some for white supremacy (particularly white male supremacy) and address the former while heeding but not in any way indulging the latter. We must use every peaceful means of civic protest to call out – clearly, firmly and swiftly – every single infringement of civic and human rights and every attack on the rule of law.  We must resist the normalisation of profoundly immoral speech and behaviour.  Such resistance is not ‘unpatriotic’, still less ‘treasonable’: if our accusers are British or American we can remind them that we are fighting to save a liberal democracy forged, in part, by the British philosopher John Locke and the British-American Thomas Paine.”
(Hobbs, The rise of the demagogue - A warning from Plato, 2017)

Simply put, we have to preserve those three principles, beyond the majority ruling, as a constitutional safeguard in order to protect liberal representative democracy from an excessive abuse of the majority rule, or ‘the tyranny of the majority’. Remember, in Socrates discourse, demagogues create their political capital by making the common enemies of the majority out of minorities and impose injustice on them (Terminal Symptom of Democracy in Ancient World). In this context, the protection of minorities to guarantee these three principles beyond the majority rule is imperative for the preservation of our contemporary liberal representative democracy. In other words, we need to resist against deceptive fantasies that demagogues cast and defend these three core principles for all of the citizens including minorities.

Overall, Hobbs’ approach is reminiscent to Aristotelean politically active life.


Section 2: Hannah Arendt’s observations

Our Own Delusion

All that said, the demagogue’s role in crafting ‘fantasy’ is only a part of the story. Now, another part of the story comes from an unexpected party, the people themselves.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) presents her illustrative observation, how people could proactively assist a demagogue to rise, from her observations with the rise of Hitler. German history of the fall of its ‘post-Weimar Republic’ democracy provides us with a recent example of the ominous transformation of democracy turning into tyranny. She describes a self-deceptive behaviour among intellects manifested at the early stage in the rise of Hitler and his Nazism.

The worst thing was that some people really believed in Nazism! For a short time, many for a very short time. But that means that they made up ideas about Hitler, in part terrifically interesting things! Completely fantastic and interesting and complicated things! Things far above the ordinary level! I found grotesque. Today I would say that they were trapped by their own ideas. That is what happened. But then, at that time, I didn’t see it so clearly.
(Arendt, 2013, p. 19)

The ‘fantasy’ was not only fabricated by the demagogue, but also further incubated in people’s mind. The deceptive notion of ‘the will of the people’ is enormous and ubiquitous.

How can we protect us from ourselves, or our self-deceptive behaviour? What a paradox! We are vulnerable to seductions created by unscrupulous demagogues. And as a result, we could voluntarily fall prey to the trap that demagogues created to become their agents. It would be imperative to raise a strong awareness about our vulnerability in order to prevent us from assisting a would-be tyrant. Nevertheless, it would be a difficult task.

Section 3: Reality Check

Now, we can do some reality check, using these Aristotle’s wisdoms and these two contemporaries’ observations.

Check against Ancient Wisdom

Against Aristotle’s general principles and guidelines, how many items has our government failed to meet? Breach of these rules could be a warning signal for adverse consequences—from social unrest to revolution—on the horizon. As an exercise, let’s make a check list along those grand principles.

  1. Common Good: Are existing laws and policies, as a whole, designed to promote ‘the common good’ of the society or to advantage certain sections of the society?
  2. Inclusive governance: Is the government taking care of the low-income class of the society?
  3. Middle way: Do the constitution and/or policies promote extreme excessive behaviour of some particular sector of the society?
  4. Laws: Are laws designed to pursue or serve the justice of the existing constitution in place? Are laws designed to be conducive to the stability or the preservation of the constitution?

In addition, in particular to Aristotle’s remark on democracy: are the low-income class receiving any business start-up assistance to restore their economic integrity?

We can also expand our questions based on his action guidelines as well. For this part, I will leave it up to the readers to make their own questions in line with Aristotle's action guidelines below:

  1. Strict Enforcement of Law
  2. Prevention of the concentration of power
  3. Prevention of corruption: institutional check on any excessively dominant social group.
  4. Prevention of embezzlement of public-funds
  5. Manage wealth disparity between the rich and the poor within a reasonable range. This can be seen as a corollary of the principle of inclusive governance.
  6. Maximum alert of risks that can impair and destabilise constitutional foundations.
(Aristotle, the Politics, Book V viii: 1307-1309)


Policy makers and dominant factions of our contemporary democratic societies
are better off going through these check items and listening to this Aristotle’s caveat in order to protect themselves—to avoid any unexpected adverse consequence that fires back to them on the horizon.


Check against Our Contemporaries’ Caveats

We can also make a list of reality check on contemporary liberal democracy with caveats from Angie Hobbes and Hannah Arendt.

1.     Is our government violating human rights and civil rights? : Is our government guaranteeing the protection of these rights for minorities in society?

2.     Are we promoting unscrupulous demagogues?

  • Are we deceived by demagogues’ mantra, ‘the will of the people’? We need to remind ourselves that a society is a diverse eco-system which includes different people with variety of dispositions. The over-simplification is deceptive and can only benefit demagogues in their consolidating their constituents.
  • We should not trade the principle of just democracy—equal civil rights, freedom of expression, and enforcement of law—with seductive fantasies that demagogues craft such as economic benefits.
  • Are we allowing demagogues to instigate injustice on minorities in exchange for necessities and/or luxuries of the majority?

Concluding Remark:

This reading sought some inspirations from two intellectuals from our time and recent history and explored the possibility to preserve our liberal representative democracy.

Professor Angie Hobbs encouraged us to play an active role in preserving three principles of our liberal representative democracy—equal civic rights, the rule of law, and freedom of expression—beyond the majority rule. In a sense, she promotes Aristotelian political active life. Hannah Arendt left us a caveat that we as voters have responsibility to maintain vigilance to prevent ourselves from falling prey to demagogues’ deception and from cooperating with demagogues in incubating ‘fantasy’ about ‘the will of the people.’

Nevertheless, these approaches give us only a general guidance as a good starting point. Specific action plans need to be formulated based on the particularities of the circumstances each instance faces.

There should be more remedies to cope with the ominous adversity. It might be a long journey, but with some hope left. In order to shape remedies, we need to have a profound understanding about the mechanism of the ominous fatalism. Without profound understanding about it, we are bound to falling prey to it.

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References

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  • Arendt, H. (2013). What remains? The language remains": a conversation with Günter Gaus. In H. Arendt, The last interview and other conversations (J. Stambaugh, Trans., pp. 3-38). Brooklyn: Melville House.
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  • Cartledge, P. (2016). Democracy, a life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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