You’ve heard Churchill’s use of the saying: “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” (Speech to Parliament, 11 November 1947)
One serious problem with democracy is that most voters are, in all candor, irresponsible and unreasonable. As political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels put their “sobering thesis” in Democracy for Realists: “Most people pay little attention to politics; when they vote, if they vote at all, they do so irrationally and for contradictory reasons.”
This claim seems harsh. The overly sensitive reader might prefer to go the way of the ostrich, inserting head into sand. But the wise person deals with reality as it is – with a normative eye on how it should be; regrettably, the human realm is as Achen and Bartels describe it: we regularly fall short of the demands of rational and moral normativity. Given our inclination toward the sentimental veneration of democracy, recognizing this cold fact is vital. Troublesome truths are not made less true by their troubling content.
Yet the problem is exacerbated: in one-person-one-vote systems, the suffrage of one foolish person neutralizes that of one wise person. This plight would be bad enough if the division between sages and sillies were 50/50. Worse still is a society in which the unreasonable and uninformed far outnumber the reasonable and informed. Alas, this “worse still” is our society.
And yet, as bad as democracy can be, other forms of government are said to be worse. Worse in which ways? Things stand in axiological relations of better or worse only with respect to some comparative factor. Regarding what factor(s) are other forms of government worse? How are they better? It seems they are better with respect to avoiding the problems noted above. How are they worse?
Exercise for the reader:
Select one form of non-democratic government. Then, select one aspect by which to compare it with democracy. Now, show how democracy is better than your chosen form regarding your selected aspect.
Need a cue? A clue?
Consider Plato’s five forms of government: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. (Republic, Books XII-IX) Or consider Aristotle, who lists six: monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional government (sometimes called ‘polity,’ which is a combination of oligarchy and democracy), tyranny, oligarcy, and democracy. The first three, says the Stagirite, are better; the last three are perversions. (Politics, Book IV, Part II)
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