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How Can We Justify Democracy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

H. B. Mayo
H. B. Mayo
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

One should say at the outset what one means by democracy. I shall keep close to historical usage by excluding the economic, social, cultural and other extended meanings, and stipulate that democracy is a type of political system. A political system in turn is composed of methods of making public policies, those policies embodied in laws, orders, agreements, understandings and “conventions,” at varying levels of generality, related to government and binding upon all within the system. The approach taken here is thus to classify political systems according to how public policies are made, the assumption being that different systems use different methods or, as we may say, operate on characteristic principles.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 555 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1962

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References

1 This definition has the defect of evading an important question, namely that of the boundaries of the system. What, for instance, is to be the unit of democracy? Should we take the municipality? the state? the nation? the world? This is one of the most difficult and least explored questions in democratic theory, and because it is seldom even asked, many political controversies—e.g., over local government or national sovereignty—are unnecessarily confused. (The international political system is clearly sui generis.)

2 Bertrand de Jouvenel apparently believes that democratic legitimacy is so widely agreed that “Argument about attribution has now, however, passed into history; the transitional period is over, and all that matters now is the realistic study of the ‘what.’” Sovereignty (Chicago, 1957), p. 6Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Wollheim, Richard, “Democracy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 19 (1958), p. 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 By a “comprehensive” political theory I mean one which deals with a type of political system, in contrast to a “partial” theory, which may cover only a specific policy, or confine itself to empirical explanation alone, or to normative theory alone, or deal with the purposes that all political systems should pursue.

5 Explanatory theory could of course take other forms—e.g., it could be historical, or by reference to causality.

6 Cf. Cornford, F. M., From Religion to Philosophy (New York, 1957), p. 80Google Scholar: “All theology is the result of doubt and criticism, not of simple and childlike faith, which has at no time felt the need for it.”

7 E. g., how we come to hold our beliefs has wide implications for education in a democracy.

8 Some human behavior is hardly purposive at all—e.g., a quarrel or even a war, which may be “because of something, not for something.” We may even speak of unconscious purposes.

9 Garritt, E. F., Ethical and Political Thinking (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar.

10 A lesser objection to this end-means justification is that it tends to make a political system merely of instrumental or expedient value, where-as a good system is surely good for itself—though not of course unconditionally good. (Loyalty to a political system should not—probably cannot—be absolute, i.e., always regardless of the content of policies.)

11 Possibly Daniel Boorstin had this in mind when he wrote in The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar, of the “un-American demand for a philosophy of democracy.”

12 Cf. Jordan, E., Theory of Legislation (Chicago, 1952), p. 73Google Scholar and Ch. 7.

13 As in my Introduction to Democratic Theory (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, Chs. 5 to 8.

14 Just as we cannot call upon all the arguments for a direct democracy to support a representative system, so the latter is immune from some of the criticism aimed at the former—e.g., that of mob rule. Our problem is less that of the psychology of crowd behaviour than of mass manipulation.

15 Cf. Wollheim, op. cit. This argument also was not used by the Athenians.

16 The Spirit of Liberty, ed. Dillard, Irving (New York, 1959), p. 76Google Scholar.

17 Cf. Toulmin, Stephen E., The Uses of Argument (Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar. It seems to me that some “natural” law reasoning falls into the error of suggesting that reaching a moral decision is a matter of drawing a correct conclusion by a chain of deductive reasoning from a general moral principle; whereas we weigh evidence and arguments and then make a choice what to do. To make a decision or judgment is much more than deductive reasoning.

18 Kolnai, Aurel, “The Moral Theme in Political Division,” Philosophy, Vol. 35 (July, 1960), p. 237CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is also true that a knowledge of moral principles is often not a sufficient guide to personal duty in concrete situations—indeed the whole subject of casuistry (in its original sense) takes its raison d'etre from this very difficulty; hence too a partial reason why moral philosophers are often no better than anyone else: knowing the rules and knowing how to apply them (to say nothing of being motivated to apply them) are different things.

19 Emmet, Dorothy M., Function, Purpose and Powers (London, 1958), p. 219Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Knight, F. H., Intelligence and Democratic Action (Harvard, 1960), p. 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Possibly we could add as a further argument the impracticability of other systems: “… under modern conditions it is the only working possibility. No member of an emancipated industrial society will put up with political tutelage,” Wollheim, op. cit., p. 242. (The last remark is however excessively optimistic, even false.)

22 Cf. Morgan, Douglas N., “On Justifying Political Action,” Ethics, Vol. 71 (October, 1960), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Cf. Toulmin, Stephen, Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 67–101Google Scholar. Cf. also Znaniecki, Florian, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (New York, 1940), p. 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “… the choice between any given theories is (not) subjectively arbitrary. For there are objective standards by which inductive theories can be compared and their relative validity estimated. Of two theories, A and B, bearing on the same empirical field, if B solves all the problems A has solved and also other problems which A could not solve, B is superior to A in theoretic validity, both from the rational and from the empirical point of view.”

24 It will be observed that I have not attempted defences of democracy in terms of theology, religion, natural law, natural rights, psychology, economic progress, etc.

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