In the classical Greek polis, democracy was the name of a constitution in which the poorer people (demos) exercised power in their own interest as against the interest of the rich and aristocratic. Aristotle thought it a debased form of constitution, and it played relatively little part in subsequent political thought, largely because Polybius and other writers diffused the idea that only mixed and balanced constitutions (incorporating monarchic, aristocratic and democratic elements) could be stable. Democracies were commonly regarded as aggressive and unstable and likely to lead (as in Plato’s Republic) to tyranny. Their propensity to oppress minorities (especially the propertied) was what Burke meant when he described a perfect democracy as the most shameless thing in the world.
Democracy as popular power in an approving sense may occasionally be found in early modern times (in the radical thinkers of the English Civil War, the constitution of Rhode Island of 1641, and in the deliberations of the framers of the American Constitution), but the real vogue for democracy dates from the French Revolution. The main reason is that ‘democracy’ came to be the new name for the long-entrenched tradition of classical republicanism which, transmitted through Machiavelli, had long constituted a criticism of the dominant monarchical institutions of Europe. This tradition had often emphasized the importance of aristocratic guidance in a republic, and many of its adherents throughout Europe considered that the British constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament was the very model of a proper republic. This idea fused in the nineteenth century with demand to extend the franchise, and the resulting package came generally to be called ‘democracy’.
It is important to emphasize that democracy was a package, because the name had always previously described a source of power rather than a manner of governing. By the nineteenth century, however, the idea of democracy included representative parliaments, the separation of powers, the rule of law, civil rights and other such liberal desirabilities. All of these conditions were taken to be the culmination of human moral evolution, and the politics of the period often revolved around extensions of the franchise, first to adult males, then to women, and subsequently to such classes as young people of 18 (rather than 21) and, recently in Britain, to voluntary patients in mental hospitals.
Democracy proved to be a fertile and effervescent principle of political perfection. Inevitably, each advance towards democracy disappointed many adherents, but the true ideal could always be relocated in new refinements of the idea. The basis of many such extensions had been laid by the fact that democracy was a Greek term used, for accidental reasons, to describe a complicated set of institutions whose real roots were medieval. The most important was representation, supported by some American founding fathers precisely because it might moderate rather than reflect the passions of an untutored multitude. The Greekness of the name, however, continually suggests that the practice of representation is not intrinsic to modern democracy, but rather a contingent imperfection resulting from the sheer size of modern nations by comparison with ancient city states. In fact, modern constitutional government is quite unrelated to the democracy of the Greeks.
Although modern democracy is a complicated package, the logic of the expression suggests a single principle. The problem is: what precisely is the principle? A further question arises: how far should it extend? So far as the first question is concerned, democracy might be identified with popular sovereignty, majority rule, protection of minorities, affability, constitutional liberties, participation in decisions at every level, egalitarianism, and much else. Parties emphasize one or other of these principles according to current convenience, but most parties in the modern world (the fascist parties between 1918 and 1945 are the most important exception) have seldom failed to claim a democratic legitimacy. The principle of democracy was thus a suitably restless principle for a restless people ever searching for constitutional perfection.
Democracy is irresistible as a slogan because it seems to promise a form of government in which rulers and ruled are in such harmony that little actual governing will be required. Democracy was thus equated with a dream of freedom. For this reason, the nationalist theories which helped destroy the great European empires were a department of the grand principle of democracy, since everybody assumed that the people would want to be ruled by politicians of their own kind. The demographic complexities of many areas, however, were such that many people would inevitably be ruled by foreigners; and such people often preferred to be ruled on an imperial principle—in which all subjects are, as it were, foreigners—rather than on a national principle, which constitutes some as the nation, and the rest as minorities. In claiming to be democratic, rulers might hope to persuade their subjects that they ruled in the popular interest.
Democracy is possible only when a population can recognize both sectional and public interests, and organize itself for political action. Hence no state is seriously democratic unless an opposition is permitted to criticize governments, organize support, and contest elections. But in many countries, such oppositions are likely to be based upon tribes, nations or regions, which do not recognize a common or universal good in the state. Where political parties are of this kind, democratic institutions generate quarrels rather than law and order. In these circumstances, democracy is impossible, and the outcome has been the emergence of some other unifying principle: sometimes an army claiming to stand above ‘politics’, and sometimes an ideological party in which a doctrine supplies a simulacrum of the missing universal element. One-party states often lay claim to some eccentric (and superior) kind of democracy—basic, popular, guided and so on. In fact, the very name ‘party’ requires pluralism. Hence, in one-party states, the party is a different kind of political entity altogether, and the claim to democracy is merely window-dressing. This does not necessarily mean, however, that such governments are entirely without virtue. It would be foolish to think that one manner of government suited all peoples.
Democracy as an ideal in the nineteenth century took for granted citizens who were rationally reflective about the voting choices open to them. Modern political scientists have concentrated their attention upon the actual irrationalities of the democratic process. Some have even argued that a high degree of political apathy is preferable to mass enthusiasm which endangers constitutional forms.
Kenneth Minogue
London School of Economics and Political Science
Further reading
Macpherson, C.B. (1973) Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, Oxford.
Plamenatz, J. (1973) Democracy and Illusion, London.
Sartori, G. (1962) Democracy, Detroit, MI.
Schumpeter, J. (1943) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, London.
