The fact of resorting to ‘alternation’, ‘representation’, ‘proportional ballot’ and ‘blocking minorities’ is an attempt to compensate for these imperfections. By preventing any act of authority, however, the very same processes could result in anarchy and thus become the indirect motivation for conducting a coup.
In and of itself, universal suffrage is insufficient for establishing a democracy. For the latter does not necessarily come into existence on account of the fact that every citizen possesses ‘a powerless fraction of power’.
And there is a further issue — that of the size of collectivities. The vaster or more heterogeneous the ensemble, the more plural its expression of consent, the more difficult it is to obtain and the lesser its impact. Direct democracy is thus inevitably a micro-democracy. This was the case in Athens: what the City represented was not a state, but a small community in which only those with a common origin were citizens, espousing identical specific values. Kratos (‘power’) sanctioned the unity of the demos (‘people’) and was not the latter’s source.
Mr Sartori remarks that macro-democracy, which excludes the direct participation of citizens in public administration and is founded upon a principle of representation, cannot consequently embody a mere ‘enlargement’ of micro-democracy. From a certain stage onwards, the ensemble constituted by the citizens undergoes a change of essence. To disregard this fact and to continue in one’s desire to practice a ‘direct democracy’ implies an ad unum reduction of human diversity, either through the brutal means of dictatorship or through non-repressive conditioning which, nonetheless, remains equally totalitarian. This is the reason why, in contradiction to the statements made by both libertarians and ‘councilists’, small groups could never replace the state, whose sovereignty remains unique (it is, however, entirely possible for a macro-democracy to be accompanied by a network of micro-democracies that correspond to regional, professional and other kinds of groupings, which allows for a genuine decentralisation of power).
Finally, one must agree on what the precept of equality actually means. In principle, the ‘classic’ form of democracy establishes an equality of rights. From the Marxist perspective, however, such political democracy lacks any and all value: in fact, it is even viewed as a superstructure which enables the bourgeoisie to consolidate its power. In Marx’s eyes, there is no such thing as the autonomy of the political. When analysed in depth, it is always the expression of an economic balance of power. The only genuine equality thus lies in the equality of revenues: in socialist countries, the latter is, in fact, never regarded as the complement of political democracy, but, instead, as its substitute. As for the rulers, they are not chosen by the people, but are to govern on the people’s behalf.
‘The conclusion is that there is no empirical criterion that would allow us to differentiate the systems that are deemed ‘popular democratic’ from non-democratic ones, for democracy is not restricted to being a governance mode. It is also a form of governance and a political system. The fact of governing in the people’s stead relates to demophilia and not democracy’, Professor Sartori writes.
Anglo-Saxons and Latin Nations
Prior to 1789, the democratic ideal remained exclusively negative, since its purpose was to reject absolutism. In the aftermath of the Revolution, two paths opened up for democracy: the first emphasised the possible and consisted in adapting reality in a manner deemed better or more ‘just’; the other insisted on what seemed, from an ‘idealistic’ point of view, (morally) most desirable and consisted in maximising concepts in accordance with a ‘radiant’ future when the ideal would end up imposing itself upon the real.
The first path was the one that liberal democracies (of the Anglo-Saxon type) chose to follow, whereas the other was embraced by egalitarian democracies of the Latin kind.
Mr Giovanni Sartori strongly insists on the opposition between the two:
On the one hand, there are ‘pragmatic’ democracies, which are the result of a gradual growth process, limiting themselves to the implementation of what is possible; they are thus, to a certain extent, the fruit of experience. In all such democracies, liberty is understood as the means to attain equality.
On the other hand, there are also ‘cerebral’ democracies (meaning ‘intellectualistic’ ones, in the sense mentioned by Karl R. Popper). Founded upon pure abstractions and a priori principles, they result almost exclusively in utopian perfectionism, if not ‘proletarian dictatorship’. These democracies are the products of the human mind, pre-interpreting equality as a means that will allow us ‘someday’ to achieve (hypothetical) liberty.
There is a common fundamental aspiration to both systems, yet its forms and results are different. ‘In the end, this difference is the one that exists between rationalistic mental structures and empirical-pragmatic ones. […] While empiricism tends to be anti-dogmatic and proceed through trials, rationalism is marked by a tendency to be dogmatic and definitive’, Mr Sartori notes.
When Hegel states that ‘reality is rational’, intellectualists interpret his words in the following manner: ‘It is reality that must surrender to reason’; pragmatics, by contrast, understand this statement to means that ‘it is reason that must adapt to what is real’.
Furthermore, Mr Sartori distinguishes two fundamental conceptions in relation to political reality: the realistic or conflictual one, according to which force precedes persuasion (and power establishes legality), and the legalistic one, which claims that persuasion (law) predates the exercise of power. In the first case, the difference between politics and war is merely a matter of intensity, and each is the continuation of the other using new means. In the second case, war and politics are of a different nature, with war merely serving as the ultima ratio, the authority’s last recourse.
The democratic notion is obviously connected to the legalistic conception. However, as stated by Mr Sartori, there are some ‘realistic’ theories, including the ones advocated by the elitist or neo-Machiavellian school (Pareto, Mosca, Michels), which, to a certain extent, remain compatible with democracy, as long as the latter is of the ‘pragmatic’ type, of course.
Mr Sartori wrote: ‘Realism only acts as the enemy of unrealistic democracies, meaning those that were born under the aegis of “French reasoning”’.
Indeed, ‘far from being a systemic flaw, democratic elites represent one of the system’s essential safeguards’. For democracy is also a means of governance. Just like any other system, it thus depends on the ‘efficacy and skilfulness of its rulers’ (Raymond Aron, La démocratie à l’épreuve du XXème siècle,121 1960) so as to avoid becoming a ‘mediocracy’.
Hence the issue of the ‘political class’. Mr Sartori seizes the opportunity to highlight the role played by ruling minorities and stress the necessity of a hierarchy.
The Assessment of the Elites at the Hands of the Masses
The actual conditions that allow for the proper exercise of power have now been clarified, having hitherto remained rather obscure. Some had, for instance, connected them to people’s living standards and to education. These explanations, however widespread, were anything but convincing. England, not to mention the ancient Greek and Icelandic democracies, was actually a democracy long before experiencing literacy or democratisation. As pointed out by Mr Sartori, ‘What must still be determined is whether a country becomes democratic as a result of its prosperity, or whether it prospers on account of being democratic’.
He adds that ‘as soon as the term “democracy” is applied to the Third-World, and particularly to those nations that are said to be “developing”, the criterion level becomes so weak that one may well wonder if the word is still appropriate’.
Mr Sartori prefers to stress a certain non-quantifiable factor: that of mentalities. He views the exclusive creation of democracy at the hands of the European civilisation as the result of a state of mind whose manifestations can be noticed but that evades any sort of measurement.
Ever favourable
to a ‘pragmatic’ and liberal kind of democracy, one that is ‘founded on popular approval, as well as on competition within elites whose actions are assessed by the masses’, Mr Giovanni Sartori finally proceeds to warn readers against both demagogues and ‘demolatrists’, but particularly against the temptation of a ‘perfect society’.
However, he does not conceal his pessimism. Due to his very unrealism, Marx will always hold a greater appeal than Tocqueville. ‘This suggests that Western democracies may well end up losing control of the explosive potentialities of the democratic ideal’.
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La théorie de la démocratie122 by Giovanni Sartori, Armand Colin, 405 pages.
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With regard to the relations between the democratic structure of power and elite intervention, there are two interesting sources of choice texts: Harry K. Girvetz ‘s Democracy and Elitism — Two Essays with Selected Readings (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1967) and Wilfried Rörich’s Demokratische Elitenherrschaft — Traditionsbestände eines sozialwissenschaftlichen Problems (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1975).
The polyarchic conception of governance is one of the modern theories that have most attempted to reconcile elitism with democracy, as seen particularly in Robert A. Dahl’s essay Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1971). This conception relies essentially on the pluralism of modern societies (meaning the fact that in every society, one finds several ruling minorities that simultaneously participate in decision-making), as well as on the acknowledgement that, even in a democratic society, there is always a governing minority and a governed majority. From this point of view, although the majority principle remains indispensable in relation to achieving an efficacious sort of democracy, it could not, on its own, ensure the accomplishment of all social interests. In order for this to happen, the elements that constitute polyarchy must necessarily come together, as they are inseparable from one another and form a coherent ‘organic whole’. Such a system could, nonetheless, only be functional provided that democratic principles are widely adopted by the population; that the country comprises a large variety of elites; and that none of these elites surrenders to the temptation of violently opposing the system. This fact accounts for the numerous criticisms that the polyarchic system has been targeted with, especially at the hands of Henry S. Kariel (in The Decline of American Pluralism, Stanford University Press, 1961) and Peter Bachrach (in The Theory of Democratic Elitism — A Critique, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1967). These authors have no difficulty whatsoever in demonstrating that the model is guilty of gravely underestimating both the will to power and the independence of elites.
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The Paradoxes of the Majority
American Kenneth J. Arrow, who won the 1972 Nobel Prize for Economics alongside Briton John R. Hicks (thanks to his essential contributions to the general theory of economic equilibrium and betterment), is particularly famous for having formulated the paradoxical theorem that bears his name.
Both Hicks and Arrow belong to the extension of the Viennese school, whose main representatives are Menger, von Wieser and Böhm-Baverk. At the close of the previous century, this school proceeded to break with moralising economic thinking, which had prevailed from the days of Plato to the age of Marx and Ricardo, with the notable inclusion of Thomas Aquinas. Simultaneously, it laid the foundations of modern economic science and replaced the illusory notion of labour value (according to which the value of any goods depends on the effort that is necessary to produce it) with that of marginal utility, which stipulates that the value of goods depends on the relation between their objective scarcity and their subjective commercial utility, meaning on whether or not it is sought after.
In his Value and Labour (Dunod, 1968), John Richard Hicks, aged seventy-three, established the relative indeterminacy of salaries, highlighting the importance of a social consensus that may or may not manage to impose itself upon labour costs. He also introduced the ‘elasticity of previsions’ concept, which is connected to the notion of a ‘contingent future’, i.e. to the continuation or reversal of tendencies.
Kenneth J. Arrow, aged fifty-six, whose views were popularised in France by Mr Jacques Lesourne123 (the theory of economic calculation, economic technique and industrial management, etc.), has chosen to particularly target the famous Condorcet paradox, according to which it is impossible to attain collective choices with identical attributes through the mere addition of rational individual choices.
In Search of a Collective Optimum
In this respect, the problem is the following: if one abides by majority rule, ‘A’ must be preferable to ‘B’ the instant a larger number of citizens (or consumers) actually expresses a preference for the former compared to latter. However, such a preference is not always possible on a collective level.
Let us imagine three MPs named Smith, Spencer and Stewart, who are expected to make a decision regarding laws A, B and C. Let us now suppose that each of these individuals proceeded to classify the three legal proposals by order of preference, resulting in three diverging combinations: ABC, BCA and CAB. It thus becomes apparent that, once it is time to cast a collective vote allowing to make a majority decision (A or B, B or C, C or A), not only is A preferred to B and B to C, but also C to A! Indeed, an identical two-third majority is thus achieved every single time.
When one attempts, therefore, to unite individual opinions and derive a ‘collective view’, rationality very often disappears.
It is in an effort to circumvent this paradox that politicians have come up with compromises, alternate majorities and coalitions.
In his Social Choice and Individual Values, whose first edition was published in New York in 1951, Kenneth J. Arrow takes on the issue and grants it a more rigorous formulation. Striving to extract the necessary conditions (meaning the behavioural hypotheses) for the elaboration of a collective choice that would fulfil the highest possible number of individual demands, he highlights the fact that such conditions have every chance of being incompatible with one another should more than two decisions be proposed. Hence his ‘theorem of possibility’.
It thus so happens that, from a mathematical perspective, majority rule is incompatible with the search for a collective optimum. This fact is accounted for by the reality of human diversity. Human aspirations are fundamentally varied and cannot be reduced to quantifiable factors: it is therefore impossible to add them together or determine an average. Terny, an economist, writes that ‘there is no democratic method that would enable us to aggregate several individual functions of preference into a social preference function that would guarantee transitive choices under any circumstance’ (in Analyses et prévisions,124 July–August 1967).
In his work dedicated to the Economic Analysis of Political Life (PUF, 1972),125 Mr Jacques Attali, a senior lecturer at the School of Polytechnics, makes the following specification: ‘For over 20 years, this spectacular result has fascinated both economists and mathematicians. In short, it “demonstrates” the impossibility of the democratic principle’. A decision-maker located above all parties, one that must be superior to the sum of these parties, must adjudicate matters. The ‘decision-maker’ in question is none other than the state.
The implications that stem from the ‘Arrow theorem’ are numerous, whether in the field of economics or that of politics. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s opinion, every citizen possesses a fraction of absolute sovereignty, with the totality of power remaining, at all times, indistinguishable from the will of the majority. From Arrow’s point of view, there is no such thing as an ideal Constitution, one that is valid regardless of time and location. All that exists are specific and temporary arrangements based on an ever-evolving reality. The latter are dependent on circumstance, on the values that serve as reference and on the forces that one can count on.
‘There are no solutions to political issues’, Mr Attali confesses. ‘All that there is are regulations, mean
ing arbitrations on the conflicts that arise between diverging interests’.
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Social Choice and Individual and Individual Values by Kenneth J. Arrow, Calmann-Lévy, 235 pages.
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Kenneth J. Arrow initially formulated his ‘theorem’ in 1950, as part of an article entitled ‘A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare’ (in ‘Journal of Political Economy’, August 1950). The book that was subsequently published, Social Choice and Individual Values (Wiley, New York, 1951), has constantly been re-edited since, notably in 1963 — with the addition of a further chapter — and in 1970 (Yale University Press, New Haven).
This theorem regarding the impossibility of reaching a rational and democratic decision caused quite a turmoil among experts. In his Coûts sociaux et coûts privés,126 (PUF 1968), for instance, Mr Claude Jessua speaks of ‘theoretical seppuku’. As for Mr Guy Terny (Economie des services collectifs et de la dépense publique,127 Dunod, 1971), he remarks that ‘the doctrine of citizen sovereignty is incompatible with that of collective rationality’. On his part, Mr Lionel Stoleru, who finds these conclusions ‘intolerable’, has declared: ‘It is clear that we cannot content ourselves with this acknowledgement of failure’ (in L’équilibre et la croissance économiques — Principes de macroéconomie,128 Dunod, 1970).
In The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1958), Mr Duncan Black tried to reduce the Arrow theorem to a notion of ‘limited intransitivity’ by defining the rule of collective decision-making as a simple ‘maximisation of a weighted sum of individual utilities’ (which is indeed true in most cases).
Systems and Debates Page 6