Democratic Hubris

Ideological Puritanism Threatens the Longevity of Democracy

“I am Cyrus, king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world, son of Cambyses, the great king, king of the city of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, the great king, king of the city of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, the great king, king of Anshan, the perpetual seed of kingship, whose reign Bel and Nabu love, and with whose kingship, to their joy, they concern themselves. When I went as harbinger of peace into Babylon I founded my sovereign residence within the palace amid celebration and rejoicing. Marduk, the great lord, bestowed on me as my destiny the great magnanimity of one who loves Babylon, and I every day sought him out in awe.”

Any system of government must justify its legitimacy to the governed. Liberal democracies base the legitimacy of their institutions on the principle of popular government. "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" was how a great American president put it. But democratic republicans were not always wedded to such ideology. Many Renaissance and Enlightenment-era republican thinkers, such as Niccolò Machiavelli and John Adams, viewed republicanism as a reasoned, empirical approach to politics. Indeed they abhorred the useless theorising of traditional political philosophy.

Alas, what was arrived at through reason becomes entrenched as ideology. Democracy today is most often defended not through reason, but through the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Proponents argue not that democracy is the best system of governance, but that it is the only legitimate form of government. The legitimacy of a democratic republic, and the illegitimacy of other forms of government, is ostensibly a matter of apodictic certainty. In other words, less Machiavelli, more Rousseau. What is worse, this social contract theory has inherited the delusion of Rousseau viz. it believes itself to be not merely a narrative designed to lend credibility to a particular form of government, but indeed to be a reasoned a priori judgment about governance. That Rousseau's moralising justification for democracy has come to overshadow the empirical arguments in favour of it is not surprising. Most persons are convinced more easily and more strongly by narratives than they are by arguments. It is simple to present popular sovereignty as the only ethical paradigm of government legitimacy. On the other hand, explaining the success of democratic republics in striking the right balance between stability and dynamism in a body politic requires far more understanding and nuance than most are willing to spare. What is more, an ethical justification is more flattering to the collective ego. In a global economy where the competitiveness of a country depends so critically on the productivity of its labour force, leaders are encouraged to feign obeisance to their citizens. But this ideological turn has led to hubris among Western peoples and leaders as I shall attempt to illuminate herein.

The democratic-republican dichotomy between Machiavelli and Rousseau has not been resolved in the modern democracy. On the one hand, the various shortcomings of democratic systems, such as short-termism and a tendency towards populism and, eventually, despotism, are acknowledged. Democracy, like any other system, is deeply imperfect. On the other hand, its present faults are often written off as the results of an environment that is presently not perfectly suitable for democracy, but which can gradually be conditioned to achieve a more perfect body politic for democracy. This is seen, for example, when commentators call for reforms to the media landscape to enable more reasonable public discourse, or when they critique the education system for leaving pupils underprepared for their civic duties. These are valid criticisms of the state of education systems in the Anglosphere¹ and the current media landscape. But they overlook the most important cause of the malaise Western democracy finds itself in. This is the lack of undemocratic checks and balances, or more precisely, the perceived lack of legitimacy for undemocratic restraints.

In any body politic, there are some main axes of competing interests. The tension between the interests of the elite and the middle or working classes is always among these. Others may arise e.g. along religious or ethnic lines depending on the particulars of the body politic. Successful institutions are those that identify these axes and arrange them such that they are amenable to civil society. Since societal tensions are constantly evolving, the best governmental institutions contain effective feedback mechanisms for internal realignment and recuperation. The success of Western democracies is rooted in their exceptional dynamism in adjusting to shifting political axes. Questions of legitimacy are important in justifying existing institutions, but they are ultimately secondary to the success of these institutions and are in fact informed by it. The Chinese Communist Party provides no overarching narrative for the legitimacy of its rule in China other than that under it the country has been immensely successful in growing its economic clout and improving the livelihoods of ordinary Chinese people. As it turns out, this justification, which has been dubbed performance legitimacy, is by and large good enough for the Chinese people. While it may seem that this is an uncompelling worldview, in a (depressingly) utilitarian world, the ultimate justification for any institution is performance legitimacy. Having provided the background for steady growth for centuries in some Western countries, democracy has heretofore laid the greatest claim to performance legitimacy of all the available alternatives. It is this claim that is the subject of the ideological clash between the West and the bloc developing around China. In other words, the question is not whether it is right to have a free press. Rather, it is whether a free press helps to advance material prosperity.

This distinction is at once understood and neglected in Western countries. The renewed attention to industrial competitiveness and national security in the United States and Europe shows that governments understand the significance of the quantifiable advantages of a democratic system. On the other hand, the distinction is neglected when democracy is viewed not as a critical tool of republican governance, but as an exalted historical and moral imperative. Indeed, while any successful republic requires a strong democratic arm of its legislature, squarely undemocratic institutions are needed to check the worst excesses of democracy in short-termism and populism. Despite the indispensable role of these institutional checks in the continued stability of government, democratically elected leaders often undermine them on the basis that an undemocratic body has no place in modern government.

Sir Keir Starmer, the opposition leader in the UK's House of Commons at writing, has promised to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected, representative body if made Prime Minister. This is ostensibly to restore public trust in politics. Ironically, the most divisive and unsuccessful recent policy and legislation in the UK, such as the Internal Market Bill and the Police, Crime, Senticing, and Courts Act, have originated in the House of Commons and have been subsequently challenged in the Lords. If the good Sir Keir is concerned about the lack of public trust, he would do better to abolish the Commons. Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister, hung on to the job for much longer than he should have based on the mandate he believed he was handed by the electorate. He was conveniently forgetting that the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of MPs, not the public. To the north in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party², cries foul every time one of the acts of her devolved government is struck down by the courts or challenged by Westminster. She believes that the will of the Scottish people is being derailed by agents who were not elected by them (or not elected at all). Yet, institutional checks and balances are a key feature of democratic republics, not a bug.

Across the Atlantic, both houses of the United States legislature are elected by popular vote. But this was not always the case. Under the original constitution, federal senators for each state were appointed by that state's legislature. The United States Senate was intended to serve a role similar to that fulfilled by the House of Lords. It was designed to be an aristocratic counterbalance to the popular authority placed in the House of Representatives. This empowerment of the aristocracy was attacked by statesmen and philosophers from America and abroad.

One of the most prominent critics was Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, a French statesman and political economist. He derided the constitutions of the United States for too closely resembling the structure of the British system and for dividing political authority between an executive branch, a house, and a senate. In 1778, he wrote of these constitutions "Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England has a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They undertake to balance these different authorities, as if the same equilibrium of powers which has been thought necessary to balance the enormous preponderance of royalty, could be of any use in republics, formed upon the equality of all the citizens; and as if every article which constitutes different bodies, was not a source of divisions."

In response to this criticism and others, John Adams, the Founding Father who was serving as ambassador to London at the time, wrote ‘A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States’. Here he defended the division of power exercised by federal and state constitutions in America. He also maintained that a balance of executive, aristocratic, and popular authority is the best arrangement of political institutions in that it provides the most enduring protection for the basic laws of a nation. In Adam’s view, a republic is that government which conducts the affairs of the people, for the benefit of the people. It matters not whether this is done by a king, an aristocracy, or the whole of the people. The key insight, however, is that democratic republics, those with a strong democratic arm, are the most enduring.

John Madison and Alexander Hamilton expressed similar sentiments at the Federal Convention of 1787. Defending the proposed six-year terms for the Senate, which were thought too long by Charles Pinckney, the delegate from South Carolina, Madison said

The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages... In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

Building on this point at the convention, Hamilton notes “We are now forming a republican government,” and cautions “Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” In addition to representing the ‘landed interest’, the Senate was meant to serve as a cool, deliberating counterforce to the popular passions that might prevail in the House. It was to be occupied by the most accomplished and talented people the states had to offer. But this aristocratic body must be kept in check by the executive and the popular branches of government, since, In Adams' words, “The senate, although it is always the reservoir of wisdom, is eternally the focus of ambition.”

This delicate balancing act of competing interests was discarded in favour of the crude principle of unadulterated popular sovereignty by the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A product of progressive and populist movements of its time, the Amendment, ratified in 1913, transferred the power of appointing Senators to the people via direct elections. Its proponents believed the benefits of popular election to be self-evident and beyond question. William Jennings Bryan, a central figure of the campaign in favour of the Amendment, argued "[i]f the people of a State have enough intelligence to choose their representatives in the State legislature.., they have enough intelligence to choose the men who shall represent them in the United States Senate.” This rhetoric, variants of which are often given in support of democratising any and all processes of decision-making, is mistaken in its assumption that the root of undemocratic institutions is contempt for the intelligence of the multitude. As we have seen, the Founders intended the aristocratic nature of the senate to safeguard the legitimate interests of the wealthy few against encroachment by the many. This is not a judgment about the common sense of the common man, only an acknowledgement that the interests of different classes must be protected by the government. It is a necessary safeguard against a tyranny of the majority.

Many proponents of the Amendment also pointed to instances of Senate seats being bought and sold, leading to the impression that the Senate was in the service of moneyed special interests. There are three faults in this objection to the process of appointment by state legislature. First, moneyed interests are precisely those which the Senate was erected to protect. Second, evidence of fraud and bribery in the appointment of Senators was scant. And third, by opening up the Senate to direct elections, the Amendment made the job of the lobbyist much easier, since now he or she need only influence a single candidate, rather than a sizeable portion of a state legislature.

Nearly one hundred years later, Donald Trump announced his candidacy in the Republican primaries of 2016. In the beginning, not many in the party establishment looked kindly on this unconventional candidate. He ended the Primaries with the fewest number of establishment endorsements that a winner, Republican or Democrat, had ever carried since 1980. Even so, it was clear that the party elite's tone dramatically changed after his strong performances in the early Primary states. In one pivotal moment, erstwhile New Jersey governor Chris Christie stood next to Donald Trump at a press conference and expressed his emphatic support of the latter's campaign. Only a few months before, Christie was running for the Oval Office himself. He had received his fair share of insults from Trump and he had responded in kind. As late as 2014 Christie was regarded as the most obvious successor to Mit Romney for the Republican Candidacy; the logical continuation of Reagan's party. Christie was not a hardliner. It is unlikely that Trump's politics appealed to him personally. But once the mobs of voters were amassed behind Trump, Christie fell in line. As did many other prominent Republicans. Even the great Mitch McConnel eventually bent the knee, albeit with less enthusiasm and in deference, rather than in obedience. Therein lies the issue with any unconstrained implementation of popular government.

Once the will of the voters was clear, every Republican lawmaker on Capitol Hill faced a choice: capitulate to the new Republican base or surrender office. That is because in a pure democracy the only measure of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, is the opinion of the majority. If instead senators believed themselves to be somewhat protected from the whims of the party base, they would have far more room to voice dissent. Perhaps the party would have already freed itself from the shackles of Trumpism, or never submitted to them to begin with.

Other instances of democratic forces undoing the arduous process of institution building abound in recent history. Take, for example, the European Union, which was a project initiated by the political elite of postwar Europe. Though the project can be criticised for foregoing public discourse on the boundaries of the union altogether, none will deny that it has played a critical role in keeping the peace across the continent and thus allowing its many nations to prosper. Yet, even this fruitful union has been ruthlessly attacked from within by populist forces. The Brexiteers heralded their nation towards a divorce that is now broadly looked on with regret. Eurosceptic populists would have done more damage on the mainland had it not been for the fresh vision of one man, Emanuel Macron, and the devastation brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Macron breathed new life into the European project by showing that it need not exclude ordinary folk, while the European response to Covid-19 disaster relief demonstrated the tangible benefits of the confederation beyond a reasonable doubt.

Many have analysed these currents by beginning with the assumption that populism is an aberration in a democracy. In an effort to relieve democracy of its failings, any number of explanations have been offered up. Most often, they split the blame among three factors: the pervasiveness of socially corrosive social media, an uber-partisan legacy media landscape, and rising inequality. But, as commentators since antiquity have observed, the difference between democracy and demagoguery is a single demagogue. In the contemporary era, the strength of institutional norms in many Western democracies has thus far precluded would-be demagogues from doing as much damage as they would. But these norms have been eroded and they cannot forever withstand assault from within. No matter what the institutions of government, such assaults will come at irregular intervals. If there is no effective counterweight to the fickleness of popular sentiment, then the assaults will be successful, while no recuperation can take place in between.

Such a counterweight can only be provided by non-democratic institutions. These establishments must take an active role in legislation, and they must enjoy the clout and legitimacy that would enable them to make a stand against those who would tear down the structures that facilitate the function of open democracies. But undemocratic institutions cannot have this legitimacy as long as they are viewed as relics of a bygone era, an era filled only with crude, unenlightened, and illegitimate governments. Through the twists and turns of history, however, that is how they have come to be seen. It is also true that, while the socio-political elite may have only their own interests at heart, their economic position allows them to assign more weight to the long-term outcome of legislative decisions. That is to say, while a middle-class person may have to consider most carefully the effects of a policy on his finances in the next six months, the established and wealthy have the luxury of considering the outcome of a decision across decades. This fact alone gives sufficient reason for the interests of the wealthy to be given weight disproportionate to their number. Such treatment would fly in the face of contemporary egalitarian sensibilities, but as we have seen, it was familiar to and accepted by some of the most accomplished statesmen of the modern era.

Western republics must hence reject Rousseau’s idealism and return to the historical empiricism of Machiavelli and Adams. Not only does the former mode of justification make institutional checks on democratic impotence and imprudence effectively meaningless in the face of populist outrage, but it also frames the problem of government as essentially solved. This complacent attitude encourages - indeed it demands – the dismantling of crucial undemocratic checks in a liberal republic. At the same time, it precludes the reinstatement of these checks and balances once they have been lost on the basis that they were undemocratic. In the introduction to ‘A Defense of…’, Adams expressed awe and regret at how little progress the science of government had made in three thousand years. Some further progress has been made since his time, at great cost. The costliness of experiments in governance has made progress in this field a sluggish endeavour. But to continue to perfect their institutions of governance, and to preserve the existing wisdom of their design, Western nations must set aside the ideological Puritanism that has been born of their exceptional success and return to the humble empiricism that made possible their rise. 

1. The author is not familar enough with the education system in non-English speaking parts of the West to make a more general comment.

2. Since writing, Ms Sturgeon has announced that she will step down as leader of her party once a new leader is elected.