Against the Technocrats
Dissent magazine says that pundits fretting about a “tyranny of the majority” would do well to remember that democracy has always been a precondition of liberalism—not the other way around. And that populism and oligarchies are the flip sides of the same coin.
Over the past few years concerns about “unchecked” democracy and rule by the people have exploded—but such concerns have been around as long as democracy itself. The ancient Greeks commonly equated democracy with mob rule. Aristotle, for example, worried about democracy’s tendency to degenerate into “chaotic rule by the masses” and in Plato’s The Republic, Socrates argues that given power and freedom the masses will indulge their passions, destroy traditions and institutions, and be easy prey for tyrants. Classical liberals, meanwhile, lived in mortal fear of democracy, convinced that once given power “the people” would trample the liberties and confiscate the property of elites. Great liberal thinkers like Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Ortega y Gasset constantly worried about democracy leading to a “tyranny of the majority” and the masses’ susceptibility to illiberal dictators.
While concerns about illiberalism, populism, and majoritarianism are certainly well-founded, blaming such phenomena on an “excess” of democracy is not. Such arguments rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of how liberal democracy has historically developed and how liberalism and democracy actually interact.
With regard to the former, many analysts argue that the problems facing many new democracies are the consequence of democratization preceding the establishment of liberalism. In such situations the “passions of the people” run rampant, unleashing dangerous forces that make it extremely difficult to establish stable liberal democracy down the road. Zakaria, for example, argues that “constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism.” Similarly, political scientists Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield argue that if democratization occurs in countries where liberal traditions are not firmly established, illiberalism and conflict will likely result. “Premature, out-of-sequence attempts to democratize may make subsequent efforts to democratize more difficult and more violent than they would otherwise be.”
As for the latter argument, many contend that the problems facing established Western democracies are the consequence of an “excess” of democracy and a concomitant withering of liberalism. As commentator Andrew Sullivan put it, we are living in “hyperdemocratic times,” with the “passions of the mob” running rampant and posing a danger to democracy itself. “Democracies end,” the title of his piece in New York magazine reads, “when they are too democratic.”
Both of these arguments are wrong. Historically illiberal democracy has been a stage on the route to liberal democracy rather than the end point of a country’s political trajectory. Indeed, in the past, the experience of, or lessons learned from, flawed and even failed democratic experiments have played a crucial role in helping societies appreciate liberal values and institutions. And many of the problems that have emerged in Western democracies today are not the result of “hyperdemocratization”—but the exact opposite. Over the past decades, democratic institutions and elites have become increasingly out of touch with and insulated from the people, contributing greatly to the anger, frustration, and resentment that is eating away at liberal democracy today.
This argument has as little merit as the former one. In Europe and the United States dissatisfaction with liberal democracy and a willingness to vote for populist parties is a consequence not of too much democracy but of too little—of citizens viewing democratic elites and institutions as out of touch and unresponsive to their needs. A 2017 Pew survey found that a mere 28 percent of Americans thought the future of the next generation would be better. Another 2015 survey found that only 19 percent believed that the government was being run “for the benefit of all,” and a 2016 study showed that both Democrats and Republicans viewed the other party as “immoral” or “threatening.” (Similar declines characterize European electorates—studies have shown that there is a clear correlation between lack of trust in political institutions and populist voting.)
In Europe, traditional political parties have hemorrhaged members (and in many cases voters) over the past generation, removing a strong link between the people and the political sphere and, as many have argued, politicians are increasingly drawn from elite educational and socioeconomic milieus, creating distance (and perhaps diverging interests from) those they purportedly represent. Also damaging was a widespread sense that the financial crisis was caused by governments that were more responsive to globalization and market forces than to their own people, and by political elites who were too cozy with bankers and the wealthy. Discontent has also been fueled by an undemocratic, technocratic European Union (EU). During the recent financial crisis in particular, issues with immense distributional consequences were taken out of the hands of nationally elected governments and placed in the purview of unelected EU technocrats and undemocratic EU institutions. In Southern Europe this tendency was taken to an extreme: in Italy, a non–democratically elected, technocratic government favored by Brussels replaced a democratically elected one, while in Greece a democratically elected government was forced to renege on explicit promises made to its own people because of threats of financial Armageddon by the EU. It is worth noting that the EU’s undermining of national democracy did not bring any (economic) counter-benefit. Indeed, political economists Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth have argued that the EU’s undemocratic, technocratic nature probably made policy-making during the crisis even worse by insulating “experts” from popular pressure, and hence, the need to reconsider unpopular and ineffective policies.
In democracies citizens, by collectively voting for a given party with given policy ideas, are exercising something like a put option. They are giving the ideas a chance, but retaining the option to “sell” the ideas by voting for someone else if the ideas don’t work out. Voters can always throw the bums out, if the bums’ ideas are rotten.
In a technocracy the citizens don’t really have a put option—they are stuck with bad policy ideas, like it or not, since those in charge are not elected. Technocrats therefore have a strong incentive to keep on implementing policy ideas, even if they are bad policy ideas since their authority and legitimacy depends on them being viewed as the experts, and the rules allow them to ignore popular pressure to deliver better outcomes. In this case, the put option cannot be exercised and the bad ideas persist.
It is hard to assert, in short, that Europe’s current problems are the results of an “excess” of democracy—indeed, it’s a deficit of democracy that is more likely the problem: governments grew increasingly out of touch with many of their people and their powers were undermined by global market forces and the EU. Is it any wonder, therefore, that calls for a re-assertion of national sovereignty and of “power to the people” have resonated in many European countries?
Similarly, in the United States it seems more likely that current problems are caused by limitations on democracy rather than an excess of it. The American political system has always had embedded in it myriad institutions designed to thwart the translation of popular preferences into political outcomes. Indeed, without these institutions it is likely we would not be in the mess we are in today. Without the blatantly undemocratic Electoral College, for example, we would not have Trump as president, and worries about the erosion of American democracy would be less pressing. Similarly, if we had a national legislative branch that more directly translated popular preferences into political outcomes than our Senate does, the more populous, liberal coasts would dominate politics at the national level, with immense policy-making consequences. Meanwhile at the state and local level voter restrictions and the expansion of gerrymandering have hindered voter participation, warped the translation of the people’s preferences into political outcomes, and turned what might otherwise be a minority party—the Republicans—into what increasingly looks like a permanent majority one. And finally, and perhaps most perniciously, the role of money in the American political system has made a mockery of the democratic ideal of equal political rights by enabling an economic oligarchy to translate its wealth into outsized political power and influence. That many Americans, in short, view democratic institutions and elites as fundamentally corrupt and unaccountable to them and are therefore willing to vote for politicians and parties who promise to blow them all up is not, unfortunately, all that hard to understand.
As recent elections in the United States and Europe have made clear, the more people believe that political elites and institutions are unresponsive to them, the more likely they are to want to sideline or even eliminate them. Continuing to allow wealthy individuals and special interests outsized influence on politics, or insulating political institutions and policy-making further from “the people,” is therefore likely to increase support for populism, rather than diminish it. Oligarchy or technocracy and populism are not opposites but evil political twins: the former seek to limit democracy to save liberalism, the latter seeks to limit liberalism to save democracy. Neither is wise and they feed off and intensify the other.
Sheri Berman is a professor of political science at Barnard College and a member of the Dissent editorial board.
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