{"id":15218,"date":"2015-05-07T11:46:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T15:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15218"},"modified":"2015-05-07T11:46:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T15:46:43","slug":"institutions-democratic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15218","title":{"rendered":"should all institutions be democratic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of my friends and colleagues believe that the more democratic any institution is, the better. I take a more pluralist position:\u00a0democratic values are worthy but they are inconsistent with\u00a0other values, and what we want is a mix of institutional types.<\/p>\n

You can’t enter this\u00a0debate without having a definition of “democracy” in mind. I would\u00a0reserve the word\u00a0for any system that defines a group of people (the demos<\/em>) and empowers\u00a0them all to rule (the “-cracy” part, from kratein<\/em>) with roughly equal influence or authority over the outcomes.<\/p>\n

Voting is neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy. It isn’t necessary because other devices, such as lotteries,\u00a0common property regimes<\/a>, and consensus decisions, can also\u00a0afford everyone equal influence. And it isn’t sufficient because a\u00a0vote\u00a0can’t achieve its purported purpose\u00a0without various supports. These\u00a0supports include at least freedom of speech and assembly and\u00a0also (I would assert) universal education, an actual press that performs its role well, an independent judiciary, habits of deliberation, and enough social equality that no caste, class, race, or gender is able to dominate the discussion because of its perceived superiority. Social<\/em> equality may, in turn, require\u00a0at least a limited degree of economic<\/em> equality. These conditions are highly debatable, but it’s pretty clear that at least some of them are necessary.<\/p>\n

Democracy embodies at least two valid principles: 1) equal respect for the dignity of all people, and 2) a general presumption that decisions made by the demos<\/em> will be wiser, or more just, or at least less corrupt and self-serving than decisions made in other ways. These two democratic principles are always worth considering, whether you are involved with a firm, a neighborhood, a church, a university, a family, or a scientific community.<\/p>\n

But they are not the only valid principles. You should also consider: liberty, solidarity, excellence of various kinds, truth, diversity, peace, rule of law (which implies stability and predictability), psychological and material\u00a0wellbeing, intimacy and privacy, efficiency, the interests of\u00a0future generations and animals, and–if you are so oriented–God.<\/p>\n

Alas, these various principles do not fit neatly together but often trade off. For instance, empowered groups can easily suppress individual liberty or ignore the rule of law. So how should we decide how to make the tradeoffs? A superficially appealing answer is: “Let’s decide democratically.” But democratic processes are biased in favor of the democratic principles over the other ones. Likewise, market processes are biased in favor of efficiency and liberty; scientific processes privilege\u00a0truth and certain kinds of excellence; legal processes favor rule of law.<\/p>\n

The cautious, pragmatic solution is pluralism. Let there be powerful democratic institutions and also intentionally undemocratic ones, where the\u00a0latter category\u00a0includes\u00a0physics departments, for-profit startups, hierarchical churches, anarchistic commons, and many more. Assign decisions about certain broad questions of distributive justice to democratic institutions. But limit the scope of democratic decisions\u00a0with a strongly\u00a0liberal constitution that defends pluralism.<\/p>\n

This is very far from an original or idiosyncratic position, but it may be useful as a dissent from the “strong democracy” thesis that is pervasive in some\u00a0circles I move in. It also\u00a0suggests a more capacious definition of “the civic” or “civic engagement.” I use\u00a0these phrases to mean not democratic participation but\u00a0rather creative love for the world. It is a secondary question whether the best way to improve the world (in a given situation)\u00a0is democratic. Sometimes it is, but definitely not always.<\/p>\n

If this statement seems lukewarm about democratic reform, it shouldn’t. The institutions that make decisions about broad questions of distributive justice are badly undemocratic, and\u00a0changing that situation is a\u00a0fundamental task of our time. I just wouldn’t interpret it to mean that all organizations must\u00a0become democratic, because if they did, I would want to leave them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of my friends and colleagues believe that the more democratic any institution is, the better. I take a more pluralist position:\u00a0democratic values are worthy but they are inconsistent with\u00a0other values, and what we want is a mix of institutional types. You can’t enter this\u00a0debate without having a definition of “democracy” in mind. I would\u00a0reserve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-theory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15218"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15226,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218\/revisions\/15226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}