The devil in democracy
Review by Samuel Brittan
Published: July 28 2007 01:15 | Last updated: July 28 2007 01:15
Anyone looking for evidence of cultural dumbing down need look no further than the way in which “democracy” has become a one-word slogan for all desirable objectives. What do both American neo-conservatives and European liberal interventionists say they hope to achieve in the Middle East? “Democracy.” What is the most common complaint in elite circles against the working of the European Union? The “democratic deficit”.
The simplest definition of democracy is decision by voting. The more sensible propagators of democratic slogans are aware of the dangers of oppression of minorities or the havoc that can be wrought by ill-informed public opinion. From here there are two ways to go. You can say that true democracy involves far more than occasional voting in nationwide elections; or you can stick with the simple definition, and accept that democracy is just a particular decision rule.
Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter usefully extends the discussion by linking it with “public choice” theory. This is simply an application of economic principles to the behaviour of voters and governments, which has become absorbed into US mainstream economics. It is still relatively unknown in Europe, however, where governments are assumed to be either guardians of the public good or devils incarnate.
Public choice theory faces a dilemma. A rational and self-interested person has no incentive to study political issues, as the chances of his or her determining the outcome are negligible. This has become known as “rational ignorance”.
Caplan maintains that the reality is much worse. He shows that voters are not just ignorant but systematically biased in favour of mistaken views. He finds, for instance, that while most economists believe that the laws of supply and demand are responsible for increases in petrol prices, the public still overwhelmingly believes that it is due to oil companies trying to increase profits.
Caplan is a far better writer than most economists. But he does not really explain how these misperceptions arise. He is far from a market fundamentalist and stresses that most market failure has been effectively analysed by mainstream economists. But he does believe that the weaknesses of democracy should create a bias in favour of market rather than political solution in cases of doubt.
One criticism of his analysis might be that economic change involves loss as well as gain. Mid-20th-century economists accepted that a change was for the better only if the losers could somehow be compensated, whether by welfare state provisions or a “trickle down” effect in the longer term. But as there is no guarantee of this happening, an act of faith is involved in espousing market solutions.
It is, however, a common fallacy that the major issues affecting nations are economic. Surely 9/11, or recent troubles in Iraq and the Middle East, should have cured us of this notion. To be fair, Caplan does suggest that his approach should be extended to other topics.
Most western nations have developed a variety of safeguards against the abuse of democracy. They include written constitutions, second chambers, Human Rights legislation, judicial review of laws, international courts and much else. They need to be strengthened rather than pushed aside.
This is where Frank Vibert’s The Rise of the Unelected, becomes highly relevant. The traditional constraints on abuse by elected pluralities come from the division of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judicial spheres - something that Tony Blair never understood. Vibert points out that these constraints are feebler than they used to be. He now places his hopes on a fourth arm, “unelected bodies”, more usually known as quangos.
Vibert hopes to make these bodies more effective by developing codes of conduct and professional standards for them. But can the same rules really apply to such diverse bodies as - to take a few examples from his list - the BBC, the Medical Research Council and the Curriculum Authority?
Personally, I would place most importance on a more careful use of language. Never let anyone, however eminent, get away with using “democracy” as shorthand for everything politically desirable.
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
By Bryan Caplan
Princeton University Press £17.95 280 pages
FT bookshop price: £14.36
The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of Powers
By Frank Vibert
Cambridge University Press £15.99 210 pages
FT bookshop price: £12.79
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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