You hear a lot in European Union circles about “democratic deficit.” The argument—or perhaps more accurately, assumption—is that EU institutions are not sufficiently accountable to voters. I have to admit, the term has always disturbed me, though not for the usual reasons. I’m not disturbed that there is a deficit, though many EU folks get highly exercised on that point. Instead, I’m disturbed that we worry about there being enough democracy. (Or, as you’re probably thinking now, I’m just plain disturbed.)
Let me explain. The claim of a democratic deficit implies that there is something inherently just, right, or desirable about democracy. It smuggles in a moral claim, and while I have nothing against moral claims, I’d like for them to be justified. (And that’s a participle, not passive voice.)
As Fareed Zakaria reminds us, there is such a thing as illiberal democracy. We often imbue the term democracy with notions of the noble pursuit of the common good. Our forefathers (the ones who brought forth on this continent a new nation) were under no illusions on that score. Democracy is about the pursuit of self-interest in the public arena. In private relations, the institution of the market bends our self-interest toward the common good (or can, if appropriately structured.) Government, too, is an institution created to bend our interests to the common good. The difficulty with democracy is that a bunch of us can get together and use it to bend other people’s behavior to our good, rather than the common one.
(Dr. Larry Hall is currently wondering why I presume there to be such a thing as a common good, let alone the common good. He is entirely correct to question this, as he well knows and will tell you. However, that discussion must wait for another day.)
The Framers explicitly acknowledged that for which Alexis de Tocqueville subsequently provided the extended proof. Democracy, left to its own devices, tends to degenerate to a tyranny, either of the majority or of a demagogue herding the majority. Tocqueville argues brilliantly that the solution to this tendency is to incorporate aristocratic elements into it. Our Framers discussed this in terms of a republic, or a democratic republic, where institutions constrained the ability of the majority to translate its wishes into public policy.
What this assumes is that the majority is not always correct, that what it wants is no more likely to be true, virtuous, or just than what a minority wants. In other words, numerical might does not make right. What the democratic deficit argument assumes (at least, as normally presented) is that there is something inherently true, just, and virtuous about what the majority wants—that it is entitled to what it wants because it wants it.
Now, I personally blame Jean-Jacques Rousseau for this idea. True, it’s not exactly what he argued, and in fact he explicitly rejected this conception of “the general will.” According to Rousseau, the general will is what we would all want if we knew what was good for us. And although he explicitly says he doesn’t mean a parliamentary majority, in practice it can be little (and has been nothing) else.
So let me start working my way back to the original thesis, but let me begin with introducing another link in the chain. Bryan Caplan (see his blog here) has a new book out, The Myth of the Rational Voter. I have not yet had the pleasure of reading this book (Blatant pandering to publishers: feel free to send the Institute books for review, especially this book—please don’t make me beg), so please keep in mind that my account is third hand via several reviews. The essence of his argument is that poor policies are not the result of government’s flawed reflection of voter desires, but rather result from government accurately reflecting flawed voter desires.
And Madison makes very clear in Federalists 10 and 51 that he designed our government to prevent (or at least inhibit) it from reflecting flawed desires (the mischief of faction). Some of the means for achieving that involved deficits of democracy: indirect, rather than direct representation, as in the Senate (popular election brought to you by the 17th Amendment) and the Electoral College. Indeed, the point of separating powers is to hamper “democracy,” at least in so far as one equates that with majority rule.
So to return to the European Union, it may be that the very deficiencies of democracy are exactly what keep it operating. Would an electorate so far removed from the supranational institutions provide as good an oversight as the elected governments, who are much more jealous of their sovereignty? Would increasing the power of the electorate, making the electoral connection more direct, result in better policies?
Sadly, we must agree to postpone the answers to those questions until our next meeting. See you here in one week!