Inclusiveness as a criteria

Inclusivity is a major characteristic of democracy for the modern advocates of more democracy in the world. The more inclusive a government is, the more it includes all of the members of its population, the more democratic it is. It is appropriate, then, to examine how inclusive the Athenian government, the ideal for many advocates of democracy, was. In fact the Athenian government was not inclusive at all.

To begin with, the median member of the Athenian city-state was a slave, who had no rights at all in the government. As much as 80% of the population was enslaved. In these terms, the government was not inclusive at all, and there was no “popular” control. See Winters’ Oligarchy for more details.

If we consider only the citizens of the city-state, as most do, even there the involvement of the citizens in the government was not great. If we assume that 6000 citizens showed up for the assemblies, and that there were another 600-1000 citizens involved in the Council of 500, the juries, and the various magistrate positions, this would be no more than 20% or less of the entire population of citizens. Further, discussion in the assemblies was clearly strongly manipulated by the ruling oligarchs and their chosen orators. This would be no better than the percent of those involved in New England town meetings as indicated by Graham Smith. Is this all that is meant by inclusiveness and popular control?

Of course an equal proportion of those participating in the government of a country with a population of 300 million would mean that 60 million would be participating in the government. Does anyone really want a government of 60 million people?

I conclude that the Athenian government was not a democratic government simply by virtue of how inclusive of its citizens it was. Inclusiveness cannot be considered a viable criterion for how democratic a government is.

If participation in the government is at most at the level of 20% of the population, as it was in ancient Athens and in modern New England town meetings, then that 20% is by definition an elite group. They become elite just by being the ones who participate. The problem is not that they are elite, and therefore, by that simple fact, not representative of the entire population—they are by definition not representative of the rest of the population. The problem is rather one of how to make sure that this elite group is responsible to the rest of the population.

In a small town or city-state, where this elite is likely to know personally most if not all of the rest of the population, it is not hard to imagine how it could be responsive to the rest. Responsibility would be almost automatic, although the elite would likely be more responsive to the powerful and wealthy than to the poor and powerless. This is a fact of human intercourse that will never be changed.

The problem becomes more acute when the population increases to the extent that personal contacts with most of the population is no longer possible. Then the problem becomes one of how to ensure that the (self) chosen elite continues to be responsive to the rest of the population. Two solutions are possible. One could institute a system of choosing the elite proportionately from all of the relevant demographic subgroups in the population—age, gender, ethnicity, etc. The choice within each group would be effectively by lot. Or one could have elections. Selections by lot was used in ancient Athens, at a time when the relevant demographic groups was quite narrow—adult, male citizens, but it has not been used since, outside of a few very special circumstances.

Historically, where power was not acquired through force of arms, the preferred non-violent method has been election. Elections become especially necessary when the relevant population is large and the elite constitute a very small percentage of the total population. Elections are the means by which the responsiveness of the elite is ensured.

Characteristics of Democracy

Those who advocate direct or participatory democracy appeal to the government of ancient Athens as their model of the way government should be. Athens supposedly had the first real democracy, and as far as they are concerned, there has never really been real democracy since. Dahl has been a major proponent of this way of looking at democracy, and in fact it has been suggested that Dahl was the founder of what might be called the Yale School of Democratic Theory, those who believe in promoting direct democracy as much as possible. More recent writers in this vein have been Graham Smith, Fischkin, and O’Leary.

Smith suggests four criteria for judging how democratic a government is: inclusivity, popular control, deliberative decision making, and transparency. A government is more democratic if it is more inclusive, includes more of the total population, if it allow popular control of government processes, if it makes decision through clear deliberation, and if its processes are transparent to the people.

We can use these criteria to judge the nature of the ancient Athenian government. The results are not promising for using Athens as a model of democratic government.

Defining democracy

In my book I defined democracy in terms of three criteria: representation, majority rule, and effective legislative control of the executive. I proposed these criteria as part of an argument that the US government is not democratic: it fails my definition in that it does not operate by majority rule, and the legislature does not have effective control of the executive. The latter criterion is not really a characteristic exclusive to a democracy: in theory effective legislative control of the executive is necessary for any viable organization, whether a democracy or not.

In any case, subsequent reading has made me aware that many other theorists of democracy do not include the above criteria in their definitions. Specifically, many theorists do not insist on majority rule as the basic mod of decision making. They are willing to admit decision making by consensus, in other words by supermajorities. They do not seem to realize that requiring supermajorities leads only to paralysis—the case of the California government is perhaps the best example. More significantly, there is another group of writers on democratic theory that maintain that representation is by definition anti-democratic. Representatives are or become an elite, oligarchical group that by definition contradict the principles of democracy. Their position is that true democracy is government by the people, as a whole, or at least as much of the people as can be enlisted in the operation of the government. They advocate such things as selection of government officials by lot, or the creation of mini-assemblies as a way of involving more of the people.

If I am going to maintain my definition of democracy, I will have to deal with these objections.

I'm back

I am hereby resuming my blog associated with the book I have written about changing our government. The book is being printed as I write, and an updated version of it will be uploaded to Amazon shortly.

In the hiatus since my last blog, I have been reading further in areas that I have felt I needed to deepen my understanding of since writing the book. I have chosen two areas in particular, the concept of democracy, and a detailed comparison of the American with the British system of government. My focus lately has been on the concept of democracy. It is the less difficult of the two areas, although it has many complications, most of them having to do with the distinction between direct or participatory democracy, and representative democracy. There has been a lot written about this, and I will be expressing my interpretations of the issues involved in future blogs, and eventually perhaps in another book.

The other area is much more involved in that it requires an extensive experience with both the American and the British governments, a background that I will probably never have. Nevertheless, I will be trying to do as well as I can, and that may result in another book.

I realize that what I will be writing will be at a fairly high level, but that is where I am. I will try to blog about once a week with comments on these two subjects.