Incidentally, it is interesting to see that the current Republican nominating process does not seem to have been adversely affected by the elimination of limits on campaign contributions from the rich through superpacs. If anything it seems that Gingrich and Santorum have been able to continue their efforts long beyond what would have been normal without such limits. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion, but it is difficult to argue that debate has been curtailed or distorted. It may have become more negative, but I am not sure that this is because of the superpacs. But this is just my view. For me the issue is not the amount of money, but of how it is distributed—it should be under party control, not the control of individual campaign finance managers.
I am still rereading Przeworski. So far he has discussed democracy, where he seems to be saying that democracy is government decision making by majority rule. This is consistent with my view of the nature of democracy, and admittedly my view may have biased my interpretation of what he is saying. He next covers representation, where he does no more than do an in depth survey of the history and variety of representative governments around the world. He reviews parliamentary and presidential governments without clearly judging which is more democratic. Then he goes on to elections, and it is here that he seems to me to get off track. He discusses elections in terms of median voter theory, and bemoans the fact that political parties may give little choice to the voter because of the constraints of appealing to the median voter. To me this is a narrow and distorting way of looking at elections, even though it is the dominant approach taken in political science. To me he conflates voters voting in an election for representatives with legislators voting on a bill in a legislature. They are two different processes, and it is not clear to me that one can talk about them in the same terms. Median voter theory is just to simplistic to be useful in describing elections. Elections are much more a matter of assembling groups of voters into a majority coalition. Competition between parties is a matter of attracting more and larger groups into the party. The median voter would seem to be irrelevant to this process.
Nevertheless, Przeworski does assert that party government in most developed countries, even when party control changes from one party to another, has been remarkably conservative, in the sense that a change in party control has not resulted in any drastic change in policies. One might dispute how drastic the changes have been between Labor and Conservatives in Britain under Thatcher, and more recently under Cameron, or between Bush and Obama in the US, but perhaps this is only a matter of degree. In any case, Przeworski’s observations are an argument against the idea that democratic governments will be capricious. More later.
Part of the reason I had to reread Przeworski is that he does not organize his material in the way I would have. To me there are three parts to his argument, one on the structure of a democratic government, one on the nature of representative government, and one on the goals or ideals of government. His discussion, however, is divided into separate, non-consecutive chapters. His discussion of the structure of democratic government is in chapters two and six, his discussion of representation is in chapters three and five, and his discussion of the goals of government is in chapters four, on equality, and seven, on liberty. It was thus difficult for me to integrate his discussions into the frame I have developed.
Przeworski does a truly masterful job of reviewing the issues in each of these areas. He has a much more comprehensive grasp of the varieties of governments around the world and through history. I have learned a lot from him, and am humbled by the relative paucity of my knowledge. Perhaps he has no interest or inclination to make judgments about any particular government, such as the US government, in the face of the large variety he surveys, or at least he is very mild and indirect in his judgments, as befits an academic.
Nevertheless, he is dubious about the value of the almost universal efforts to restrain the expression of the will of the majority, in particular the notions of the separation of powers and checks and balances. He favors the dominance of majority rule and the role of political parties. He is dubious also about the value of representation by itself to ensure that the government is responsive to the people. I find little to disagree with in what he says.
My only regret about Przeworski is that he does not focus his knowledge on a critical judgment of the American system, and this is my problem, not his. He does not judge the US system perhaps because he knows of so many other systems that are no better, but my focus is on the US system in particular. My goal is to suggest changes to the US government, not just to describe it.
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