Germans stand on top of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate days before it was torn down in 1989.
Wikimedia Commons / Unknown photographer

The photograph above  is a memorial to the hatred any human people will develop toward despotic, tyrannical regimes. It is also a testament to their hunger for democracy. There is a great deal of difference between barriers like the Berlin Wall, designed to imprison people where they do not want to be, and walls to keep people out, like the border wall Donald Trump wants to build on our southern border with Mexico. The former is a tool needed by despotic governments to crush their populations into obedience. Donald Trump’s kind of wall is needed to control the flood of people who would otherwise inundate a country where they desperately want to go.

One would think the history represented by the photo above — as well as the examples of both kinds of walls — would deter intellectuals from waxing nostalgic for authoritarian government. Much of the past few centuries, particularly in the Age of Enlightenment, was spent escaping from the ideologies used to oppress the human spirit. Yet intellectuals of the Left never tire in finding reasons to transfer ever more power to the state.

Progressives Against Democracy

Given the close political balance  between American progressives and neoliberals, both ideological points of view have great difficulty finding enough support to advance its programs. The U.S. has become ideologically balkanized. It was inevitable in this situation that some progressive intellectuals, driven by frustration, would begin to question the desirability of democracy.

In writing about this trend, I must needs emphasize the word some. As of now only a small minority of progressives are thinking about replacing democracy with a more authoritarian form of government. Musings by Thomas Friedman about the superiority of the Chinese regime over American democracy spring to mind. Nevertheless, a growing authoritarianism is a hallmark of the American progressive movement. We must be very worried about these progressive academics being the heralds of an expanding campaign against democracy.

There have been a great many books published critical of democracy and its outcomes. In this essay I will concentrate on two relatively recent publications. One is Against Democracy by Jason Brennan, and the second is Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. All three are university professors who study (among other things) the theory of democracy and the behavior of electorates. Dr. Brennan appears to have more of a libertarian point of view than a progressive, even though he argues against the desirability of a democratic republic. Achen and Bartels, on the other hand, are more ordinary progressives.

One of the biggest points of both books is how dreadfully unprepared voters are to cast informed votes. The electorate might (or might not) have a vague sense about how the nation should change. Nevertheless, they generally do not have more than an inkling about specific policies to make the desired changes.

Jason Brennan categorizes voters into three classes: Hobbits, Hooligans, and Vulcans. In the J.R.R. Tolkien classic The Lord of the Rings, hobbits were small, humble creatures who did not take much interest in the outside world. In fact, to take such an interest made a hobbit socially very disreputable. Similarly, Brennan’s hobbits are citizens with limited intellectual and political interests. It is not that they are totally disinterested in public affairs. Their dilemma is they are inundated with all the problems of life. Once they spend the requisite hours needed to earn their livings, attend to their budgets and bills, handle the maintenance of their houses, and deal with any childrearing problems, there are not many hours left over to become politically and intellectually engaged. Rather than spend a great deal of time studying economic and social problems, these folks would rather spend the rest of their day watching television or a sporting event, go to a movie, read an exciting novel, socialize with friends, or go to a bar.  Of hobbits, Brennan notes,

Hobbits are low-information citizens with low interest and low levels of participation in politics. Hobbits generally have unstable or only weak ideological commitments.

Hooligans on the other hand are “higher information citizens.” They participate in politics in various ways and have strong political commitments. Nevertheless, they are infested with group biases, particularly confirmation biases.

Finally, a Vulcan is the ideal citizen of a democratic republic. In the preface to his book, Brennan defines “Vulcans are an ideal type— perfectly rational, high-information thinkers with no inappropriate loyalty to their beliefs.” Of course, we would all like to think of ourselves as Vulcans, but in chapter 2 entitled Ignorant, Irrational, Misinformed Nationalists Brennan gives evidence that the vast majority of American citizens fall somewhere on a spectrum between the perfect hobbit and the perfect hooligan. [Presumably, there is a branch somewhere on this spectrum leading to the perfect Vulcan!] He states, “When it comes to politics, some people know a lot, most people know nothing, and many people know less than nothing.” Even granting a bit of hyperbole (I find it very hard to believe most people know absolutely nothing), this is a very depressing observation. One can not blithely dismiss his judgement because of the number of studies he cites supporting it.

In chapter 8, The Rule of the Knowers, Brennan proposes what he thinks would be superior to a democratic republic. He calls it an epistocracy, and it is rule by people who have demonstrated they know a lot. How is their greater knowledge to be demonstrated? Brennan proposes a system where everyone begins as an equal. Absolutely everyone would have extensive civil liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom to publish their ideas of whatever nature, and freedom to protest, but not necessarily the freedom to vote. To earn that privilege, prospective voters might be required to pass a voter qualification exam. What kind of questions should be on their exam? Brennan suggests,

To keep the test objective and nonideological, we might limit it to basic facts and fundamental, largely uncontested social scientific claims. Much of this knowledge is strictly speaking irrelevant to any given election. For instance, almost nothing in the US citizenship exam is needed to be a good voter. Still, at least right now, a person who possesses this knowledge is much more likely to have the kind of knowledge that is relevant. As we saw in previous chapters, citizens who know the answers to basic civics questions, say, tend to have political opinions that more closely match what economists of all ideological stripes believe. That said, it might be that if we made voting rights conditional on passing such exams, this correlation would diminish or disappear. There are currently some Americans who possess a high degree of political and social scientific knowledge, and hence score well on the citizenship exam. . . . It might be that effective voter qualification exams need to test basic social scientific knowledge, such as introductory microeconomics and introductory political science.

Brennan goes on to say,

To encourage the poor and disadvantaged to become good voters, governments could offer incentives to citizens who can pass the exam and acquire the right to vote. For instance, the government might offer a prize: anyone who qualifies to vote gets a thousand-dollar tax credit.

If this would encourage the development of knowledgable voters, it would be cheap at double the cost.

In the video below, Jason Brennan is interviewed about his book Against Democracy by David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the libertarian think thank, the Cato Institute. In this video Brennan explains his ideas in somewhat greater detail than I have related.

Before I leave Brennan for Bartels and Achen, I should note I am being more than a little unfair to lump Jason Brennon in with progressives. In fact the video below about another book he has written about libertarianism shows him to be something very close to a neoliberal, “Neoliberal” is the label I prefer for most people who are mischaracterized nowadays as “conservatives.” Both major combatants on the American ideological battlefield, progressives and neoliberals, have some aspects of society they would like to conserve and some they would like to change. Therefore, they both should have labels that refer to something other than change or conservation. Instead, their labels should evoke how they want to change or conserve society. Neoliberals, those usually named “conservatives” by both themselves and the press, are people who believe in classical liberalism together with free-markets. Brennan refers to himself as a “neoclassical liberal.” He names himself this in the video below. As far as I can tell, however, his “neoclassical liberalism” is substantially the same as what I mean by  neoliberalism. The long interview in the following video is well worth the viewing for its depiction of the various ideologies, although it is only tangentially related to the subject of this essay.  I present it primarily as an apology to Jason Brennan that I would ever mention him in the same breath as progressives.

Nevertheless, Brennan has argued persuasively against the desirability of democracy. It is an absolute certainty progressives will seize on his scholarship to promote increasing the powers of government.

Now let us turn to the more traditionally progressive Larry Bartels and Cristopher Achen (B&A), and their criticisms of democracy. By the second paragraph of their first chapter of Democracy for Realists, they declare

Unfortunately, while the folk theory of democracy has flourished as an ideal, its credibility has been severely undercut by a growing body of scientific evidence presenting a different and considerably darker view of democratic politics. That evidence demonstrates that the great majority of citizens pay little attention to politics. At election time, they are swayed by how they feel about “the nature of the times,” especially the current state of the economy, and by political loyalties typically acquired in childhood. Those loyalties, not the facts of political life and government policy, are the primary drivers of political behavior.

Even more darkly, the authors claim that voters’ identity politics determines the results of elections. They state,

We will argue that voters, even the most informed voters, typically make choices not on the basis of policy preferences or ideology, but on the basis of who they are—their social identities. In turn, those social identities shape how they think, what they think, and where they belong in the party system.

In order for a democracy, republican or otherwise, to work, the bulk of the citizenry must satisfy certain ideals. Among these are the obvious ones of being knowledgable about issues, and being interested enough to vote. In addition, they must be able to sort out the implications of various facts enough to form a well thought-out point of view on what government should do. They also must have the welfare of the nation as their primary motivation when they cast their votes. This picture of democracy is what Bartels and Achen call “the folk theory of democracy.”

Bartels and Achen see several problems with this portrait. One is the already mentioned ignorance of most people about basic facts of social reality. Most people really are hobbits. For example, how many people can explain how corporations and consumers fit into the laws of supply and demand and marginal utility? How many understand the law of comparative advantage and how it requires free-trade between nations. Do they actually understand what “free-trade” really means?

Not knowing basic facts about social reality, how can people put together well thought-out preferences for public policies? Not being highly knowledgable creates an insurmountable problem in weighing alternatives. Indeed, in chapter nine B&A cite research showing people generally do not vote based on issue preferences. Instead, they claim voters decide for whom to vote first, and then choose their side of issues to suit.

Bartels and Achen also debunk another justification for the desirability of democracy they call “the retrospective theory of democracy.” According to the retrospective theory, people may not understand social reality very well, but they definitely understand what is going well or wrong in their lives. Republican democracy gives citizens the capability to retain politicians who provide good results, and to get rid of politicians who give us destructive policies. The people exercise effective sovereignty by feedback through elections.

The counterattack against the retrospective theory begins with the following observation: Citizens often hold their rulers to blame for disasters over which the rulers have little or no control. The authors cite a long historical record of plagues, floods, and famines that evoked hostility by the ruled for their rulers. One automatically thinks of Chinese emperors losing the “mandate of heaven.” B&A state this penchant for irrationality is just as apparent in democracies as it was in earlier authoritarian regimes. They state in chapter 5, Blind Retrospection: Electoral Responses to Droughts, Floods, and Shark Attacks,

Our assertion is that voters’ retrospections are blind, not just in natural disasters but in hardships of all kinds. When they are in pain they are likely to kick the government, so long as they can justify doing so with whatever plausible cultural constructions are available to them. Only if no such constructions are available, or if no ambitious challengers emerge to articulate them, will people take out their frustrations on other scapegoats, or just suffer. In most cases, incumbents will pay at the polls for bad times, whether or not objective observers can find a rational basis for blame.

Clearly, B&A do not hold a very high opinion of the rationality of their fellow citizens. However, the evidence they offer to prove this irrational reaction during elections is sometimes less than convincing. In the same chapter they recounted a spate of shark attacks in 1916 on the coast of New Jersey, These resulted in a number of fatalities, which generated great public concern. The federal government was petitioned for help, although there was little the government could do at the time.

These events occurred during the 1916 reelection campaign of Woodrow Wilson. According to B&A, the irrational reactions of people to the New Jersey shark attacks caused them to blame Wilson for an inadequate response, almost costing Wilson the election. Concerning reactions to the shark attacks, B&A write

. . .  the shark attacks entered popular imagery and became a metaphor for other political crises as well: “Newspaper cartoons now portrayed Wilson’s chances for reelection in November, using the shark fin as the symbol for his potential loss. The black fin labeled ‘defeat’ was shown slicing through shark-infested northeast regions.

However, B&A then weaken their argument by noting citizens had other major reasons for dissatisfaction with Wilson.

By election time in November, Wilson was back at his Asbury Park headquarters, but other election issues, notably potential U.S. entry into World War I, took over the headlines.

Did shark attacks off New Jersey almost cost Woodrow Wilson his reelection? Or were his troubles really caused by other, more substantive issues? The use by B&A of the New Jersey shark attacks to demonstrate voter irrationality seems a reach.

Just how irrational are American voters, or for that matter voters of other Western countries? We have all met people who seem connected to reason only by a slender thread. Yet most people I have met throughout my life are more than capable of creating reasonable causal chains.  One might consider their reasoning to be faulty due to neglected facts, but in the absence of those facts, their thinking is generally not irrational. Lack of knowledge would appear to be a much bigger problem than irrationality. If that is the case, we can hold out greater hope for the retrospective theory of democracy.

In their final chapter, Bartels and Achen confess they can not offer a better theory for democracy. Nevertheless, they do have a major suggestion to better the republic we do have, suggested by the title of the chapter: Groups and Power: Toward a Realist Theory of Democracy. Throughout the book, B&A have developed a picture of the  electorate that says most citizens get their political opinions not from knowledge and reason, but from their group identities. An optimal democracy would then be a state that could most thoroughly reconcile the competing interests not of individuals, but of identity groups.

These ideas then suggest to B&A the following typically progressive thoughts:

New thinking about both ideals and realities will be required if democracies are to become truly more democratic. Our account of group politics points to a variety of potentially significant reforms, but we will focus on just one here. In our view, more effective democracy would require a greater degree of economic and social equality. The most powerful players in the policy game are the educated, the wealthy, and the well-connected. Corporations have more clout than workers; major media outlets are more powerful than independent bloggers; affluent citizens’ views matter more than those of the poor; and members of ethnic and racial majority groups are policy “winners” more often than members of minority groups.

That is, the heavy hand of government would be used to suppress the economic and political freedom of those in power in order to better the lot of the less powerful.

The video below is of a lecture given by Bartels and Achen to the Maxwell School of Syracuse University in which they describe their major ideas.

Why Should We Continue With a Democratic Form of Government?

Criticisms of democracy  as a form of government, such as the two described above, are impossible to completely dismiss. There is simply too much good research supporting them. What should we think then? Should we seriously be considering a change to a more authoritarian style of government?

Neither Jason Brennan nor Larry Bartels and Christoper Achen are ready to make that leap completely. Nevertheless, Brennan is ready to justify a greatly reduced electorate, restricted to those who can demonstrate they know a lot. Bartels and Achen on the other hand are ready (in a typically progressive way) to have the heavy thumb of government press down on the rights of the more successful to favor the less successful. What we have to fear from this research springs from the already authoritarian yearnings of progressives. Any serious research that puts democracy in ill-repute as a form of government can be used by progressive politicians — in conjunction with their allies in the media and academia — to advocate more power be taken from individual citizens and private groups (especially companies) and given to government. Given all the bad, dysfunctional characteristics of democracies, can we in good conscience resist these trends? Can we defend continuing as a democratic republic?

I think the answer is not only yes, but a resounding yes. In answer to the cogent criticisms considered above, one might reply with the following points.

First, consider the import of the statements at the beginning of this essay. Every truly authoritarian regime in history has ended up destroying itself, most often through a bloody revolution. If a disliked regime can be overthrown by an election rather than revolution, much destruction of life and property could be avoided.

Second, there is a large correlation between democracies and a high level of economic development. If GDP per capita is the gauge for economic development, then one could justly claim if a country is highly developed, it must be a democracy.

In addition, there is a high correlation between democracies and economic freedom. Should a democracy evolve toward a more authoritarian regime, one of the first losses citizens experience is freedom to control their economic affairs. This was the experience of fascist Germany and Italy in the 1930s, of the Soviet Union, and more recently of Cuba and Venezuela. People are demonstrably better off in an economically free, democratic nation than in an authoritarian regime. You can see this in a scatter plot of countries’ GDP per capita versus their index of economic freedom calculated by the Heritage Foundation. The higher the index of economic freedom, the greater the economic freedom in that nation.

The same point can be made with a scatter plot of countries’ Human Development Index (HDI) calculated by the United Nations. The higher a country’s HDI is, the greater its possible quality of life is.

Finally, we can illustrate the point with a scatter plot of the nations’ GINI index versus their index of economic freedom. The smaller the GINI index, the more equally the nation’s GDP is distributed among its population.

Finally, what the demonstrable flaws of democracy might actually be telling us is that we should be depending on government far less than we are. If citizens are likely to cast uninformed votes, we should limit the damage government is capable of doing to us. I came to this conclusion using different reasons in the posts The Structure of Social Revolutions and A New Paradigm for Democratic Government Coming?. Remember all this the next time you hear a progressive say we need to surrender more power over our lives to federal or state governments.

For after all, as Winston Churchill once told us in 1947,

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

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