Not Everything Bad is “Anti-Democratic”

In a current Bloomberg column, my George Mason College colleague Tyler Cowen – a outstanding economist – warns towards the rising tendency to conflate “democracy” with good and simply coverage, and describe something we oppose as “anti-democratic”:

Some of the disturbing traits in present discourse is the misuse of the time period “anti-democratic.” It has develop into a type of all-purpose insult, used as a cudgel to criticize political and mental opponents. Not solely is that this apply intellectually lazy, but it surely threatens to distort the that means and obscure the worth of democracy.

The benefits of democracy are apparent, not less than to me, and deserve higher emphasis:

• Democracy helps produce increased charges of prosperity and financial progress.
• Democratic governments usually tend to shield human rights and fundamental civil liberties.
• As thinker Karl Popper pressured, democracy helps societies escape the very worst rulers, by voting them out of workplace and within the meantime constraining them with checks and balances.

In fact democracy isn’t good. First, a variety of particular person democratic choices are usually not excellent…. Second, there are intervals when some international locations would possibly do higher as non-democracies, despite the fact that democracy is healthier on common…

An excessive amount of commentary ignores these nuances….

The hazard is that “stuff I agree with” will more and more be labeled as “democratic,” whereas something somebody opposes shall be referred to as “anti-democratic.” Democracy thus involves be seen as a strategy to enact a collection of private preferences slightly than a (principally) useful impersonal mechanism for making collective choices….

[M]any on the political left within the US have made the cost that the Supreme Courtroom’s choice to overturn Roe v. Wade was “anti-democratic.” It’s nice to name Dobbs a nasty choice, however in actual fact the ruling places abortion regulation into the palms of state legislatures. If aliens had been visiting from Mars, they merely wouldn’t see that transfer as anti-democratic….

By conflating “what’s proper” with “what’s democratic,” it’s possible you’ll find yourself fooling your self in regards to the reputation of your individual views. In the event you attribute the failure of your views to prevail to “non-democratic” or “anti-democratic” forces, you would possibly conclude the world merely wants extra majoritarianism, extra referenda, extra voting.

These might or might not be appropriate conclusions. However they need to be judged empirically, slightly than following from individuals’s idiosyncratic terminology about what they imply by “democracy” — and, by extension, “anti-democratic.”

The conflation of what’s “democratic” with what is true and simply has numerous unlucky penalties. First, it promotes mental confusion. Second, and extra importantly, it primarily defines away the chance that democracy – outlined, extra moderately, as a majoritarian political course of – needs to be constrained to be able to shield different values, and counter varied predictable pathologies of democratic authorities, corresponding to widespread voter ignorance and oppression of minority teams.

All too typically there are trade-offs between democracy and different values, corresponding to liberty, equality, and justice. We should not let terminological confusion blind us to that actuality.

I’ve made comparable factors about the necessity to keep away from conflating democracy with good and simply coverage in earlier writings, corresponding to right here:

Admittedly, the time period “democratic” is typically used as only a type of synonym for “good” or “simply,” slightly than within the extra slim sense of referring to governance by majoritarian political establishments. By that normal, such insurance policies as faculty segregation, merciless punishments, and legal guidelines banning same-sex marriage are inherently “undemocratic,” regardless of how a lot political help they get pleasure from. Regardless of the linguistic deserves of this utilization, it’s not analytically useful. If something good is by definition additionally democratic and something democratic is by definition additionally good, then democracy ceases to be a helpful idea for constitutional principle, or another kind of intellectually critical evaluation.

Recognizing that democracy is not inherently good and that not all evil and dangerous insurance policies are anti-democratic would not by itself inform us how a lot democracy needs to be constrained and in what method. Nevertheless it does assist clear away conceptual confusion that impedes clear pondering on the topic.