“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” These words, commonly (but probably falsely) attributed to Winston Churchill, betray a serious misconception about the primary purpose of democracy, namely, that democracy is supposed to yield political decisions that best serve the interests of the greatest number of people. Evidence shows that this outcome does not reliably obtain. Democracy, be it Minimal, Aggregative, Representative or Deliberative, is an essentially fallible decision-making process that is nonetheless characterised by one invaluable feature that all other known forms of government are (in principle) lacking: multilateral abstention from political violence. Insofar as political violence may still be occasionally perpetrated within democratic nation-states, it constitutes an attack on democracy rather than its essential feature.

The anecdotal statement attributed to Churchill may be described as the argument from incompetence, based on the premise that, in general, people are poor judges of what will reliably and durably make them safe, prosperous or simply ‘happy’. This argument, despite the relevant premise being true, assumes that democracy is supposed to make the greatest number of citizens happy with specific political outcomes. In contrast to this view, the pragmatic account of democracy recognises that by always going with the will of the majority – which is typically the most dangerous political entity – the potential for political violence is practically neutralised. Political adversaries of the ruling faction (minorities) need not be destroyed or enslaved for the dominant faction to be appeased because they have in principle agreed to abide by the will of the majority. In essence, democracy is a form of political discourse that allows any dissenting minority to submit to a stronger adversary with relative dignity, hoping that further deliberation and participation may in time popularise the will of the minority to the point of achieving political dominance. This does not always work, as the majority may be excessively oppressive or irrational and give the minority little choice but to fight (and probably be violently suppressed), but the relatively recent development of the human rights doctrine, defining the minimum standard of treatment of individuals, is a stabilising feature of the democratic system insofar as the definition and recognition of human rights are not exempt from democratic deliberation.

The central feature of democracy is not unadulterated representation (a logical impossibility), not collective competence, not maximisation of happiness or value (this could be the standard by which to judge Any political system), but structured participation of all factions in the political decision-making process, conditional on abstention from unilateral political violence. Tyranny of the majority is therefore not a weakness of democracy but its redeeming feature, which is evidently also the basis of lasting material prosperity, even ‘happiness’. Sometimes, perhaps in some critical matters, compromise is not possible without rendering the solution unworkable. Democracy then allows for temporary submission to a minority faction, based on competence rather than power or representation. This may be practically necessary in situation without precedent, where nobody knows what to do and so there is nothing that can be consistently re-presented. But what endures (or is supposed to endure) through challenging times is the absolute scope of participation, where expert-leaders can be removed from power, at least in principle, if the naive majority would decide to do so.

Democracy can certainly collapse into anarchy or dictatorship, but that does not of itself entail that democracy is not the best political system of all. The first pragmatic test for democracy (and for a meaningful comparison between different variants of democracy) is whether it generates more prosperity or happiness for the strongest faction (strongest in case of political collapse) than any other political system, despite being implicitly based on the primacy of self-interest of all. The second test for democracy is whether it sustains prosperity or happiness for longer periods of time than any other political system, despite various factions always vying for domination. The question is whether the mere abstention from political violence in favour of public deliberation and the majority-rule satisfies this test better than, say, dictatorship. Things are looking good for democracy, but there may be other political system which are yet to be devised that would perform better on the above two counts. It is reasonable to ask why should we judge democracy in terms of lasting happiness for the strongest faction or the greatest number rather than in terms of ‘my’ happiness? There is no easy answer to this fundamental question. It may be the case that by achieving the former we maximise the likelihood of the latter, or that there’s a fundamental link between ‘my’ happiness and the happiness of others. I use the term ‘happiness’ loosely, as a placeholder for anything we may value above all else, and whatever we value above all else is the primary measure by which we judge the systems we create. If the standard of value adhered to by the strongest faction is reliably satisfied, then the system is likely to endure. Conversely, if the standard of value adhered to by the strongest faction is Not reliably satisfied, then the system is likely to collapse.

In conclusion, democracy is not detrimentally affected by individual incompetence because its primary function is not finding the best possible solutions to practical problems but commits citizens to a process which neutralises or greatly mitigates political violence. Wise people should be able to agree on the most rational solution to every problem, but fools need a way of tolerating their irreconcilable disagreements without killing or enslaving one another. Democracy, like any other political system, must nonetheless be judged on the basis of its capacity to generate lasting happiness for the strongest faction, because if the strongest faction is persistently unsatisfied then the system is likely to collapse, inevitably through violent confrontation, into dictatorship or anarchy.

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