Democracy Defined

JUST WHAT IS this ancient and much admired concept we call democracy? What does the word mean? If we examine its roots, we find that it derives from the Greek dêmokratia: dêmos, the people, and kratia, rule. A simple concept really—the people rule.

There are no qualifiers here. The definition doesn’t say the majority rules, it says the people rule—all the people. If we are to be democratic, we must include everyone in our governance.

But people disagree. How can we include all of them in those decisions where they are of different minds? Choices are not only often incompatible, but individual choices rarely affect only the individual that makes them. If they affect others, those others deserve a say in them. Issues that affect us all require collective decision-making, everyone sitting down and working out a solution. The happiest result is consensus—a solution acceptable to all. If, however, there is no such solution, then as a last resort, the group must rely on majority vote. This does not mean that the majority may dismiss or bully the minority. On the contrary, the majority are obliged to incorporate the views of the minority into the final decision as much as possible, keeping in mind the degree of support those views have.

Majority vote is not democracy. It is no more than a tool that democracy may use when consensus cannot be reached. The dêmos is the people, not Christian people, not heterosexual people, not the majority of the people, but the people—everyone. The majority have the right to decide issues; they do not have the right to exclude minorities from full participation in the decision-making. We barely have a democracy at all when the majority behaves as a tyranny.

Although our definition insists on all the people ruling, it does not insist that they rule personally. They may decide instead to choose representatives to govern for them. Usually that means election, but not necessarily. A body of citizens may “elect” to choose their leaders by lot or, in a small group, by rotation. As long as that is their free and equal choice, it is equally democratic. The point is that in a democracy the only legitimate governance is that which derives, in one way or another, from the consent of the governed.

When we refer to the people, we must sensibly refer to them equally. Once again, there are no qualifiers. Political equality and democracy are virtually indistinguishable. If one citizen has less power than another, then that citizen has less democracy, and we have to discount democracy that far from the ideal. Full democracy demands full political equality. We may refer to an institution as democratic when it is in fact only partly so, but that, in practice, is forgivable—we rarely achieve perfection in anything. Our definition, however, is not forgiving. Democracy in the ideal is an all or nothing affair.

We might also keep in mind what democracy is not. It is not an ideology. It is not dogma. On the contrary, by allowing the people of each time and place to choose their own rules to live by, it is an anti-ideology.

Nor is democracy freedom. The two are often combined, like salt and pepper, but they are different things. Some freedoms are essential to democracy. Freedom of speech, for example, is critical—democracy could not function meaningfully without it. Yet it can also undermine democracy. For example, setting limits on the funding of election campaigns might be considered as limiting freedom of speech, yet without limits money can overwhelm political equality.

It is within these constraints, then—rule by all the people equally, either directly or through freely chosen representatives—that democracy must be measured in our institutions. To the degree that an institution lacks self-governance, it lacks legitimacy to that same degree.

When we measure democracy, we should not think of it as simply an instrument. It is an instrument, a powerfully effective instrument for governance, but it is much more. It embodies other concepts such as freedom and civil rights. It is not these things; however, they are essential to it. Consequently we come to think of democracy not only in concrete terms of practical governance—getting things done—but also in moral terms, about such things as compromise, co-operation and tolerance, about how we treat our fellow beings.