Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion

This topic is about the theory and practice of democracy. I'm leaving the definition of "democracy" wide open, from the direct democracy of ancient Athens to the representative democracies of our own era. Moreover, I include within the term "democracy" political orders that balance popular vote with bills of rights, separation of powers, and checks and balances.

Please note that there are several separate topics in this Goodreads group that are related to this one, e.g., "United States Constitution and Government," "Parliamentary Democracy," "Political Polarization, Social Divisions, and the Future of Democracy," "Sortition," and "Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy." When your post falls within one of the narrower topics, it belongs there, unless you wish to make a point about democracy in general.

See Lia's review of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy and the many ensuing comments here.

I'm curious as to what anyone here might have to opine about the practice of democracy in small groups. At the national scale--well, that's one topic. But how about in entities such as unions, leagues, and associations? I think America --at least in the 1800s up to the mid 1900s--was very much a place where small 'communities-of-interest' formed. There used to be 'welcome-wagons' in suburban neighborhoods, and of course things like the PTA, German-American Bund, Italian-American Civil Rights League...Elks-Shriners-Kiwannis (fraternal orders), masons, and even things like bowling leagues and dart leagues. How well democracy work at this level? Is there a point at which democracy becomes ineffective when shrunk down? Is it always the best organizational tool in every capacity? Just musing aloud here...

Feliks wrote: "I'm curious as to what anyone here might have to opine about the practice of democracy in small groups. At the national scale--well, that's one topic. But how about in entities such as unions, leag..."

The definitive work on this subject is Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Recent books lamenting the decline of such groups include Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. I have read Tocqueville but not Putnam.

Addendum to my preceding post:

Upon further reflection, Feliks's question may have been somewhat different from the question I answered. His question (democratic practice in subpolitical groups) belongs to the field of sociology (in which I would guess there have been many such studies) rather than political philosophy. One could perhaps say that it belong to the political philosophy of anarchocapitalism, except that anarchocapitalism rejects, in principle, all "political" matters: it would banish the political from all human life. Anarchocapitalism addresses the question of what would happen if there were no governments, just individuals and private associations. As my practical-minded father (probably referring to me) used to say, "There are some dreamers around here too."

Tocqueville's analysis (and perhaps Putnam's) is within the field of political philosophy. Tocqueville explored the benefits and the problems of private groups in a democracy. He was astonished at how prevalent such groups were in the democratic United States as distinguished from monarchical France. In much of European and early American history, private groups not authorized by the government were verboten. President George Washington nostalgically channeled this long history when he criticized "self-created societies"—by which he meant the emerging Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican political (but not governmentally authorized) societies.

Thanks for these thoughts Alan. I haven't read Toqueville but now I am certainly considering it. 700+ pages though! Daunting investment of time, I can see that much at least...

Question, what do you think of something like "Robert's Rules of Order (RONR)"? In the context of this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%...

I suppose --when I initiated this question--I was wondering whether any other culture had ever arrived at organizational structures which are comparable to democratic procedure. This is why I made the distinction early on, between national democracy and smaller-scale versions. The Toqueville tip was great. I wasn't aware that he focused on these aspects.

Feliks wrote: "Question, what do you think of something like "Robert's Rules of Order (RONR)"? In the context of this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%..."

It's interesting but outside the scope of this group. If we are going to discuss such minutia, we will end up with a thousand separate topics going every which way. Please keep the focus of this group on political philosophy and ethics. Political philosophy includes procedural due process (both judicial and legislative) but does not include the rules of private organizations or even the procedural rules of legislative assemblies. The former belongs to sociology; the latter belongs to political science. But such procedural rules of order do not belong to political philosophy, which addresses more fundamental questions.

You may be aware that Jefferson, as vice president (and thus president of the Senate) composed the first set of Senate rules. That's a very interesting subject but, again, outside the scope of this group.

Alan, thank you for mentioning the 'sub-groups' dealing with 'democracy'. In particular, the one I started 'Sortition'.
I believe there are two 'legs' of democracy: one is voting (sometimes, in fact often, only by 'representatives') and the other is sortition, random selection. The latter, sortition, is particularly effective at breaking up factions ... and, I posit, at inculcating a wider sense of 'belonging'.
One of the main problems with large-scale voting (whether for candidates or for policies) is that it is rational for individuals NOT to vote. It takes too much time to study the candidates or the issues ... for very little, miniscule impact. That is referred to as the problem of 'rational ignorance'.

I would like to propose a definition for democracy. I think a good definition should be somewhat intuitive to us, but also functional, robust and explanatory so that it actually helps us to understand reality.

My definition of democracy is a society in which political power is decentralized.

1) I think this is intuitive because non-democracies like dictatorships and totalitarianism are characterized by overly centralized political power. Countries that claim to be democratic (e.g. Democratic People's Republic of Korea) because they claim to represent the people, but lack the needed decentralization are therefore clearly not really democratic.

2) If at any time, the people decide (e.g. by referendum) to give one person all power, it ends being a democracy because power has been centralized. There is no possibility for a paradox there.

3) Because power creates power (feed forward loop, Mathew effect), larger societies are harder to be democracies. Hence, larger societies need more formal and complex rules to maintain decentralized power. A society of one is always a democracy. A small group can maintain a democracy informally, e.g. by listening to each-other and making decisions by consensus. Large groups need formal rules.

4) Voting, referendum, sortition, but also the rule of law, anti-corruption laws, etc. are methods by which we accomplish this decentralized political power (and therefore democracy).

What do yo think? Are there wholes in my definition? Potential for contradiction or paradoxes? Do you prefer other definitions? Why?

Quite nice. I like it, at first glance.

Not to contradict what you've stated but just to note that the same 'democratic criteria' lends itself to other forms of non-democratic rule, too. The original definition of 'soviets' was that of purely local, de-centralized power structures for region-sized states. And mercantile trading towns in the feudalistic / medieval era also possessed all (or many) of these characteristics you've cited. May be parallels in indigenous island/native cultures as well.

Klaas wrote (#9): "I would like to propose a definition for democracy. I think a good definition should be somewhat intuitive to us, but also functional, robust and explanatory so that it actually helps us to underst..."

I disagree that democracy is properly defined as decentralization, except insofar as one is willing to admit that local majority tyranny is a legitimate part of the definition of democracy. For example, in the United States before the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, the central government had limited powers, whereas state and local governments in the South were effective tyrannies, with laws strongly supporting slavery and prohibiting freedom of speech for those advocating the abolition of slavery. This was a decentralized system, with the national government having very little power. But these state and local governments were “majority tyrannies”—the very dangers of localized, unconstrained, democratic majority rule that James Madison warned us against in Federalist No. 10. Until the twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court let the states and their political subdivisions violate many of the provisions of the first eight amendments to the US Constitution (individual constitutional rights originally applicable only against the central government) on the theory that the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause applied mainly to afford large corporations—now defined as “persons”—“economic due process,” e.g., protection against state and local health and safety laws protecting individuals working in factories.

In my erstwhile experience (before I retired in 2012) as a civil ligation attorney representing local governments and their public officials over much of three decades, I found that it was precisely the most local governments that were the most ignorant and dismissive of individual constitutional rights. The reasons why this is often the case are well explained in Federalist No. 10—an analysis (with very few exceptions) that has stood the test of time.

Note: I wrote the foregoing before seeing Feliks’s immediately preceding comment, which appears to be mostly along the same line while citing different examples.

@Feliks, if the indigenous groups are fairly small, It think there is a good case to be made for calling them informal democracies.

@Alan, I think you are focusing the scope of decentralized in the federation vs state. My meaning of decentralized is more general in the sense that the federation exists out of states, that exists out of communities, that exists out of individuals. We stop at individuals, because lower entities (organs, cells) have no conscious. So the "classical" definition of power of the people arises. The problem is of course: how can these individuals all share uniform political power without some individuals having more power - and that is why we have the methods like voting, sortition, etc.

Hence, the south was definitely non-democratic in my definition, because political power was overly centralized in a subgroup of those states (the non-slaves).

When I think of (de)centralisation, I am imagining a network of people (nodes). People are well connected because they know many people, but also because their role in our institutions gives them the ability to communicate (in)directly with many other people. e.g. the president is very well connected because he controls the government. In a centralized system, the well connected nodes will make all decisions, while in a decentralized system all nodes will be able to make decisions.

Klaas wrote: "@Feliks, if the indigenous groups are fairly small, It think there is a good case to be made for calling them informal democracies.

@Alan, I think you are focusing the scope of decentralized in th..."

I'm sorry, I don't get it.

ADDENDUM TO MY PRECEDING POST:

You speak at a high level of semantic abstraction. I need concretes. Are you advocating for some kind of anarcho-capitalism or some kind of anarcho-socialism? If not, what, concretely, are you proposing? How would such a system work, for example, in the current pandemic? Would individuals, being the most reductive part of the equation, make all decisions for themselves, notwithstanding their ability to infect others absent governmental regulation?

I'm not really proposing a system. I am proposing a criteria by which you can check if a given system is democratic or not.

No, I don't think all individuals should make decisions for themself on all issues. I don't think democratic level is the only criteria we want to strive for in a society. For example, we might want people that are specialized in certain domains to have some larger say in certain decisions (at the cost in other domains for which that person is not specialized). This poses risks for democracy in some instances however, so trade-offs need to be made.

I think for example that the separation of powers (judiciary, legislative, executive) are a very effective measure to ensure centralisation of these powers into one person - which was all to common in the ancien regime. Anti-corruption is also an example I think, because it prevents people with economic power (money) to gain political power.

Klaas wrote: "I'm not really proposing a system. I am proposing a criteria by which you can check if a given system is democratic or not."

So it's purely a semantic question—how to define "democracy." But are we going to make decisions about proper government based on semantics? "What's in a name?" asked Shakespeare (and numerous others before him). Pace twentieth-century linguistic analysis, names are not real things. They are merely conventions. “Democracy” is not a magic word and should not be used as an allegedly magic word. To call something “democratic” should not be a final judgment about it. Rather, it is what actually is being proposed that is subject to evaluation.

Klaas wrote: "I think for example that the separation of powers (judiciary, legislative, executive) are a very effective measure to ensure centralisation of these powers into one person - which was all to common in the ancien regime.

Do I correctly understand, then, that you oppose separation of powers, because it ensures centralization of powers in one person? I thought the whole idea of separation of powers was to distribute power, not to centralize it.

From your spelling, I gather that you are British (or have learned to write based on the principles of British rather than American English). That’s fine, and it might explain why we don’t understand each other about these matters. We seem to be talking past each other.

If the tone of my comments appears hostile, it’s not intended to be such. Rather, I’m trying to drill down to an understanding what you actually mean. I still feel as though I’m missing something. Perhaps I will need to read your book, but, as a result of other commitments, I won’t be able to do that for some time.

Hi Klaas

Indigenous groups in Africa, the pre-Columbian Americas and throughout the Atlantic and Pacific have extraordinary variety in group size. As a simple correlation of their size, they can't conveniently be described as either democratic or anti-democratic.

I suppose my opinion is that a worthy 'technical definition of democracy' might not always express 'working democracy' at its best. My feeling is that democratic principles have yet to be 'perfectly applied' anywhere in history. It is always something 'to be striven for' and 'adjusted as we go'.

I've pleaded with a retired anthropologist (camrade of mine) to join this group to address all questions regarding indigenous peoples, but he's an obstinate non-joiner. :(

re: #15 the last paragraph in that post, throws me off too. Something going on in the word usage I'm not used to seeing.

paragraph #2 in message #15, Klaas are you speaking to the philosopher-king principle? 'Some are more fit to govern than others'?

message #12 (Klaas) last paragraph appears to drift towards communications theory, network theory, other concepts of sociology. It's interesting but I don't see how it will support the premise you began with.

message #12 para 3, even if I might tentatively concur with this characterization of the USA's pre-bellum South, I just want to point out that plantation slaves practiced a form of ad-hoc self-rule for their own affairs. I mention this not to deflect your point but merely to suggest it to your curiosity.

So it's purely a semantic question

I think it is definitely a semantic question, but it has its consequences outside semantics. A rose is indeed a rose, no matter how we name it, but that is because roses (and a lot of things/concepts in the natural sciences) are well demarcated. Someone can give me a peace of green, and I can perform a DNA test and pretty much dead on tell you that it is a rose. I don't have the same feeling for a democracy. In that same thought, I think it was crucial for K. Popper to find its falsification theory in order to better distinguish science from pseudo-science.

Do I correctly understand, then, that you oppose separation of powers, because it ensures centralization of powers in one person?

the last paragraph in that post, throws me off too.

No, I think they are really good. I meant it the other way around: ...are a very effective measure to prevent centralisation of these powers into one person... I was probable already a bit tired - sorry for that.

I think we learn British English here in Belgian high schools. But I think I am being fed sufficient amounts of American English - I think it will probably be a bit of a mishmash of both :-) Also, my spellcheck is American English

I don't explicitly mention a definition of democracy in my book, because I'm not too certain about it - that is why I posted it here - to get some feedback :-)

are you speaking to the philosopher-king

No, I mean that people specialize, and some may specialize in e.g. corona virus. Than it would be advantageous to have these persons have a larger say in how to deal with the coronavirus. But these specialist should imho be assigned by some voting system - in my book I defend the idea of inclusive party system. These are specialized parties that are not exclusive - so you can support multiple of them, independent of each other.

last paragraph appears to drift towards communications theory, network theory, other concepts of sociology

It was some extra information as an illustration that (de)centralized is much broader than just state vs federation.

'Out-of-the-Blue Question' Dept

Where did the original idea of 'president' and 'vice-president' come from?

Feliks wrote: "'Out-of-the-Blue Question' Dept

Where did the original idea of 'president' and 'vice-president' come from?"

I thought you’d never ask.

It came from the U.S. Constitutional Convention, which lasted from May 25, 1787 to September 17, 1787. For much of the convention, the delegates simply referred to the “executive.” The word “president” started to be used near the end of the convention, and the word “vice president” was used for the office that was invented at that time.

The Constitution resulting from the 1787 convention (the one we still have today, with twenty-seven amendments) replaced, when ratified in 1788, the Articles of Confederation, which was a loose confederation of the thirteen original states. The Articles of Confederation also had a “president,” but that person was simply the presiding officer of the unicameral legislature (called the “Congress”): there was no independent executive branch of government. The Constitution created the three branches of government (legislative, executive, judicial), and the framers of the Constitution stole the name “president” from the office of the presiding officer of the Confederation Congress, even though the two offices (the president of the Congress and the president of the United States under the Constitution) were totally different in their powers and functions.

For further information, see the Appendix to the forthcoming (sometime this month) second edition of my book The Electoral College: Failures of Original Intent and Proposed Constitutional and Statutory Changes for Direct Popular Vote. The Appendix is titled “A Detailed Narrative of the Debates in the 1787 Constitutional Convention on the Selection of the President.” It is about 65 pages in length.

Nicely stated.

Alan, so does this mean that in the world of business and commerce, companies-firms-and-corporations began adopting these terms for their chiefs, from that point going forward?

I reckon that I had always assumed it was vice-versa. I supposed that 'presidents' and 'vice-presidents' were something the Signers borrowed from the world of businessmen. I see I was wrong!

Feliks wrote: "Nicely stated.

Alan, so does this mean that in the world of business and commerce, companies-firms-and-corporations began adopting these terms for their chiefs, from that point going forward?"

I don't know how business enterprises referred to their heads in 1787 or soon thereafter, but I doubt very much that they called them "presidents." Keep in mind that this was before the Industrial Revolution. Almost all businesses in 1787 America were small operations, often involving family members who were owners and sometimes a few apprentices or laborers. There were hardly any "corporations" except for joint-stock companies for building canals and other large public works. I don't know in any detail how the latter were organized or what they called their officers.

You are thinking of business practices that occurred much later--after the Civil War and, especially, the late nineteenth century. Such practices were virtually nonexistent in 1787 America.