Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy

I'm finishing this review not long after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for the second time. The fate of democracy, both in America and worldwide, is deeply uncertain, and it has been for some time now. It is, thus, perhaps not surprising that political philosophers, who traditionally preferred to reflect on the virtues of a somewhat idealized democratic society, have increasingly turned to the question of how real-life democracy functions and fails to function. Adam Lovett's Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy makes an important contribution to this timely research project by combining philosophical rigour with careful and thorough engagement with the vast empirical literature on democratic politics from the past century.

Lovett's project is to subject US democracy, as the most empirically studied democracy in the world, to a philosophical evaluation. His main question can be summed up as follows: Given a philosophical account of the value of democracy, how does the empirical reality of American politics measure up to it? Lovett's conclusion is ‘not very well’. American democracy fails to realize democratic values to any significant degree and this, he argues, has important consequences. Most notably, he claims that American democracy lacks political authority and legitimacy. In light of the failures of American democracy, people under its jurisdiction have no obligation to obey the law, nor can this law be permissibly enforced by political institutions. Thus, we must endorse a form of philosophical anarchism when it comes to the USA. And since, arguably, many other democracies around the world are in no better shape, perhaps similar conclusions must be drawn about democratic authority and legitimacy elsewhere too.

The book's argument is presented in four parts. Part I spells out the underlying democratic theory. In Chapter 1, Lovett proposes a pluralist non-instrumentalist view of the value of democracy on which democracy's goodness is explained by its contribution to the values of equality, particularly relational equality, i.e., not simply the egalitarian distribution of goods, but interpersonal relations wherein individuals relate as equals, as well as self-rule, i.e., personal and collective autonomy. These values, he argues in Chapter 2, support democracy's authority and legitimacy, i.e., the fact that democratic law ought to be obeyed and is permissibly enforced. Not only do democracies have authority and legitimacy, but in non-democracies people have positive reasons to avoid obeying the law. This is mainly for egalitarian reasons; by obeying non-democratic law—which means not simply complying or going along with the law, but treating it as authoritative, i.e., as a source of content-independent reasons for action—one affirms the superior standing of the non-democratic legislator (be it an autocrat or an oligarchic elite), and thereby the subordinate, unequal position of subjects. Insofar as one has a duty to relate to others as equals, one ought to avoid this. This argument is crucial for Lovett's philosophical anarchist conclusions.

Parts II and III address in detail the specific democratic failures of American democracy based on a wealth of empirical evidence. Part II focuses on ‘elite-level’ failures, such as the lack of popular control over policy and elected representatives (Chapter 3) and the influence of money on politics (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 discusses two temporal phenomena characteristic of US politics, i.e., alternation—the fact that positions of power alternate between two parties each being responsive only to their own constituents—and inertia – the fact that policy is hard to change even for a party in power due to constitutional constraints and obstruction by the opposition. All these, Lovett argues, undermine the democratic values of equality and self-rule. Political power is monopolized by political elites in the grip of moneyed interests, free from popular control and often unable, even when willing, to change policy. This puts these elites in a position of social superiority, undermining relational equality, while simultaneously hindering ordinary citizens’ ability to engage in self-rule by shaping public policy through democratic participation.

Part III turns to ‘mass-level failures’ or the democratic failures of ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens have various cognitive shortcomings, e.g., ignorance and irrationality (Chapter 6), they are polarized (Chapter 7), and they vote based on group-identification rather than on issues or government performance (Chapter 8). This, again, undermines democratic values. An ignorant and irrational electorate interested only in promoting their in-group's interests cannot exercise genuine self-rule, i.e., cannot autonomously shape its political world, just as an individual with serious cognitive shortcomings, overtaken by tribal passions, cannot engage in independent and autonomous self-authorship. Furthermore, a polarized citizenry whose members increasingly view each other not only as political opponents but as morally depraved, and where one party in particular, i.e., the Republican Party, increasingly turns toward authoritarianism, is one in which the value of relational equality is outstandingly difficult to realize. For relational equality involves not only the lack of social hierarchies, but also the presence of positively valuable relationships such as civic friendship. Polarization severs the ties of such civic friendship and fosters civic enmity.

What is the solution? Lovett's picture is not particularly optimistic. In Part II, he discusses possible institutional reforms to remedy elite-level failures, e.g., introducing more direct democracy in the form of initiatives and referenda to enhance responsiveness, campaign finance reform to curb the influence of money on politics, and redistricting to increase the competitiveness of elections and ensure that representatives respond to all their constituents and not only their co-partisans. However, as he notes in Part IV, containing only the concluding chapter, we should not expect major improvements from these reforms. When it comes to mass-level failures, Lovett offers virtually no solutions. Discussions on the possibility of civic education, depolarizing public dialogue, or promoting issue-based or performance-based voting, or any other measure to counteract the democratic failures of ordinary citizens are absent. Indeed, he concludes that in light of democratic failures, we might have reason to be open to technocratic reforms, e.g., delegating more power to non-elected bodies, such as supreme courts and central banks.

Democratic Failures is an exemplary study in empirically informed political philosophy and an important contribution to contemporary democratic theory. And yet the bleak conclusion may leave the reader somewhat puzzled. Lovett's deep appreciation of the democratic values of relational equality and collective self-rule is clear from the discussion. But if these really are important values, shouldn't the political philosopher try to highlight the ways in which they might be realized, however unlikely they are? An account of democratic failures without a vision, however outlandish, of democratic success gives the impression that one is ready to acquiesce in democracy's demise. This, I take it, is not Lovett's intent. I hope that in future work he will present a similarly careful and thorough analysis of what might lead us out of this dark moment in democracy’s history.

Footnotes

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This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the ERC grant agreement 101003208.