Sunday, July 16, 2006
Democracy vs Majority-ism
Though democracy is one of the most evolved forms of government, I think it still faces a fundamental problem. The assumption of the ‘equality of vote’ for everybody. The premise that each person’s vote is as valid as the other’s regardless of the person’s profile. And everybody's vote contributes 'equally' to arrive at a collective decision.
At the onset, it may seem like a counter-intuitive idea. How can ‘equality of vote’ be a bad thing ? After all, everybody will agree that ‘equality, liberty, fraternity’ is the cornerstone philosophy of the modern world. And democracy is the final embodiment of political modernism.
The essential premise of democracy is that governments get elected on the number of the votes they can garner. Democracy pre-supposes that a vast mass of people will necessarily take the best collective decision of who governs them. This, precisely, is the fallacy. Democracy does not account for :
1. The ignorance of a general mass of people in an increasingly complex world.
2. The particular local agendas of a group, especially in a fragmented society.
3. And their strength in numbers. (A decision does not become right/wise because more people support it.)
Essentially, it does not allow for the best solution, but the most popular one. Democracy dangerously mutates into ‘majority-ism'.
Let's consider this demographically. Any population group with traditionally higher birth-rates is at an inherent long-term advantage in a democracy by the sheer strength of numbers. An example is the US, where both the east and west coasts are ‘blue’ democratic states bordering a hinterland of ‘red’ republican states. The liberal educated democratic families are likely to produce lesser children in the long run and their eventual influence will decline due to the democratic principle of ‘equality of the vote’. The ‘red’, bible-belt families with their conventional opposition to abortion will eventually produce more kids –magnifying their voting power and influence. Due to American hegemony, a few conservative American states will eventually end up influencing world history.
Lets consider another example, of India. The sheer voting numbers of the historically persecuted scheduled castes/tribes ensure that no mainstream political party will ever oppose reservations/"affirmative action" in education. Even in the recent debate, not a single mainstream party dared to criticize this move. Why ? The flawed democratic principle of ‘equality of the vote’. Since a particular sizeable segment of the electorate benefits, no political party opposes the move, though in the long run India loses economic competitiveness (due to unavailability of educated manpower).
The problem is much more acute in heterogeneous societies where every social group wants to increase it’s own influence. In such a case people often cannot see beyond their own parochial/regional/communal agendas. In the end, the national agenda gets defeated by the sheer numbers.
Lets take the example of any country which is trying to embrace globalization. Such a structural transition will involve a lot of short-term pain for people (loss of subsidies, competition from imports etc.), however, leading to long-term gains. In such a scenario it is expedient for a political party in the country to blur the debate and win elections on a populist platform. Also, today with the world becoming so complex, to explain to the common folk how this short-term pain is eventually beneficial to them is extremely difficult. Frankly, as a normal voter I don’t really care about globalization till it fundamentally affects me. So in such a case, democracy actually allows a less-than-optimum decision to be taken, which often hurts the country in the long run and makes the pain of globalization more acute than it actually is.
What fundamentally happens is that at the end of the day, societies take less-than-optimal decisions owing to the ‘equality-of-vote’ paradigm.
To have a view that ‘all votes (voters) are not equal’ is to actually say that you do not believe in human equality*. You are a fanatic. The concept of human equality is a holy cow among the enlightened us, and on a sub-conscious level we all want to be seen as ‘modernists’. Everybody will shy away from even thinking about criteria-based voting rights (say based on tax contribution). Mind you, this was precisely the case less than 100 years ago.
Only the tax payers could vote in Britain and half the population (women) were given the franchise in 1923. So the idea at face value may be an anathema, however not everybody was allowed to vote less than 100 years ago.
There are two things which keep democracy going :-
1. Firstly, as we have seen there is no real alternative to democracy. This is the only system which the least of all the other evils – dictatorship, communism etc.
2. Secondly, democracy does a great job of keeping societies together as everybody assumes that they have a say in things. However, whether it's the most optimal decision or not is highly questionable.
It's about time we had the courage to think about how to prevent democracy from degenerating into ‘majorityi-sm’, and to accept that it is possible to improve democracy only if we are willing to let go of our holy-cow, the fabled "vote equality".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*(Also, it's dangerously reminiscent of the famous Orwellian phrase ‘some people are more equal than others')
At the onset, it may seem like a counter-intuitive idea. How can ‘equality of vote’ be a bad thing ? After all, everybody will agree that ‘equality, liberty, fraternity’ is the cornerstone philosophy of the modern world. And democracy is the final embodiment of political modernism.
The essential premise of democracy is that governments get elected on the number of the votes they can garner. Democracy pre-supposes that a vast mass of people will necessarily take the best collective decision of who governs them. This, precisely, is the fallacy. Democracy does not account for :
1. The ignorance of a general mass of people in an increasingly complex world.
2. The particular local agendas of a group, especially in a fragmented society.
3. And their strength in numbers. (A decision does not become right/wise because more people support it.)
Essentially, it does not allow for the best solution, but the most popular one. Democracy dangerously mutates into ‘majority-ism'.
Let's consider this demographically. Any population group with traditionally higher birth-rates is at an inherent long-term advantage in a democracy by the sheer strength of numbers. An example is the US, where both the east and west coasts are ‘blue’ democratic states bordering a hinterland of ‘red’ republican states. The liberal educated democratic families are likely to produce lesser children in the long run and their eventual influence will decline due to the democratic principle of ‘equality of the vote’. The ‘red’, bible-belt families with their conventional opposition to abortion will eventually produce more kids –magnifying their voting power and influence. Due to American hegemony, a few conservative American states will eventually end up influencing world history.
Lets consider another example, of India. The sheer voting numbers of the historically persecuted scheduled castes/tribes ensure that no mainstream political party will ever oppose reservations/"affirmative action" in education. Even in the recent debate, not a single mainstream party dared to criticize this move. Why ? The flawed democratic principle of ‘equality of the vote’. Since a particular sizeable segment of the electorate benefits, no political party opposes the move, though in the long run India loses economic competitiveness (due to unavailability of educated manpower).
The problem is much more acute in heterogeneous societies where every social group wants to increase it’s own influence. In such a case people often cannot see beyond their own parochial/regional/communal agendas. In the end, the national agenda gets defeated by the sheer numbers.
Lets take the example of any country which is trying to embrace globalization. Such a structural transition will involve a lot of short-term pain for people (loss of subsidies, competition from imports etc.), however, leading to long-term gains. In such a scenario it is expedient for a political party in the country to blur the debate and win elections on a populist platform. Also, today with the world becoming so complex, to explain to the common folk how this short-term pain is eventually beneficial to them is extremely difficult. Frankly, as a normal voter I don’t really care about globalization till it fundamentally affects me. So in such a case, democracy actually allows a less-than-optimum decision to be taken, which often hurts the country in the long run and makes the pain of globalization more acute than it actually is.
What fundamentally happens is that at the end of the day, societies take less-than-optimal decisions owing to the ‘equality-of-vote’ paradigm.
To have a view that ‘all votes (voters) are not equal’ is to actually say that you do not believe in human equality*. You are a fanatic. The concept of human equality is a holy cow among the enlightened us, and on a sub-conscious level we all want to be seen as ‘modernists’. Everybody will shy away from even thinking about criteria-based voting rights (say based on tax contribution). Mind you, this was precisely the case less than 100 years ago.
Only the tax payers could vote in Britain and half the population (women) were given the franchise in 1923. So the idea at face value may be an anathema, however not everybody was allowed to vote less than 100 years ago.
There are two things which keep democracy going :-
1. Firstly, as we have seen there is no real alternative to democracy. This is the only system which the least of all the other evils – dictatorship, communism etc.
2. Secondly, democracy does a great job of keeping societies together as everybody assumes that they have a say in things. However, whether it's the most optimal decision or not is highly questionable.
It's about time we had the courage to think about how to prevent democracy from degenerating into ‘majorityi-sm’, and to accept that it is possible to improve democracy only if we are willing to let go of our holy-cow, the fabled "vote equality".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*(Also, it's dangerously reminiscent of the famous Orwellian phrase ‘some people are more equal than others')
# posted by Abhijat @ 7:05 PM 
