Examining Democracy: Why it Works

Sometimes it seems that faith in democracy is waning in the West. As countries like China appear to speed ahead, there appears to be an increasing tendency in the West to attribute its own perceived failures to the most obvious difference between it and its rivals: democracy.

In this series of articles I’ll talk about what makes democracy work, and why; the threats facing it and how to overcome them; and finally how to make it even better, and propel it into the 21st century. These articles will be appearing here and on romuluseurope.eu. I highly encourage you to check out their website. In this first article I’ll look at what truly makes democracy work: the systems behind it.

While countries such as China and Russia often regard democracy as being weak and ineffective, what’s far more worrying is that people in Europe are starting to think the same way:

 “How can it be that European people hold democracy in ever greater esteem—we Hungarians are also this way—than non-democratic systems, yet it is still the latter that are successful?” – Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary.

One of the principal reasons for democracy’s success is that even in a pretty barebones democracy, there will be a few innate advantages over other systems. Revolutions are extremely rare in democracies (and nearly impossible in well regulated ones) since it’s easier to go out, discuss the issues and vote, than it is to revolt. Unlike in authoritarian systems, discussion and voting can actually produce change. This gives the government innate legitimacy, since the people chose and built it. Thanks to that, the people feel like they have a stake in the government.

Often, faith in democracy is undermined because of terrible governments being elected; but democracy isn’t the problem here. In fact, good democracy is often the solution. Bad governments may be elected for a variety of reasons, such as bad media laws, divisive populism, and/or weak institutions in general. The solution to democracies electing bad governments is a complex and multifaceted issue, and lies in rule of law and strong institutions; getting rid of democracy is in no way the answer.

Of course, something anti-democrats love to criticise democracy for is the converse problem: majority rule. They say that majority rule is no less oppressive to minorities than a dictatorship is. The difference, they claim, is that you only need one person to be kind to minorities in a dictatorship, but the majority to be so in a democracy. In reality, minorities often present a convenient scapegoat for dictators, who may need someone to blame because their rule (and maybe even their life) depends on it. Betting on a dictator (or a series of dictators) being kind is playing dice with human lives, whereas thanks to democratic institutions this isn’t the case in good democracies.

A working democracy does not function through majority rule – that would be a terrible idea. Instead, people create a government (directly, through representatives, or by lottery), which may be constituted by the will of the majority, but is the government of the whole country, not just of those who voted for them. As such the government has to ensure it treats all citizens equally, equality being one of the core principles of modern democracy, and often noticeably lacking in dictatorships.  In a non-democratic system, there are no guarantees and no recourse.

Democracies by contrast can have enforceable laws preventing the oppression of minorities: the key point here is that while an unrestrained democracy could theoretically be terrible, in practice democracies are never raw democracies: they have rule of law and institutions to enforce it.

It is important to note that the real advantages of democracy only appear when it is paired with rule of law and strong institutions. These things are necessary to avoid the state being democratic in name only: that’s why the U.S. can hardly be said to be feeling those benefits, having largely devolved in recent years into a dysfunctional plutocracy. Modern Europe has largely escaped this fate (for now) and remains relatively stable and prosperous.

Rule of law means that nobody is above the law, including the government. Strong institutions means strong, independent institutions which can hold even the government and head of state to account. The U.S. doesn’t meet these requirements of a functioning democracy for many reasons. For example, in America, the supreme court judges are nominated for life by the president, and the judges are openly partisan; so if the president stacks the supreme court they are above the law. Similarly, there are no functioning mechanisms to enforce the law against sufficiently powerful people, as we saw during the Trump presidency.

When paired with rule of law and strong institutions, democracy becomes a more transparent and less corrupt system. This is why the highest ranks of freedom from corruption indexes are almost always held by democracies. Now I’m not saying democracy fixes corruption by itself: where it’s a society-wide problem, even strong democracy can struggle to counter it. Despite this, Europe’s commitment to these values has had almost all the most corrupt European states become less corrupt over time (an exception being Hungary, which has largely abandoned democracy because of a poorly written constitution). For example, Austria’s Chancellor recently resigned due to a corruption probe. This was only possible thanks to Austria’s democratic system. In a non-functioning democracy, there would be no corruption probe against the head of state and even if there were, the head of state would hold on to power regardless – again the US supplies us with a recent example.

One of the biggest benefits of democracy is being able to change course when something goes wrong. While the aforementioned event in Austria is a good example of this, I’m sure you can think of plenty yourself. Sure, the electorate may make bad decisions from time to time, just like any group; but in a democracy those bad decisions can be reversed and mistakes can be fixed. Unlike functioning democracies, authoritarian regimes are only ever one bad apple away from disaster.

Finally, there is the biggest benefit of democracy, which we should not lose sight of: the government actually serves the people. Since the government’s legitimacy and existence depend on the people, they are far more inclined to serve the people, than to be purely self-serving; because if they don’t serve the people, they can be ousted. Democracy is one of the only systems where the government is obligated and incentivised into serving the people, which helps explain its incredible success in defiance of its huge flaws. 

Some of these huge flaws are too big to be fixed with just rule of law and institutions. Instead they require extensive structural changes to be addressed. These are also some of the most exciting problems because solutions are finally starting to come into sight, which I’ll talk about in the next article.