Lectures Political Philosophy and
Democracy
Lecture 1 9-2-21 Stapelbroek
The meaning of democracy
Today an introductory lecture: contentwise and to explain about the course, today the theme
is the meaning of democracy?
- Think about the word: greek and invented in ancient athens, might think about that
- Preservation of the idea of direct government?
- F.i. Swiss cantons where people still meet regularly to give opinions, in this
way an idea of direct democracy is preserved
- Many different ways: going on the street and claiming democracy to make
themselves heard, a claim to norms and rights, demanding to be heard as a
member/aggregate of demos.
- People want to associate themselves with political decision making and to be
heard and in charge of own conditions
- Many other things as well: message for today, defining democracy is impossible, but
we still can’t do without
- Democracy doesn’t have specific meaning, but it is fundamental somehow,
how do we deal with that?
The word democracy
- Demos= the people, kratos= to rule → the people rule (themselves). Government by
the people
- Expresses idea of having a stake in own conditions somehow, boss of own
future/predicament.
- By itself can mean different things in our societies.
- Slide: what do we think are important conditions/criteria that need to be met for
democracy? Answers include
- Representation
- Transparency
- Voting
- Equality
- Legitimacy
- → Legitimacy claim (if a,b,c,d,e are present we can call this a democracy)
There are many associations you have with democracy, you can find many different
emphases/definitions online.
- Most are pretty close to terms we came up with, shaped around the idea that
democracy is the case if certain conditions are met for the system to look like.
- F.i. there must be “enough” representation, equality, boting, human rights,
authority for people, absence of hereditary privileges, etc.
- → Many different ways of defining democracy (on top of many different associations!)
, - Basically a mess: how do we then study?
Measuring democracy and international policy
If it’s such a mess, why not find a different word? → Democracy matters, it’s extremely
influential.
- lots of research about measuring democracy, based on those scores, this can have
lots fo consequences! F.i. for public debt regimes or abilities to get loans from
international financial organisations, global politics and economic development
- Or if a country is undemocratic: does it give democratuc state ability to interfere?
- Lack of democracy can have all sorts of economic, military, political, etc.
consequences!
- Getting rid of the term is not easy, it’s too influential.
- How can we still study it?
Categorising models of democracy: the wood for the trees
- Many different sides → different adjectives
- Direct democracy
- E-drmoracry
- Representative democracy
- Parliamentary democracy
- Liberal democracy
- etc. etc. You can put as many words in front of it as you can find, no clarity
- Is there a different way? → Analytical philosophy
Analytical political philosophy
Approach all questions analytically and make strict rules for different performances,
questions, gradations, etc. for democracy, there must be a “recipe”
- Timeless questions
- Who should rule?
- Which system of government is best?
- Is majority rule fair?
- Is representative democracy better than direct democracy?
- etc. etc.
- Chooses not to go this way in this course: it’s legitimate, but if you start to answer the
questions it becomes complicated quickly, we follow another approach
- We will ask a simple question
Looking back at the history of our system: how did we get here
Open up what maybe seems self-evident now, but not so long ago wasn’t.
- How did it emerge?
- If you accept that most states have governments with big ministries and civil servants
doing the actual government, what is the relation between democracy and modern
public administration? How is this seen as legitimate?
- We will look at the key elements of things we associate with democracy and where
they come from, how it’s constructed historically.
- Building blocks of democracy
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, - If we have that structure in place and now something about their relation to
democracy we are in a much better position to ask ourselves what it does and
does not give us. Can we call society just f.i. if we have these things?
- So more contemporary challenges from that basis.
- WIll follow this logic in lectures and tutorials.
What is expected of us?
- Realize course is different: different skills, engage with materials and literature in
different way
- Reading is different: dense, conceptual, seeing relation text and context.
- Read → think → reflect on context → engage w open questions
- Read book asap, then read back certain parts
- Start playing with ideas and interrelation and start reading on time!
- Portfolio: everyone gets same question, but apply knowledge of classical knowledge.
1 You know better, but you have learned of the other 5 from classmates and lectures
and knowledge clips. So in portfolio essay apply what you know about mostly 2 at
least of the classical writers to answer the question
Watch John Dunn on the word democracy
Author of the other main textbook of the course.
- Look at our everyday life and who takes decisions: not us!
- If you take definition of self-government literally, then 100% we do not live in
democracy, particularly when compared to athens
- He basically opens a can of worms: starting with realization what we have is not
literally democracy, but a government that developed with the name of the system,
so where does that leave us? What then is democracy still? He says not literally
self-government, but turns form description of political system into legitimacy claim.
- 85% says yes we live in democracy, as we believe the system is legitimate
- What we call democracy is not self-government but associated with legitimacy
claim that what we accept is good enough and we can live with it, while others
do governing but we can live with that.
Athens and the 18th century (fennema does not discuss athens)
- The classical textbook example of direct democracy
- Idea of democracy basically doesn’t exist before then
- Form of political authority that emerges at that moment because some people think
of it and it gets implemented: ad hoc political crisis that leads to this invention, not
planned/philosophized of premeditated.
- Crisis between mighty families that govern at the time and families about to
loose power with threat of dictatorship, enlist people to go against this and
involve all citizens.
- New situation where all citizens have voting rights (10% the rest are slaves),
so not foundation that everyone is equal. The 9% provides the 10% with food
and services, so the 10% have the leisure time and freedom to think about
the right decisions, self-government means little time for anything else.
- Find out pretty soon that in the 10% voting equality can only work if there is some
material equality, or rich will start to buy votes ot the poor: no nice ideal, they just
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, realize this system can only work if those 10% are properly equal and don’t start
buying each other.
- There needs to be monitoring of equality not because they like it, but it’s
essential for the preservation of their government
- System comes into being as result of political crisis, but ti turns out very productive
and successful!
- Completely ad hoc and successful
- Athenians start to colonize and become wealthy and trade with smaller city states,
becoming rather an empire. → Equality and their system of government is extremely
successful
- Also art, etc. Athenian democracy leads to boost of cultural production
- Not that nobody thought of democracy beforehand: even while it was successfully in
existence, still people wrote about it critically. Not about “oh it’s so great”, but most
philosophers were critical and thought it was unjust and could be better.
- Aristotle: democracy vs politeia (an institutional design of values that would
be more productive)
- Plato: democracy is not a system of wisdom, justice requires knowledge, truth
and organisation, not improvisation by the people.
- For a long time nobody would call themselves a democrat: it’s a filthy word, the
tradition of critique continues, nobody wants to be called democrat! Only changes on
general scale by the end of the 18th century.
Fennema H2: Democratic revolutions: Enlightenment?
- America - Paine
- Restore citizens’ social functioning, abandon monarchy, inherited rights and
interests and ridiculous english parliamentary control structures
- The actual american constitution however becomes reactionary: built on old
european ideas. Growth of national productivity, political economy is key
- Rather than ideal of something new: american constitution becomes
reactionary
- France - Condorcet
- American structures presuppose fiction: no unified will of the people
- More radical approach: scientific state/society, centralisation of the will of the
people
- Through representation and democratic citizens panels
- Universalism and naturalism, beyond the political, nearly religious, female
suffrage
- Haïti
- Emancipation, human rights
- Universalism of french revolution
- Connection to abolition of slavery
A way of thinking about reemergence of term democracy after a long silence: people thinking
about political system and then realizing it
- Enlightenment perspective on why democracy becomes new aspiration
Or democracy a resultant of 18th century political reform?
More critical
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