POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
AND DEMOCRACY
Block 3.5
,Table of Contents
Lecture 1...................................................................................................................................................2
Lecture 2...................................................................................................................................................6
Lecture 3.................................................................................................................................................13
Lecture 4.................................................................................................................................................19
How are public administration and democracy related?.....................................................................................19
Lecture 5.................................................................................................................................................24
What were the politics of the welfare state?.......................................................................................................24
Assigned classical text.............................................................................................................................27
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation.......................................................................................................................27
TWO FORMS OF THE STATE.......................................................................................................................................................28
PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS.....................................................................................................................................................29
TYPES OF PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS.....................................................................................................................................31
POLITICS AND ETHICS................................................................................................................................................................33
Katrina FORRESTER: The Future of Political Philosophy.......................................................................................34
Carl Schmitt.............................................................................................................................................39
Global Democracy...................................................................................................................................41
Models of Global Democracy....................................................................................................................................................42
1. Intergovernmental Democratic States..................................................................................................................................42
The limits of sovereignty as responsibility...............................................................................................44
,Lecture 1
What is the meaning of democracy?
The word made in Athens
here is a direct expression of a claim that is being made people wants it wants to associate themselves again
with political decision making, but then being heard.
But democracy can make many, many different other things as well, and that is today the the message that
it's absolutely impossible to define democracy.
Democracy is ruled by the people
Definition: dɪˈmɒkrəsi/ noun:
1. A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a
state, typically through elected representatives. I.e. "a system of parliamentary
democracy"; representative government, elective government, constitutional
government, popular government.
2. A state governed under a system of democracy. "a multiparty democracy"; A
country ruled by democracy: a political unit that has a democratic government
3. Control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.
4. The practice or principles of social equality. I.e. there can be "demands for greater
democracy".
5. A form of government in which people choose leaders by voting (assemblence and
involved in political participation)
6. An organization or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal
rights
a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised
by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving
periodically held free elections
7. The common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
(everybody is constantly confirming that they are part of political authority and if you
don’t you will start to resist)
8. The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
Measuring democracy and international policy
If democracy is such a mess we can say well why don't you find a different word or get rid of it, democracy
is extremely influential. BUT Democracy matters!!:
Comparing, measuring, evaluating on a number of indicators as ‘good government’: Countries/ states that
are (becoming) democratic. Maps, graphs...
Scores basically countries have based on based on that democracy democratic performance, this can have a
lot of consequences so to start with, it has consequences for. Public debt regimes or the ability to get loans
from international financial organizations or development possibilities.
HOW MEASURE??? WHO MEASURES?
To justify intervention in non-democratic countries? ‘To make the world safe for democracy’? Removing
dictators as ‘enemies of humankind’?
To justify support (aid, loans) for democratic countries? WTO, OECD, IMF, Development banks....
How to still study it? Categorising models of democracy: the wood for the trees...
Direct democracy, representative democracy, procedural democracy, reflexive democracy, e- democracy,
majoritarian democracy, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, classical democracy, liberal
democracy, social democracy, developmental democracy, protective democracy, parliamentary democracy,
legal democracy, consensus democracy, pendulum democracy, voter democracy and so forth.
Are you there still...?
Thinking hard and deep about democracy: Analytical Political Philosophy
we're going to ask answer we're going to approach all the questions analytically and we're going to make
strict rules for. All the different gradations and different performances and different questions that we can
ask about democracy, so if there is a question, such as well sure rule.
, TIMELESS QUESTIONS:
Who should rule?
Which system of government is best?
What is the difference between ‘forms of government’ and ‘principles of government’?
What is the difference between “form of sovereignty” and “form of government”?
Which system of voting leads to the best ordering of social preferences?
Is majority rule fair?
Is representative government better than direct democracy?
Under what conditions can a political party system best promote the common good (or fail to)?
How about?:
Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and implications for agenda control, collective
preferences and aggregation problems etc...
Illustration: Arrow’s paradox, see (F. p. 61)
We will go through the history of our system:
John Dunn argues: So Jonathan argues that what we call democracy is not self-government, but what we
call democracy is associated with the legitimacy claim we accept what we have as good enough fine, this is
something we can live with.
So john Donne says democracy as a definition of a political system that's not how it works, it has turned the
way we use it, these days, into a legitimacy:
Athens and the 18th century (Fennema does not discuss Athens; see Dunn 13-52).
Athens the classical (also the word) textbook example of direct democracy.
Before democracy not a known term/ concept.
Invention of democracy was an opportunistic move: to avert dictatorship the entire bourgeois class was put
into power (only 10% had voting power!: on everything, also as a jury in legal penal cases).
This coupled with equality of property. Not from ideology, but to protect the form of government.
The idea here is that direct democracy can only function if you have such an extreme form of
inequality that verges on slavery. Because otherwise people don't have the freedom to constantly
think about governing themselves so self government means that you have very little time to do
anything else, imagine if you have to think about should we build a spreadsheet or should we built
this road or.
Labor between 90% of the population slaves and a small part of citizens and this one with
democracy can only function, because there is this assumption that 90% are made to be slaves
are born to be.
So there is no ideology of equality, there is no nice ideal, they just realized that once we have this
system where 10% takes all the decisions it can only work if those 10%.
This was very productive: funeral oration Pericles: Athens equality was engine of spread of civilization,
wealth, power, territorial expansion.
- So you have something that nobody thinks about beforehand that comes out of
a crisis is completely ad hoc but it's very successful so difference with their
internal equality, they start to colonize and become wealthy and trade with.
Irony (see Dunn 41-50): from philosopher, orators critical of democracy to ideal form of government:
- Aristotle: democracy vs politeia (an institutional design of values
that would be more ‘productive’).
- Plato:democracyNOTasystemofwisdom.Justice
requires knowledge, truth and organisation; not ‘improvisation’ by the people.
Fennema Ch 2/ Dunn Ch 2: ‘Democratic Revolutions’: Enlightenment?
America – Paine:
Restore the citizen’s social functioning. Abandon monarchy, inherited rights and interests and ridiculous
English parliamentary control structures (F. pp. 35-6).
The actual American constitution, however, becomes ‘reactionary’ (Fennema’s term. See discussion
‘Federalists’). Built on ‘old European’ ideas. Growth of ‘national productivity’, political economy is key.
(Compare: Sieyes on the Third Estate (F. 20/ Dunn 102-114)).