Fraser Smith (THINK 16) argues that Plato's argument against democracy as reconstructed by Jonathon Wolff is flawed because in a ‘modern’ democracy the people do not rule, but instead elect officials subject to a system of checks and balances. Smith's conception of democracy is much like Churchill's (and Popper's). I will argue that Smith's reply does not address Wolff and Plato's argument. I will then point out that Aristotle replied to Plato's argument in an appealing – and strikingly modern – fashion. Aristotle, I conclude, did justify to at least some degree democracy, and hence did address Plato's argument.
Wolff's reconstruction of Plato's argument against democracy is:
1. Ruling is a skill.
2. It is rational to leave the exercise of skills to experts.
3. In a democracy the people rule.
4. The people are not experts.
Therefore:
5. Democracy is irrational.
Smith's reply, based on the political philosophy of K. R. Popper, is that premise (3) is false: in a modern democracy, people do not rule, they only exert some control over the rulers through elections. The argument, while valid, is therefore unsound. Smith then argues that we should not ask ‘who should rule’, as do Plato and Wolff, but instead ‘Who shouldn't rule?’ The answer is that tyrants shouldn't rule, and systems where people have a say in the choice of their government seem to be the best at avoiding tyranny. (Popper makes this argument in The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. I, chap. 7§II.) The justification for democracy, then, is not that it makes good decisions, but that it makes less bad decisions.
Smith and Popper's views fit well with Churchill's famous dictum about democracy:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time… (11 November 1947, available on-line at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill)
The context in which Churchill produced this memorable quote was a debate over a bill to amend the Parliament Act of 1911. This Bill would reduce the amount of time the House of Lords could delay Bills (from two years to one, spread over two sittings instead of three). Churchill fiercely opposed the Act because he saw it dangerously interfering with the existing set of checks and balances.
According to Churchill, both progress and stability were necessary to a well-functioning government. He pointed to the empirical evidence (which was disputed in the debate) that most prosperous countries have a two chamber system of government, where one chamber, less directly elected than the other (or not elected at all), is meant to act as a buffer to the momentary desires of the population, reflected in the ‘lower’ house. Together the two chambers reflect the actual will of the population: ‘The object of the Parliament Act, and the spirit of that Act, were to give effect, not to spasmodic emotions of the electorate, but to the settled, persistent will of the people.’ The Act set out the balance of powers: to disturb this balance was, Churchill argued, dangerous.
It seems, therefore, that Churchill, Popper and Smith thus all hold the same view of democracy.
This seems a very attractive picture of government: but it does not answer Plato, for we still have the question of who should rule. If it is the people who are ruling, then, fast or slow, the government is headed for disaster, since, Plato argues, the people are not fit to rule. But if it is not the people who rule (even through their delegates), then Plato is again not refuted. And in this view constitutional democracy is not democracy to the degree that it does not reflect the will of the people.
It might be argued that Plato is wrong. One might be optimistic and say that given time, the truth will sink in, and the masses will make the right choice. But Plato thought the common masses incapable of ruling well, whether they made decisions quickly (as in a direct democracy) or slowly (as in a representational democracy). Or, Plato could disagree that the people will make the right choice often enough to overcome their stupidity. (Woolf's use of the Condorcet Jury Theorem supports this view.)
Continuing this line of thought, a Platonist could respond that the empirical evidence is in, and in many of the ‘successful’ countries, an elite wields significant political authority. And so the evidence is in as to who should rule, and it's not the people. Nor does it seem to help to consider who shouldn't rule: if Plato is right, the people shouldn't rule. Of course, Plato was also opposed to tyranny, and so might agree with Smith, Popper and Churchill to the degree that an elected tyranny is bad. But he still need not agree, either in principle, or on the basis of current evidence, that democracy, of a sort where the people rule, has been shown to be best. For democracies with universal enfranchisement are relatively young. Consider the United States of America, which is only 232 years old. But the history of political regimes is much longer.
To sum up the argument so far: Smith is of course right that modern democracies are not directly run by the people, but by elected representatives (as opposed to delegates). But Smith does not succeed in defending democracy, the rule of the people, from Plato's argument. For Plato is attacking direct, and not representative, democracy. We can extend Plato's argument: the more direct a democracy, the worse it will be.
There is another, currently popular, account of the flaw in Plato's (reconstructed) argument, the roots of which can be found in Aristotle's writings. Aristotle would deny premise 4 – the people are experts. In Politics, Book III, Chapter 11, he says:
For the many, of whom each individual is not a good man, when they meet together may be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of excellence and practical wisdom, and when they meet together, just as they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses, so too with regard to their character and thought. Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole… Whether this principle can apply to every democracy, and to all bodies of men, is not clear. Politics, 1281a40 – 1281b15
He concludes that it cannot apply to all bodies, and it that the participation of the less able masses must somehow be mediated. He suggests this be done, following the example of Solon and others, by ‘giv[ing]… them [the masses] power of electing to offices, and of calling the magistrates to account’ but not allowing them to hold these offices alone themselves. (1281b30-35)
Aristotle also addresses the question of the expert raised by Wolff. When we are ill, we, or at least, many of us, want to be treated by a doctor with a reputable pedigree, and not a group chosen at random off the streets of the city. Surely there are some areas in which we do need experts, and ruling is just one of these areas. Aristotle does agree that we sometimes need experts (or rather, he seems to – reading Aristotle is always challenging). But he denies that we need them in elections (of magistrates): ‘…if the people are not utterly degraded, although individually they may be worse judges than those who have special knowledge, as a body they are as good or better.’ But he has a further example: the people are experts, at least in the relevant sense:
Moreover, there are some arts whose products are not judged of solely, or best, by the artists themselves, namely those arts whose products are recognized even by those who do not possess the art; for example, the knowledge of the house is not limited to the builder only; the user, or, in other words, the master, of the house will actually be a better judge than the builder, just as the pilot will judge better of the rudder than the carpenter, and guest will judge better of a feast than the cook. 1282a15-20
The people can recognize if they are ruled well, and judge better than the rulers. Ruling may be a skill possessed only by the few, but assessing rulers is a skill the many do possess. (There is much more in this chapter on this same topic – I recommend reading it. Also, more arguments from Aristotle along these lines can be found in his discussion of kingships, in Book 3, Chapter 15.)
Aristotle's argument is then that sometimes groups make better decisions than individuals. One of the areas that they make better decisions is in fact in the choice of rulers. But what of the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT)? This is the proof that if each voter is only slightly more likely to be wrong than right, then the wrong decision will most likely be reached. Aristotle answers this by holding that we are more likely to be right than wrong about the quality of those ruling us. Thus, the more voters, the more likely they will choose good rulers.
And this happy result is not merely limited to the choice of rulers. James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds points out that there are models of groups that show the group will reach the right decision given several conditions. These conditions include that the members of the group have some knowledge relevant to the problem at hand; that the members of the group reach their decisions independently; and that the group is diverse, they each have a different way of approaching the problem (which helps to preserve independence). Then, even though they individually are not experts, they do collectively become experts (as Aristotle argued). Of course, this also depends on a mechanism to aggregate the opinions of a crowd, like a market, or an election. Surowiecki gives impressive examples from the literature, from judging the weight of a bull to determining the cause of the Challenger disaster.
The flaw in the use of CJT, then, is the way decision-making is conceived: of each voter having an inherent tendency to be right or wrong individually. The question of whether they will be right or wrong hinges most importantly as to what the group of voters is like. This is not captured by the CJT model. As well, it is important to note that voters communicate with each other: if this is carried out well, we get the concept of deliberative democracy, a democracy in which citizens make informed collective decisions by means of compromise.
The study of the epistemic aspects of democracy is a booming field, and there is much investigation into exactly when a crowd can become wise. (A recent contribution to the field is Scott Page's The Difference.) Of course, not all is bright for democracy. While it seems to me that Aristotle is right that citizens know best how they would wish to live, it does not seem that they know which tax policies are best, to use a current example. Nor does it seem that we are completely free of the herd mentality, and so the conditions laid out by Surowiecki may not actually be met. Still, it gives us some hope that, even if Plato is right in thinking the masses individually dull, collectively they might be very bright indeed.
