The Vagaries of Moral Progress (7): Women’s Right to Vote

women in Turkey, 1934

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In 1934, women in Turkey could vote in national elections, unlike in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland… Last year,

Doğan News Agency and Hurriyet Daily News reported that Turkish Prosecutor Veli San acknowledged that over the past 9 years sex crimes in Turkey have increased 400 percent, with 32,988 open cases in 2011 as compared to 8,146 in 2002. Previously Today’s Zaman had reported that the leading cause of death for women ages 15-44 is gender-based violence. (source)

More posts in this series here. A very similar post is here.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (35): Why Do We Need Democracy?

The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

Democracy is a human right. In the past, I’ve  listed a number of reasons why we should prefer democracy over other forms of government (here and here for example). I’ve now come across another reason, one that may not be convincing or relevant to everyone, but still it’s mildly interesting:

Lisbon, Portugal, during the great earthquake of 1 November 1755. This copper engraving, made that year, shows the city in ruins and in flames. Tsunamis rush upon the shore, destroying the wharfs. The engraving is also noteworthy in showing highly disturbed water in the harbor, which sank many ships. Passengers in the left foreground show signs of panic.

All things — including wealth — being equal, earthquakes kill more people in dictatorships than in democracies, write NYU political scientists Alastair Smith and Alejandro Quiroz Flores. The reason that democratically elected leaders prepare their countries for disaster better is because they fear they’ll be voted out of office if their governments are caught unprepared. (Dictators obviously tend to worry less about election outcomes.) A recent World Bank study backs up this argument, with an added wrinkle: institutionalized autocracies, like China’s, tend to outperform non-institutionalized or corrupt autocracies as well as young democracies when it comes to preventing earthquake deaths. Still, another study finds that politicians in democratic elections benefit even more from doling out disaster relief after a catastrophe than they do from preparing for disasters yet to come. (source)

More on democracy and human rights here, here and here. More on earthquakes and accountability.

Political Graffiti (209): Resistance Grows

From the Zoo Project in Tunisia by Mohamed Hanchi

(source)

More on the Arab Spring. More political graffiti.

Human Rights Maps (177): A New Middle East?

Here’s an interesting question: do people really want to live in the states they live in? I know that many want to migrate, but those who want to stay may also want to live in a different state.

If we want to respond positively to some people’s desires for a different set of international borders I assume we have to do so democratically. But how do we decide which is the “people” that can vote democratically to change the borders of the state it lives in? A minority which wants to secede? What about the wishes of the rest of the citizens of the existing state?

I guess one principle we could use in deciding whether or not to allow the redrawing of borders is self-government. The purpose of borders and therefore also of the redrawing of borders is to give more groups of people more self-government. If new borders yield more self-government then that’s one good reason to go ahead. Yet I doubt that this is the only principle that has to be taken into consideration. After all, if it were the only principle, single person states would be optimal, and that’s an absurd conclusion.

So, in other words: to what extent should a democratic vote be allowed to result in new states or state borders, and what does a democratic vote mean in this setting? Does a majority or a minority within an existing democracy have a right to secede if it democratically votes for secession? And is a democratic vote for secession a vote within the group that wants to secede? Or a vote among everyone in the existing state? Do those left behind have a right to stop secession? If so, what would be the basis of this right? It can’t be self-government. Those left behind would end up with more self-government, even if they oppose secession.

If self-government is an important right – as it surely is – then is it not the case that secession is also an important right if and when it results in more and better self-government? Perhaps it is. But if it is, how far does it go? It should obviously stop short of the one person state, at least if we agree that the notion of the state as we have it now remains useful – in other words, if we’re not anarchists. Another way of asking this question: what is the optimal state configuration from the point of view of self-government? Clearly, if a state contains marginalized minorities which are also territorially concentrated, and if democratic reforms meant to help those minorities are unsuccessful, then the size of this state is not optimal. The same is true when groups spread over different states have a strong urge to live together and self-govern their destiny. But what of other cases?

For the moment, I don’t intend to examine these questions any further. I’ll instead limit myself to an example: if people in the Middle East could democratically choose what country they lived in, would they choose the one they are in now? It seems not:

What the borders of Middle Eastern countries would be if the people could decide

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This map is conjecture, of course, since people haven’t been asked their opinion. Nor will they any time soon. Imagine current leaders giving up oil fields. Right, you can’t.

However, maybe the Arab Spring makes some things more likely. People don’t only question rulers but also states, and the popular uprisings in the Middle East intensifies this questioning. Listen to the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, to the Baha’i in Iran, etc. Part of the reason is the artificial nature of many borders in the Middle East.

In the Middle East … the countries are mostly the product of a British-French agreement made in 1916 (Sykes-Picot) that paid little attention to local sociopolitical realities. As a result, few possess the historical roots, social cohesion, and legitimacy necessary to nurture the complex institutions that are a prerequisite for development and democracy. On the contrary, most suffer from both sectarian divisions and weak government—the causes of state fragility. (source)

Not that this problem is limited to the Middle East (see here), but it can become more salient during popular uprisings or violent conflict. For example, here’s an animation showing the current borders of African countries and what they will become if different separatist or independence movements will have their way:

(source, where you can also find an interactive version)

More human rights maps here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (37): Torture is Social and Political Suicide

torture scene with rats from the movie "1984"

(source)

When democratic governments consider the option of torturing someone, the stakes are usually high. They won’t consider it just for some marginal benefit. The paradigmatic case is the ticking time bomb that’s about to kill thousands or even millions. Torture is supposed to be justified because the benefits are huge, or – stated negatively – because the possible harm resulting from a failure to torture is huge. Combining the size of what is at stake with the urgency of the threat makes the case for torture even stronger.

However, this justification of torture has some unsettling side effects. Given the urgency, and given the fact that terrorists are probably trained to withstand torture, a free society would have to

maintain a professional class of torturers, and to equip them with continuously-updated torture techniques and equipment. Grave dangers to democracy and to individual freedoms would be posed by an institutionalized professional “torture squad”. (source)

Such a highly trained and continuously available torture squad would be necessary to inflict torture that is likely to succeed in extracting the information on a reliable basis and within an extremely short time frame. It would also be necessary to inflict levels of pain sufficient to procure the victim’s compliance but insufficient to kill or render incapable of communication. Amateur thugs will not suffice. You really need professionals.

This is the institutionalization of torture. It’s difficult to see how a free society could survive the presence of such a torture squad. It would infect our entire society to know that there are people among us who torture for a living. The squad members themselves will most likely fail to remain well-intentioned, and the mere existence of such a squad corrupts morality in a society. It’s naive to think that the members of the torture squad will return to normality once their job is done and function like normal law-abiding and non-violent citizens in between emergency sessions. Torture leads to the destruction of a democracy and a free society that decides to go this way.

More on social and political suicide here. More on the ticking bomb here.

(image source)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (90): Prohibiting People From Standing Together and Doing Nothing

Some old-fashioned, Soviet style anti-imperialist propaganda: "No, Belarus not for sale"

(source)

President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus … drafted a law that would prohibit a “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest.” The measure, which in the words of the New York Times “prohibit[ed] people from standing together and doing nothing,” was proposed in response to a series of weekly protests that had begun a month earlier, whereby citizens gathered in public parks or on street corners each Wednesday night and did nothing more than clap their hands or synchronize their cell phones to ring at an appointed time. … There was nothing overtly political about these protests. … There was no mention of the name “Lukashenko.” Not even the word “freedom,” which has gained a new global currency in the wake of the Arab upheavals, crossed anyone’s lips. (source)

The image seems to have been inspired by this one:

More absurd human rights violations here.

What is Freedom? (3): The Paradox of Self-Ownership: The Right to Sell Yourself Into Slavery

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Self-ownership, or the property of your own person, is a metaphor for the right to exclusive control of your own body and life. It captures some important intuitions: for example, that you should have a right to end your life as they see fit, that no one should be enslaved and that you generally have a right to decide what to do with your own life. As such it supports the idea of personal autonomy. For some, it also supports the right to abortion and it invalidates taxation.

Others even believe that self-ownership implies a right to sell your own body and life, just as you have a right to sell your other property. If that’s the case, then you have a right to sell yourself into slavery.

However, if self-ownership is understood as merely a metaphor for autonomy then there can’t be a right to sell yourself into slavery. Autonomy, or any other value for that matter, can’t be made to include the seeds of its own destruction. In other words, autonomy can’t include the right to autonomously abdicate your autonomy. Take this quote from Mill:

John Stuart Mill

The ground for thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. … [B]y selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it beyond that single act. He, therefore, defeats in his own case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. (source)

If you insist that values or rights should be made to include their own negation, you’ll end up in Absurdistan. Democracies, for example, should then include the possibility to vote democracy away. Freedom should include the freedom to create totalitarian government. Tolerance should include tolerance of intolerance and of the forces intent on destroying tolerance. I don’t think we want to go there.

So, autonomy must include certain limits if it’s not to collapse under its own weight. This means that it’s legitimate to deny the moral value of – and perhaps even to forbid – autonomous actions that forfeit autonomy. Just like democracy is limited and suppresses anti-democratic movements and votes, and just like tolerance is limited and excludes tolerance of intolerance.

More on self-ownership here.

Political Graffiti (145): Revolution in Tunesia

(source)

More on democratization in the Middle East here; and on the power of people uniting here. More political graffiti here.

Capital Punishment (34): Mere Signaling

It’s often assumed that capital punishment is about fighting crime, just retribution or desert, or perhaps about anger and revenge, but in reality it’s much more about signaling. And by signaling I don’t mean the signaling of threats to potential murderers so that they are deterred, or the signaling of the “just” nature of a society that takes an eye for an eye. Proponents of capital punishment, by expressing their support for it, signal their own moral rectitude. Their expression of support refers to high profile crime cases that are widely discussed in the media and that are likely to be familiar to friends, family and others to whom people want to signal. Signaling support for the death penalty in reference to such high profile cases makes the signal particularly strong and deep, partly because it’s so full of familiar and shockingly emotional detail.

Politicians who favor capital punishment and who keep the legal regime in place are equally focused on signaling. They signal that they care about the emotions of the victims of crimes and of the relatives of the victims, and at the same time they signal that they emotionally identify with those who care about the victims of crime. In other words, they signal that they feel connected to the large majority of humanity. And that kind of signal is vitally important for democratic politicians.

Opponents of capital punishment simply don’t have the same signaling power. For example, there’s no large constituency for signals about sympathy for criminals or for signals about anti-instrumentalization. Politicians don’t stand a lot to gain from such signals, and neither do citizens concerned about how others think of them. On the contrary, they risk signaling emotional indifference for the plight of victims and hence they risk lowering their moral standing.

This asymmetry in signaling power between proponents and opponents can explain the persistence of rational arguments in favor of capital punishment, even after they have been shown to be wrong or inconsistent with the facts. (That’s the case for the arguments based on the deterrent effect for instance – see here and here – but also for the arguments based on retribution which are hopelessly circular: a certain punishment is appropriate for a crime because that crime requires a certain punishment). Proponents of capital punishment obviously can’t justify it simply on the basis of emotional identification. They need a more rational story as a cover. And as long as this story can be used successfully in the signaling process, that will do, whether or not the story is factually or logically correct. That will do, because opponents who point to factual or logical failings in the story amplify the signaling of the proponents: by pointing to these failures, the opponents signal rationality and detachment rather than emotional connection, and they thereby make the case for the proponents.

This is counterintuitive, given that it’s most often the opponents of capital punishment who are accused of emotionality and a lack of toughness, but I think it’s the right conclusion.

More on human rights and signaling is here. More on the death penalty here.

Related Articles

• How the planned execution of Teresa Lewis challenges our views on gender and capital punishment. (slate.com)
• It Beats Death By Electrocution (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Jerry Brown Wants Executions To Resume In California (huffingtonpost.com)
• Swiss death penalty advocates drop campaign for referendum to restore capital punishment (foxnews.com)
• Teresa Lewis: God have mercy on us | Lynn Litchfield Divers (guardian.co.uk)

Political Graffiti (129): Protests in Egypt

Egypt: "The people want the regime to fall"

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More political graffiti here.

Related Articles

• Graffiti As Protest (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Political Graffiti (114): The People Shall Govern

(source, source)

More about popular sovereignty. More political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (83): We Govern Ourselves Now

More on the meaning of democratic self-government. More political graffiti.

Human Rights Cartoon (64): Tyranny of the Majority

cartoon by Pavel Constantin

(source)

Read more…

Thinking About Politics, and Doing Politics

What’s the status of thinking about political subjects? I think it’s fair to say that there’s no way of achieving something called “truth” or “scientific knowledge” when dealing with basic political concepts. For example, there’s no truth about democracy, human rights, justice etc. We’re stuck with mere opinions. Opinions which can be better than others, based on the reasoning and the arguments supporting them, but which nevertheless cannot pretend to be the unquestionable truth. There will always be people with other opinions which may be supported by equally good arguments. This doesn’t mean that we should all become extreme relativists for whom everything is equally valuable. Opinions can be based on prejudice or arguments, on good or bad arguments, on arguments picked up more or less randomly or on arguments that are properly tested and investigated, on correct logic or flawed logic etc.

This doesn’t mean that there can’t be any truth or scientific knowledge in the field of politics. We can do scientific work, for example we can do quantitative analysis on support for democracy, on preconditions of democracy etc. but not on the concept of democracy as such. The basic terms of the debate will remain contestable concepts that mean different things to different people, and that are valued differently by different people.

Opinions – contrary to the truth – do not have to be accepted, do not eliminate difference and do not impose consensus. They can be accepted or rejected, depending on the force of the arguments, your inclination to properly investigate the arguments, your prejudice, your upbringing and education, your social environment etc. Needless to say that the proper way of thinking about politics or about anything else requires investigation of the arguments for and against any opinion.

The world of political thinking is therefore very similar to the world of politics itself, at least as long as we limit ourselves to democratic politics (which for many is the only proper type of politics – any other kind is really just force rather than politics): it’s a world of plurality, contradiction and persuasion. We like to hope that the similarity between these two worlds goes even further than this, that democratic politics isn’t just a clash between opinions, but that the persuasion taking place in democratic politics is based on the proper investigation of all the arguments for and against, and that the opinions which temporarily gain the upper hand (and become policy or law) are the ones that are strongest intellectually. Just like in the world of political thinking.

(source)

Of course, democracy is only potentially like this. In reality, the predominant opinions aren’t necessarily the ones that are backed by the best arguments. Sloppy arguments or even prejudice (the absence of arguments) often determine which opinions “win” in a democracy. But that also happens in the world of political thinking, although perhaps (and hopefully) less often (if it happens less often, this doesn’t have anything to do with the supposed superior “intellects” of political scientists or philosophers compared to the ordinary people; it’s because of structures and procedures such as peer review and citation requirements, the time these people can spend on investigations of arguments etc.).

Democracy falls short of its potential because arguments aren’t investigated properly or are replaced by prejudice, but also because some players in the game regard their opinions not as opinions, but as the truth. As a result, they don’t believe it’s necessary to investigate the merits of other opinions or the arguments behind other opinions. Other opinions are no longer equal players in a game of persuasion, but are mistakes, errors, lies, or even sins (if the “truth” is of godly origin).

Ideally, the world of political thinking and the world of democratic politics would merge. Democratic politics, if it’s to avoid prejudice, faulty argumentation and claims of truth, needs an education in argumentation. Political thinkers (and, yes, I’m not thinking of myself) can provide this, not because they are smarter than the ordinary people who engage in politics, but because they have the benefit of practice in the art of argumentation. However, the benefits don’t have to travel in this direction: Soviet political science in the 1930s or 1940s, for example, could have benefited a lot from the example of ordinary US politics at the time. I’m not so sure about present-day US politics…

More on thinking here and here. More on prejudice here.

Political Graffiti (70): Our Dreams Do Not Fit In Ballot Boxes

Here‘s more on the things made possible by democracy. And here is more political graffiti.

Political Graffiti (68): Democracy Promotion

More on democracy promotion here, here, and here. More political graffiti here.

Political Artist (28): Sue Coe

(source, more about the artist here)

More on the independence of the media.

What is Democracy? (44): Less Repression

In previous posts in this series, I made the theoretical argument in favor of a strong link between democracy and human rights (see here, here and here). In a paper called “Measuring the Democracy-Repression Nexus“, David A. Armstrong makes the quantitative argument. At least he does so for a subset of human rights, namely physical integrity rights or security rights, such as extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture etc. The violation of these rights is usually called “state repression”.

He finds that democracies are less likely to violate the physical integrity rights of their citizens. Democratic institutions and behavior limit a state’s repressive tendencies, but only when there is a certain level of democracy. A dictatorial government becoming a bit less dictatorial (for example by way of token elections) produces only a very small decrease in repression.

So this is an example of the threshold model I described here. This is a graph from the paper:

influence of democracy on state repression

Political Graffiti (53): Dumb-ocracy

(source)

More on the role of knowledge and intelligence (or even expertise) in politics, especially democratic politics – democracy is often derided as the rule by the ignorant masses – is here, here and here. More outdated anti-Bush tirades are here and here.

What is Democracy? (43): A System Characterized by Free Speech

Alexander Meiklejohn

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The principle of the freedom of speech springs from the necessities of the program of self-government. It is not a Law of Nature or of Reason in the abstract. It is a deduction from the basic American agreement that public issues shall be decided by universal suffrage. A. Meiklejohn (source)

Democracy is a power struggle. The participants in this struggle have to be able to express themselves, to present themselves to the electorate, to create a distinct profile for themselves, and to make the electorate familiar with their political program. That’s one reason why democracy needs freedom of expression. The participants in the power struggle also have to be able to organize and associate in a group that is free from government control, because this allows them to gather strength and have a more influential voice. So they need the freedom of association and the separation of state and society. And for the same reasons they have to be able to meet and demonstrate. So they also need the freedom of assembly. If they want to organize, associate and assemble, it’s because they want to convince new people to join them. And they can’t do that without free speech.

Without the guaranteed right of all citizens to meet collectively, to have access to information, to seek to persuade others, as well as to vote, democracy is meaningless. Democratic rights, in other words, are those individual rights which are necessary to secure popular control over the process of collective decision-making on an ongoing basis. David Beetham (source)

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The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) as well has long recognized that the facilitation of self-government is one of the main goals of free speech and the First Amendment. Take, for example, Mills v Alabama:

Whatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs. (source)

Or Brown v Hartlage:

First Amendment [is] the guardian of our democracy. That Amendment embodies our trust in the free exchange of ideas as the means by which the people are to choose between good ideas and bad, and between candidates for political office. (source)

Or Roth v United States:

The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people. (source)

There’s also Justice Louis D. Brandeis famous (concurring) opinion in Whitney v California, in which he described the democratic function of freedom of speech. According to Brandeis, every citizen has the right to

endeavor to make his own opinion concerning laws existing or contemplated, prevail. (source)

Justice Louis D. Brandeis

(source)

Brandeis believed, correctly I think, that free speech is necessary for democracy in three ways:

• to inform the people about the workings and policies of the government (a free press being an important part of freedom of speech)
• to inform the government of the the will of the people (an election – or “vote” – being the voice of the people)
• to allow the people to deliberate, to discuss government policy and the merits of representatives.

More on the connection between democracy and human rights.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (9): Free Speech, Democracy, Socrates and the Search for Truth

Socrates

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Just a few additional remarks on the way in which the equal right to free speech, and democratic deliberation based on this right, improve the quality of “knowledge” and of political decisions. (Continuing where this and this post left off).

Of course, “knowledge” and “truth” not in any absolute or objective sense, but in the sense of the best kind of thinking a given society at a given time can achieve.

Before arguing how Socrates is relevant in this discussion, allow me to cite a few 20th century thinkers. Justice Louis Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v California, stated that the

freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth. (source)

Alexander Meiklejohn:

Just so far as, at any point, the citizens who are to decide an issue are denied acquaintance with information or opinion or doubt or disbelief or criticism which is relevant to that issue, just so far the result must be ill-considered, ill-balanced planning for the general good. It is that mutilation of the thinking process of the community against which the First Amendment to the Constitution is directed. (source)

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Abrams v. United States (dissenting):

The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.

The freedom to speak, the equal freedom to speak, and massive use by large numbers of people of this freedom, result in the appearance and confrontation of a large number of points of view and of perspectives on an issue. It means that a proposal or opinion or policy is subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism. If it survives this, it is bound to be of better quality. Unfounded opinions or opinions that are open to sound criticism are not likely to survive this process. Free speech in general, and free speech as it is implemented in democratic decision procedures, initiate such a process. That is why opinions in a free society and political decisions in a democracy have what we could call an epistemological advantage. They are of better quality. At least as long as we contemplate the ideals. Real free societies and real democracies may fall significantly short of this ideal.

Again, epistemological advantage doesn’t equal “truth” and “knowledge”; just the best thinking we can get. Unfortunately, I’m not being very original here. This is obvious when we return to the Ancient Greeks. The Athenians especially believed that democratic deliberation (which for them was the same as free speech, and vice versa) was essential for wise decisions because it sheds the light of diverse opinions and criticism on policy options. Pericles, in his Funeral Oration, as recorded by Thucydides, said:

Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.

None of this is limited to highly participatory systems of direct democracy such as the Athenian democracy, or to politics. The process can occur in modern, representative democracies and in any setting, political or non-political, guaranteeing free and equal speech. The scientific community for example heavily relies on peer participation. It’s fair to say that freedom of speech is essential for any collective search for of or advancement towards truth. In fact, the word “collective” is superfluous here, because the process is by definition collective. No one thinks or thinks more or less correctly in isolation.

We normally assume that an ideally conducted discussion among many persons is more likely to arrive at the correct conclusion (by a vote if necessary) than the deliberations of any one of them by himself. Why should this be so? In everyday life the exchange of opinion with others checks our partiality and widens our perspective; we are made to see things from their standpoint and the limits of our vision are brought home to us … Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments. At least in the course of time, the effects of common deliberation seem bound to improve matters. John Rawls

John Rawls

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I know, I know: “what about Socrates!”. Well, the Socratic method is a type of discussion with adversaries which is intended to expose the adversaries’ pretensions, prejudices, dogmas and conventional beliefs. In other words, it targets opinions which are accepted as such, without having first passed through a process of examination and criticism. Socrates is a one man democratic agora, launching different criticisms and counter-arguments at an opinion, and shining the light of many perspectives.

More of the same.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (6)

Vaclav Havel addressing the crowds during the Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia

(source)

Democracy is a human right. If we want to promote universal respect for this right, we have to know how societies have achieved the transition from authoritarian forms of government to more democratic ones, and how democracies have avoided the opposite transition. Once we know this, we can promote the future emergence of democracies, and we can counteract the breakdown of existing ones.

Unfortunately, this is a very murky area of political science. The only thing that’s clear is that there is no silver bullet. There isn’t one thing we can do to transform societies once and for all into democracies. Things aren’t easy or simple. A huge number of factors have been identified as causes of or obstacles to democratic transitions, and existing democracies need constant nurturing and protection. A few of the factors that have been named as either promoting or inhibiting democracy are:

• economic growth or GDP per capita
• protestant culture versus catholic culture (a catholic culture is believed to be more hierarchical)
• levels of education and literacy
• income or wealth inequality (in very unequal societies, the wealthy have a lot to lose with democracy)
• levels of employment in agriculture versus industry (industrial societies are believed to more more urban and less attached to traditional and authoritarian social relationships)
• the presence/absence of neighboring democracies
• export diversity (countries with one major export product such as oil tend to be “resource cursed“)
• is a country a former U.K. colony or not? (former U.K. colonies are believed to be more sympathetic to democracy given their British colonial heritage)
• is there a large middle class or not?
• etc.

Statistical analysis to pinpoint which ones of these many variables really determine democracy – and which ones are merely guesses – has yielded contradictory results, not surprisingly given the low numbers of observations (societies or countries don’t change their political systems very often) and the relative lack of long time series (most classifications of regime types haven’t started earlier than a couple of decades ago). One interesting analysis is here.

So don’t expect me to have an opinion here. What I wanted to focus on in this post is the first in the list. There are two radically opposing views on the effect of economic development on democracy. One view, which I’ve defended here, is called modernization theory. Basically, the idea is that as countries develop economically, people will switch to other, higher needs, such as self-government, self-control, and political activity in general (see Maslow’s Scale, for instance). Poverty, on the contrary, forces people to focus on survival and makes democracy seem like a luxury.

However, the opposite view is also persuasive. Countries that do well economically are less likely to become democratic because the population is quite pleased with how things are going and will not revolt. The authoritarian rulers can claim that it’s thanks to them that things are going well. It’s not unlikely that economic collapse rather than success causes authoritarian regimes to break down.

So even if you isolate one of dozens of possible factors causing regime transition, things aren’t very clear. Should we starve dictatorships, or help them develop economically? As a result of this lack of clarity, it’s very difficult to frame foreign policy in such a way that it favors the development of democracies around the world. This may go some way to explain the traditional lack of ambition in diplomatic circles.

Terrorism and Human Rights (15): Does Respect for Human Rights Reduce Terrorism?

(source)

Here is an extremely interesting paper by James Walsh and James Piazza. Quote:

Some hold that restricting human rights is a necessary if unfortunate cost of preventing terrorism. Others conclude that such abuses aggravate political grievances that contribute to terror. We demonstrate that theory and data support the latter position. (source)

They focus on what they call physical integrity rights, or rights which protect people from physical harm. The more a state respects these rights, the less terror attacks it suffers. It will also be less engaged in some way or other in transnational attacks.

These findings are opposed to two similar and widespread beliefs: unstable states can only guarantee security is they are authoritarian (see here), and even well-developed democracies have to limit some human rights in order to fight a terrorist threat (see here). In the former case, the threat comes usually from within; in the latter case from abroad.

States that seek to preserve human rights and political freedoms are limited in their ability to monitor and detain terrorism suspects, are prohibited from making broad police sweeps to catch terrorist perpetrators and their sympathizers, limit coercive interrogation of suspects, and must afford suspected terrorists access to a lawyer and a public trial. Freedom of assembly and of the press allows terrorists and their supporters to publicize their grievances. … The implication is that states that protect human rights are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. (source)

In fact, the opposite is true. Protecting human rights, and especially security or integrity rights, reduces terrorism, and violating them promotes terrorism. Terrorism is a complex phenomenon, but I think it true to say that grievances and injustices (and many of those are caused by rights violations) are important motives. Democracies and states that respect human rights supposedly give too much freedom to terrorists, allow them to organize, recruit, mobilize and plan, and make it very hard to efficiently combat terrorists (rule of law, free speech, humane treatment and torture prohibitions etc. are all said to hamper counter-terrorism). But authoritarian regimes create injustices on which terrorists feed. They also make it hard to express and redress grievances in non-violent ways,  and use ruthless methods that only make their opponents more radical, fanatic and popular.

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The authors back this up with data. They link the MIPT measure of terrorism (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism) with the Physical Integrity Index:

More here and here.

The Causes of Poverty (21): Absence of Human Rights and Democracy

Mary Robinson

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I’m often asked what is the most serious form of human rights violations in the world today, and my reply is consistent: extreme poverty. Mary Robinson

Mark Malloch Brown

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Sustained poverty reduction requires equitable growth – but it also requires that poor people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a manner consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society. That means ensuring that institutions and power are structured and distributed in a way that gives real voice and space to poor people and creates mechanisms through which the powerful – whether political leaders, corporations or other influential actors – can be held accountable for their actions. Mark Malloch Brown

Read more on the link between poverty and human rights, and on the link between poverty and democracy. In short, poverty is a human rights violation, but the fight against poverty requires the use of other human rights and democratic participation. Only the squeaky hinge gets the oil. Poor people need to express themselves; they need to organize and to get represented; they have to be allowed to engage in trade and the economy with full protection of their property rights; they need education and healthcare in order to avoid poverty traps etc.

Human Rights Cartoon (51): The Financing of Political Parties

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In a democracy, political parties and candidates need money to get elected. And, in the U.S. in particular, they need a fortune. In most democracies, their funds are a mix of government subsidies and private donations. It’s a continuing worry that these private donations will somehow falsify democratic procedures. Outright corruption – “I give you money for your campaign if you adopt/repeal this or this law/policy” – is relatively rare in democracies, given a well-functioning free press. But donations can result in excessive influence. There’s always a lurking feeling that a candidate, once elected, has to do something in return in order to compensate for donor generosity. And in a democracy, everyone should have equal influence, irrespective of campaign contributions.

I have a very detailed post on the subject here.

Political Graffiti (41): An Appeal to Go and Vote

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More here and here on the reasons why people should vote. And here on the reasons why they don’t.

What is Democracy? (41): Democracy is Peace, Continued

The so-called “democratic peace theory” – democracy promotes peace (a theory originating in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant) – has been mentioned a few times before on this blog (here, here and here). One of the points that were made there was related to the typically democratic procedure of “rotation in office“. Democracy promotes peace because it provides a mechanism for the peaceful transition from one ruler to another. This mechanism guarantees that:

• there is no need for a violent succession struggle which can have international consequences
• opposition movements do not have to resort to extreme tactics in order to prove their point or to take over power
• the participants in the power struggle will not be tempted to use violence as a means to avoid physical harm resulting from a possible defeat
• leaders do not need to engage in dangerous international adventures in order to increase their legitimacy etc.

More on violence here.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (40): Tyranny of the Majority

(source, photo by Bonnie Cline, 2008)

Democracy: Four wolves and one lamb voting on lunch

More on the tyranny of the majority. The concept of “constitutional democracy” that is on the sign in the picture, means that democracy is more than just majority rule. The majority cannot decide to violate the human rights of the minority. Such a democracy therefore cannot be a tyranny of the majority.

Income Inequality (11): Why Should We Care?

Some more on income inequality, although I already discussed this several times:

• There a post here on ways to measure income inequality.
• I have a page here with statistics on income inequality, and a world map here.
• Something here and here on the situation in the U.S.
• And I stated why it IS NOT a problem here, and why it IS a problem here.

Put very, very briefly, my position comes down to this. It’s a fact that many rich countries – rich in terms of total GDP – have a substantially unequal distribution of income; or, to put it in other words, these countries accept that there is huge inequality of wealth between people. It’s also a fact that, in many countries and particularly the U.S., these inequalities in income or wealth have become wider over the last decades.

What’s the problem, you may ask. Well, according to me this inequality poses some problems. But these problems are of relative importance. More important to me is the problem of absolute poverty. Absolute poverty is a lack of certain resources that are necessary to meet certain basic needs. This is not a problem of inequality. People may live in a very unequal society and at the wrong end of inequality, but they may nevertheless have no problem whatsoever meeting their basic needs.

More important as well, in some aspects at least, are the problems posed by other types of inequality. Gender inequality in some countries may be much more of a problem than income inequality (although these different types of inequality are probably connected).

Nevertheless, income inequality engenders some important problems. One is self-esteem. People suffering from relative poverty – i.e. finding themselves on the wrong end of an unequal income distribution – may suffer psychologically and emotionally. It’s also likely that their relative disadvantage isn’t very fair. In other words, it’s probably not solely based on questions of merit and desert. We don’t live in a world of equality of opportunity and level starting conditions. There’s also a correlation between relative and absolute poverty, so we may have to worry about relative poverty as a cause of absolute poverty.

Income inequality can also cause a problem for democracy. The rich can use their financial means to pervert the democratic procedures and to distort the equal influence on which democracy is based. Another way in which income inequality may pervert democracy is its divisiveness. It polarizes societies and it can antagonize regions within countries. None of this is helpful for the adequate functioning of democracy.

More on income inequality here and here.

What is Democracy? (39): Government of the Stupid, by the Stupid, and for the Stupid?

When the merits and demerits of democracy are discussed, we often hear that it’s not very wise to let the people govern themselves. Democracy must be rejected because the will of the people is necessarily ill-considered, emotional, stupid, based on instinctive and hasty reactions and so forth. The people are said to be disinterested, apathetic, indifferent and generally not smart enough to deal with the complex problems of today, and this is a sufficient reason to exclude the people from political decisions. They are not qualified to rule and are perhaps not even qualified to choose their rulers. Something which no amount of education can possible remedy. Politics should therefore be something inherently unequal.

This rejection of democracy is only correct when applied to a limited kind of democracy in which there is no place for public debate and active participation guaranteed by freedom rights. It is evident that the debates which precede and which are almost automatically engendered by a democratic vote, a referendum or a council meeting, vastly increase the willingness and the ability of the people to judge complex matters. If the people are allowed to vote on a certain issue, then many of them will instantly start to debate the issue and will become aware of the different arguments in favor of and against a certain solution. The same is true for those merely watching the debates.

This awareness not only increases the knowledge of the people, but also their interest in the issue and in related issues. Political participation eliminates the lack of knowledge and interest harmful to its functioning, at least to a certain degree. Why would you be interested in and knowledgeable about something if you can never use your knowledge in active deliberation and decision taking? Why would you have an opinion if this opinion will never have serious consequences, and if nothing depends on your decision?

The “stupidity argument” against democracy is therefore circular: it excludes people from politics because they are supposedly too stupid for this “profession”, but they lack knowledge precisely because they are excluded.

More on the supposed need for “experts” in politics here.

Abraham Lincoln

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By the way, if you didn’t know, the original quote - ”Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people” – is from Abraham Lincoln.

What is Democracy? (38): Equal Representation and the Share of Women in Parliament

In a representative democracy, one can reasonably expect to have a parliament that is roughly representative of the population in general: poor people should have their representatives or delegates just like rich people, women just like men, minorities just like majorities. This representativity or representativeness isn’t an absolute requirement. One can have a democracy without it. The people, after all, may decide that their views are best represented by an all-male, all-white body of parliamentarians for example.

However, it seems statistically unlikely that this would be their decision in each consecutive election in each democratic country. Imbalances in the demographics of parliament that persist over time and space are probably not the result of the choices of voters but of other factors, such as discrimination, unequal opportunities etc. If that’s the case, we are dealing with an imperfect democracy because democracy means equal influence and an equal chance to get elected (art. 21 of the Universal Declaration and art. 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

And that is the case. Take the share of women in parliament for instance. In almost every major democracy of the world, election after election, women are a (tiny) minority in parliament. It’s very unlikely if not impossible that women are systematically less competent than men to serve in parliament, or that the voters sincerely, rationally and objectively believe this to be the case. There must be other, more deeply embedded psychological motives for such a choice, related to the generally inferior position of women in patriarchal societies.

Here are some data:

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A complete up-to-date data set is here. More on women’s rights in general here.

Human Rights Facts (27): Democratization and Economic Growth, Why Democracy is Good for the Economy

This paper, by Elias Papaioannou and Gregorios Siourounis, examines the effect of democratic transitions on economic growth. Since democracy and the absence of poverty are both human rights issues, and since poverty usually correlates with insufficient economic growth, it is encouraging to see that countries which have experienced a transition to democracy experience higher average growth after the transition.

The graph below, from the paper, plots the evolution of real per capita GDP growth in the years surrounding a successful democratization (the year of the democratization being T), compared to the global growth rates in each year. The average growth is the purple dashed line. The graph also shows that the transition itself may imply economic costs, but in the longer term democracy pays off.

Now, democracy is of course desirable for many reasons, and most of these are unrelated to the economy. But the fact that democracy produces economic gains will make it even more attractive.

Why does this happen? Why is democracy good for economic growth? For many reasons, some of which are the rule of law and respect for human rights (property rights, freedom of information etc.). More here.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (5): The Aid Curse, or the Negative Effect of International Development Aid on Democracy

(source, INDONESIA Meulaboh, Aceh, Northern Sumatra: Indonesian army (TNI) soldiers unload aid from an American helicopter following the tsunami which struck South Asia in 2004, Photographer © Patrick Brown/Panos Pictures)

Via Bill Easterly’s blog, I discovered this paper on the so-called “aid curse“: just as dependence on natural resources has a negative effect on the quality of a country’s governance and democracy (a phenomenon called the resource curse), so has international development aid (or official development aid, ODA), especially in countries which depend heavily on aid (and in which aid represents a large percentage of GDP).

This is surprising, because one of the aims of international development aid is to bolster the quality of governance, directly through aid targeted at this objective, or indirectly on the assumption that better education, health care etc. will ultimately lead to better governance.

It seems now that there is a correlation (and perhaps even a causal link) between high levels of aid and low levels of democracy. The explanation is that foreign aid , like the revenue of natural resources, provides an opportunity for governments and leaders to appropriate funds illegitimately. And, because they benefit from aid, they will try to exclude other groups from power. This obviously destroys democratic institutions or makes it more difficult to establish them.

Foreign aid also reduces the need for a system of taxation. And without such a system, it’s a lot more difficult to construct a well-functioning government, and it’s less likely that forces for representation take root (historically, the principle of “no taxation without representation” has promoted democracy). When a government doesn’t depend on taxes for its revenues, then it will have less incentives to seek accountability.

These graphs from the paper show how the levels of democracy in countries decrease while the levels of aid (as official development aid – ODA - over GDP) increase:

None of this proves that we should give less aid to developing countries. Probably the opposite is true. What it proves is that aid is more than just sending money. Donors should check what happens to their money, should target the money, and should bypass the “sticky fingers” in government as much as possible. To some extent, donors should also make aid conditional on democratic reform because this reform is the way to avoid aid inefficiency. However, when doing so, they should be careful not to put the cart before the horse: one of the goals of aid is precisely democratization.

Political Graffiti (32): Impeachment

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More on democratic accountability.

Marx, Democracy and Human Rights, Ctd.

Karl Marx

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Some second thoughts after this and this post. The system of private ownership of the means of production (factories, natural resources etc.) that characterizes the capitalist economies of all developed and many developing countries has proven to be very resilient and very successful economically speaking. Marxism and communism traditionally criticize this system, for many different reasons, the most important one being the alleged exploitation of the workers employed by the owners of these means of production.

However, in this blogpost, I want to focus on another, less well-known criticism. Marxism claims that the private ownership of the means of production yields not only an unfair share of economic power, but also of political power, especially when, as is more and more the case, the means of production also include information production (news, TV, movies etc.).

From the point of view of the defenders of democracy (such as we), that’s a highly relevant criticism, and its relevance hasn’t decreased during the century and a half since it was first expressed. It’s relatively uncontroversial to state that in all democracies the owners of the means of production influence democratic processes with

• financial means (lobbying, campaign finances or outright corruption),
• ideological means – as was already known to Marx
• but also with information technology.

They use these means in order to further their own interests. Well-developed democracies have systems to detect and correct this (a free press for example) but these systems can themselves be “infected”.

Disparities in economic power tend to distort the democratic process. This process is based on the ideal of equal influence and the equal importance of everyone’s interests. But that’s an ideal. Existing democracy, as opposed to ideal democracy, often serves the interests of a particular part of the population (e.g. what marxism called “the ruling class”) rather than the interests of the people, in which case it is perverted or imperfect.

The purely formal abolition of the difference between rich and poor in a democracy – every citizen has one vote and as many rights as the next citizen – cannot hide the reality that some citizens can influence policies and public opinion much more than others and hence have more power. The difference is only abolished formally; in reality, democracy may serve to widen it given the fact that relatively powerful individuals or groups can use democracy to become even more powerful.

The communist theory that politics, including democratic politics, is a capitalist tool or that the state is a “capitalist machine”, has had an enormous success, even with people who are not communists or even anti-communists. Who is not convinced that the numerous military or covert interventions of the United States elsewhere in the world served the interests of American companies and American economic supremacy in general? Or that the elections in democracies are heavily biased by big business which wants politics to serve certain interests and therefore funds candidates, lobbies officials, indoctrinates the public through grossly biased television channels etc.?

The reason for this success is that the theory is based on reality. Politics is to some degree influenced by the economy and communism is still relevant to us today because it reminds us of this and because it was the first theory to systematically expose this. Also relevant and significant today is the theory that oppression is not only a power thing but is also based on ideology, persuasion, information etc.

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What we have to reject is the communist insistence on determination. Politics and narratives are influenced but not completely determined by economics. According to communism, the superstructure of consciousness, religion, morality, politics and law is a mere product of the substructure of productive forces and class relations. However, we must accept that politics can be much more than violent oppression, ideological indoctrination or perversion of democracy for the purpose of maintaining class and property relations.

In a democracy especially, we see that politics can be a powerful tool for people to determine and control their common destinies and to expose and undo economic injustices. Consciousness and thinking are obviously much more than ideological shadows of the light of economic reality. (And religion is of course much more than opium for the people. It has many beneficial effects which we need not mention here. Even if it is a bag of illusions, which no one and not even Marx can prove, it is still a fact that religious illusions can have morally beneficial effects and can make life easier to bear. So why try to strip people of their illusions – which has proven very difficult anyway – for the sake of a better yet uncertain future?)

It is wrong to claim, as communism often does, that the economic perversion of democracy is a necessity. Communism sometimes acknowledges that improvements in the situation of the workers can be the product of democratic politics (no room to include citations here). However, these are mere footnotes in communist theory. In most cases, communism demands revolution and an entire change of system, based no longer on the private ownership of the means of production. Private ownership softened by economic and social human rights, social-democracy, legally enforced improvements for the workers etc. is not enough. It doesn’t have to be softened but replaced by the community of the means of production, or communism.

Communism therefore fails to acknowledge the importance of legality, and particularly of democratic participation in legislation and of the use of human rights (especially economic rights) to improve the situation of those who are worst of. Human rights are more than the right to private property. They include economic rights and the participation in democracy by workers’ representatives. The effective exercise of these rights can lead to some kind of redistribution of property, better working conditions, corporate participation and less poverty.

No matter how strong the influence, the economy and economic power do not completely determine politics and law. Human rights and democratic participation for example can and do change the economy. Human rights are more than purely formal, and certainly more than false consciousness, convincing the people that they are equal when they are not, and thereby deflating any pressure for change and maintaining the status quo. They can give power to those who want to change the economy. This is insufficiently acknowledged by communism. It is even likely that communism’s rejection of rights and democracy as bourgeois exploitation tools has facilitated human rights violations of totalitarian communist regimes.

Limiting Free Speech (18): Lèse Majesté

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Lèse majesté (a French expression but originally from a Latin expression meaning “injury to the Majesty”) is a legal rule making it a crime to say or write things that offend or insult a king or queen, or violate his or her dignity.

Fortunately, this kind of limitation of freedom of speech has become extremely rare. Most countries have done away with the archaic institution of the monarchy and hence also their lèse majesté rules. Or they have relegated their monarchies to the domain of symbolism and celebrity. Absolute monarchies or monarchical dictatorships are the exception nowadays. Oppression has become a distinctly “republican” affair. (Some of the remaining absolute monarchies are Brunei, Qatar, the southern African Kingdom of Swaziland, and Saudi Arabia).

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Most of the monarchies that continue to exist have no strict practice of limiting free speech on the grounds of lèse majesté. They may have some legal rules, but they aren’t applied rigorously. So, on a global level, it’s difficult to claim that lèse majesté is a big problem for freedom of speech. However, some monarchies do impose the rule and thereby violate the right to freedom of speech to a large extent. I’m thinking of course of Thailand. The law there states:

The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action. Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen or the Heir-apparent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years. (source)

Moreover, a precise definition of defamation of or insult to the king is lacking, making the net very tight. As a result, the law has shown itself very useful for political vendettas. There have been numerous cases of censorship, self-censorship and imprisonment, often as a consequences of rather ridiculous faits divers:

Frenchman Lech Tomacz Kisielwicz refused to switch off a reading light on a Thai Airways flight he shared with two Thai princesses and was jailed under lèse majesté for two weeks after his flight landed in Bangkok. He was acquitted after apologizing to the King. (source)

But the consequences of many cases have been much more serious than the causes. Writers and academics have been jailed, thousands of internet sites are blocked, books and magazines such as The Economist have been banned etc. It’s not impossible that the site you’re reading now will suffer the same fate.

Thai law goes well beyond protection of the royal family. It has been used and abused to protect and justify an entire ruling elite, an autocratic and conservative social system, and even military coups.

Other monarchies are much more tolerant. It’s worth mentioning that some non-monarchies also have rules prohibiting insults to heads of states. In October 2006, a Polish man was arrested in Warsaw after expressing his dissatisfaction with the president and prime minister by farting loudly (see here).

Mr Bull farting at a poster of George III

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Lèse majesté laws in one form or another, especially in countries where the beneficiaries of such protection are relatively powerful, is undemocratic. They can stifle large areas of political journalism and debate, and make it impossible to expose official wrongdoing and corruption.

The Causes of Poverty (18): Amartya Sen, Famines, and Democracy

Amartya Sen

(source, photo by Mary Lee/Harvard News Office)

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. … a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have. Amartya Sen

victims of a famine in India

Amartya Sen argues that democracy (which is a subset of human rights) is the best way to avoid famines. Of course, a well-functioning democracy is not a sufficient condition for the absence of famines. Other mechanisms also contribute to famine prevention, so it’s not impossible to see famines in democracies.

What is a famine?

G. B. Masefield states:

On balance it seems clear that any satisfactory definition of famine must provide that the food shortage is either widespread or extreme, if not both, and that the degree of extremity is best measured by human mortality from starvation. (source)

A famine occurs when there is a sudden collapse of the level of food availability and consumption (measured in terms of calorie intake). Sen’s argument is that a focus on lack of availability isn’t enough. Actual consumption is what counts. And consumption can drop when availability doesn’t (this was the case in the Bengal famine of 1943 for instance). Famines occur not only from a lack of food, caused by drought, crop failures or floods, but also from a lack of information. Rumors of a famine, even false rumors, are often enough for people to start hoarding and panic buying, which pushes up the price of goods, and which makes it impossible for poor people to get enough food. As a result, they may starve in the midst of abundance. A war may have the same effect or make it worse. And so can ineffective food distribution mechanisms.

Inequality

An important point about famines is therefore inequality:

While Famines involve fairly widespread acute starvation, there is no reason to think that it will affect all groups in the famine-affected nation. Indeed, it is by no means clear that there has ever occurred a famine in which all groups in a country have suffered from starvation, since different groups typically do have very different commanding powers over food, and an over-all shortage brings out the contrasting powers in stark clarity. Amartya Sen (source)

Information

Free information can counter these risks. It can debunk myths and rumors about food availability. It can inform accountable governments of certain risks and force them to act in order to remedy the food distribution, to impose price controls etc.

Price controls, however, are a risky business. Higher food prices may lead to a larger volume of food production because food producers will be encouraged to produce. Hence, higher prices may increase the overall availability of food and reduce the risk of famine. However, as we have seen, availability is not enough to stop famines. Distribution and equality of availability is just as important, and higher prices may result in very unequal availability and may put poor people at risk. But then, again, these poor people may find a better paying job in food production if food prices are higher… This is all very complicated indeed. For some light on the matter, look here.

More on famine here.

Human Rights Facts (24): Freedom in 2008

Freedom House has its new data out (see also here):

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What is Democracy? (37): One Man, One Vote

(art by Ted Ellis, source)

Or better, one person, one vote. It’s not until relatively recently that women and minorities have been given the vote, even in the most advanced democracies in the world. Here and here are posts on the importance of equality for democracy.

In most modern democracies, all adults have 1 vote. No large groups are excluded from voting, and no one has more votes than anyone else. (In the early days of many democracies, some people had a larger number of votes; this was called plural voting).

However, it’s not because all people have one vote, that all votes have the same weight and that all people have an equal weight in the aggregate outcome of the vote. They only have in democracies that use proportional representation. PR results in a political spectrum in parliament that roughly coincides with the spectrum of the voters. No part of the electorate is over- or under-represented.

Democracies which do not use PR often use district systems (e.g. the U.S. and the U.K.). This is also called the “first-past-the-post” system – whoever has most votes in a district (not necessarily the majority of votes) gets the seat in parliament reserved for this district and becomes the only representative for the district (“winner takes all”). In some cases, this electoral system gives power to a relative majority and therefore, not necessarily an absolute majority. A party that has a few more votes than all other parties in a majority of districts, will have a majority of seats in parliament, but perhaps a minority of the votes. As this example indicates, a district system can result in the rule of a minority. An important minority or maybe, even a majority may not be represented at all. Political equality and majority rule, the basic values of a democracy, are affected. There is no longer a perfect match between the views of the people and the views present in parliament.

In such a system, the one-man-one-vote principle can be further harmed If the districts are not equal in proportion in terms of population. If both a small group of people and a large group of people have one representative, then we can hardly claim to have political equality, regardless of the possible problems created by the winner-takes-all rule. In some countries, rich minorities have often been given small districts, which favored them politically and offered them a very large and disproportional share of the seats in parliament. This is called gerrymandering.

For these and other reasons, the type of democracy instituted in the U.S. deviates, in part, from the principle of one-man-one-vote (a reason for some to call it a republic rather than a democracy, although the difference between these two concepts is spurious, see here). Whereas each member of the House of Representatives represents more or less the same number of voters (even though the system is based on voting districts), the Senate seats are not allocated according to population. Each state, large and small, gets two seats. Wyoming, with barely half a million citizens, has exactly the same political influence in the Senate as California (37m citizens). If you view U.S. states as large districts, you could say that the U.S. Senate has institutionalized the bias that gerrymandering can create in district systems.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the U.S. Senate, the Second Chamber in the U.S. parliament, didn’t have so much political power. It’s powers, defined in the Constitution, include

• consenting to treaties as a precondition to their ratification
• approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation.

Even a minority of Senators can block legislation. The filibuster is a tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely. As it takes 60 votes out of a total of 100 Senators to stop a filibuster, a minority can block everything if it wants. So again, a further restriction of the democratic principle of one-man-one-vote. The Economist has calculated that if the least populous states ganged together, senators representing 11% of the population could thwart the will of the remaining 89%. Speaking of tyranny of the majority … The filibuster has often been used for very conservative and ill-intended purposes such as the preservation of Jim Crow laws and wasteful farm subsidies.

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The longest filibuster speech in the history of the Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for over 24 hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Strom Thurmond

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It can of course be used for more positive purposes as well. It can slow down over-anxious House representatives and hence improve the quality of legislation. The division of the legislative power into two parts, an Upper House and a Lower House or a House of Representatives and a Senate, is typical of a democracy and makes it possible to correct mistakes made in one House. One House can slow down or stop another House when some decisions are too risky or are taken without the necessary reflection or discussions. This system

doubles the security to the people by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient. James Madison in the Federalist Papers.

James Madison

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If we expect two houses or chambers to control and correct each other, then the participants of both must be selected in different ways. But it seems that this can still be done with a higher degree of respect for the principle of one-man-one-vote.

The reasoning behind this deviation from the one-man-one-vote system in the U.S. was to ensure equal representation of each state in the Senate, so that populous states can’t take measures that harm the fundamental interests of small states and therefore can’t violate the federalist philosophy of the U.S. It was supposed to be a counterweight against the “people’s house” (the House of Representatives) that would be sensitive to public opinion. Trust in public opinion has never been very high (which I argue is a self-fulfilling prophecy). But rather than protect the U.S. from the tyranny of public opinion, one has delivered it to the tyranny of the minority. Hardly democratic at all.

Political Graffiti (21): Government Transparency

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More on government transparency in a democracy here. More on the rule of law here.

Political T-Shirt (2): We Are Your Government

More on popular sovereignty.

What is Democracy? (36): Peaceful and Legal Transition of Power

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In a democracy, power is the provisional and temporary result of a legally formatted and peaceful power struggle between those who want to change the government or its policies and those who want to keep it. This struggle should not be abolished and should continue indefinitely, according to stable and foreseeable legal rules and procedures (for example those regulating the elections and the election campaigns). Periodically, the struggle reaches a climax. Elections are a temporary decision of the struggle in favor of one or a few of the parties. Power is, therefore, an object of temporary use rather than property, and is always the result of conflict, criticism, struggle and competition between opposing views on good government. But this conflict is one of words and ideas and it has to follow very strict legal rules and procedures. A coup d’etat is by definition outside of these procedures, even if it is a non-violent one.

More here and here.

Political T-Shirt (1): George Bush

More on the contradiction between democracy and the rule by experts.

Human Rights Facts (22): Support for Democracy in Latin America

(First of all, for those wondering why this post is part of the “Human Rights Facts” series on this blog, there’s a post here describing the reasons why democracy is a human right).

You can find world-wide data on support for democracy as a form of government here, but this post focuses specifically on Latin America. Support for democracy of course fluctuates for many reasons: the state of the economy, the quality of the elected politicians, corruption scandals, the strength or weakness of other ideologies etc. Many data on popular support for democracy also don’t distinguish between people’s abstract support for democracy as a form of government, and their support for the actual government that is in power, or between their support for democracy as an ideal and democracy as it actually functions in their countries at a particular time.

The following data do seem to make these important distinctions:

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The data show that support for democracy as an idea is higher than support for the actually existing democracies. But even the latter kind of support has, in most countries of South-America, increased over the last years.

Human Rights Cartoon (46): China’s Support for Rogue States

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In addition to its widespread disregard for human rights at home, China has now become the main supporter of some of the world’s most loathed dictators. The governments of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, North-Korea, Burma and many others regularly receive Chinese support in many different ways:

• China uses its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block the liberal West’s efforts to impose sanctions.
• It offers other means of diplomatic support.
• It gives unconditional economic aid.
• It sells arms.
• It invests.
• It trades.

To some extent, it does all this with its narrow economic and political self-interest in mind:

• It needs the resources that these dictatorships can provide.
• It profits from trade with these countries.
• It profits from banding together with these countries and forming strategic alliances against the U.S.

But there is more to it: resisting the tide of freedom abroad helps to stem it at home.

China of course isn’t the only nation with bad friends. The U.S. has long supported dictatorships in South-America for instance, and continues to sell arms to Saudi-Arabia and others in the Middle East.

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More on the dealings of China in Africa. More on the link between Chinese authoritarianism and Confucianism.

Political Graffiti (12): This is Indian Land

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Here’s a related one by Banksy:

no tresspassing, by Banksy

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More on self-determination. More Banksy.

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• True Identity of Grafitti Artist Banksy is for Sale on Ebay (socyberty.com)

What is Democracy? (35): A Complete Waste of Time?

The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of an election are very small. Close elections are very rare, and even rarer are those in which one vote is pivotal. So it doesn’t make a difference whether you participate or not. In light of this, it’s a small miracle that turnouts are as high as they are, and it’s ridiculous for people to lament a turnout that’s “only” 60%.

Clearly, people know that their votes don’t affect the outcome and vote for other reasons than a mere sense of responsibility. But what reasons? Signaling is certainly part of it. People vote because they are more than individuals. They identify with others, they want to belong and they want to be part of a “movement” or party that has a certain set of beliefs. Voting makes them such a part, and hence gives them an identity and a cause. Let’s not forget that an identity is highly dependent on expression and on recognition of this expression by others. Elections, even with a secret vote, are highly effective tools for the production of identity. The seemingly meaningless anf futile vote of an individual becomes quite meaningful when aggregated with the votes of like-minded individuals.

It’s only when you adopt an economic and reductionist view of people, in which individuals only pursue their self-interest, that you cannot make sense of apparently silly behavior such as voting in which the costs (transport, risk, time etc.) outweigh the benefits (if any).

There’s also the mysterious force of the “if-everyone-were-doing-this” rule, which we apply regularly. Throwing one piece of garbage in the park is almost absolutely harmless. Someone will clean it, and if not no one will notice. And yet most of us just don’t do it because “if everyone was doing it” – which they are not – it would be hell, and that’s how we teach our kids not to do it. And they understand. And they – or most of them – listen and don’t do it. Part of the reason why this rule works is the force of example. We don’t want to give a bad example because when people follow it, we will suffer, even though we may in the short run benefit from doing what we shouldn’t.

Similarly, when large numbers of voters believe that their vote doesn’t make much of a difference and isn’t worth the cost of participating, then they give a bad example which can be followed by large numbers of people. As a result, the usefulness of the remaining votes increases, and these votes will then determine the behavior of the rest of the population. People will be ruled by a minority with perhaps harmful views. So in order not to find themselves in this situation which is detrimental to most people, most people choose to vote.

A better way to express this idea:

The idea is not that one person’s decision to forgo voting would crash the system—how would that possibly happen?—but that it is immoral to act on a maxim that we cannot imagine everyone else acting on. So if I … will abstain from voting because the costs of voting outweigh the benefits, I will first need to see if the maxim passes a test implicit in Kant’s categorical imperative. I ought not act in accordance with the maxim if it fails the test.

So let’s see: can I universalise the non-voting maxim? Can I imagine living in a world in which every eligible voter opts for a nap or a game of Temple Run in lieu of going to the polls? No. The logic of American democracy does not support such a universalised principle. No one votes, no one is elected, a moment of constitutional failure brings an emergency convention in which unelected delegates draft a new constitution calling for an alternate system of specifying leaders that doesn’t involve the public. The franchise, and America as we know it, disappears. Since the logic of the system cannot be sustained were everyone to adopt the nap-over-voting maxim, I am morally bound not to act on it.

Now, again, the force of Kant’s argument is not empirical: you don’t need to show that a decision not to vote will actually bring a constitutional doomsday. You just need to show that if universalised it would. (source)

What is Democracy? (34): A Civic Responsibility

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In most democracy, voting is a right and not a legal duty. Hence, political participation is less than 100%, sometimes a lot less. Some people vote, and vote only in some elections. The number of people who vote is called voter turnout. Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. In U.S. Presidential elections, for example, turnout is usually between 50 and 60%, with slightly more in the 2008 election which saw many first-time African-American voters vote for Obama.

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More statistics on voter turnout throughout the world can be found here.

However, even if voting is not a legal duty in most democracies, it is generally considered to be a moral duty and a civic responsibility. A high voter turnout is generally considered desirable for many different reasons, and most democracies spend a lot of energy on “get the vote out” efforts. One reason for these efforts is the fact that low turnouts lead to unequal representation among various parts of the population. Policies will reflect this and will be to the benefit of those who vote. This can result in discrimination.

High turnout is generally seen as evidence of the legitimacy of the system and low turnout as a symptom of disenchantment, indifference and ultimately of the demise of the system. Of course, a single vote doesn’t make a lot of difference – except in very close races – and hence it’s normal that people feel indifferent. An individual, when faced with a monolithic monster of a state, threatening and distant at the same time, feels insignificant, like a grain of sand on the beach. Powerlessness becomes a fact of life and people retreat from democratic politics. A single voice is not noticed in the noise of millions and is reduced to insignificance. The state does not react to individual claims as quickly as it is supposed to, if it reacts at all. The bottom line is that individuals or small groups cannot hurt the state. Their votes are less than pinpricks. The only elements in society able to influence the centralized state are large, national and centralized pressure groups or political parties that are just as distant from the citizens as the state and equally insensitive to individuals’ claims.

But there is a solution. Federalism and decentralization encourage participation and counteract alienation and a feeling of distance between the citizens and the state. See here.

Apathy and indifference are also the consequence of the impossibility in many democracies to vote for issues. When people are allowed to take decisions on issues, they will be more eager to debate the issues and to inform themselves on the pros and cons of possible solutions. Relying exclusively on representation creates apathy because people can only vote on persons. Take a look here for the reasons why representation creates indifference.

Other ways to promote civic responsibility are better education, a well functioning civil society in which free associations can mobilize citizens, modern information technologies such as the Internet etc. More on the need for equal participation here.

Greg Mankiw

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Greg Mankiw has a different take on the problem of voter turnout:

Voting is a civic responsibility, they tell us, because democracy works best when everyone participates. … But relying on your fellow citizens to make the right choice … can be perfectly rational. If you really don’t know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision.

Eligible voters who are less informed about the candidates than their fellow citizens choose to stay at home, knowing the outcome will be more reliable without their participation. By not voting, they are doing themselves and everyone else a favor. If the ill-informed were all induced to vote, they would merely add random noise to the outcome.

What’s the evidence that this theory is right, that nonvoters are less informed than voters? Studies of voter turnout have found that education is the single best predictor of who votes: The highly educated turn out more often than less educated. A classic argument for why democracies need widespread public education is that education makes people better voters.

Granted. But rather than encouraging the less educated to stay home, as Mankiw seems to do, we should perhaps try to give them a better education.

Limiting Free Speech (8): The Fairness Doctrine, Limiting or Improving Speech?

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The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – currently no longer applicable – that required television stations to deal with issues in a fair and balanced way, and to present contrasting viewpoints and give them all some air time (but not necessarily equal air time). The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine.

Self-censorship

The FCC, when headed by Reagan appointees, abolished the policy because

the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters

and hence “chills speech” and violates the First Amendment. In order to avoid to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every story, some journalists will supposedly refrain from covering some stories. Hence you have a de facto, not de jure, limit on free speech resulting from self-censorship.

What scarcity?

Another reason given for abolishing the doctrine was that the “scarcity argument” is no longer valid. In the old days, when the number of media outlets was limited, the public couldn’t go elsewhere to find other viewpoints, and the Fairness Doctrine could be justified. Today, however, with the internet, blogosphere, cable and satellite television, this is no longer the case. If anything, there’s too much punditry.

Public support

There’s some truth in all of this, but still I think there are good reasons for reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

• First of all, the claim that it limits free speech is somewhat awkward. How can a rule that multiplies the number of views and arguments that are represented in the media, be called a limit on the freedom of speech? If journalists will not cover a topic in order to avoid having to go and find opposing views, than this is either because there are no opposing views (if there are, they will quickly assert themselves) or because the journalists are lazy. After all, why do we have Google?
• Secondly, there’s public support for the Fairness Doctrine. A recent poll by Scott Rasmussen asked whether the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of liberal and conservative political commentary. 47 percent said “yes”, 39 percent were opposed.
• Thirdly, the scarcity argument is still valid, albeit in another way. Sophisticated audiences, tech savvy, with knowledge of where to find information and enough spare time to do so, will not benefit from a reinstated Fairness Doctrine. They will make sure that they get their balanced information from different sources if one source isn’t balanced. But other people will benefit, in particular those who rely on one or a few media-outlets for their information. Some of these people may be burdened by low levels of education and poverty, and hence are especially vulnerable to the effects of one-sided reporting.
• And finally, it is common knowledge that the quality of public debate and information in the U.S. is not what it could be. What we hear and see on television, radio and the internet is often no more than shrill partisan shouting. The issues are oversimplified, nuances get lost, sound bites rule, and much of the time the really important issues are pushed back by sensational trivia or personal attacks. A requirement to air opposing views would temper this and would improve the quality of political debate.

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There’s a great clip of Jon Stewart appearing on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 and denouncing the current state of political debate (the program was dumped by CNN following Stewart’s criticism).  Check it out on Youtube here; it’s worth your time if you haven’t seen it yet. Here’s a transcript:

TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Welcome to CROSSFIRE. Less than three weeks before the election [of 2004, FS], we’re going to take a break from campaign politics, sort of. Joining us will be Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and co-author of a new best-seller entitled “America (The Book).”

PAUL BEGALA, CO-HOST: We will spend the next half-hour with the most trusted man in fake news. As both of our loyal viewers, of course, know, our show is about all left vs. white, black vs. white, paper vs. plastic, Red Sox against the Yankees. That’s why every day, we have two guests with their own unique perspective on the news. But today, CROSSFIRE is very difficult. We have just one guest.

JON STEWART: Thank you. Can I say something very quickly? Why do we have to fight? … I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America. … So I wanted to come here today and say… Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. … See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks. … You’re doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great. … It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. … You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one. …

Democracy rests on opinions: opinions of candidates on policies, opinions of the people on candidates and policies, opinions on proposed policies and on executed policies. It’s therefore of the utmost importance that these opinions have some kind of value and aren’t knee-jerk impulses, prejudices, intuitions based on personal attacks, etc. Only well-considered opinions are good opinions and well-considered opinions are those that are tested in discussion and that survive as many counter-arguments as possible (see here).

Clearly, the media have a responsibility in this respect and have to present the struggle between arguments. They shouldn’t just be the mouthpiece of one side of the argument. They are indeed the “fourth estate” and are necessary for the functioning of a democracy.

We shouldn’t forget that opinions are not readily available. They are the result of thinking, studying, deliberation and discussion. If we want the people to have opinions, and preferably well-considered opinions, then we have to create frameworks for debate. We shouldn’t allow democratic elections – or even opinion polls and referenda – to be a simple system for tapping opinions that aren’t based on debate, or that often don’t even exist as opinions when they have to be tapped.

More on the media here.

The Compatibility of Freedom and Equality (4): Freedom as Autonomy

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In the previous three post in this series, I looked at the contradictions between freedom and equality, and at one way in which to bridge these contradictions. More specifically, I examined the way in which limits on freedom can equalize freedom. However, I found that the problem of freedom and equality isn’t solved by limiting freedom, providing security and equalizing freedom. Notably the freedom of the poor and the freedom of those who, for one reason or another, don’t have a reasonable set of alternative options to choose from, are still very unequal kinds of freedom. Limiting the freedom of others doesn’t help these people.

I also stated that freedom defind as the absence of coercion and the ability to do as you want – limited of course by some restrictions imposed by the state so as to ensure that the freedom of one doesn’t harm the freedom of another – does to some extent equalize freedom, but not the freedom of the poor and the freedom of those with a limited set of choices. Another problem is that it is essentially an anti-political freedom. The state is not a place of freedom; the state is a set of institutions which limit freedom.

However, it is my view that the state can be a place of freedom if we understand freedom in another way. Democratic political participation in the decisions of the state (especially on a local level) can be a source of freedom; freedom not necessarily in the sense of the ability to do as you want, but freedom in the sense of autonomy.

Autonomy in this context must be understood as the ability of a group of people, living together, to participate equally in deliberations, and to come to an agreement (by majority vote for instance) on certain matters that shape their living together. It is a more communal and less individualistic notion than the ability to do as you like, since it requires political self-government through democratic participation. It is also closely related to equality since the right to participation is an equal right and the adequate functioning of the decision-taking process requires equal attention to all arguments and alternatives.

Autonomy does not result from the isolated exercise of an individual will outside of state control.  Similar to freedom as self-development – see the previous post in this series – autonomy is mediated through life in a community. Freedom as self-development means that you can only do as you like when you know about the options and when the options appear in public debates, in education and in other circumstance that require a community. Freedom as autonomy profits from the same kind of debate. The advantage of debate in this case is not the clarification and expansion of choice as a precondition of real freedom of choice, but a better decision on things that are common to a group of people.

Autonomy is not a freedom outside of the state. It is necessarily a part of it and cannot survive without it. Autonomy is a kind of self-government. It’s a community that determines the social conditions in which it lives. People usually engage in self-government within some form of state institutions, local or even national. By determining the structures, laws and rules which govern their lives, people govern themselves. So we see that freedom and the state are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Check out this post for the rest of the argument.