Democracy

Democracy

Democracy is both a sacred and a promiscuous word. We all love her but we see her differently. She is hard to pin down. Everyone claims her but no one can possess or even name her fully. To give any definition for a class to learn would not be particularly democratic. To have any open-ended discussion about possible meanings could be reasonably democratic. Like ‘Britishness’ it is more a matter of recognizable behaviour over time than of definitive definition for a precise cur-ricular moment. Besides, definitions don't settle arguments. ‘Democracy’ can suggest certain institutional arrangements or it can suggest authorities or individuals behaving in a democratic manner. To some it means that the will of the majority must prevail; but to many others it is simply a synonym for good or just government - which may some have to contradict and restrain majority opinion. Not every decision can be judged by whether it is reached democratically or not. BBC news programmes, in the UK, ask listeners to send in their opinion on road-pricing for motor vehicles or on the provision of a super-expensive new drug in the National Health Service, but this is an illusion of democracy, perhaps better called populism. Representative government is best conducted as dialogue and mediation between opinion and knowledge, popular majorities and elected minorities.

A moment's thought or reading a short book could remind us why the concept, while so important, is yet so often so confusing, even sometimes dangerously misleading (Crick, 2002). Some world leaders recently assumed that if an oppressive and intolerant autocracy was destroyed, democracy would automatically follow. But the concept that we take so much for granted has had, at its best, an essential historical and logical precondition: the idea of politics itself, practised in what we would regard as pre-democratic societies; politics as a willingness both to offer and to accept compromises binding on both governments and majorities.

Historically ‘democracy’ has had four broad usages, each of which can be invoked as the real meaning even today. History is not a dead past but conditions how we understand the present and the future. There are no real meanings, only different usages of concepts; some more acceptable than others, some less self-contradictory or more compatible with others. The report that led to citizenship becoming a compulsory part of the national curriculum in England was titled Education for Citizenship and the[Page 14]Teaching of Democracy in Schools (Advisory Group, 1998); but noticeably offered no explicit definition or even extended discussion of ‘democracy’; rather it chose to concentrate on ‘citizenship’, especially active not just good citizenship, ‘participation’, ‘rights and responsibilities’.

The first historical usage is found in Plato's attack on democracy and in Aristotle's highly qualified defence: democracy is simply, in the Greek, demos (the many, or more often invidiously ‘the mob’) and cracy, meaning rule. Plato attacked democracy as being the rule of the poor and ignorant over the educated and the knowledgeable, ideally philosophers. His fundamental distinction was between knowledge and opinion: democracy is rule, or rather the anarchy, of mere opinion. Even in modern times this view has some resonance. Beatrice Webb, a democratic socialist, once said ‘democracy is not the multiplication of ignorant opinions’. Aristotle modified Plato's view rather than rejecting it utterly: good government was a mixture of elements, the educated few ruling with the consent of the many. The few should have ‘aristoi’ or the principle of excellence from which the highly idealized concept of aristocracy derives. But many more can qualify for citizenship by virtue of some education and some property (both of which he thought necessary conditions for citizenship), and so must be consulted and can, indeed, on occasion be promoted to office. He did not call his ‘best possible’ state democracy, rather politea or polity, a political or civic community of citizens deciding on common action by public debate. But democracy could be the next best thing in practice if it observed ‘ruling and being ruled in turn’. As a principle unchecked, by aristocratic experience and knowledge democracy was a fallacy: ‘that because men are equal in some things, they are equal in all’. The citizen class in Athens in the 5th century BC excluded women, the propertyless, foreigners and there were slaves. Citizens were a minority but they made decisions by public debate, chose officials by vote or by lot, and had forcibly resisted and overthrown rule by tyrants or narrow oligarchies (Farrar, 1988).

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