Exactly Why Should the Majority Rule?

Unlike many concepts in political theory, such as liberty or justice, democracy is easy to define. It denotes government by the majority, whether directly or indirectly. In the present essay, I shall restrict the discussion to government in control of a reasonably large territory. This restriction leads to, but perhaps does not entail, a further limitation. The type of government I shall endeavor to discuss is a variety of indirect democracy, i.e., a representative democracy, as in the United States and Great Britain, where the national legislature is popularly elected. Representative democracy is not the only conceivable sort of indirect democracy: imagine, e.g., a system in which the people by plebiscite can veto laws but only a non-elected body can propose them. Nevertheless, it is the system of government most frequently commended to all and sundry.

Though it is easy to characterize democracy, recent political theory has been marked by a conspicuous omission. Virtually no argument is ever offered to support the desirability of representative democracy, and the little that is available seems distressingly weak. Why ought democracy to be either instituted or promoted, let alone exported, as a recent book by Joshua Muravchik (Exporting Democracy) advocates? One would think that as important a question as that of the best political system would have generated an enormous literature. In point of fact, most writing on the subject simply takes for granted the desirability of democracy and inquires how existing democracies may be improved. The issue of whether democracy is a “good thing” is not thought worth raising.

More