Conditions For The Success Of The Democratic Method

If a physicist observes that the same mechanism works differently at different times and places, he concludes that its functioning depends on extraneous conditions.

These conditions are as it was to see what the conditions were under which the classical doctrine of democracy might be expected to fit reality to an acceptable degree.

This conclusion definitely commits us to that strictly, relativist view that has been indicated all along.

Exactly as there is no case for or against socialism at all times and in all places, so there is no absolutely general case for or against the democratic method. And exactly as with socialism, this makes it difficult to argue by means of a ceteris paribus clause, for “other things” cannot be equal as between situations in which democracy is a workable, or the only workable, arrangement and situations in which it is not.

Democracy thrives in social patterns that display certain characteristics and it might well be doubted whether there is any sense in asking how it would fare in others that lack those characteristics—or how the people in those other patterns would fare with it. The conditions which I hold must be fulfilled for the democratic method to be a success 5 —in societies in which it is possible for it to work at all—I shall group under four headings; and I shall confine myself to the great industrial nations of the modern type.

The first condition is that the human material of politics—the people who man the party machines, are elected to serve in parliament, rise to cabinet office—should be of sufficiently high quality. This means more than that individuals of adequate ability and moral character must exist in sufficient numbers. As has been pointed out before, the democratic method selects not simply from the population but only from those elements of the population that are available for the political vocation or, more precisely, that offer themselves for election. All methods of selection do this of course. All of them therefore may, according to the degree to which a given vocation attracts talent and character, produce in it a level of performance that is above or below the national average. But the competitive struggle for responsible office is, on the one hand, wasteful of personnel and energy. On the other hand, the democratic process may easily create conditions in the political sector that, once established, will repel most of the men who can make a success at anything else. For both these reasons, adequacy of material is particularly important for the success of democratic government. It is not true that in a democracy people always have the kind and quality of government they want or merit.

There may be many ways in which politicians of sufficiently good quality can be secured. Thus far however, experience seems to suggest that the only effective guarantee is in the existence of a social stratum, itself a product of a severely selective process, that takes to politics as a matter of course. If such a stratum be neither too exclusive nor too easily accessible for the outsider and if it be strong enough to assimilate most of the elements it currently absorbs, it not only will present for the political career products of stocks that have successfully passed many tests in other fields—served, as it were, an apprenticeship in private affairs—but it will also increase their fitness by endowing them with traditions that embody experience, with a professional code and with a common fund of views.

It is hardly mere coincidence that England, which is the only country to fulfill our condition completely, is also the only country to have a political society in this sense. Still more instructive is the case of Germany in the period of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). As I hope to show in Part V, there was nothing about the German politicians of that period that would ordinarily be considered a glaring defect. The average member of parliament and the average prime and cabinet minister were honest, reasonable and conscientious. This applies to all parties. However, with due respect for the sprinkling of talent that showed here and there, though rarely in a position of or near high command, it must be added that most of them were distinctly below par, in some cases pitifully so. Obviously this cannot have been due to any lack of ability and energy in the nation as a whole. But ability and energy spurned the political career. And there was no class or group whose members looked upon politics as their predestined career. That political system missed fire for many reasons. But the fact that eventually it met smashing defeat at the hands of an anti- democratic leader is nevertheless indicative of the lack of inspiring democratic leadership

The second condition for the success of democracy is that the effective range of political decision should not be extended too far. How far it can be extended depends not only on the general limitations of the democratic method which follow from the analysis presented in the preceding section but also on the particular circumstances of each individual case. To put this more concretely: the range does not only depend, for instance, on the kind and quantity of matters that can be successfully handled by a government subject to the strain of an incessant struggle for its political life; it also depends, at any given time and place, on the quality of the men who form that government and on the type of political machine and the pattern of public opinion they have to work with. From the standpoint of our theory of democracy it is not necessary to require, as it would be from the standpoint of the classical theory, that only such matters should be dealt with by the political apparatus which the people at large can fully understand and have a serious opinion about.

But a less exacting requirement of the same nature still imposes itself. It calls for additional comment. Of course there cannot be any legal limits to what a parliament, led by the prime minister, might subject to its decision, if need be, by means of a constitutional amendment. But, so Edmund Burke argued in discussing the behavior of the English government and Parliament with respect to the American colonies, in order to function properly that all-powerful parliament must impose limits upon itself. Similarly we may argue that, even within the range of matters that have to be submitted to parliamentary vote, it is often necessary for government and parliament to pass measures on which their decision is purely formal or, at most, of a purely supervisory nature. Otherwise the democratic method may turn out legislative freaks. Take for instance the case of so bulky and so technical a measure as a criminal code. The democratic method will apply to the question whether or not a country is to have such a codification at all. It will also apply to certain “issues” that the government may choose to select for political decision which is more than formal—for instance, whether certain practices of labor or employers’ associations should or should not be considered criminal. But for the rest, government and parliament will have to accept the specialists’ advice whatever they may think themselves. For crime is a complex phenomenon. The term in fact covers many phenomena that have very little in common. Popular slogans about it are almost invariably wrong. And a rational treatment of it requires that legislation in this matter should be protected from both the fits of vindictiveness and the fits of sentimentality in which the laymen in the government and in the parliament are alternatingly prone to indulge. This is what I meant to convey by stressing the limitations upon the effective range of political decision—the range within which politicians decide in truth as well as in form.

Again, the condition in question can indeed be fulfilled by a corresponding limitation of the activities of the state. But it would be a serious misunderstanding if the reader thought that such a limitation is necessarily implied. Democracy does not require that every function of the state be subject to its political method. For instance, in most democratic countries a large measure of independence from political agencies is granted to the judges. Another instance is the position held by the Bank of England until 1914. Some of its functions were in fact of a public nature. Nevertheless these functions were vested with what legally was just a business corporation that was sufficiently independent of the political sector to have a policy of its own. Certain federal agencies in this country are other cases in point.

The Interstate Commerce Commission embodies an attempt to extend the sphere of public authority without extending the sphere of political decision. Or, to present still another example, certain of our states finance state universities “without any strings,” that is to say, without interfering with what in some cases amounts to practically complete autonomy.

Thus, almost any type of human affairs may conceivably be made to enter the sphere of the state without becoming part of the material of the competitive struggle for political leadership beyond what is implied in passing the measure that grants the power and sets up the agency to wield it and the contact that is implied in the government’s role of general supervisor. It is of course true that this supervision may degenerate into vitiating influence. The politician’s power to appoint the personnel of non- political public agencies, if remorselessly used, will often suffice in itself to corrupt them. But that does not affect the principle in question.

As a third condition, democratic government in modern industrial society must be able to command, for all purposes the sphere of public activity is to include—no matter whether this be much or little—the services of a well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strong sense of duty and a no less strong esprit de corps. Such a bureaucracy is the main answer to the argument about government by amateurs. Potentially it is the only answer to the question so often heard in this country: democratic politics has proved itself unable to produce decent city government; how can we expect the nation to fare if everything, eventually including the whole of the productive process, is to be handed over to it?

Finally, it is also the principal answer to the question about how our second condition can be fulfilled 6 whenever the sphere of public control is wide.

It is not enough that the bureaucracy should be efficient in current administration and competent to give advice. It must also be strong enough to guide and, if need be, to instruct the politicians who head the ministries. In order to be able to do this it must be in a position to evolve principles of its own and sufficiently independent to assert them. It must be a power in its own right. This amounts to saying that in fact though not in form appointment, tenure and promotion must depend largely—within civil service rules that politicians hesitate to violate—on its own corporate opinion in spite of all the clamor that is sure to arise whenever politicians or the public find themselves crossed by it as they frequently must.

Again, as in the case of the personnel of politics, the question of the available human material is all-important. Training though essential is quite secondary to this. And again, both requisite material and the traditional code necessary for the functioning of an official class of this kind can be most easily secured if there is a social stratum of adequate quality and corresponding prestige that can. be drawn upon for recruits— not too rich, not too poor, not too exclusive, not too accessible.

The bureaucracies of Europe, in spite of the fact that they have drawn enough hostile criticism to blur their records, ex-emplify very well what I am trying to convey. They are the product of a long development that started with the ministeriales of medieval magnates (originally serfs selected for administrative and military purposes who thereby acquired the status of petty nobles) and went on through the centuries until the powerful engine emerged which we behold today. It cannot be created in a hurry. It cannot be “hired” with money. But it grows everywhere, whatever the political method a nation may adopt. Its expansion is the one certain thing about our future.

The fourth set of conditions may be summed up in the phrase Democratic Self-control. Everybody will of course agree that the democratic method cannot work smoothly unless all the groups that count in a nation are willing to accept any legislative measure as long as it is on the statute book and all executive orders issued by legally competent authorities. But democratic self- control implies much more than this.

Above all, electorates and parliaments must be on an intellectual and moral level high enough to be proof against the offerings of the crook and the crank, or else men who are neither will be driven into the ways of both. Moreover, miscarriages that will discredit democracy and undermine allegiance to it may also occur if measures are passed without regard to the claims of others or to the national situation. The individual proposals for legislative reform or executive action must, as it were, be content to stand in an orderly breadline; they must not attempt to rush the shop. Recalling what has been said in the preceding chapter about the modus operandi of the democratic method, the reader will realize that this involves a lot of voluntary subordination. In particular, politicians in parliament must resist the temptation to upset or embarrass the government each time they could do so. No successful policy is possible if they do this. This means that the supporters of the government must accept its lead and allow it to frame and act upon a program and that the opposition should accept the lead of the “shadow cabinet” at its head and allow it to keep political warfare within certain rules. Fulfillment of this requirement, habitual violation of which spells the beginning of the end of a democracy, will be seen to call for just the right amount—not too much, not too little—of traditionalism. To protect this traditionalism is in fact one of the purposes for which rules of parliamentary procedure and etiquette exist.

The voters outside of parliament must respect the division of labor between themselves and the politicians they elect. They must not withdraw confidence too easily between elections and they must understand that, once they have elected an individual, political action is his business and not theirs. This means that they must refrain from instructing him about what he is to do—a principle that has indeed been universally recognized by constitutions and political theory ever since Edmund Burke’s time. But its implications are not generally understood. On the one hand, few people realize that this principle clashes with the classical doctrine of democracy and really spells its abandonment. For if the people are to rule in the sense of deciding individual issues, what could be more natural for them to do than to issue instructions to their representatives as the voters for the French States- General did in and before 1789? On the other hand, it is still less recognized that if the principle be accepted, not only instructions as formal as those French cahiers but also less formal attempts at restricting the freedom of action of members of parliament—the practice of bombarding them with letters and telegrams for instance—ought to come under the same ban. We cannot enter into the various delicate problems which this raises concerning the true nature of democracy as defined by us. All that matters here is that successful democratic practice in great and complicated societies has invariably been hostile to political back-seat driving—to the point of resorting to secret diplomacy and lying about intentions and commitments—and that it takes a lot of self-control on the part of the citizen to refrain from it.

Finally, effective competition for leadership requires a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion. It has been pointed out before that this tolerance never is and never can be absolute. But it must be possible for every would-be leader who is not lawfully excluded to present his case without producing disorder. And this may imply that people stand by patiently while somebody is attacking their most vital interests or offending their most cherished ideals—or as an alternative, that the would-be leader who holds such views restrains himself correspondingly. Neither is possible without genuine respect for the opinions of one’s fellow citizens amounting to a willingness to subordinate one’s own opinions.

Every system can stand deviating practice to a certain extent. But even the necessary minimum of democratic self-control evidently requires a national character and national habits of a certain type which have not everywhere had the opportunity to evolve and which the democratic method itself cannot be relied on to produce. And nowhere will that self- control stand tests beyond a varying degree of severity. In fact the reader need only review our conditions in order to satisfy himself that democratic government will work to full advantage only if all the interests that matter are practically unanimous not only in their allegiance to the country but also in their allegiance to the structural principles of the existing society. Whenever these principles are called in question and issues arise that rend a nation into two hostile camps, democracy works at a disadvantage. And it may cease to work at all as soon as interests and ideals are involved on which people refuse to compromise.

This may be generalized to read that the democratic method will be at a disadvantage in troubled times. In fact, democracies of all types recognize with practical unanimity that there are situations in which it is reasonable to abandon competitive and to adopt monopolistic leadership. In ancient Rome a non-elective office conferring such a monopoly of leadership in emergencies was provided for by the constitution. The incumbent was called magister populi or dictator. Similar provisions are known to practically all constitutions, our own included: the President of the United States acquires in certain conditions a power that makes him to all intents and purposes a dictator in the Roman sense, however great the differences are both in legal construction and in practical details. If the monopoly is effectively limited either to a definite time (as it originally was in Rome) or to the duration of a definite short-run emergency, the democratic principle of competitive leadership is merely suspended. If the monopoly, either in law or in fact, is not limited as to time—and if not limited as to time it will of course tend to become unlimited as to everything else—the democratic principle is abrogated and we have the case of dictatorship in the present-day sense. 7