Democracy and the Consent of the Governed

In one line

Democracy is the arrangement by which the people authorise those who govern them and can remove them, and an election performs that function only if the voter knows what they are choosing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: democracy rests on the principle that the authority of government derives from the consent of the governed; since actual consent to the state was never given, the institutions of a democracy supply a continuing substitute for it, through periodic elections on a universal adult franchise, freedom of speech and association, the availability of an alternative government, and the right of the voter to information about those seeking their vote; and the legitimacy of a democratic government rests on the operation of those institutions rather than on any original act of agreement.

The word, and the two questions

Democracy is from the Greek demos, the people, and kratos, rule: rule by the people.

Two questions have to be separated, and most confusion about democracy comes from running them together.

Who rules? The people, in some sense that has to be specified.

How do the people rule? Directly, or through representatives who are chosen and can be removed.

The forms

Direct democracy. The people themselves decide, in an assembly or by referendum. Rousseau at chapter 330 regarded this as the only genuine form, because sovereignty cannot be represented. It is possible in a small community and, in a modern state, only for particular questions.

Representative democracy. The people choose those who decide, at intervals, and may remove them. This is what every large modern democracy is.

Participatory democracy. Representative institutions supplemented by direct participation in decisions that affect people locally, which is what chapter 920's Gram Sabha is.

Deliberative democracy. The emphasis on the quality of the reasoning that precedes the decision rather than only on the counting of preferences.

How consent operates in a democracy

Chapter 340 concluded that actual consent to the state cannot be found, that tacit consent is a weak inference, and that hypothetical consent is not consent. Democracy's answer is institutional: it replaces an original act of agreement with a continuing process that performs the same functions.

Authorisation. An election confers a mandate to govern for a term. It is not agreement with each measure; it is authorisation of a body to decide.

Accountability. The government must return and ask again, which is the mechanism that consent alone could never supply, because a person who has agreed once cannot withdraw the agreement.

Removal without violence. The single greatest practical achievement of democracy, and the one that most deserves emphasis: governments are changed without anybody being killed.

Participation between elections. Speech, assembly, association, petition, litigation and the press, which allow the governed to press their views continuously.