Democracy Flashcards
(46 cards)
What does democracy mean?
‘Rule by the people’
(Demos + kratos)
What is a theocracy?
A religious or monarchic dictatorship.
What is an oligarchy?
A state ruled by a small set of elites.
What is an epistocracy?
A state ruled by experts, or the wisest person/group.
What is a strength of epistocracies?
We normally consult experts on complex political decisions, rather than ordinary citizens.
What is a weakness of epistocracies?
Educated experts have biases that go against the ordinary person’s interests.
Describe Wollheim’s Paradox of Democracy
Say you’re a democrat. You’re voting on some policy, and you have to choose between options A and B. You choose A, and endorse its implementation, so vote A. However, the outcome of the vote is B. (The majority of votes were for B). Because you are a democrat, it seems that if you uphold the notion of democracy you are committed to the belief that A should be the case (you endorsed it) but also that B should be the case (because that’s the majority vote). But they can’t both be the case.
What is Walzer’s response to Wollheim’s supposed paradox?
Walzer says that there’s no paradox, there’s no incoherence. He argues that Wollheim takes the notion of ‘right’ in an unusual way. The central notion of democracy is that the people get to rule, not because of what they know, or whether they’re wise or objectively correct, but rather because of who they are. The people who have to live under the rules are those who get to make the rules. And if the law if going to bind them as free people, then it has to be their law. They get to make decisions not because they’re right but rather because it’s their decision to make. We are committed to the democratic vote in the end, because the people get to make their decision.
What are instrumental arguments about democracy?
They are arguments that investigate democracy as a means to another end, e.g. ‘we want democracy in so far as it helps us get something else that’s valuable.’
What does Rousseau say about democracy?
You can be free, and you can be governed, but only if you’re governed by laws you make yourself.
What is a strength of the democratic political state?
The political state involves the civil service, military, police etc. and keeps going regardless of what government changes occur. The state remains in place. If we just had a system of monarchy, then as the change of rule occurs, the state itself would be unstable. So having a democracy in place helps offer stability.
What does Sen say about democracy?
He notes that you don’t get famines in democracies. People think that famines are to do with crop yields and whether - things beyond our control. But they’re actually about whether outside people ignore it. Within a democracy, the government wants to be re-elected - they only keep their place that way - so the people’s interests are at the forefront. To get support, you have to be accountable for what goes on through things like free press who report on famines etc. It reports these things, so we know about it; there’s a certain demand for transparency. This keeps the government from ignoring what’s going on in other places.
Expound Condorcet’s Jury Theorem
1) Democracy has an epistemic value since these procedurse produce good outcomes.
2) If the average voter has a greater likelihood of being right rather than wrong (e.g. a better than 0.5 chance of being right), then the majority is more likely to be right than the minority.
3) The larger the voting cohort, the greater the likelihood that the majority will be right.
4) In very large cohorts, the majority’s being right becomes extremely likely.
What is the problem with Condorcet’s Jury Theorem?
The majority may be biased, e.g. racist and thus believe themselves to be right.
What does Mill say about democracy?
He sees it as good for us; it exposes us to other people’s arguments and opinions and forces us to discuss with people who aren’t like us. It forces us to compromise. For Mill, we need democracy not just for its results, but also for producing better citizens.
What is the problem with Mill’s view of democracy?
Sharing our ideas with others who disagree may just incite violence and encourage people to learn how to disagree more vociferously.
What is democracy?
A system of politics in which ultimate power lies with each and every individual citizen equally, whereby political institutions and the people who work in them are accountable to the people.
What is wrong with democracy according to Plato and Aristotle?
It is based on the false notion that people are equally fit to rule.
What is the tyranny of the majority?
The problem that, in a democracy, only the majority counts, and the majority can act unjustly such that minority groups can’t influence policy and the minority lacks freedom.
What is Rousseau’s argument in defence of democracy?
Self-rule is the only way in which we can both be governed and free in some sense. Democratic forms of government enable us to hold the government to account which is a way of protecting our freedoms.
What is a non-instrumental argument from political equality?
One person, one vote: if you see democracy as embodying political equality, then we must think about how the people should rule, and one person one vote ensures no-one’s voice is weighted more than any other.
What may be a problem with one person, one vote?
One may wish for the best and wisest to rise to the top, such that they are given more votes to minimise the role of the uneducated. Or it could be argued that diverse voices should have weighted votes if a policy particularly affects them. What this shows, though, is that just because you’re a proponent of democracy, doesn’t mean you necessarily care about political equality.
Why might one person one vote discourage voting?
I might think my vote doesn’t really count because I know I live in a constituency where 75% of the vote is not in my favour, so my vote doesn’t make any affect. If we are in a position where those in government can redraw the boundaries of constituencies, then there’s the potential for political inequality.
Why might voting be anti-democratic?
Because voting involves selecting the best, or picking out the favourite etc. What’s really democratic, it could be argued, and that really embodies the notion of political equality is something like a lottery, whereby any one of us could rule. And as long as the seat rotates, we won’t have disparities in political level. Everyone is one and the same.
