SOSC 3630 Democracy
and Democratization
Around the World
Lecture 1
Prof. Wenkai He
hewenkai@ust.hk
The changing meaning and
significance of democracy
• Democracy by the early 20th century has a negative implication:
• The value of democracy can only be achieved in a mixed political system: Aristotle, for example.
• The non-democratic elements in a mixed political system: aristocrats or elites
• The tension between elites and the majority as a crucial concern
• The tension between liberalism and democracy in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century
• Liberalism emphasized individual rights and freedom, including the freedom from the majority:
• The dominance of liberal democracy as an ideology after WWII and especially after the end of Cold
War in 1990.
• Is democracy becoming an ideology? Or shall we take it as a normative idea that can be debated in reasonably and
intelligent ways?
Democratization: A transition from
non-democracy to democracy
• Democracy is applied to the state, not any community or organization
• In fully democratic countries, there are still many organizations and community that are not managed in
democratic manner: company for example.
• The relationship between democracy and organizations, and the state?
• Non-democracy: a large varieties of political system
• One can find democratically managed organizations in non-democratic state
• The transition from non-democracy to democracy:
• Normative perspectives: the morally right thing or good in itself.
• Empirical perspectives: under what conditions it would happen, even though you think it is not a good; under
what conditions it would not happen, even though you think it is a good.
Democracy in the age of
sovereignty of the people
• The establishment of the sovereignty of the people in the 19th century.
• The extension of voting rights and the expansion of the electorate was gradual yet irreversible: first universal male suffrage and later
universal suffrage.
• Meanwhile, the government administration became more specialized and complicated due to the complexity in society and economy.
• What can democracy do to the modern capitalistic economy?
• Would the majority principle of democracy allow the working class and lower middle class to dominate the decision making process?
• How could the ruling elites, either intellectual or judicial elites, justify their efforts to constain or tame the power of popular
democracy by such proposal as proportional representation, plural voting, or an Upper House of educated and intellectual elite
representatives?
• Did the elites possess any special capacities in understanding what the common good or public good of a nation-
state, which the majority ordinary electors did not have?
Democracy or Polyarchy:
Contestation and Participation
• Contestation to political power: the power to use coercion to people
• No contestation:
• Limited contestation: competition within a few ruling elites or the limited suffrage
• Full contestation: democracy with universal suffrage
• Participation: Ordinary citizen’s right to participate into the process of political contestation:
• Participation in what forms? Petition, protest, or rebellion?
• Participation in the form of voting: meaningful or not?
• Two by Two matrix: Contestation in the Y axis and Participation in the X axis.
• Implications to understanding the transition to democracy?
The judicial quasi-guardianship and
the democratic process in the USA
• The judicial quasi-guardianship: such as the Supreme Court that can veto laws made by the elected representatives
in legislature
• Elites with expertise legal training, skill and experience in interpreting laws.
• The Chief Justices in the Supreme Court are not democratically elected and often have long and even permanent tenure once being
appointed.
• The use of majority rule among the seven or nine Chief Justices of the Supreme Court is in nature different from the majority rule
in popular democratic process.
• According to Tocqueville, the judges as the elites in a democratic society can serve as the bank against the current of majority
decision or the current of democratic will of the people.
• Why do we have to believe that the decision made by the small number of judges can serve the common good than
the decision made by the people in democratic decision?
• What if the majority view in the Supreme Court goes agaisnt the majority or even super majority view of the people? [example?:
gay marriage? Abortion issue?]
Political participation and the
development of human faculties and
political equality
• The principle of political equality: every citizens are free equals who have equal primary political rights: the
right to self-preservation, property, enjoyment of property, and the right to develop the human faculties.
• Univeral suffrage and one-vote-one-citizen express such political equality.
• Inequality in economic resouces, natural talent, as well as different intension or willingness to decide
which dimention of human faculties to develop.
• One has freedom and autonomy to decide the life that she or he prefers to live: not everyone would like to devote the
time and efforts to become educational or intellectual elites.
• Any difference between the intellectual faculties and moral faculties?
• For John Stuart Mill: “The private money-getting occupation of almost every one is … mechanical and routine, which
brings but few of his faculties into action.”
• Political participation brings them to actively use the human faculties in issues related to public interest, ranging from
local to national.
Elites and democracy in modern
society
• The administration of government demands expertise knowledge and experience that not every citizen
would possess the required abilities to understand, or would want to possess as a matter of individual
autonomous choice.
• Not every intelligent citizen wants to become civil servants or professional politicians.
• Each individual has freedom to decide how to develop her/his intellectual faculties
• The process of legislation is also highly complicated and not every citizen would have ability or willingness or
time to follow in great details.
• Citizens have their respective careers and they do not have the necessary time and energy to follow the deliberation
process in legislature.
• They cannot be forced to be educated by the “elites” representatives elected to legislature.
• Yet government policies and laws passed by the legislature have huge impacts on citizens’ life.
Common good in theories of
democracy and non-democracy
• Common good is an important concept in theories of democracy and non-democracy ever since Plato and
Aristotle.
• Plato: the philosopher-king has the wisdom to understand the common good of a political community.
• Aristotle: the common good of a community is closely tied to the good of individual citizen (perfection)
• The republican tradition: it is a duty and virtue of the citizen to participate into public affairs to promote the
common good.
• Locke: individual citzen’s voluntary consent to contribute taxes for the public good
• Rousseau: the general will is to serve the general good or public good of a political community
• Mill: intellectual elites could “educate” common citizens to better understand the public good
Common good, equality, and
individual freedom
• Is common good something independent of the democratic decision process?
• If the philosopher-king, or the elite ruling class, or the pioneers of the proletariat, have the wisdom to
know the common good as a truth, then there is no need to have democracy.
• Participation in such an elite authoritarian regime is simply the participation to be instructed or educated.
• Individual self-governance or freedom would be seriously constrained, if not completely abolished in this
situation.
• Democracy as an instrument only: common good as an outcome from the democratic
decision-making process in which every citizen has the equal rights to participate through
regular and competitive elections?
• Is the good of the majority necessarily the common good?
Schumpeter’s rejection of common
good in a complext modern society
• Common good is only meaningful to a small community: the scope of common then is quite
limited, which cannot be extended to a state with large territory and population.
• Conflicts of interests among citizens: between the rich and the poor.
• Conflicts over short-run interests and long-run interests even among the same segment or the same class of
society.
• Such different conceptions of interests would not be settled through rational deliberation among citizens: “our
conceptions of what life and what society should be … are beyond the range of mere logic.”
• Individual citizen’s conceptions and understanding of what happiness or satisfaction is are also different,
which makes it meaningless to talk about maxization of aggregate happiness
• A fundamental fact: “to different individuals and groups the common good is bound to mean different things.”
Common good as an unanimous
agreement in the capitalistic
economy?
• Such conceived common good must be a very thin concept
• Basic livelihood being protected: minimal social welfare.
• Basic rights to education: ranging from primary schools, to middle schools, and even colleges, no further extension to
graduate education for example.
• The rule of law and the legal protection of property rights: the arbitration of disputes over wages or working
conditions between workers and employers settled in the court rather than settled by the democratic decision
process.
• Pluralism is not necessarily the means to attain common good at the national level
• Individual citizens in a pluralist society enjoys the freedom to form various kinds of associations to advance the
“common good” shared by members in each association.
• Yet such associational activities would not contribute to an agreement of common good at the national level.
Common good in regard to national
issues?
• “there are many national issues that concern individuals and groups so directly and unmistakably as to
evoke volitions that are genuine and definite enough. “money and taxation” yet on these issues, classical
democracy theory does not work either: selfish interests prevails, short-run rationality prevails.”
• “This reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary
citizen’s ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything
more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political
walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations.”
• “All of this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance
will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct.”
• Then why not an elitist meritocratic government with no popular democracy at the national level? Only
political participation at the local level.
Common good and
democratization?
• Is there a concept of common good in a non-democratic political system?
• No:
• Yes: How could a non-democratic state have a concept of common good?
• Do we need the concept of common good in democracy?
• No: the minimalist concept of democracy only emphasize the procedure value of democracy: competitive and free elections
to determine the leader.
• Yes: Democracy is not simply an instrument or procedure, but aims to achieve certain substantive goals such as equality.
• Implications to the study of democratic transition:
• From a non-democracy without common good to a democracy also without common good?
• From a non-democracy with common good to a democracy without common good?
Requirements and grading
• Course participation (10%): class attendance and participation in class discussion.
• Writing assignment in the form of three shorter responses to weekly assigned
readings (30%):
• A response should be 2-3 pages, which critically evaluate the reading in one week. You need to
examine how the author justify the argument by empirical evidence.
• You can choose to write the fourth response if you are not satisfied with the grade in the
previous three responses, and the lowest grade will be dropped. If you receive three A in
responses, then no need to write the fourth one.
• One final term paper (60%)
