A familiar question - I mean my headline, not the cartoon. I don't intend to answer it. My title comes from In a democracy, when and where should majorities rule? (via X) which is an actual real paper by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. I'm not going to review it properly either. I did kinda skim it, but I think that really what they've done is a fairly std.tactic: arrange a set of ostensibly-neutral criteria in order to arrive at the answer they want. In reality, I don't think there's any such objective criteria. Instead, it is very much a matter of give-n-take, as well - most importantly - as a matter of history; in most places the rules are, correctly, not easily changable.If you'd like to read me advising you not to fetishise democracy, then see Aristotle's politics which also discusses balancing O[M|D]OV; or just read Popper telling you that democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Two views of democracy is also worth reading, or so I tell myself.
Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson discusses Majoritarianism vs Constitutionalism.
Seguing on from there (yes this is one of those posts where I dump a pile of links I've been accumulating) is Why Is Democracy Tolerable? Evidence from Affluence and Influence. That's from Bryan Caplan in 2012 but recently reposted. The core of it is Democracy has a strong tendency to simply supply the policies favored by the rich. When the poor, the middle class, and the rich disagree, American democracy largely ignores the poor and the middle class. To avoid misinterpretation, this does not mean that American democracy has a strong tendency to supply the policies that most materially benefit the rich. It doesn’t. Gilens, like all well-informed political scientists, knows that self-interest has little effect on public opinion. Neither does this mean that Americans strongly object to the policy status quo. They don’t, because poor, middle class, and rich tend to agree. Gilens’ key conclusion is simply that when rich and poor happen to disagree, the rich generally get their way. BC finds some comfort in that, because Democracies listen to the relatively libertarian rich far more than they listen to the absolutely statist non-rich.
Finally, one of the elements of the paper I started with is - if I recall - some kind of pean to the virtues of proportional representation on the grounds that it allows you to exclude the "far right" (though I think that in an effort to appear neutral they probably phrase it differently). Which I think is iffy; because one of the virtues of having parties in power is the electors get to see what a bunch of clueless clowns they are. If you persistently exclude them it looks - and is - anti-democratic1, but it also allows them to keep going "but it would be so much better if we were in charge", and allows their supporters to believe the same. As the Austrians amongst others are finding out (more).
Notes
1. I'm not a strong democrat, so you could say this is rich coming from me; but the point is that the people saying it are, hence look like a bunch of hypocrites. Which of course they are, but normally they try to hide that. 2025/05: RH has a yes-its-fine-to-suppress-wackos post: No, You Don't Get to Elect the Microchips in Soda Guy; Limits on democracy are necessary. But I'm doubtful.
Refs
* For those still wondering, Biden confirms that he is senile (a politer comment), and Harris that she is an NPC.
* Trump's Attempt to Usurp Congress's Spending Power - is he spinning out of control or is this just a bit of flailing around? - but that one at least didn't last long.
* Climate Change in the Courts: A 2024 Retrospective Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
* Throw Biden under the bus - even the faithful are falling, although not far enough.
* The Republican Party is doomed - a while ago, but illustrates the problems the R's have if all the folk in actual charge are Progressive.
* Apology for a Trainwreck - Bryan Caplan, the ethnographies of Oscar Lewis paint a bleak picture of lower-class life. And Who's Afraid of Oscar Lewis?
