Richard Rorty, 1931–2007, was a fairly prominent Left-Liberal American philosopher. He saw himself as a pragmatist and a disciple of John Dewey and is known for promoting wide-ranging relativist views. In particular, Rorty rejected the existence of transcendent truths that can serve as the goals of scientific inquiry, philosophy or politics.
Such radical philosophical notions somehow seem to co-exist with an old-fashioned electoralist political theory, which harks back to the post WWII era – a period which embodied Rorty’s political ideal.
I think democratic governments are run by experts. The only question is which experts are going to be in power at any given moment. Dewey’s dreams of participatory democracy will never come true. I think American universities and Western universities generally have served democratic societies very well indeed. They have supplied experts who could then be associated with politicians who were voted in or were voted out by the masses. That’s the best we can expect.
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Actually the best democratic theorist is better known for his advice to the princes he served so well. Nicolo Machiavelli. See his books on Titus Livius, if I spelled it correctly. Ted Becker. We can expect much more than American democracy post WWII, in which I lived. Add to your People’s House by lot (a real house of commons) two new inventions: participatory budgeting and citizens assemblies plus initiative and referendum and you have the perfect mix of democracy and oligarchy, which Aristotel 2500 years ago called “polity.” Ted Becker
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> the perfect mix of democracy and oligarchy
Why would we want a mix of democracy and oligarchy rather than pure democracy? Why should the high and mighty have larger share in power than their proportion in the population?
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Are there any historical examples of pure democracy, in any other than microscopic poleis, where everyone can rule and be ruled in turn? And why is it assumed that oligarchy means rule by the “high and mighty”? The principle of distinction is agnostic as to what features characterise “the few”. They could be socioeconomic or, on the other hand, epistemic.
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Rorty may have seen himself as a pragmatist, but pragmatists don’t necessarily agree:
https://www.academia.edu/26025052/Vulgar_Pragmatism_An_Unedifying_Prospect_1995_
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Keith asks if there has ever been “any historical examples of pure democracy, in any other than microscopic poleis, where everyone can rule and be ruled in turn?”
Why, yes. Indeed by DEFINITION, since the ancient Greeks coined the word to describe exactly the sort of systems they used, based on political equality and the appointment by lottery. I expect, some would say… “ah, but these were small (microscopic) city states.” Not really. The Demos of Attica, for example, (the democracy in which the city of Athens was located – it can be thought of as the capitol) was about 2,500 square kilometers — roughly the size of Luxembourg. The population was five times that of the the city of Athens, with villages scattered across the entire nation. Yes the population was much smaller than Luxembourg, but the point is that with hundreds of thousands of citizens, this democracy was far beyond a microscopic face-to-face democracy, in which people all knew each other. We are so accustomed to referring to the “city “democracy of Athens,” that the scope of this democracy is often unappreciated. They used a population-based representation system allocating seats in the randomly selected Council of 500 based on each local deme’s population. Once we have moved beyond face-to-face democracy, and allow samples to represent the whole (only a tiny fraction of citizens attended the ecclesia — yet that sample made decisions for the entire population), there is no logical upper limit. An ecclesia of 6,000 (typical of Attica) can statistically represent a population of 20,000, or a population or 200,000,000. As for “ruling and being ruled in turns”… that should be the case for modern sortition democracies as well, with a vast number of mini-publics at the national, regional, municipal and neighborhood level, with all citizens serving as decision-makers at various times throughout their lives.
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Terry,
Athens was certainly not a pure democracy in the Age of Pericles, when some animal(s) were a lot more equal than others. Scholars are still debating whether the fourth century was an age of radical or moderate democracy. Demokratia was a hybrid of isonomia (equal law) and isegoria (equal speech), so let’s examine each in turn, in the ancient and modern contexts:
Isonomia: In the fifth century, every citizen could (and should) attend the assembly, and laws were passed through a show of hands, so all attendees had equal power. Hansen and Rhodes have claimed that laws in the fourth century were passed by a large randomly-selected jury, although other scholars dispute this. However most sortition advocates would agree that the decision of a large jury is a proxy for the whole population and, as you point out, this is scaleable to large modern states. So I think we agree that Classical-era Athens was isonomic, and that modern states could be.
Isegoria: In theory everyone had the right to propose new laws but, in practice, “the demos never produced spokesmen in the Assembly from their own ranks” (Finlay, 1983, p. 27). Terry rightly points out that the Council was constituted by a population-based representation system, but it’s hard to understand how a group of 500 people could deliberate in any meaningful sense. Whilst the Council prepared the agenda for the Assembly, most historians view it as an administrative, rather than policy-making body (if it was the latter, then one would expect evidence of speeches along similar lines to the Assembly). If representation is necessary for isonomia in large modern states, then the same is true for isegoria, hence Lafont and Urbinati’s claim that the political party is the modern equivalent of the Athenian rhetor.
Rule-and-be ruled-in-turn: In the Classical era, this is something that every citizen could (and should) do — either through the magistracies, the Council or the courts. I cannot comprehend how that might be possible (regarding important roles) in a large modern state comprising hundreds of millions of citizens.
So I would agree with Hansen (2010) that ancient and modern “democracies” would be better described as mixed constitutions. There has never been a “pure” democracy and never will be, outwith works of utopian fiction.
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