About a week ago, a friend pointed me to an article in the Jerusalem Post by Mark Regev. It contained the following sentence: “For its part, the government champions representative democracy.” This stuck out to him. What makes an unrepresentative democracy?
Regev’s piece sought to make sense of the judicial reforms pushed by Israel’s government, and the ensuing civil demonstrations in response. Many like me have found it increasingly difficult to stay engaged with our national homeland. Trying to understand the dynamics at play and the core arguments on both sides is helpful.
So let me quote the section of the article from which that sentence originated:
“For its part, the government champions representative democracy. It maintains that over the years the High Court has assumed unchallengeable powers that curtail the authority of the people’s representatives, and calls for re-tweaking the relationship between judiciary, legislature, and executive.
“Tensions between the different branches of government exist in all democracies. For the reform’s advocates, Israel’s ultra-activist judiciary, epitomized by former chief justice Aaron Barak’s contention that all acts of the Knesset [Israel’s parliament] and the government can be subject to judicial review, has created an imbalanced system in which the Court reigns supreme over the other branches.” (emphasis added)
Mark Regev, Jerusalem Post
This strikes me as an extremely narrow reading of what it means to be a representative democracy.
Define Democracy
I find myself transported back to my civics courses in high school. They were, upon reflection, woefully inadequate. I distinctly remember the teacher asking for a definition of democracy. A classmate offered up this pithy answer: “majority rule.”
Which, yes. That is one of the definitions of democracy you’ll find in some dictionaries. Merriam-Webster’s first definition for the word reads “government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.”
Look up democracy in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), however, and you won’t even see the word “majority.” The same goes for Dictionary.com, which is based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, but pulls from other sources as well.
For my money, the OED has the best definition of the lot:
“Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In [modern] use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.” (emphasis added)
Definition of “democracy” in the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition
Merriam-Webster’s definitions are particularly egregious. You’d be forgiven for thinking, upon reading that reference, that democracy begins and ends at “periodically held free elections.”
Define Representative
Of course, democracy is so much more than elections in which the majority rules and the rest of the people drool.
To be fair, that is a key milestone in the life of a representative democracy. It’s why we say “elections have consequences.” In fact, the basic definition of “representative democracy” is one in which the people elect representatives that will, hopefully, reflect their wishes in the government.
Look it up in Wikipedia, and that’s exactly what you’ll see outlined in the first sentence. “Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is… where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy.”
Thankfully, the volunteer editors of the Wikimedia Foundation do include a bit more on the subject. The article touches briefly on criticisms of representative democracy. This phrase bears highlighting: “majority-won legislators voting for issues for the large group of people fosters inequality among the marginalized.”
Left to the simple standard of majority rule, democracy would eventually become less stable as a form of government. Over time, a system of elections absent the larger liberal institutions and values would lead to less genuine representation of people’s preferences. You would have, in effect, an unrepresentative democracy.
Such a system would trample minority rights. Unrepresentative democracy is rife with corrupt leaders, enriching themselves at the expense of their constituents. When not enriching themselves personally, they would be entrenching their power ideologically.
There are myriad ways a government can erode the influence of even popular majorities. See the state of gun safety legislation in the United States.
The Spirit of Representative Democracy
Which is why for a government to be truly democratic, it must empower a majority to effect real policy outcomes. But it must also have systems to ensure the rights of minorities are protected, and the perspectives of those minorities are recognized.
Truly vibrant democracies will develop different centers of authority, and structure those authorities in ways that let them play off each other. Checks and balances is the common term you’ve likely heard for that. In the United States, we are abounding in checks and balances.
We’ve got three branches of the federal government. Then we’ve divested powers across the federal, state, and local governments. Oh my, do those groups have different ideas about how to run things.
Through principles like the freedom of the press, enshrined in the very first amendment to our Constitution, we’ve fostered the power of media watchdogs. Their coverage raises awareness, particularly of uncomfortable developments in society. To use the vernacular, the press helps keep government honest.
The First Amendment also includes the freedom of association, implicit in its guarantees of free speech, assembly, and petition. That has allowed likeminded citizens to organize around shared ideas. They exercise the people’s power of influence, pressuring politicians and bureaucrats alike.
Because when we say representative democracy instead of just democracy, we're speaking not to the act of electing representatives. We're emphasizing a system designed to represent the people as a whole.
This is not true for every democracy. Some, like Israel or the United Kingdom, don’t even have formal, written constitutions. But every well-functioning democracy has some version of these mechanisms.
Unrepresentative Democracy Isn’t
I tend to write about far less serious subjects, but indulge me for a moment. Democracy matters. It matters for a host of reasons.
Foremost among them is that democracies are intrinsically tied to the freedom of their citizens. That freedom is not always extended equally to every citizen. But this tension, within vibrant democracies, cannot be easily ignored over time.
If you want a more materially selfish reason to care, there is ample evidence that citizens of democracies are more prosperous.
Yet we are living in a time when democracy is increasingly under threat. This is true even in America, a country held up as a beacon for the values of democratic freedom.
Legislatures gerrymander districts to ensure their partisan faction has an edge. Politicians pass laws to restrict the ability to vote, building as much friction as possible into the system. Beyond voting, there are efforts to undermine our educational system, the free expression of marginalized communities, and other informal markers of a free society.
As is the case in Israel, those who advance these illiberal causes claim they are defenders of democracy. But we must remember that democracy is a complex undertaking, requiring the involvement and understanding of all its people. When it becomes unrepresentative, not only of the majority, but also its minorities, it ceases to be fully democratic.
It doesn’t matter how many elections you hold.