“What is democracy, anyway?”

If I had to describe democracy to someone I care about but who has no background in political science I would probably try to simplify the complexity of the debate (so that he/she still wants to talk to me after that discussion). It would probably look like this:

– “What is democracy, anyway?”

– Well, there is no single definition of democracy. It depends who defines it : a politician, a journalist, a lawyer, an economist, a social scientist, a philosopher, a citizen from Canada, a  citizen from Iran, or a political scientist, etc. And it also depends what is the context of the definition, which epoch, which region and why you are defining it: to decide what the institutions should look like, to have a deep philosophical debate, to judge if you consider something democratic, to measure how democratic a country or an institution is, etc.

– What?! But there must be some common definition because everyone talks about it all the time! It’s common sense! Some countries are democratic and some others are not!

– I’m going to answer all those very important questions you just mentioned, but step by step, please don’t run away. However, I have to warn you that this is my take on the issue and not a universal truth.

First, there are some minimal conditions for something to be described as democratic but not everyone agrees on what that is. I personally have a very demanding vision of democracy. It means that I don’t think that democracy is only about how having free and fair elections. By the way, by free and fair I mean that there is an open competition and that the decision is taken by a majority. So, legitimate elections is certainly a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Once the government ( which can be a president, or a parliament, or a group of people) is elected, I think that there should be a written contract about what this government is allowed to do or not. Same for the legislative power, there needs to be some limitations. Usually those limitations are written in the constitution. That’s what we call checks and balances. When different bodies of the power control each other. But it is also important that nobody else control them, neither an external power, like another country, nor the military. To summarize, not only must the bodies be democratically elected but also must they govern in a democratic fashion. Furthermore, they should be held accountable for what they are doing in order to remain in office. So it also entails regular elections.

Secondly, democracy is not only about the political regime and the way the rulers are elected. It is also about people and their individual rights. Do you think a country is democratic if you are not treated equally by the judge in a trial? Or do you think a country is democratic if you are not free to say what you think? I don’t think so, I think everything is intertwined. If there is no freedom of expression how can we be sure that a segment of the population is not excluded from the pursuit of political power? Furthermore, in a system that lets the majority decided there should be some way to protect the minority. Some inalienable rights that nobody can take away in any case. They are the substance of democracy.

– So I guess it seems pretty hard to have a democracy for you?

– You guess right, but I don’t think it’s a major problem. It is better to have an idealistic vision of it towards which we should strive for and that gives incentives, rather than a minimalist version where everyone would be able to pretend to be a a legitimate democracy and still breach human rights. So that’s my dream definition. But to tell you the truth if I have to measure it in a research I might have some troubles. So maybe I’ll have to accept to have a scale with different levels of democracy so that I can compare different countries and different periods of time. At the end my strategy would probably be to have a set of necessary conditions to decide whether or not a country is democratic and then inside the category of democratic countries I will have tools to nuance the quality of democracy. Therefore I think that in the public discourse we should have a very high standard of democracy in order to protect the people. But in the realm of research we might have to simplify reality in order to understand causal relationships and improve our knowledge of reality.