Introduction to Political Theory

Introduction to Political Theory

Données clés

Faculté	Faculté des sciences de la société
Département	Département de science politique et relations internationales
Professeur(s)	Annabelle Lever
Enregistrement	partie 1 (2015) partie 2 (2015)
Cours	Introduction à la science politique

Lectures

The challenge of modern democracy comes from what we learn from Greek democracy. The subject of this course is the political theory of democracy. To do this, we must understand the political problems of modern democracy through what we have learned from Greek democracy.

What is normative political theory

The pluralist model of democracy is a model that has been as critical for empirical political science as it has been for normative political theory. It is this pluralistic model with its attractions and flaws that forms the basis of what we do today in empirical as well as normative political science. It is really through this model that was founded in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Understanding the pluralistic model of democracy helps to understand the elitist model of democracy, Schumpeter's model. To understand the attractions, but also the flaws, of the elitist model of democracy, we must understand why modern democracy does not seem so obvious as a legitimate form of government that now appears to us. To understand this, we must see modern democracy through the democracy of Athens and understand that if the model of democracy that we really knew was the democracy of Athens and Sparta, why the possibility of having a democratic government in the modern world, especially after the Second World War, seemed so unlikely. So why do we really even have a real challenge these days, namely what democracy can be in the modern world?

Although political theory today seems to be at the margins of modern political science, the normative political theory is probably the oldest form of political science as well as moral philosophy. It is with Socrates and his questions on the justice of society, the importance of the duties of sons compared to the duties of citizens, with the question of how a good life is for men, that we begin both philosophy and the study of political theory, then, indeed, it is with normative political theory that political science and its problems begin.

The normative political theory focuses on how the world should be, not how it is. We are interested in the questions of how these institutions should be organized, what form of government should be legitimate, accepted as morally right, what duties citizens should have and not those they have. For example, with regard to compulsory voting, we wonder whether it is not justified to have a compulsory vote if our duties as citizens do not include the duty to vote. Political theory is primarily concerned with questions of how the world should be, how we should be, how we should organize ourselves, what political preferences we should have, what forms of freedom, equality and solidarity we should try to implement and so on.

In this sense, normative political theory differs from the more empirical aspects of political science even if one wants to understand how the world should be, it is a good thing to understand how it is and why it is as it is. Even if we do normative political theory, we have reasons to take a strong interest in empirical and more formal questions in political theory. To the extent that more generally empirical political science tries to explain how our world is, how it is. In more empirical political science, it's not just what you really try to describe in detail, but why they are who they are. It is the same thing in normative political theory, even if our explanations are normative explanations instead of causal, we do not try to explain why people have the values they have, but we try to explain or demonstrate why we should, for example, change our values, why we should vote instead of abstaining, why we should be pacifists instead of subscribing to the theories of just war. The explanation and use of evidence are as important in political theory as in the more empirical sub-disciplines of political science.

Sometimes we have the impression that moral philosophy and political philosophy show relativity; this is false. To the extent that we speak of an intellectual discipline, as in other disciplines, there are questions of method, demands for evidence, confrontation with diverse opinions, we must face and explain with supporting evidence; the instruments of normative theory are logic, conceptual analysis, knowledge of how internal criticism can be made and the power to well organize and use evidence based on norms, on the quality of actions judged normatively. The question is how to use the moral and ethical powers of judgment that we already have, but we are trying to discipline it and refine it so that it can be used as an academic study.

Political theories at the University of Geneva

The Department of Political Science at the University of Geneva is currently the only political science department in Switzerland that teaches normative political theory from baccalaureate to doctorate, most of the time, in Switzerland, one studies the history of ideas. In positive political theory, one tries to give as precise and therefore mathematical a formulation as possible on political ideas, normally on problems of coordination of conflicts and expectations. On the other hand, we try to take the current problems and by using logic, the analysis of normative concepts such as the value of the rights and duties of democracy, government, tolerance, we try to understand the stakes nowadays, the struggles, the conflicts. Compared to other forms of the history of ideas, in normative political theory, we take the current problems, the problems that are the subject of current political conflicts and we try to understand what values are at stake, try to clarify the issues. Sometimes, we can have conflicts based on misunderstandings, as soon as we open the field to clarity, the conflict disappears. One important thing is to try to clarify and make people understand the attractions of competitive positions on political problems these days; after that, if there are still conflicts, difficult choices, we try to clarify the measures, the positive aspects, but also the negative measures of these options.

Introduction to modern democratic political theory

Importance of democratic pluralism

Why examine the pluralist theories of democracy whose paradigmatic example is that of Robert Dahl. Why look at these pluralist theories of democracy, why take an interest in the theories which, at the end, were made fifty years ago and whose flaws, after all, we know. The answer is that the theories, especially Dahl's paradigmatic theories, present a model or painting of the world of democracy that seems to reflect the key aspects of our modern societies. For example, despite the differences between the United States, Switzerland, France, India, England, and the Scandinavian countries, we can say that modern democracies are societies with representative governments, with universal suffrage, with the rule of decision by the majority, with votes and especially with the freedom of the modern as Constant called it, the freedoms of expression, thought, religion, association, movement and of course political choice. One thing that makes these pluralistic theories important is the effort they make to give us a model of modern democracies through their differences, a model that we could use both for empirical analysis, for social theories and especially for normative judgments. What this model is trying to show us is not only the characteristics of our world and our modern democracy, but also a way of thinking about the legitimacy of our governments, our way of governing ourselves in the face of the reasons for believing that democracy is, after all, not a very good form of government.

The appeal of pluralist theories is that they offer us both a useful model empirically, but above all a useful model from a normative point of view, a model that tries to show why the governments of our societies, democratic governments, despite all too well-known defects, have a legitimacy that other forms of government do not have. Based on this, pluralism offers us what we can call a study of fair competition and government as a form of fair competition between organized political parties, but also organized secondary associations such as unions, employers' associations, religious associations and so on; they try to say that in a political system where people cannot agree on how to act, on the laws that make them all govern, the only form of legitimacy, it seems, depends on the possibility of competing fairly for the power to govern. This fair competition depends both on the protection of citizens' equality and their personal as well as political freedom, and, from then on, the pluralist model is important because it shows, so to speak, the minimum necessary for political legitimacy.

The challenge of Greek democracy

Why does it seem so necessary to be able to answer these questions? Why can it seem so necessary to show that our governments are democratic and as a democracy, they have an important legitimacy. In order to fully understand this, it is absolutely necessary to understand the challenges posed by Greek democracy. Democracy was a question of small states such as Athens or Sparta, cities of a few thousand inhabitants and many fewer citizens, cities and especially democracies based on slavery which gave citizens the opportunity to devote their hours to the government of their homeland as well as their families and states. We live in modern, gigantic societies in which there is no slavery, the majority of citizens have to work to earn a living and have to return home to do their household chores and fulfill family obligations, thus having very little time for politics and political education. One may wonder, given the differences between Greek democracy and our situation if it is really possible to have democracy in the modern world.

The first challenge, and it is a fundamental challenge that has weighed heavily on philosophers such as Arendt who, since the Second World War, was trying to understand what possibilities for democracy in a world that suffered two world wars whose most advanced nation at the time, namely Germany, fell into barbarism..; then, we who think of our societies as democratic, but we may wonder how this democracy resides since we know that for the most part very little about the very public policy of our country and not only on the international level. We also have very little time to participate, to organise ourselves, but also to debate political issues with others. To make things even worse, it's not only that we don't have slaves, we can have paid servants, and in addition, now that there has been some emancipation of women, there is no more unpaid work for women at home. Part of the problem of women's emancipation was the problem of how we are going to have democracy in a world without slaves, in a world where we do not have slaves to educate children, to organize the home...; so if citizens, people like us, of average intelligence, with average energies, if people like us must both earn a living, keep children, care for parents and grandparents, and in addition educate and take an interest in a policy that for us is sometimes very abstract, but also very difficult to understand and naturally very difficult to influence, so one can really wonder what this has to do with democracy as known in Greece where, in the end, citizens governed themselves, who were elected by lot. They were the people who could take a full interest in the politics of their country.

The first thing to understand if we try to understand the influence of the pluralist model is the problem, the fundamental challenge of how we can have democracy today despite what we call our governments. Secondly, the ancient democracies, the Greek democracies had no freedom of religion, Socrates had no freedom of thought and freedom of expression. For the most part, it was the citizens fairly unanimous on what counted for a good human life and what should be the goal of their country. On the other hand, in our modern societies, we are quite deeply divided on moral questions, on religion and whether to have a religion, how many deities to accept or not. On the role of religion in politics, we are divided on the economy, how it should be organized in a socialist way, should we accept basic income. We divide not only on our personal preferences, but on our deepest, most intimate convictions. So, again, one may wonder if this is possible in these circumstances, the modern circumstances of fundamental distancing on questions of good and morality, from this perspective, is it really possible, that citizens can share government as equals, is it really possible to see how equal we are to people who have ideas that we find deplorable, ideas that we find idiotic, ill-conceived, dangerous, that is the challenge these days, to know if it is possible to treat us as equals if in the end we share very few common values. Finally, we can ask ourselves whether in a modern, cosmopolitan world, with economies far beyond our city and our country, in economies of which our governments can only manage a small part, whether it is possible to have democracy. In the Greek world, economic decisions did not take a very big place in political life, it was only a few questions of taxation, of income to finance the government, poor citizens, but also to finance wars and particularly in Athens and Sparta. Today, however, economic issues are a huge part of public policy, but it is clear that these issues far exceed our understanding for the most part as individuals and our powers to act. So, once again, we must ask ourselves whether this is possible and how it is possible to have democratic governments in our current world.

Why do we care what we do in Greece? There are things they have done, especially democracy that speaks to us, that even attracts us despite centuries of differences in mores and especially despite our differences in values around issues of sexual equality, race and of course slavery. The appeal of Greek democracy is the appeal of self-government, of the possibility of governing oneself, of having a way, of having a way with weight in what happens to us in life. After all, it is very difficult for us to influence what happens to us and even in personal matters. There are all kinds of things that happen to us that we cannot influence, but to have this lack of power, this very impossibility of having a voice in matters that concern us, especially in matters of politics where it is a question of coercion, of the convention, but also of laws, where it is also a question of force, the risks of violence, in these, the lack of voice, of power, of the possibility of governing oneself not individually, but with others would really be something serious. It is because we find ourselves, we can find ourselves in the Greeks, in this ideal of self-governance, that the ideal of democracy has attractions for us and that for us this is a real question only if we can achieve self-government, democracy under conditions so different from what gave rise to this idea and this form of government.

But why think that self-government is something attractive? For some it is a utopia, for others it is a decoy to believe that we can govern ourselves as a group, that it is attractive to give ourselves ways to influence politics. To address these questions, we must enter into the conception of the person, into the philosophy of the person, of how we think, we apprehend our possibilities as humans, our possibilities to reflect, to deliberate on our actions, to evaluate what we think, what we want and what we have done. We have the feeling of freedom, of the possibility of developing our capacities for action and reflection, of choices in our actions not only individually, but as a group of which this ideal of self-government speaks. We have interests in politics even if we will agree on the ideal of an autonomous person in control of his emotions, in control of his desires, this image of the stoic ideal that we learned from the Greeks. We can value politics and the possibility of having a path with the same weight as the others for purely instrumental reasons. The importance of these instrumental reasons for wanting democracy comes, if we look back, on the forms of feudal governments, on the forms of monarchical governments, on the forms of representative but undemocratic government that characterized for example the United States and 19th century Europe.

In these other forms of government, what happened to most people no longer mattered. If you were a serf, you were like an animal, a beast to the nobles, the interests of the serfs had no importance in themselves, they were perhaps the bodies to throw into the war, to work in the fields, to have children, but their feelings, what they wanted and smelled, counted for absolutely nothing. Indeed, even in representative but not democratic governments, governments such as in 19th century England, it is clear that the interests of those who did not have the vote, the interests of women or working class men did not count for much because they had no way, because their status was much less than that of others. If we think that being able to govern ourselves is something worthwhile, if we think it is important to be able to participate in international affairs, we must be able to justify the political capacity of others. The justification was to say that most people were not smart enough to participate in complicated matters such as politics. As Plato suggested, politics has a technical aspect, there are things that require expertise, knowledge of how to manage people, comparing possibilities, there are technical aspects in politics as well as in economics and medicine. To the extent that we believe that politics has this technical aspect, and in addition, realizing that most people have very little time to learn these techniques, then it is natural to believe that it is a bad idea to give the vote to the majority of people because they will not know how to use it. If we can say so, a reason to want a democratic vote, to want to be a member of a democratic country is not because we perhaps accept, but because we fear what will happen to us if others that we do not think are smart enough to participate in common affairs, not smart enough to deserve a voice in matters that concern us, so the instrumental reasons for wanting a democratic vote, for wanting to participate in government, gives, even nowadays, an important attraction to the ideal of Greek self-government even if we reject much of the human philosophy and worldview that made this vision of democracy attractive to the Greeks themselves.

Through difficulties, through differences, we believe that either there is something attractive in the idea that men, people like us, without really special abilities, without really special knowledge, without special assets, can participate in their government. This is ideal is attractive in itself and for instrumental reasons, we believe that at the end that history teaches that the only real way to protect oneself from the disdain, indifference, misplaced paternalism of others, is to give everyone the vote.

What should we think about? We can see a justification for democracy through distinctly modern ideas and ideas of freedom, freedom and even solidarity. Regardless of the appeal of the idea that even people without truly special assets can participate and do difficult things in life like governing themselves. This can be done in small groups, so why not try in larger groups. Despite this, it is clear that democracy in its intrinsic and instrumental aspects responds to distinctly modern ideas of freedom and equality. They respond to modern ideas of freedom because democracy avoids paternalism. The modern idea of freedom is that adult, rational and educated people, without intellectual defects, despite their capacity for error, have an interest in making their own choices, in learning how to manage their lives, in learning from these errors, in being able to correct them, but also in being able to live with their errors. We all know that sometimes others know much better than we do what we should do. The paradigmatic case is our parents, it is always when our parents are right that it is most difficult to admit it. Nevertheless, we also know that our sense of freedom, of the importance of freedom is the possibility of making our own mistakes and living with the consequences even if they are unhappy and being able to learn from our mistakes by talking with others, reflecting on what we have done wrong and right and continuing to act.

Alexis de Tocqueville by Théodore Chassériau (1850).

An important aspect of democracy from a modern perspective is that it is the form of government that seems to respond most directly to the value of individual freedom and our ability to protect these individual freedoms as a collective. This is one of the most important things and we find some of its justification in Tocqueville's idea in his studies on democracy in America where he says that it is clear that in America there are political scientists of much lower quality than in aristocratic France, sometimes people who want to make a career in politics are bad, but, The most important thing about democracy is not that politicians are the smartest and most will not be, but that we can correct their mistake, that democracies have the opportunity to correct themselves because they are governments with freedom of expression, not only for the nobles, but for everyone, with freedom of association, freedom of movement and of course with political as well as personal choices. It is the same idea that drives the Nobel Prize in Economics Amartya Sen.

In his studies on famines in India, Sen noted that after democracy, there was never any more famine in India. Of course, it is not because suddenly the politicians in India have become much smarter, this is not the case having made a lot of mistakes including fairly serious economic errors, but the importance of democracy and the freedoms that compose it, is that if in a small neighborhood, we see that there are food shortages, freedom of movement allows us to go to another village to say that we lack wheat. Previously, without the possibility of leaving one's village, it was impossible to distribute this knowledge. With the freedom to move, we can denounce a policy or an environmental change that causes a lack.

If we value the freedom of the modern, the freedom of movement unthinkable historically and in some countries sadly nowadays, the freedoms of movement, association and expression as well as choice, we know the quite modern reason to value democracy even if it is a form of government that does not give us the forms of self-government that made the Greek ideal. If we think so, we can also see that we have reasons based on modern ideas of equality to value democracy. Democracy is a form of egalitarian politics that gives everyone, regardless of their resources, status, an equal voice and path in political decision-making. In our world, the value of equality is important, but also controversial. Based on modern ideas of equality, we have reasons to value democracy even if it is a rather limited form of self-government in the modern world.

It is an ancient ideal that was born in societies very different from us. It is clear that, in part, the ideal of self-government that draws us to democracy as a form of government is a difficult ideal to achieve in modern conditions. In large countries such as ours, how can we talk about self-government? In countries in a world like ours where political decisions are not just under the finger of our government, we live in a global world, how can we talk about self-government? In the end, even if it is the ideal of self-government, the possibility of guiding life that draws us towards democracy, it is based on modern ideas of freedom, equality and perhaps solidarity that we will find more foundations, more justification for this form of government that we value.

Before we decide that we can call our governments democratic, we must ask ourselves how representative governments can be democracies; what in the ideal of representation can give life to the ideal of democracy. Bernard Manin shows that the ideal of representative government was historically a way of excluding democratic government. Representative government, when it was born in the 18th century, was an explicitly undemocratic theory of government based on the fact that in the modern world, the majority of us do not have the capacity to govern ourselves, at least it seems that the majority of us do not have the time to govern ourselves. So the ideal of representative government was to minimize the political participation of the majority of people in politics. If that was the ideal of representative government, it was an ideal form of representation that tried to take the interests we had, to give them to see without us being there to defend them, without us having the opportunity to participate in the issues that concern us. How was it possible to reconcile the appeal of democracy as a form of modern freedom and equality with a form of representative government.

We live in the world of the 20th century, but after the Second World War, but especially in the era before the First World War, these were lively issues. We lived in the richest, most stable and most powerful countries in the world, such as 19th century England. But the vast majority of people did not have the right to vote in politics and their government, which claimed to be representative, and we wondered whether it was possible to have a government that tried to represent different ideals of the people, and especially the different interests of the people.

Schumpeter's "elitist" democracy

Joseph Schumpeter.

With universal suffrage, why did he seem to have such a problem? Imagine, in Schumpeter's day, that there were representative governments, as a member of the government, we know very well that across the way there were thousands of uneducated workers, many of them, who wanted to participate in government, and we wondered if we gave them the vote, an equal voice, in collective decisions, the question was what was going to happen. The great fear was that democracy, universal suffrage would destroy representative government because the idea was that the workers would vote en bloc and en bloc would have been a tyranny of the majority instead of a free and representative government. It is this kind of fear that seemed to come true between the two wars and after the Russian revolution, especially with the example of the socialist states. It seemed that the possibility of reconciling representative government necessary for large countries where not all can participate directly in politics; with democratic suffrage, it was to destroy representative government. Schumpeter's importance and his elitist conception of democracy, is that it seemed to open the field to the possibility of reconciling both modern freedoms and forms of modern equality with representative government.

Schumpeter's idea is that indeed, in a modern society, even with the vote, workers will not take much interest in politics, they have too little time. The vast majority of people, he believed, have neither the education nor the desire to really participate in politics. Indeed, as Tocqueville noted, the effect of modern freedom on our possibilities to have a private life, a family life, to participate in sports, personal associations, to practice one's religion, to form charitable associations, to travel, etc., all these parts of the modern world unknown in the ancient world; Schumpeter noticed that all this given to us, people like us, the workers, does not really have the desire to participate in politics. Of course we want to have the opportunity to do so, we do not want to be banned from participation, so the universal vote is very important from this point of view: we do not want others to despise us and force us. But for most of us, Schumpeter thought, we don't really have the ability or the desire to participate fully in politics. He believed that it was possible to reconcile modern representative government with universal suffrage through what he called the "division of labour. Most ordinary people wanted to vote for their representatives, but they didn't really want to be representatives and participate directly in politics. We thought it was important not to have these desires because most workers felt they did not know enough, did not have enough time to manage politics.

Schumpeter's elitist idea of democracy was not that we have a nobility inherited and led to govern ourselves. The elite was an elite elected by universal suffrage, an elite of those who want to make a career in politics, who want to master the technical issues of world politics. The division of labour remained on this distinction between an elite specialized in politics and ordinary people who will choose between the members of this elite. The question was who would we rather have represented us. It is a model of democracy that has little to do with the idea of self-government. The vast majority of people in modern democracies, but especially in modern democracies such as Schumpeter wanted them, do not have the means to make the decisions themselves.

According to Schumpeter, it was perfect, there were no problems. After all, if the importance of democracy, in part that protected our personal freedoms, we can do it well without participating directly in the government of our society, perhaps we will protect our personal freedoms better by leaving politics to the specialists we have chosen than trying to do it ourselves. For Schumpeter, modern equality was best protected by an even elitist form of democracy, even with an elite of politically educated, politically specialized people competing for power among themselves. If we ourselves, for example, try to make decisions on international politics, energy policy, financial issues; according to Schumpeter and not only, if we value modern equality, we should take into account the fact that few people go and want to achieve themselves in politics. Compared to historical republican ideals, republican ideas such as Rousseau in the 17th century who thought we should force citizens to be free, force people to take an interest in politics, force people to participate politically to be free, Schumpeter believed that the best way to protect both our freedoms and our equality, is to recognize that with the freedoms of the modern, with the possibilities of choosing one's life plan, most people will not choose a career in politics that we will not like to give ourselves, to education, to the hours of participation, to the difficulties that a political career requires. Instead, Schumpeter suggested that we can realize both the democratic values and the benefits of a representative government of specialists by accepting that modern democracy is a democracy of division of labour between the elites who will compete for our votes and us citizens who, outside elections, are not going to care and according to him, should not care too much about politics.

With the elitist model of democracy, according to Schumpeter and not only him, these days there is Samuel Huntington in the United States who believes that in the end, this model, is the only valid, possible, stable and legitimate model of democracy in modern societies. Why? Why? Because it is clear that if many people really wanted to participate, really wanted their political ideas to be recognized in collective decisions, we will really have serious struggles against each other, workers against other classes, religions against each other. If we can say so, modern democracy depends on the possibility of making compromises asking us to accept that only a part of our demands will be realised in our common policies, that only a part of our ideas, only a part of our efforts will be realised in politics.

It is a vision of democracy that can be called "cynical", but can also be called "realistic". the idea is that in a modern world, the ideal of self-government must be at best a personal ideal and not a political ideal, that it is impossible for thousands of people to really govern themselves together, that if we want to keep the idea that government must be made for the happiness of citizens, that they must treat these citizens as free and equal people, according to Schumpeter and many political scientists, the only way to achieve democracy in these modern conditions and what is called elitist democracy. This is democratic insofar as those they want, the political power, must compete for their vote, so the blood nobility has nothing to do with elitist democracy. The good family, the wealth have nothing to do with elitist democracy, what counts perhaps for the most is the charisma, the possibility to speak well, to promote people, to speak to them, to train them and to make compromises so that the governors arrive at difficult decisions such as we could see with Laurent Fabius at COP21 in Paris. This is the ideal of elitist democracy.

You can see its attractions. This seems realistic, it seems well protected, the freedom of people who for the most part have no interest in politics, it avoids the dangers of an authoritarian policy that insists that we, as citizens, should want to participate in politics, we should put the interest of our other citizens on a higher scale than the interest of foreigners, people we do not know, the interest of the environment, etc..

So the importance of this model is that it is at once anti-authoritarian, anti-paternalistic and anti-moralist. One may also wonder if it is not close to cynicism to talk about democracy, to talk about free and equal politics in a situation or perhaps, the vast majority of people will never experience making an important political decision. It is this Dahl who will propose a response to modern democracy that responds both to the attractions of the elitist model, but also quite seriously from the empirical point of view and from the empirical point of view.

Joseph Schumpeter's so-called elitist model is elitist in a rather specific form. Above all, it is elitist not because it advocates the importance of a hereditary aristocracy for government. On the contrary, he was looking for an elite that would make the government specialists, not choose a people based on a democratic vote. Then, compared to the ideal of a nobility and hereditary aristocracy, Schumpeter's idea was that competition linked with the institutions of representative democracy gave citizens the means to choose among them people who were more interested and better trained to govern. The elite, if we can say so, were the people who had more vocations for politics, more talent and desire for politics and who could convince others. Compared to the ways of choosing his government by inheritance or not lottery, Schumpeter believed that elections gave us the greatest opportunity of a competent government, a government of people who knew or could at least master the techniques of politics, persuasion, political judgment, and political know-how. Compared to the hereditary nobility who on the one hand with a heap of problems in terms of abilities, according to Schumpeter, the ideal was that we could choose the politicians we felt were best. This is the best way to find competent, reliable politicians with the knowledge and techniques to govern in the modern world.

In addition, he believed that democratic elections compared to the lottery and compared to the principle of heredity gave us a greater chance of having a government that valued us, that wanted our good. If we can remain on the ideal of democracy as government for the people, Schumpeter's idea was the best way to find a government for the people which was to link a representative government with universal suffrage to choose among those who wanted to govern the one we liked most.

Naturally, and this is what makes Schumpeter's ideal elitist, the ideal of self-government, the idea of democracy of a government by the people, had very little interest for Schumpeter. To tell the truth, he believed that in the modern world, the ideal of self-government made no sense; how could it be that each of us could govern ourselves since we are many. Even in the classical republics, participatory democracy had fairly strict limits. He believed that in the end, even in the Greek republics, the ideal of self-government was more the gallows than something attractive. The solution was that the constitutional government with regular elections would give us the means to achieve what was achievable in the modern world of the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy of the classical world. We will have freedom because no one will be forced to participate in government if they do not want to. According to Schumpeter, one should not be interested in politics if one does not want to. So, for him, a representative democracy where citizens can take an interest in their own affairs or other matters that politics was the simple expression of the freedom of the modern. The fact that if we want and can elect our representatives and present ourselves as representatives for others, it gave us all the political freedom that was desirable and feasible in the modern world.

This is all the more important if we consider that in the history of the years after the First World War was the time of the Soviet revolution, the era of fascism and Nazism when people were forced to participate in politics and to participate in accepted means. The importance of freedom not to be interested in politics was something really essential to a democratic idea according to Schumpeter. If one does not have the possibility to refuse participation, the choice to abstain, the idea of a free policy was born. What's free in politics if you're forced to participate. He also wondered where political equality is if we are forced to participate according to the ideas of others. So the essential thing for him in modern democracy could only be the possibility of participating in elections, of running as a candidate if he wanted to, but also of no longer being interested in politics.

We believed that it was because of representative, democratic government that we could link efficiency, freedom and equality, but also stability and the competence that Greek democracy lacked. The ancient Greek republics, but also republics like medieval Florence were very unstable. Exile was common because there was so much fighting, so much difficulty reconciling different interests in the same republic. According to Schumpeter, what made democracy attractive in the modern world was the fact that it was representative rather than participatory. It was precisely because we participate for the most part that we have the possibility of having forms of stable democracy because since we should participate in choosing our representatives, representatives must seek to unite us, to find the platforms, the ideals that interest us, that will make us vote and support them. For him, what was important with representative government was that it was up to our representatives to get elected, to unify us and offer us a platform that mobilizes us. But once we have chosen them, we should no longer make the real political demands. Schumpeter's idea was precisely by relying on our representatives to represent us that we can have a stable democracy. Instability according to him came with the idea that people should continue to act, continue to present their demands, continue to demonstrate; this, according to him, was to misunderstand what was valid and important for democracy in representative government innovation.

If we can say, the elitist model of democracy was that we will elect our representatives, as free and equal, we have the choice of whom we will accept, we should not vote if we do not want to, but then we should shut up and let the experts make their decisions. For the most part, he thought that was exactly what we are going to want to do because, after all, the majority of us are not particularly interested in politics. It is a bit of a division of labour to leave it to those who really care about politics to govern us and we can do the other things that interest us.

Although there are important attractions in Schumpeter's effort to link both the idea of representation and a form of elitist democracy, it is clear that there are a heap of empirical as well as normative problems. Empirically, Schumpeter's theory is that constitutional representative government with universal suffrage will generate so much competition among people who want to participate in politics that we will have no problem finding a stable government, full of competent people who care about our happiness. The idea was that competition between organized parties will give representatives the motivation to look among all strata of society for other individuals who have the political talent to bring them into their party. It seemed that we had a model with a virtuous circle where, because of competition, the elites will not reproduce themselves by the principle of heredity, but because they will look among the elites for people who have a vocation for politics. Empirically, we know that this is not really the case, that in a system where the majority of people do not participate in politics, politicians sometimes become hereditary castes as in the United States or Latin America. We know that by becoming rather hereditary, the quality of these policies is getting worse and worse and we only have to compare the Bush family. The theory that links competition with a specialized non-hereditary elite has really not worked empirically. Moreover, instead of really being interested in the happiness of citizens who are not interested in politics, the inevitable effect of having an elite who knows how to manage the reins of power is to give our representatives the means to sustain themselves for the future and thus political power becomes the means to enrich themselves and maintain a social status may be that they had no birth.

Traditionally, rich people or good-born aristocracies came to power, but their political base was their land, their blue blood, and so on. On the other hand, the problem of the democratic elites and especially on the model presented by Schumpeter was that the political seizure of power becomes the means to secure oneself economically and to secure one's social position. We see many people entering politics precisely to get rich and not because they already had the means to get interested in politics.

These are the modern empirical problems. Normally, we have a lot of problems because, after all, if there is a form of government with a fairly small part that has a special knowledge of the reins of power and a majority that knows very little about politics how it is organized, how it is done, it is clear that the freedom and equality of this much larger second group is in danger. If we can say so, a model of democracy that quickly becomes cynical rather than ideal.

It seems that we can modify this elitist model of democracy to make it less elitist, more participatory and egalitarian. We can imagine, for example, a system where we keep the idea of a competition for power among a small group, but with perhaps a form of positive action to really widen the circle of the governor, or we can imagine a form of corporatism like Durkheim and his successors, a form of corporatism where we try to involve and represent in politics the various interests of different parts of the population. In the corporatist model of democracy, we try to represent people not only as citizens through elections, but also as workers or as religious or as employers in associations that will participate directly in political decision-making.

One can imagine a way to make Schumpeter's model of democracy less elitist, more egalitarian at least or more participatory, perhaps using more corporatist ideas. There, we must realize that in the model where most people must associate as members of a union, they must join a union to be represented and people must be represented as farmers for example so that agricultural interests are represented in politics. We have a model of politics that goes beyond Schumpeter that loses the appeal that we should not participate in politics if we are not interested and there is no specific form of participation.

David Held is not trying hard enough to see how we can change these models because we do not like them because it is always interesting to see how we can improve a model that has its attractions and disadvantages. The theory of corporatism, both Durkheim's theory in the Division of Labor and Suicide, but also the practice of corporatism. These models can perhaps improve the form of democracy advocated by Schumpeter, but the risk is that in the end we will also overcome the attractions of this model by trying to correct these defects. This gives us the key to the really interest of pluralism and Dahl because he tries to show how we can guarantee or build on the most attractive aspect of Schumpeter's ideas without its flaws both empirical and normative.

Dahl's pluralist democracy

Robert A. Dahl.

We will see how Dahl tries to build on Schumpeter's attractive and perhaps even innovative aspect, but tries to avoid the empirical and normative difficulties of this elitist conception of democracy. We will see why Dahl believes that a pluralistic vision based on different forms of power seemed both more empirically correct and even more ideal, normatively attractive than Schumpeter's elitist vision.

What is the key to pluralism? The key is freedom of association, it is the importance of a democratic society made up of multiple associations, of individuals who seek each other, who join for the pleasure of joining, but also for instrumental reasons. Dahl's idea is to say that Schumpeter has a poor idea of democracy because he is not interested in societal democracy, the necessary basis for democratic government in the modern world and this basis for Dahl as well as for Tocqueville is the free association of individuals who can form associations because they like it and have common interests.

Both Tocqueville's idea and Dahl's important one is that a modern democracy, a modern democratic government must have a society, citizens who organize themselves, who associate in many ways according to their individual tastes, needs and beliefs. The idea is that if we have a society in which people can enter, leave, leave associations as they wish, we will have what are called tangled cleavages. The idea is that if we want and when we can associate with others for a personal reason, if we can associate in multiple ways class differences, differences in race, political, religious or moral beliefs, will fade away in an important way because we will discover through our various associations that there are multiple, diverse interests that translate into politics in completely different ways. Compared to the fear that haunted Schumpeter, but also a lot of political scientists since the advent of universal suffrage, the fear that the working class will vote purely as a working class and that the landlord class will vote purely as an owner for their interests, the importance of associations, as Dahl acknowledged, is that we can see that we have a lot of other interests even as a worker, as an owner, a lot of diverse interests that can also represent themselves in politics and sometimes have to be represented. The idea then is that as soon as we see that democracy requires not only a form of representative government with universal and majority suffrage, but also a living society where individuals discuss, a society where individuals seek others with whom they can associate to advocate their demands, with whom they can identify what interests them and their meaning for politics. As soon as we see this society full of lively, combative groups covering all our interests, we will have a model of democracy that is truly free because it will reflect the difference and freedom of citizens and in a truly equal and important way because birth would not be the political destiny. One may be born poor, but the fact of being poor does not mean that one cannot be a member of a heap of associations with others who are not poor and who will then have so many interests. The idea is that if people also decide to engage in politics on the basis of their religion, we will also have the means to blur racial differences, between immigrants and native-born people because at the end, if we can represent these interests as members of the same association, we will have the reasons to want the good of all others who advocate our religion regardless of colour, immigrant status or ancestry. It is an ideal of a world where people will blur the hereditary differences, the differences that divide them to arrive at a competitive policy, but where the cleavages will change from one moment to the next, a creative, reactive, accounting policy that responds directly to the interests of individuals as individuals themselves conceive them.

For Dahl as well as perhaps for Tocqueville in Democracy in America, the idea was that in a truly democratic society with multiple, changing associations, technology and political knowledge are something for everyone's hands because associations must manage each other, must unify, must know how to cooperate with each other, and then, one can learn politics as an accountant from an association and little by little, it is the idea that politics becomes something linked to our personal interests that shapes us and gives us the assets to participate at the national level. This is far from Schumpeter's idea that politics is a different special profession that has nothing to do with the abilities of the vast majority of people. In Dahl's pluralistic vision, politics is not something special, it is something everyone can do.

It is a rather attractive vision, a vision where one can see, perhaps give meaning in the modern world to the ideal of self-government, the ideal of democracy, democratic associations. However, despite Dahl's attractions, despite this living, changing and fluid vision of the policy he advocated, one has a much more complete reality. Robert Putman published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community in 2000, which is a book crying for the loss of this vision, but also of the pluralistic world Dahl advocated. There was a perhaps idealistic vision of America in the 1950s, a vision where everyone was associated with others. What is sad about politics is that politics no longer takes place the way it used to. Now politics is professionalized at all levels. Parties are seeking to buy the capacity of political experts to advocate an agenda. The difficulty, at the end, empirically, of Dahl's model, that it turns very quickly in the elitist reality and it must be said Schumpeter's capitalist, happens for several reasons.

The first is the idea that the ideal of pluralism where people can compete in multiple ways ignores that in our society there are groups that are distinctive minorities of the small. There are a lot of small groups in our societies that are too small to really be connected with others. So for most of us, the majority, we know nothing about them, we have very little interest in them. The consequence is that the policy we like does not take their specific interests into account. However, the logic of pluralism was that since we have a lot of overlapping interests, it is very easy to protect our diverse interests through public policy. The problem is for isolated, small and distinct groups that will not be included in this mix of association and will not find themselves represented in politics.

The second problem is that this attractive model of pluralism in and out of associations does not really take into account what Mancur Olsen called the logic of collective action. In the logic of collective action, we show ourselves how much resources, money is necessary for the organization of groups. The underlying problem of pluralist politics is that if resources are very uneven, even the most voluntary associations will not have the same power to represent the interests of its members. This is, for example, the problem of many consumer associations. As a consumer we are very numerous, we would have thought that as a consumer we would have enormous political power, after all, as a consumer we have purchasing power, but also unparalleled purchasing power, but the problem is that the largest group, the most expensive to organise, the most divided group, then the more difficulty, the more time and money we will need in order to identify our common interests and to organise ourselves to advance them. For this reason, consumer interests are much less protected in democracies than producer interests.

Finally, pluralist theory does not take into account arbitrary prejudice and bequeath it in our institutions and policies, such as against women, people of colour or those who hold different views than the majority. The problem is that with freedom of association, it is very difficult for people who are victims of prejudice to really associate with others. Even if formally, this is something important in our democracies that we can enter, also leave different associations; in today's world, we know very well that these opportunities are distributed very unequally because of differences in wealth, but also because of structural effects, prejudices of our governments.

The empirical problems of pluralism are reflected in the difficulty in the United States, but also elsewhere, of truly blending class, race and even religious differences in our societies. Pluralistic theory had promised that without changing freedoms, we can blur these differences that are so problematic and sometimes so unfair. In reality, for the most part, our voluntary associations, at least to blur them, can deepen them. It is one of the tragedies of free association that we may go instead of blurring our differences, deepening them.

We have looked at two efforts to link the idea of democracy to a policy of freedom and equality, an ideal of autonomy for the modern world, but we have also seen that these two models despite their real attractions have very profound difficulties. What is at stake now in normative political theory as well as in more empirical political science is whether we can envisage a model, a model of democracy that can both recover what was strong and attractive in Dahl's pluralist model, in the rather Tocquevilian model of democracy, but accept that without intentional efforts to blur past inequalities, without intentional efforts to promote the common good, there is no real possibility of achieving free and equal politics based on the self-interest of individuals.

Annexes

• Robert A. Dahl, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_A._Dahl
• Robert A. Dahl, Wikiquote, https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_A._Dahl