Foundation Briefs Advanced Level Sept/Oct 2013 Brief
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| Sept/Oct 2013 Aff: Emphasis on Democratic Procedure foundationbriefs.com Page 22 of 104 Places emphasis on democratic procedure Emphasizing democratic procedure allows the votes to be counted, rather than promoting an elite aristocracy that decides what is democratic RMF Allen, James. "In Praise of Compulsory Voting" Quadrant, May 2012. Webb When it comes to democracy, broadly speaking there are the thins and the fats. The thins see democracy as a procedural tool for allowing the majority to rule. What you do is count all of us voters as equal and then let the numbers count. Democracy is all about how decisions are taken. It may correlate with very good substantive outcomes—that as an empirical generalisation democracies are more desirable places to live than other places on average, overtime (which I believe is true)—but there is no necessary connection. Democracies, on the thin understanding, can produce bad substantive outcomes, can even pass illiberal laws. Meanwhile the fats have a different conception of democracy. They take the core idea related to how decisions ought to be made and they stuff it full of moral abstractions they make it more morally pregnant. So democracy now means not just how decisions are taken. It also includes a judgment related to what those decisions are and whether they are acceptable ones (to them or to some group that is by definition smaller than the voting population as a whole. So the fats now get to assess how rights-respecting some statute passed by the elected legislature was, or whether it was unduly illiberal. And if was too illiberal, well on this new understanding of democracy it just doesn’t count as democratic, even though it is a product of the majority’s legislature. … I am a thin when it comes to how best to understand democracy. I think it’s best to understand it as a procedural tool for making decisions. The fat conception is less attractive, to my way of understanding, because it leaves wholly out of sight two things. First off, people disagree about what is and isn’t rights- respecting or liberal or in keeping with liberty or all such substantive calls. Smart, nice, well-informed people simply disagree. And second, if it is not to be all of us counted equally as voters who will decide these substantive moral calls, then at least sometimes it will be the top judges and the overseas committee members of United Nations agencies (and other internationalists) who will now get to make some of the authoritative calls otherwise made by the voters and hence who will, on this fat understanding of democracy, have more say on a host of debatable social policy issues than you and your fellow citizens. … So for me it’s better to be able to say, This is a democracy (given the procedural way in which its government was chosen) but it’s a bad democracy rather than having to say This government did such bad things that it doesn’t get to count as a democracy, which is where the fat understanding inevitably takes you. For thins you |