Democracy’s Machinery for Political Equality Is Stalling

Democracy makes an extraordinary promise, which is probably why it has expanded so much through the centuries. As all societies are inevitably marked by inequalities (of wealth, education, status, influence) it states (and practices) that citizens count as political equals. The preferences of a cleaner and a billionaire should carry the same weight in determining collective decisions.

But this equality does not arise naturally. Social and economic inequalities continually push in the opposite direction. Political equality has to be produced—and reproduced—through a complex interaction between different actors, organised in specific institutional arrangements. Democracy, in this sense, is a machine: a set of interlocking mechanisms designed to turn the diverse preferences of unequal citizens into public decisions that respond to those preferences, according to a process where each citizen counts equally.

This is the starting point of my book Democrazia addio. It draws on Robert Dahl’s classic definition of democracy as the continuing responsiveness of government to the preferences of citizens considered as political equals.

Democracy thus is based on a simple principle. But making it real requires complex machinery. Citizens need rights and freedoms to form and express their preferences; parties and other collective organisations gather scattered demands, combine them into alternative programmes and give power to people who possess few individual resources; elections allow citizens to choose among those programmes on the egalitarian basis of one person, one vote; winners, based on their authority and practical capacity, implement their commitments; an independent public sphere enables citizens to observe the results, discuss them and hold governments accountable at the next election; constitutional limits preserve this entire process into the future.

Importantly enough, these mechanisms do not directly eliminate social inequality; but allow for the possibility of political action to counteract and overcome it, if citizens agree on this goal: something that I call the transformative potential of democracy, which by definition – practicing equality in unequal societies – contains a tension towards a change in the inequality structure of a society. Mass parties were especially important in this regard, because they organised millions of people who, acting alone, had little money, information or access to decision-makers; collective organisation thus allowed the many with few resources to confront the few with abundant resources. Electoral competition then channelled this organised conflict through elections in which every vote carried equal weight.

The central argument of Democrazia addio is that this machinery – especially in the Western world where I concentrate most of my attention – has progressively seized up, thus almost cancelling the transformative power of democracy. Mass parties have withered or become vertical organisations centred on leaders and professional communication. Economic globalisation has reduced the capacity of national governments to effectively govern the economy (e.g. think about tax havens; or job offshoring, often leading to a race-to-the-bottom in salaries and work conditions); it also has led to the emergence of global corporate giants that command resources that are often larger than those of most governments, thus exerting incredibly strong influence on those governments. In Europe, EU integration – which might have represented the perfect solution to restore democratic control of these processes – has in fact created an integrated market without common labour-market standards or fiscal and economic-policy harmonisation, and has transferred important decisions beyond the nation-state without creating democratic politics of comparable democratic responsiveness at the supranational level. Meanwhile, concentrated media ownership, privately governed platforms and the de facto anonymity of social media accounts (small actors with abundant resources can easily simulate mass consensus through large numbers of automated accounts, thus effectively manipulating public opinion and political decision-makers) have weakened (bringing back inequality) the common arena in which citizens evaluate political alternatives.

As a result, each of these transformations can be seen as jamming a different gear; and – together – they end up strongly distorting the transmission of citizens’ preferences into policy – i.e., democracy. Citizens remain free to speak, yet actors controlling capital, expertise, media visibility, data or the ability to move across borders can make their preferences count far more. Parties may still compete but no longer represent and organise society’s different (especially weaker) groups effectively. Elections remain formally egalitarian, but their winners (often already representing distorted preferences) may lack the power to carry out what voters selected.

This is why democracy can deteriorate before freedom disappears. Obviously, freedom is indispensable: without expression, association, opposition and genuine electoral choice, democracy cannot exist. But freedom alone does not ensure political equality, because a system may retain competitive elections and substantial civil liberties while becoming steadily less responsive to citizens as equals, i.e., less democratic. In this case, we have the survival of part of democracy’s institutional shell, but with the failure of the machinery that gives it democratic substance.

This perspective also changes the diagnosis of populism. Populist leaders may attack pluralism and constitutional safeguards, and these dangers must never be minimised. But I argue that support for populism is, rather than the cause, a symptom of that deeper crisis of responsiveness I presented above. Research across six Western European elections in 2017–18 found that shifts in party support (especially for populist parties) were driven predominantly by economic issues, often involving welfare, employment, redistribution and protection from growing insecurity. Condemning populism without repairing democracy’s machinery leaves these demands unanswered.

Defending courts, rights and electoral integrity therefore remains essential, but is not enough. Democratic renewal also requires strong parties that can convert weak individual voices into collective power; public authorities capable of governing markets; constraints on concentrated corporate and informational power; democratic institutions operating at the scale of transnational problems; and a genuinely plural public sphere.

The decisive question, thus, is not only whether citizens are free. It is whether democratic mechanisms still make them political equals. Understanding the real mechanisms behind the deeper crisis of democracy is in my view a decisive first step to direct the efforts of those that believe in its future; and then also to fuel their hope.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.