The Myth and Reality of Democracy: An Illustration

The second round of the French election, which will take place on July 7, has interesting lessons about democracy. In each cycle where no candidate received more than 50% of the votes in the first round, those who received more than 12.5% ​​were allowed to run in the second round. A political party or coalition that comes in third or lower may have an interest (and an illegal obligation under electoral treaties) to pressure him to resign so as not to split the votes between the two majors in the event that one of them is elected. it can affect its position after the election in the National Assembly. “Centre” groups have joined forces with the left-wing New Popular Front to try to block the “far-right” National Rallye. (I put “far right” in scare quotes because the NR is arguably no further to the right than the leftist NPF, and many of their statistical proposals are the same.) This strategy resulted in 224 candidates leaving out of 577 circumscriptions. (See “French Election: 224 Candidates Officially Withdraw from Second Round,” Le MondeJuly 2, 2024.)

The purpose of the second round is to increase the chances (or ensure, depending on the specific program) that the candidate will be able to say that he represents the “will of the people,” that is, 50%+1 of the people who make up “the people.” One might think that, for a worshiper of democracy, removing one option from the voter list would be a sin. Technically, it violates what is called “neutrality” in democratic theory, because it favors some options over others. In reality, however, the limited options presented to the electorate are always possible, in one way or another, as long as there are millions of possible collective (political) options; Each voter may have their own ideal choice.

For any single voter, the limits of voting choice are irrelevant because his vote, whatever the menu, is not decisive. He (including himself, of course) will stay home and the winner will not change. However, the political strategy of getting one person out of office may change the collective choice from the election, compared to what it would otherwise be. The contradictions and inconsistencies of the myth of democracy are many.

No democratic gadget can make an election or a poll better reflect the “will of the people,” which does not exist anyway. As I noted in a previous post, different democratic voting systems can achieve very different results. Interpreting the work of Donald Saari (“Millions of Electoral Results from a Single Profile,” Social Choice and Welfare1992), Gordon Tullock wrote (in Government Failure: The First Step in Public Choice2002):

Many different voting rules are used in the world and each one leads to a certain different result. Saari produced strong statistical evidence that for a given set of voters with fixed preferences, any outcome can be achieved by at least one voting method.

Combining all that with the Condorcet Paradox and its current extensions, it would be a mistake to look for a majority that is not found. A majority can only be one among many, depending on the voting system and the politics behind it, not to mention the general influence of officials on the political system. As political scientist William Riker would put it, democratic decisions can be tyrannical or “lawless nonsense, at least some of the time” (see Liberalism Against Populism1982).

The inestimable advantage of constitutional democracy (“constitutional” means “limited”) is that it gives voters, when enough of them are dissatisfied with their rulers, a cheap way to remove them. Liberal democracy (meaning, in its old sense, constitutional democracy), writes Riker, allows for “an occasional and sometimes random popular veto” with some ability to prevent “legal tyranny.” We shouldn’t ask too much of a democracy.

Although the limitation of options presented to voters is inevitable, the continued limitation of individual choice by collective choice is not the only conceivable scenario in the world. It is usually ineffective or unethical or both. Collective selection removes multiple choices from the individual’s probability sets. It has a direct effect on the election of all the people who would do what has been forbidden. This, not a myth of democracy or a gadget, is an important issue.

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I instructed ChatGPT to “produce a democratic image.” I didn’t tell him anything else. He captioned his photo (inset photo for this post, reproduced below) as follows: “A group of healthy and diverse people standing together in a large open space, each holding a different flag representing different countries around the world. In the center, there is a large, ornate ballot box on a raised platform, symbolizing democracy. Above the scene, a bright sun shines, casting a hopeful and unifying light over the crowd. The backdrop includes iconic world landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Wall of China, representing international unity and cooperation.” It is the empty concept of democracy: democracy is good and beautiful; but it is probably widely shared, as the bot database attests. (“He” produced a second image, at the same level of emptiness.)

Democracy is good, beautiful, and free, if we believe DALL-E


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