A Scary Thought about Democracy:

1/28/2022

A provocative essay by Richard Horton “Is Democracy Good for Your Health?” in the online version of The Lancet (December , 2021) picks up on Josh Ober’s work on democracy and the concern that many of us have that in its current form democracy is in big trouble. Horton argues that autocratic regimes may be doing a better job at combatting Covid-19 than liberal democracies.. For example, they can (and do) enforce measures that are essential for the health and safety of their populations. Liberal democracies have had a hard time convincing their citizens to follow even the most basic precautions. Democracies do pretty well when the going is relatively smooth, but can they deal with urgent situations that make demands on the citizenry?
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Horton pushes Ober’s view that the problem is not democracy per se, but liberal democracy, quoting Ober: “A good deal of human misery has attended twenty-first-century policies of ‘democracy promotion’, notably in the Middle East.” Horton adds, “Moreover, Ober is concerned that liberal democracy may not be able to solve the complex crises facing our world today. If liberal democracy fails, as it has done during this pandemic, the public might lose faith in its efficacy and, over time, be susceptible to the attractions of more authoritarian rule. But the choice we face is not between liberal democracy and autocracy. Rather, it is to understand that there exists a non-liberal version of democracy, which is still able to deliver security, prosperity, liberty, equality, dignity, education, and wellbeing, including health. … But the value of democracy lies not in its liberal form, but in something much more fundamental—and that is what we must defend against - populist and totalitarian regimes.”
If that’s right. the chances that liberal democracies can take the tough, often unpopular measures that are needed to combat the climate crisis are just about nil.
Can we believe that a non-liberal variant of democracy exists and is strong enough to deal with the BIG crisis – the climate disaster that is already upon us?
What do you think? Please post your comment here.
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Thanks to Judith Hallett for calling Horton’s article to my attention

1 Comment

Josh Ober

1/30/2022 04:43:37 pm

It is an honor to have my academic work picked up by policy-oriented practitioners, especially in a publication as distinguished as the Lancet. Of course, there is always the worry that long-form work that was written with a political theory audience in mind will lose some of its nuance when reduced to a few lines. So just to be clear: my argument in Demopolis was indeed that it is important to distinguish democracy, understood as collective self-government by an extensive and socially diverse body of participatory citizens from liberalism, understood as an extensive regime of inalienable, universal rights. It is possible in principle and at least in ancient practice to have democracy without liberalism, and perhaps, at least for a while (although I am skeptical about benevolent dictators and meritorious aristocracy) liberalism without democracy. And, in modernity, it is possible to have liberal democracy - that is, a liberal regime built on a foundation of collective self-government by citizens. But, contrary to the optimism about democracy promotion that was quite common in the last decade of the 20th century, and perhaps a few years into the 21st, the hybrid liberal-democracy is difficult to bring into being and difficult to sustain. The failure of various democratizing experiments of the 21t century has led some autocrats and autocrat wannabe's (notably Victor Orban) to squawk on about the supposed value of "illiberal democracy" - i.e. majoritarian tyranny crossed with demagogic populism, with overtly racist and ethnocentric overtones.

That is decidedly NOT what I was advocating in Demopolis, and certainly not what Richard Horton has in mind either. What we may want to think about more seriously, is the difference between the civic and civil rights that are preconditions of democracy and the universal human rights that are the premise and the aspiration of contemporary liberalism. If we are really serious about universal rights, and if those rights include an unrestricted right to movement, then there is indeed no justification for borders or quarantining of any kind. And if rights include an unrestricted right to bodily integrity, then there is no justification for mandatory vaccination, masking etc. Nor is it obvious that democracy, as citizen self-government, could be sustained with those sorts of strong and absolute rights. Collective self-government imposes the necessity of compromise with absolute rights - which can be difficult for liberals to accept. Can either democracy or autocracy deal effectively with climate change, nuclear proliferation, pandemics or other matters requiring global cooperation? The jury is out as far as I can see. And finally, what if it turned out that neither democracy NOR liberalism was actually "good for your health," Is a marginally more healthy or longer life a good trade off for a life with the autocrat's book on one's neck? I don't think we need to answer that yet, since I don't think we yet have much evidence that non-liberal or non-democratic governments are actually better at delivering health outcomes. But at least some of us would, I guess, trade off some risk to our health for the benefits of either self-government or basic rights or (if we can manage it) both.

A Scary Thought about Democracy:

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