Designing Democratic Institutions: Nomos XLII

4. Democracy, Electoral and Contestatory

4 DEMOCRACY, ELECTORAL AND CONTESTATORY PHILIP PETTIT I have argued elsewhere that the ideal of democratization—the ideal of bringing government under the control of the governed —has two dimensions.1 It represents both the familiar ideal of giving people electoral control over government and the usually unarticulated ideal of giving them contestatory control as well: giving them the sort of control that comes from the ability to contest government decisions effectively. This essay approaches the two-dimensional conception of democracy from a new angle. I begin with some propositions about the normative role of democracy (section 1). I argue that democracy can play this role only so far as it operates in two distinct dimensions, electoral and contestatory (section 2). And then I try to show two things: first, that the institutions found in polities that we are happy to describe as democratic display those two dimensions (section 3); and, second, that the two-dimensional conception can help us in thinking about how those institutions might be reformed so as to serve democracy better (section 4). The first argument is an attempt to show that the two-dimensional conception is fairly true to established ways of conceiving of democracy; it does not represent a new-fangled idea. The second is a complementary attempt to show that nevertheless there is point to articulating that conception; it enables us 105 to take a critical view of actual democratic practice. The essay concludes with some general observations on the emerging conception of democracy (section 5). In earlier work I made a case for a two-dimensional conception of democracy, and I looked at the likely shape of such a democracy, starting from the requirements of the distinctively republican ideal of freedom as nondomination. I make no republican assumptions in the current essay. The points that I argue are defended on relatively—though only relatively—ecumenical grounds. I. The Normative Role of Democracy Perhaps because it is inherently vague, the concept of democracy is easy to characterize. It is that of a system of government—a set of rules under which government is selected and operates— whereby the governed people enjoy control over the governing authorities. The concept is vague because it does not, in itself, tell us what kind of control, and how much control, the people ought to have over the authorities. Also it does not tell us anything about which are the controlled authorities and who belongs to the controlling people. Different conceptions of democracy offer specifications of such indeterminacies in the abstract concept; the two-dimensional conception to be outlined here provides one example of how that may be done. Even with the points of indeterminacy unresolved, however, most of us will agree that democracy, or at least democracy as it ought to be, is a desirable system of government. Certainly we will agree that it scores decisively over familiar alternatives such as a dictatorship, or a one-party system, or a system run by professional elites. But if we think that democracy is superior to such alternative systems, then that is presumably because we think that it serves the role of a system of government better. Whatever other virtues we may see in democracy—and I say nothing here on those virtues—we would hardly favor democracy over alternatives , if we did not think that it serves that role better than those alternatives. So what, then, is the role that a system of government ought to play? What is the role that we think democracy can play better than alternatives? philip pettit 106 In approaching this question, we might take our start from the various themes sounded in the extensive literature on democracy : that the democratic system gives voice to the will of the people ; that it protects people best from government; that it ensures a sort of equality between citizens; and so on. I prefer to approach it afresh, however, working from four presumptions about government that fit fairly well with common thought, or at least with common thought in more or less egalitarian, secular cultures. These presumptions tell us in the broadest terms what brief we should expect government to discharge and they thereby direct us to a story about the normative role of a system of government, in particular a democratic system of government; the role of the system will be precisely to ensure that government discharges that brief. Four Presumptions about Government...