POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

Lesson 10.- Democracy

1.- The government of the people

The etymology of the word democracy comes from the "government of the
people" and the historical origin of its appearance is, in the context of classical
antiquity, the polis of Athens. From this perspective, Bobbio refers to democracy
as saying that "specifically designates the form of government in which political
power is exercised by the people" (Bobbio, 1992, 188).

Although democracy is now part of the widely accepted criteria of legitimacy of

political systems, it is noteworthy that, throughout history, it is a concept that
has not had excessive good press. It is well known that Plato, Socrates and
Aristotle were supporters of other forms of government. In this regard,
Aristotle's classic typology of forms of government places democracy as the
government of the many for its own benefit. Sartori explains that Aristotle builds
his joint typology on the criteria: the number of rulers plus the interest they serve
(general or proper). Thus, one's government is divided into monarchy (good)
and tyranny (bad), the rule of the few in aristocracy (good) and oligarchy (bad);
The rule of many in politeia (good) and democracy (bad) (Sartori, 2003, 201-202).

This traditional fear of democracy is the fear of demagogues and the

manipulation of the people. This tension lies in the foundations of the American
Constitution and the debates of Federalists and anti-Federalists. Here it was
conceived that the power of the majority was limited by the power of the
minority, and vice versa, and where no minority had all the power, in the well-
known speech against the factions. A well-known advocate of parliamentary
democracy was Kelsen who linked self-government and autonomy. In this
regard for Kelsen, the forms of government in which laws are made by those to
whom they are directed (and precisely are autonomous norms) are autocratic
forms of government in which those who make the laws are different from those
To which they are destined (and are precisely heteronomous norms) (Bobbio,
1992, 194).

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BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

Democracy is linked to popular will - and its representation - and with the
consent of the citizens. As Sartori argues, democracy means that power is
legitimate only when its investiture comes from below, only if it emanates from
the popular will, which means, in particular, if it is freely consented to (Sartori,
2003, 43).

W will now analyse the characteristics of democracy in the classical model and
the representative model will be analysed.

2.- Classical Democracy

The context of the discovery of the notion of democracy is the polis of Athens. It
also coincides with the context of the discovery of the notion of Philosophy. It is
not a coincidence that education of the citizens corresponded to the sophists first,
and to the philosophers later (Perez de la Fuente, 2009).

The first issue is that the historical translation of concepts as democracy requires
some contextualisation efforts. The classical mentality and the relationship
between individual and community have their own framework of reference,
distinct from the individualistic perspectives of today. As Sartori points out, he
insists on saying polis because the referent of ancient democracy was not at all a
city state as we are often told: it was a city-community, a city without a state
(Sartori, 2003, 198).

The ancient Athenians were a community. The word “person” means mask and
alludes to the faces that were placed the actors in the Greek theater. To be a
person was to play a social, communitarian and political role. Hence, man is a
political animal, in the celebrated expression of Aristotle. Man is an animal of the
polis, inserted in a social fabric that guides and defines morally.

The second relevant issue about classical democracy is that its characteristics
singled it out against representative democracy. It is generally considered that
classical democracy is a model of direct democracy. Perhaps most importantly, at
any given historical moment, a political form of government emerged, distinct
from previous and other polis, which was based on two basic ideas: (a) Equality
of citizens; B) The deliberation, participation and consent of the citizens for the
public decisions.

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

According to Requejo, the characteristics of Athenian democracy could be listed

as: isonomy: equality with respect to the law and the isegoria: citizen equality of
use in the Assembly; isocratia: use of a draw for the appointment of certain
public positions. Other legitimating values in the Athenian demokratia were
freedom, understood at the individual level through the slave-free man counter-
position, and at the collective level in the idea that the polis must be free in the
sense of not following provisions of any other external power. The participation
of the citizens, in particular in the Assembly and in the courts, and in the popular
control of the political power, foresaw in the examination of the main positions,
the rotation of the same ones and in the practice of the ostracism (Requejo, 2008,
49, 64).

Citizens are equal in the law-isonomia-has an equal voice –isegoria-, and, to a

certain extent, by the rotation of public offices, has equal power –isocratia-.
However, the bases of Athenian democracy are based on the border between
citizen and non-citizen, which excludes women, metecs-foreign merchants and
artisans-and slaves-individuals who are the property of citizens.

In the Agora public affairs are debated, deliberated and finally voted to make a
decision. All citizens are called to deliberate. Some critics of classical democracy
argue that citizens can freely engage in public affairs because non-citizens
resolve private affairs.

The sophists educated in the arts of rhetoric and dialectics so that the citizens
had more power of conviction in the agora. They were educators for democracy.
From this perspective, Bobbio offers some arguments in defence of classical
democracy where he affirms that it is not a government in favour of few but of
many; The law is the same for everyone, both for the rich and for the poor and
therefore is a government of laws, whether written or unwritten, and not of men;
Freedom is respected both in private life and in public life, where membership in
this or that party is not worth anything but merit (Bobbio, 1992, 196-197).

3.- Representative democracy

Democracy has been, in its modern versions, a representative system controlled

by the popular will. This system involves some tensions in its criteria of
legitimacy and legitimacy. In the famous words of the British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, is the less bad of the known political systems.

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

The first tension receives different denominations, but with different nuances
pointing to the same idea. It is the contrast between negative freedom and
positive freedom of Isaiah Berlin; or the opposition between the freedom of the
ancients and the freedom of the moderns of Benjamin Constant. In a synthetic
way, it could be said that this tension occurs between the value of freedom -
negative- as non-interference of the State and positive-freedom as active
participation in self-government. The ideal is the combination of both, but can
the state impose active participation? Is it an illegitimate intrusion into negative
freedom? In this sense, Requejo explains the profile of this tension when he states
that one of the main characteristics of political liberalism is that any current
consideration of contemporary democracy must retain the idea of negative
political freedom as one of its basic necessary conditions. This means, first, to
understand the radical difference between the liberal idea of political freedom
(negative freedom) and the democratic idea of political freedom (associated with
positive freedoms of participation and self-transformation) (Requejo, 2008, 106).

The second tension could be established between what we will call Theory of
Interest and what I will call Theory of Will. This view would be partially inspired
by the controversy between Burke and Paine.

According to the theory of the will, collective self-government is an extension of

individual autonomy. In the same way that the individual "is the best judge of
his own interests" -Stuart Mill-, the people are the best judge of their own
interests. According to the Theory of Interest, there is a minority of individuals
who have the proper training, the time available, the necessary information, the
skills required to know the true interests of the people.

If we follow the theory of the will, in the extreme, there is direct democracy. The
people must be consulted on all matters and take decisions by majority. Proof
that the transition from autonomy to self-government entails some difficulties,
disscussed by Stuart Mill himself when he defended a double voting system for
the most educated, especially denying that it has to do with his level of wealth,
but with his level of intellectual preparation. In this regard, he defends "a plural
mode of voting that assigns to education, as such, the degree of superior
influence that is sufficient to balance the numerical weight of the less educated
class" (Stuart Mill, 2007, 172-173).

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

It is unhelpful, if not harmful, for the Constitution to proclaim ignorance and

science with equal titles to govern the country. Everything concerning national
institutions should be presented in the spirit of the citizen, from the point of view
most advantageous for him, and as it is advantageous to think that all have some
influence, but that the best and wisest It is important that the State profess this
doctrine and that national institutions implement it (Stuart Mill, 2007, 174).

At the end of Theory of Interest is Carl Schmitt and his vision of Führerprinzip
where the charismatic properties of a leader made him the most suitable to know
the true interests of the mass people. In that system, the mass participated by
acclamation. This system was not democratic as people do not participate -
directly or indirectly - in the establishing of norms, nor does they control political
power.
The conclusion is that the Theory of Interest and Theory of Will should be
combined where there are representatives who are periodically democratically
elected and public decisions and re made after open and public deliberation of
issues with great participation.

The third tension is between the parliamentary system and its critics. As an
advocate of democracy, Kelsen defines parliamentarism with these words:
Formation of the decisive will of the State through a collegiate body elected by
the people by virtue of a universal and equal suffrage, that is to say, democratic,
based on the principle of Majority (Kelsen, 2002, 37). In this regard,
parliamentarism presents itself as a compromise between the democratic
exigency of freedom and the principle, essential for any progress in social
technique, of the differentiated distribution of labor (Kelsen, 2002, 38).

The controversy between Schmitt and Kelsen on democracy, which had in the
parliamentary system as one of its points, is well known. From this perspective,
Schmitt offers critical arguments to parliamentarism when he argues that
increasingly small party commissions or party coalitions decide behind closed
doors and what the representatives of the interests of big business decide in the
most limited committee, Is perhaps even more important to the daily lives and
fate of millions of people than political decisions (Schmitt, 1996, 65). Schmitt
concludes his view by stating that if publicity and discussion have become, with
the very dynamics of parliamentary functioning, empty and futile formality,
Parliament, as it has developed in the nineteenth century, has lost its previous

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

foundation And sense. (Schmitt, 1996, 65). The alternative proposed by Schmitt is
the Fascist State and the Fuhrerprinzip.

The arguments of democracy are better. Following Kelsen, democracy is based

on (a) public deliberation and participation when it states that "democracy gives
equal value to the political will of each person, respecting equally every belief,
every opinion in which it manifests itself. That is why all political conviction has
the same possibility of manifesting itself and of fighting in free competition for
the conquest of the intelligences and the hearts. That is why the dialectical
procedure of popular and parliamentary assemblies, in which free discussion
precedes and prepares normative creation, has been rightly regarded as
democratic "(Kelsen, 2002, 603).

A another level, democracy (b) offers a suitable role for majorities and minorities
when Kelsen argues that "the rule of the majority, so characteristic of democracy,
distinguishes itself from every other domain in which it not only presupposes
essentially an opposition - The minority - but recognizes it politically, and
protects it in fundamental rights and freedom, or in the principle of
proportionality. And the stronger the minority, the more it tends to turn the
politics of democracy into a policy of compromise "(Kelsen, 2002, 603).

At the third level, democracy (c) does not defend an absolute truth, but rather a
critical examination of values when Kelsen states that "it is ensured that
parliamentarism, by its very nature, is to perform in the contradictory dialectical
procedure and in the realm From the formation of political will, the idea of "pre-
established harmony" (purely metaphysical, with pretensions of absolute truth).
In the same way that, in the field of economic life, free competition takes place;
just the reverse is the truth, we must show that democracy in general, and
parliamentarism in particular, is immanent a critical-relativist ideology.
Moreover, the objective sense of the dialectic of parliamentarism is in no way the
achievement of an absolutely just truth, but the achievement of a "middle way"
between the interests of the majority and those of the minority: political
commitment " (Kelsen, 2002, 578-579).

To define the notion of democracy Bobbio sets out criteria as universal

procedures that characterize how they can be fixed in these essential points:

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

1. All citizens ,who are of legal age, irrespective of race, religion, economic status
and sex, must enjoy political rights, that is to say, that everyone must enjoy the
right to express his or her own opinion and Choose who expresses it for him.

2 ..- The vote of all citizens must have the same weight.

3. All those who enjoy political rights must be free to vote according to their own
opinion, formed as freely as possible, in a free competition between organized
political groups, in concurrence among them.

4.- They should be free also in the sense that they should be put in the condition
of choosing between diverse solutions, that is to say, between parties that have
diverse and alternative programs.

5.- For both elections and collective decisions, the rule of numerical majority
must be valid, in the sense that the decision that obtains the largest number of
votes is considered elected or considered valid.

6. No decision taken by a majority must limit the rights of the minority,

particularly the right to become a majority on equal terms (Bobbio, 2005, 460).

It is relevant that what underlies democracy is not only the existence of elections,
but that these are the product of free and informed decisions and especially the
existence of political pluralism, of different alternatives.

In his Lessons on Ethics, Power and Law, Peces-Barba distinguishes two

principles in democracy: the principle of majority and the principle of
negotiation. In this regatd, he maintains that "the principle of majority is a final
principle for decision-making, approval of rules, formation of criteria and other
assumptions of direct decisions of citizenship (general elections or any level) and
training of The will of collegiate bodies and public institutions, starting with the
seat of representation of popular sovereignty that is the Parliament and also in
the collegiate Courts (...). On the other hand, the principle of negotiation, is a
medial principle, of communication, of dialogue, of transaction, of approach of
positions that serves to favour the consensus, in which argumentative and
rationality dimensions are dominant (Peces-Barba, 2010, 328).

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

The tensions between negative freedom and positive freedom, between Theory
of Interest and Theory of Will and between parliamentarism and its critics, show
that the way is to improve democratic quality without giving up the gains made.
The issue is how to institutionalize channels of public deliberation that allow the
participation of citizens, without undermining the negative freedom that those
who do not want to participate and without undermining the role of
representative institutions. Democracy is synonymous with voting, it should also
be synonymous with public deliberation with democratic quality.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

Bobbio, Norberto (1992), Estado, gobierno y sociedad. Por una teoría general de la
política, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, traducción de José f. Fernández
Santillán.

Bobbio, Norberto (2005), Teoría general de la política, Trotta, Madrid, traducción de

Antonio de Cabo y Gerardo Pisarello.

Kelsen, Hans (2002), Esencia y valor de la democracia, Comares, Granada,

traducción de Rafael Luengo Tapia y Luis Legaz Lacambra.

Kelsen, Hans (2002), Teoría general del Estado, Comares, Granada, traducción de
Luis Legaz Lacambra.

Mill, John Stuart (2007) Del gobierno representativo . Madrid: Tecnos, traducción de
Marta C.C. de Iturbe.

Peces-Barba Martínez, Gregorio (2010), Lecciones sobre Ética, Poder y Derecho,

Dykinson, Madrid.

Pérez de la Fuente, Oscar (2009) “Educación para la Democracia. Una visión

desde los clásicos”, Universitas, núm. 9, pp. 83-103.

Requejo Coll, Ferran (2008), Las democracias, Ariel, Barcelona.

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 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
BACHELOR IN JOURNALISM
CARLOS III UNIVERSITY OF MADRID

Sartori, Giovanni (2003), ¿Qué es la democracia?, Taurus, Madrid, traducción de

Miguel Angel González Rodríguez et. al.

Schmitt, Carl (1996), Sobre el parlamentarismo, Tecnos, Madrid, traducción de

Thies Nelsson y Rosa Grueso.

Spanish version: http://ocw.uc3m.es/filosofia-del-derecho/filosofia-politica