Is public participation in democratic government really a good thing - or is the question moot?

Current circumstances are making for interesting times on the Web, as all sorts of new questions & views pop up about what is happening around us.  Underlying this I see growing disillusionment and anger about the state of world affairs, and a rising tide of despair about the future. For me, interesting thoughts relevant to TCR are triggered.

For example I have just read a piece by Larry A. Hickman published in Free Inquiry (the journal of the Council for Secular Humanism) called Citizen Participation: More or Less?  Hickman examines two contrasting views of the form that public participation should take in a democracy.

First, there is the view that many people are simply not competent to participate in public decision-making, and so should be excluded. Hickman says:

"For democracies, then, as opposed to theocracies and other types of dictatorships, the question is not whether there should be citizen participation but what form it should take. This question has received a wide range of responses. In his 2007 book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Bryan Caplan argued that citizen participation in political processes should be limited. On his view, efforts to increase voter turnout should be abandoned, and educated citizens should receive additional votes.

Caplan’s view is hardly new. Some two and a half millennia ago, both Plato and Aristotle denounced participatory democracy as a profoundly flawed form of political association. More recently, in his 1925 book The Phantom Public, journalist and public intellectual Walter Lippmann argued that participation in political decisions by ordinary citizens is neither necessary nor desirable. Experts, Lippmann believed, should be at the service of governing elites—not ordinary citizens. In Lippmann’s view, the ordinary citizen should be asked to do nothing more engaging or demanding than to vote for the party in power when things are going well and for the opposition party when things are not going well.

The United States Supreme Court has apparently sided with Caplan and Lippmann. In a 6–3 decision handed down on April 28, 2008, the high Court upheld an Indiana law that requires voters to produce either a state- or federally issued photo ID. Because a “primary document” such as a certified birth certificate (or its equivalent) and a visit to a state motor vehicle agency are required to obtain an official photo ID, voter turnout among the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped will likely be reduced. The effect of this ruling will be to grant those who are affluent, young or middle-aged, and healthy with greater influence at the ballot box."

Hickman then looks at the views of John Dewey who essentially advocates not for pure participatory democracy but for 'deliberative democracy'. As Hickman puts it:

"Dewey was in fact calling for a form of deliberative democracy that would achieve a creative balance between participation and representation. He realized that deliberative democracies cannot function in the absence of experts in various fields and representatives who take decisions on behalf of a voting public. On one side, while participation within civic affairs could hardly be required, it should nevertheless be open to anyone willing to develop the skills necessary for involvement in the processes of public debate and decision making. On the other side, efficient government requires both representatives who are sensitive to public problems and experts who can advise those representatives on technical matters."

For me, Hickman's article crystalised the arguments in support of retaining strong elements of representation in our democratic institutions, even while we can see that there are serious problems with current modes and practices of representation - some of which we believe we can use the Internet to repair.  So for me, this article was illuminating and optimistic. 

Then, looking further, I ran into another article of a much more despairing nature.  First, in the same journal I read a piece by Laurence W. Britt called Fascism Anyone? I found the authors listing of 14 common features of fascist regimes interesting, and this closing comment intrigued me:

"Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not."

And now we reach the point about so much despair being expressed today. On MarketWatch.com (the least likely of places) I found a piece by Paul Farrell entitled Wall Street's 'Disaster Capitalism for Dummies' - 14 reasons Main Street loses big while Wall Street sabotages democracy. Farrell responds to Britt's question by adapting his 14 features of fascism to arrive at dire conclusions about the current state of democracy in America.

People can form their own views of Farrell's arguments. For me, the huge number of comments made for interesting reading in itself.  The relevance of all this to TCR for me is the question of, if a country's democratic institutions are under stress, what role an increasingly interconnected public can play in protecting, strengthening and perhaps even evolving those institutions either as part of a deliberative process led by elected representatives, or simply as a bottom-up phenomenon. Farrell may be proving a counsel of despair which could apply not just in the USA but in in many other countries. The question is, what are the people going to do about it, and how?