In Defence Of Democracy

The answer to bad democratic choices is not dictatorship. It is limiting what government can do.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Democracy has come under repeated attack in the past decade, as the excesses of many democratic countries have come to destroy what many perceived to be the democratic dream.

But it is not merely the corrupt, bloated, bureaucratic, vote-buying parody of democracy that is facing an assault. That deserves criticism. No, what has become fashionable is something deeper and more dangerous: the idea that democracy itself is the problem.

A growing number of people, disgusted by corruption, mediocrity, populism, and the endless disappointments of modern politics, have begun to flirt with alternatives. Some dream of a benevolent dictator. Others romanticise monarchy. Others simply want “strong leadership”, a man on horseback who can sweep aside the petty squabbles of parliament and impose order.

This frustration is understandable; it is also foolish.

Too often, we rely on the idea that we need great men and women to lead us into prosperity. We wait for them to rise so we can vote them into power. And often, we are left disappointed.

Great leaders can make great changes, for good and bad. But great leaders are also rare. Relying on a person who can only rise up once in a generation is not a sustainable way to bring prosperity or stability to a country.

The bedrock of any society is not who is in charge; it is how they are chosen, how their power is used, and how that power is structured.

This is where many critics of democracy go wrong. They judge democracy by whether it produces their preferred leader, their preferred ideology, or their preferred policy outcomes. When democracy produces corruption, socialism, racial nationalism, incompetence, populism, or cowardice, they conclude that democracy has failed.

But democracy is not magic. It is not a prosperity machine. It is not a guarantee of liberty. It is not a substitute for a sound constitution, private property, free markets, limited government, or the rule of law.

Democracy serves a more basic, but vital, purpose: it provides a peaceful and stable means of appointing those in power. That may sound modest; it is not.

The way a government or ruler is chosen is often called a political system. This includes democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy, and more. The essential nature of these systems is that they determine who rules and how a new ruler is appointed.

A common misconception is that political systems are meant to produce certain ideological results. Many assume that democracy will always produce prosperity, while a fringe push towards monarchism assumes that a good king will restore order and dignity. When democracy fails to deliver the promised prosperity and freedom, people damn the system and look for something else.

This is how we fall into the traps of populism, dictatorship, and the endless cycle of changing political systems without the results truly improving.

Political systems do not exist to produce certain results. Democracy will not necessarily make a country richer or freer. There are ways in which democracy can be integrated into a society to encourage wealth creation and liberty, but the same system can also be used by voters to choose poverty, dependence, and decline.

South Africa is proof of that. But that does not mean democracy has failed in its primary function.

As denizens of a world dominated by generally sophisticated modern democracies, we are quite privileged. We can complain about the excesses and vices of democracy because many of us have not been faced with the alternative.

In countries without democracy, handovers of power are fraught with danger. In a democracy, power is transferred through a vote. In societies that have bought into this system, losers accept their losses. Perhaps with grumbling. Perhaps with court challenges. Perhaps with endless whining on television. But not usually with the alternative violence so prevalent in non-democratic societies. This is not a small achievement.

In monarchic systems, the deaths of monarchs often ignited violent insurrections, coups, and plays for the throne. Look at the Wars of the Roses in England: three decades of civil war because there was no sufficiently peaceful way to settle the question of succession.

Modern supporters of monarchy suffer from a brutal confirmation bias. They look at the successful monarchs in history and ignore the buckets of filth. For every wise king, there were fools, tyrants, degenerates, incompetents, and children thrown onto thrones because of bloodline rather than merit.

Democracy does not produce perfect results; it is not meant to. It is meant to provide a peaceful means through which power is transferred to a successor. And it accomplishes this far better than monarchy.

Countries are full of political rivals vying for power and prestige. They will attempt to grasp at that power. In a monarchy or dictatorship, their only real option is violence, conspiracy, or palace intrigue. In a democracy, they can attempt to win the favour of the public.

Democracy turns what could be a brutal civil war into a popularity contest. And while that may seem ridiculous, shallow, and often humiliating, it beats war.

When it comes to sustainability and stability, history is also on the side of democracy. The Serene Republic of Venice experienced peaceful and uninterrupted republican government for over a millennium. It was only finally broken by foreign invasion. While Venice had essential differences from modern pluralistic democracies, it still paved the avenue to power through peaceful election rather than violent insurrection; that matters.

Democracies also give at least a semblance of decision-making power to the public. Often, the average citizen has more skin in the game than an aristocrat or ruler. It is ordinary people who suffer in wars, endure economic collapse, pay the taxes, face the crime, and live with the consequences of bad policies.

In practice, this is imperfect. Voters can be ignorant. Voters can be manipulated. Voters can be bribed with their own money. Voters can be swept up by race nationalism, envy, fear, and economic illiteracy.

But giving the public some say in political power is still far more principled than placing all authority in a hereditary monarch who may trigger a civil war if he dies without a clear heir, or in a dictator who can only be removed by death, coup, or revolution.

So, what does this have to do with South Africa?

South Africa has had a racially equal democracy since 1994. And while it may be controversial to admit, it had a democracy before that, from its inception in 1910. Democracy does not necessarily equate to universal franchise. Even in ideal democracies, franchise is not truly universal. Not everyone is allowed to vote. People have to be a certain age. Some are denied the vote based on mental incapacity. Some nations deny convicts the right to vote.

If we strictly defined democracy as universal franchise, then no country in the world would constitute a democracy.

South Africa had and has a democracy because enough citizens were able to vote for the ruling government. That is all that is required for a political system to be meaningfully democratic. The great moral stain of pre-1994 South Africa was not that it was not a democracy at all, but that its democracy was racially restricted and unjust.

Since 1994, our democracy has failed to give us a prosperous and free society. But it did achieve one thing: peace.

We have not faced a civil war in South Africa, despite coming excruciatingly close many times. That is not nothing.

Democracy is not perfect. South Africa proves that. We are faced with apocalyptic levels of corruption, rolling blackouts, violent crime, unemployment, cadre deployment, race law, and the breakdown of infrastructure and order across the country.

But monarchy would not have saved us. Dictatorship would not have saved us. A “strong man” would not have saved us. Imagine a ruler with the same nature as the ANC, but without any possibility of voting them out of power.

Imagine cadre deployment without elections. Imagine the National Democratic Revolution without opposition parties. Imagine expropriation without Parliament, courts, public pressure, or electoral consequences. Imagine the worst instincts of the ruling party, but freed from even the limited restraints of democratic accountability.

That is what the anti-democrats are playing with. Democracy is not the problem. Waiting for a great leader is a foolish waste of time; romanticising authoritarianism is worse.

The fundamental issue in South Africa is not that we vote. It is that the state has too much power over too much of our lives. It is that our Constitution has not sufficiently restrained that power. It is that voters have been trained to treat politics as a means of plunder. It is that race law, welfare dependence, cadre deployment, central planning, and socialist delusions have corroded our institutions.

Democracy can choose freedom; it can also choose ruin.

But the answer to bad democratic choices is not to abolish democracy. It is to limit what any government, democratic or otherwise, is allowed to do.

Democracy is not enough. It must be paired with constitutionalism, property rights, federalism, free markets, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Without those, democracy becomes little more than a peaceful way to choose new managers for the same destructive machine.

But without democracy, that destructive machine becomes even harder to stop.

We should defend democracy, not because it always gives us good leaders, but because it gives us a peaceful way to remove bad ones. And in a country like South Africa, that may be the difference between reform and ruin.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is a political analyst and author. He is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.