In public discussion, the qualification “democratic” has such a tone that one may be tempted to label various phenomena as democratic or undemocratic according to whether they fit one’s aims and preferences or not. In order for such a manner of speaking to be appropriate for other than demagogic purposes, one ought to use the term “democratic” in some specific sense. Crucially, comments intended to be parts of a rational discourse must not be based on utilizing, intentionally or unintentionally, verbal ambiguity. Yet, the word “democratic” suffers precisely from ambiguity.
According to the standard meaning of the word, one may qualify as democratic a certain kind of method for making group decisions that transforms expressions of opinions of individual group members into a group decision. In order for such a method to be democratic, the method must treat individual group members as being equal—that is, each group member must have the same weight in forming the decision attributed to the group (e.g., one vote per voter). A method for collective decision-making is undemocratic, if group members have no influence on the decision being made (e.g., a dictatorship), or if some group members have a greater influence on the collective decision than the equality requirement would allow.
One can often see the word “democratic” used as if it meant the same as “equal”. People may for example speak of educational democracy meaning that having access to education does not depend on factors such as one’s city of residence or one’s socioeconomic status (equality with respect to educational opportunities). Someone could speak of the ideal of linguistic democracy when referring to the idea that the language of public administration in an English-speaking country ought to be understandable to anyone having English as one’s native language (equal opportunity to understand language in certain contexts). By democratization of knowledge one may wish to refer to the fact that people’s opportunities to obtain and transmit information have significantly improved thanks to the Internet (equality with respect to making public one’s opinions and being informed about the others’ opinions).
It is easy to note that the “democracy” of education, knowledge or language-use has no conceptual connection whatsoever either to decision-making procedures or to collective decisions. Should one pose to the Finnish population the question of choosing which academic disciplines ought to be taught in which cities, the result might very well be that ethnomusicology and philosophy should not be taught anywhere, while Finnish literature should be taught in one city only. Thus, the result of this democratic decision would not exemplify “educational democracy” in any way. Then again, a dictator might demand that ethnomusicology be taught in all municipalities of at least 10,000 inhabitants. In this case, an entirely undemocratic decision would help to establish “democracy” of education in a very radical fashion.
We may observe, furthermore, that even if a society applied a democratic decision-making method—hence a method subject to the requirement of equality among citizens—in all group decisions, this would by no means guarantee any sort of “equality of opportunity” or even equality before the law. The equality requirement of democracy regulates only the way in which decisions concerning groups are being made. It is in no direct way connected to decisions concerning individual citizens and even less is it linked to the opportunity for an individual citizen to make independent decisions.
The ambiguity of the term “democratic” may render it difficult to carry out rational discussion—for the same reason that this ambiguity is useful for the demagogue: one can move from one meaning to another without this transition being observed. It can likewise give rise to unfounded expectations among those who participate in democratic decisions. Roughly, democratic decision-making is founded on interest group thinking: people form coalitions according to each person’s individual demands, and the coalition with the largest number of members will have the greatest influence on the decision concerning the whole community. Typically, the goal of an interest group is simply to obtain concrete advantages to its members (say, reducing capital gains tax or improving conditions of protection against dismissal). The members of interest groups need not bother about the implications of their demands to the society as a whole. Reflecting on those implications is beside the point, if the goal is merely to make one’s voice heard.
If one wished to arrange that democratic decision-making actually serves equality among the community members in significant matters, radical maneuvers should be adopted: one should allow only such group decisions that cannot yield to any individual an essentially more advantageous position than to other individuals. That is, decisions should concern certain very general and all-embracing principles, all of which would be neutral with respect to interests of individuals. Thus, an individual’s pursuit for personal benefits could not influence the way in which the individual takes part in collective decisions, for the simple reason that no alternative would yield to any individual more personal benefits than any other alternative. Nevertheless, there would remain many decisions to be made, because people can have good grounds for disagreeing on how to understand the criteria of equality and on what means to use when attempting to reach the chosen goals.
However, especially for economic reasons it is far from clear whether one could even in principle obtain equality among individuals in one respect without creating some degree of inequality in another respect. And even if one could, in the long run individuals would presumably not content themselves with interest-neutral democratic decisions. People with various political inclinations would, with all likelihood, go to the barricades in order to change the system so that it would become favorable to interest group thinking.
One might wish that pursuit for some sort of social justice would be a guideline for democratic decision-making. Insofar as democratic decision-making however always in practice unavoidably makes it possible for different interest groups to promote their own interests, there can be progress with such a pursuit basically only by pure chance. Yet, even democracy based on majority decisions of interest groups is better than undemocratic alternatives—not because of any intrinsic value of the decisions made, but because the conflict between the aims of different interest groups will produce decisions that are watered down to the extent that on average they are not very bad for anyone.
[This is an English version of my post Demokratian ongelmallinen monimerkityksisyys. It appeared originally in Uusi Suomi in July 2016.]