The Cult of Democracy

“The bigger the election’s participation, the bigger the mandate, and so universal suffrage elections have grown into unwieldy, ugly beasts.”

We almost never complain that a country or an institution is too democratic. We never say that there really ought to be fewer elections and fewer electors or that young people are too involved in politics when they ought to be pursuing other things. Democracy is metastatic. Once introduced, unless strong efforts are made to restrain it, it soon infects much of society. Higher education, for example, must now be democratic: Everyone must be able to go to university if that is their wish, such that 50% of young people in Britain now attend. People increasingly identify themselves—especially online—in democratic, political terms. They are feminist, trad, liberal, conservative, LGBTQ+, socialist, MAGA, anti-fascist, pro-European Union, Republican, Democrat. Political conflicts have replaced theological ones. Now, instead of, say, not dating a Catholic, someone might not date a Tory. Most people have a side, a faction they tend to sympathize with and trust. Worryingly, this is often their deepest moral commitment.

To increase democracy is to increase the influence of politics in people’s lives. This is why modern authoritarian and totalitarian regimes love to use referenda. It is why they often have the word “democracy” in the title of their country and go through monumental efforts to stage elections. It is also why monarchies tend to be freer, better governed countries. To be a subject of a monarchy is generally less oppressive than to be a citizen of a republic. To be a citizen, one has an obligation to engage in politics, and, in turn, he owes his freedoms to politics. Indeed, if one compares republics and monarchies, the monarchies are generally preferable. Was the French Third Republic governed better than Victorian and Edwardian England? Is republican Italy better governed than monarchic Sweden?

There was a time—at least in Britain and America—when many understood that democracy was not an intrinsic good; instead, it was only good insofar as it produced desirable results. One of the most forgotten and interesting campaigns against democratic expansion was that of the female anti-suffragists. These were women who did not believe that equality meant having the same political privileges as men. They also believed that progress—when it came to issues affecting women—was not necessarily helped by enfranchisement. (There had, after all, been significant progress on various issues, from child custody to prostitution, before universal suffrage in the United Kingdom.) Fascinatingly, when there was a referendum in Massachusetts in 1895 on whether the electorate “supported the position that women should be allowed to vote in municipal elections,” only 4% of women turned out to vote. Consistently, in the earlier years of voting, women tended to be quite conservative.