Defining Democracy: A Nonecumenical Reply to May
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| Author | Elaine Spitz |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1979.tb01194.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
DEFINING DEMOCRACY: A
NONECUMENICAL REPLY
TO
MAY
ELAINE SPITZ
Russell
Sage
Foundation
STIPULATED
definitions cannot make an ecumenical appeal
if
the conceptual
issues they encompass are genuine. Choice is but the end result
of
a process of
thought, and it is our reasons for our choices that reveal their moral content.
The definitions we attach to things include our moral judgements
of
them (e.g.,
abortion is the murder of a fetus vs. abortion is the termination of an
unwanted pregnancy).
If
people choose sides on the basis of sheer caprice, or
the chance turning of a lottery wheel, then the meaning of their decisions
will
be unknown, and the phenomenological clarity John May seeks in his recent
article in
Political
Studies
will remain out of reach.
Political preferences are not simply matters of taste: one person likes
chocolate ice cream; another likes government by the people.
As
arbitrary
predilections,
of
course, choices would have certain convenient qualities. They
could be sorted into a priority order, ranked and assigned a numerical worth,
traded for a price, and summed to yield satisfaction indexes. Unfortunately,
such manipulation of allegedly neutral terminology merely masks moral issues.
It also introduces into politics an individualist bias seriously at odds with the
dominant liberal democratic tradition. Let me illustrate by reference to some
of May’s examples.
1.
An alleged virtue
of
understanding democracy to mean ‘governmental
acts responsive to the policy preferences of those affected’ is that it firmly
chooses between ‘government for’ and ‘government by’ conceptions of
democracy. May prefers ‘government by.’ However, he defends this choice with
trivial reasons that have nothing to do with the issues at stake. Opposition to
‘government for’ does not rest, as his discussion might lead one to suppose, on
its nonconventional usage, or on the confusion it might cause in an argument
about the good society. Rather, serious opposition arises from disbelief in the
possibility of knowing what
is
in the people’s interests if you don’t ask them. If
May believes in ‘government by’ and also believes that people’s interests can be
better protected by others than themselves, then the moral reasons for his
choice are not obvious. The moral content of ‘government by’ disappears from
the term and it becomes a murky phenomenon arbitrarily supported. The
John
D.
May.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XXVII,
No.
I
(126128)
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