In recent years there has been a flowering of books discussing the various crises facing the many representative democracies of the world. These works have grown especially since 2016 as scholars, journalists, and pundits seek to explain and understand Trump’s 2016 victory, the Brexit vote, and the weakening of centrist parties across Europe.
In a somewhat different vein, there have also been a number of books that have sought to explain this democratic dysfunction through a critique of democracy itself. These have included Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter, and Larry Bartels and Christopher Achen’s Democracy for Realists. These authors, despite their differences, argue that the danger we face is not a weakening or de-consolidation of democracy; rather, democracy itself may be the problem. Or more specifically, too much democracy is the source of much present-day dysfunction.
Garett Jones’ 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less, published in 2020, is the latest contribution to this latter category. As with the democratic crisis authors, the democracy-is-the-problem authors have varying backgrounds and perspectives. Brennan in is a libertarian philosopher, Bartels and Achen are centrist political scientists, and Caplan is a free market economist. Jones belongs to this latter category—indeed, he and Caplan are both economists at George Mason University.
Jones, perhaps more so than these other authors, begins his work with a discussion of the strong benefits of representative democracy. As he puts it, there are big benefits to having some democracy. Two of the most basic benefits? Modern representative democracies don’t have famines and they don’t massacre their own citizens. In so far as these claims are true, the obvious question is why. As for famines, the economist and social theorist Amartya Sen argued that competitive elections and a free press are the two keys factors that ensure accountability, open dialogue, and the transmission of accurate information. Some version of those two, along with other factors, probably is at play in the second benefit as well.
These positive benefits come with caveats, of course. India, the representative democracy that Sen contrasted with Communist China, has not had famines but a lack of good medical care leads to many preventable deaths every year. In addition, India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, presided over the persecution and killing of hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslims as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002. Many independent analysts consider Modi and the state government he presided over complicit in the killings.
Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence for the positive benefits of representative democracy in the past century. Jones is right to recognize the persuasiveness of this research. More to the point, there is no evidence that becoming more authoritarian will lead to better outcomes regarding these issues. So, broadly speaking, representative democracy, when it means competitive elections and a free press, will serve the cause of human rights and accountability and reduce the risk of famines and massacres.
So why argue for 10% less democracy? As Jones points out, he will not propose any reforms that will weaken competitive elections or freedom of the press. His suggested reforms will be more along the lines of longer terms for elected officials, more years between elections, and more independent boards making decisions without direct electoral oversight.
Jones mentions Ancient Athens and recognizes that by classical standards, modern representative democracy is not democracy at all. He refers to modern forms as “indirect democracy.” Why does this matter?. Because he rightly recognizes that democracy is not an either/or choice but instead exists on a spectrum—you can have more or less of it. Hence his proposal for reforms that will lead to 10% less democracy.
With these thoughts in mind, what kinds of reforms does Jones want to see?
First, Jones points to some research that suggests, in a number of countries, elected politicians are more responsive to (and more constrained by) popular opinion during an election year. This would seem to be mostly a good thing—i.e. there are at least some years when elected officials are actually likely to respond to popular pressure. Jones paints this as bad because in election years politicians go against the thinking of economists—that is, in election years politicians are more opposed to trade agreements, IMF-style labor reforms, and devaluing the currency. These are all things to which the public is generally opposed but professional economists generally favor. In election years politicians join the public and oppose these policies. My own general response is, well, so much the worse for the economists. If only every year were like this! But more on that later.
As a concrete example of what Jones means by 10% less democracy, he suggests we extend 2 and 3 year terms for elected officials to 4 years, and extend 4 year terms to 6 years. This reduction in the frequency of elections, with politicians having fewer years being directly responsive to voters, will lead them to make more decisions in keeping with the opinions of economists, not voters. As he says later, “longer terms make for at least slightly braver, more technocratically-oriented, less populist politicians. Based on this finding, I suggest that countries with two- or three-year legislative terms should consider at least four-year terms.” (pp. 39-40).
While in some formal sense these changes would not spell the end of representative democracy, they would weaken it. There is of course no single inherently correct term length. And there may even be good arguments against two year terms, since legislators spend more time campaigning and fundraising than investigating and legislating. But to lengthen terms with the goal and knowledge that it will make politicians less responsive to voters is to knowingly make a country less democratic. Democracy exists on a spectrum, as Jones notes. But contrary to Jones, the last thing we need is less of it.
The next chapter turns to judges. Jones says most of us take for granted the independent judiciary, the process of judicial review, and the legitimacy of these institutions. It is not clear that this is true. (For instance, many of us on the left are critical of the Supreme Court). But let’s grant his point and move on.
Jones wants to see if elected judges perform better or worse than judges appointed by “technocratic merit commissions.” US states vary in terms of how judges are selected, similar to the variation seen in many countries around the world (see Jones p. 69). So we can in principle compare the performance of elected and appointed judges. The most basic problem for Jones is how does one assess the “quality” of a judge? Jones thinks he has found the answer: citations.
Studies have found that the opinions of appointed judges are cited more than the opinions of elected judges, at least in the US. It’s not at all evident why this matters. Jones argues that higher citation counts mean appointed judges write higher quality opinions but that isn’t what the evidence establishes. He is using citations as a proxy for objective quality, which is much harder to measure.
What about differences in outcomes? There is evidence that elected judges in US states assess bigger damages against out of state defendants (often big corporations) and thus reward more money to in-state plaintiffs than appointed judges do. To say the least, it is not clear why this is bad. If anything this seems a positive point in favor of electing judges.
Jones, agreeing with many other commentators, asserts that appointed judges are better than elected ones. But there is no real evidence for this—merely the fact that their opinions are cited more, which doesn’t really tell us much. Are their decisions good for ordinary people? Who do they help or harm, what values do they reflect and advance, what political theories do they draw from? These are all important questions left unanswered. And so Jones is stuck with citations, a paltry measure. The stronger claim that he wants to make, namely, that appointed judges simply make better decisions than elected ones, is too entangled with the clashing interests and values of politics and lacks any real evidence in its favor.
Grasping for more hard evidence, Jones turns to research that finds a more independent judiciary (they are appointed rather than elected, serve longer terms, etc) correlates with and may contribute to more laissez-faire economic policies. This point will fail to persuade any but the already converted, as it assumes that laissez faire policies are obviously desirable, something those of us on the left reject. One study cited by Jones indeed takes the US as an ideal economic baseline and then finds that less independent judges could lead to government ownership of banks on par with, gasp, Norway! Oh no! (See pp. 74-77).
This is not to completely dismiss concerns regarding the judiciary. Countries like Russia or Hungary have judiciaries that are not independent and this is a problem. But the problem is that the judiciary in these countries serves as a key component in enforcing the rule of an authoritarian, unaccountable regime. The problem has nothing to do with citations, let alone whether the judges advance the preferred economic policies of free market economists. It is also possible, even if unaddressed by Jones, that independently elected judges might be more likely to rein in the abuses of an autocratic executive than appointed judges would be. If so, this would be an argument in their favor. But Jones does not provide the needed evidence to support this claim.
What about other elected officials? Jones spends a considerable portion of the book arguing for the value of independent central banks and elected city treasurers. In so far as he takes his arguments as contributing evidence for a broader critique of democracy, we should reject them. But the specific case he makes, especially regarding the position of city treasurer, is intriguing and not necessarily threatening to democracy.
Consider city treasurers in California. Cities with appointed treasurers receive lower interest rates when they take out loans than cities with elected treasurers. There may be various reasons for this, including a bias on the part of financial lenders in favor of appointed treasurers. But this is not a major concern for advocates of democracy—there is no democratic theory that demands the election of city treasurers, who will often be engaged in administrative work. They will likely not be making a lot of substantive policy decisions, in the way that unelected judges frequently do. More to the point, defenders of representative democracy, not to mention more participatory forms of democracy, do not demand the election of every single government official.
According to the demanding standards of participatory democracy, as thinkers like Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber make clear, citizens should, as a matter of right, be able to directly vote on key issues of importance in city government. Hence their support for participatory budgeting, in which city residents debate and then vote directly on various proposals for municipal capital investments. They don’t demand, however, that every executive position be open to election.
What about central banks? This is the topic of chapter 3. According to Jones, “when countries increase the independence of their central banks, the inflation rate tends to fall.” (p. 47). Independence here means that central bank members have longer terms, are difficult to remove from office, and are not immediately beholden to the whims of the executive. There is also some evidence that independent central banks correlate with and maybe even lead to fewer economic crises.
How should those of us on the left respond? Is there any clearly shared or obvious position on central banking for the left? Not really, other than that, within the context of a capitalist economy, we want the central bank to promote low unemployment and not simply to focus on inflation, as many central banks do.
Although we should reject much of what Jones says, the first few chapters of the book are not unequivocally hostile to democracy. It is only in the chapter on education, when Jones mentions Jason Brennan’s much more extreme ideas on epistocracy, that things get worse.
Epistocracy, simply put, is the idea that more knowledgable citizens should have more formal political power. The philosopher Jason Brennan advocates epistocracy in his book Against Democracy and Jones uses these ideas to frame the discussion in this chapter.
Jones flirts with the idea of requiring a high school diploma or GED for voters, a move which would disproportionately disenfranchise black and latino voters, a concern he acknowledges but doesn’t really take seriously. This alone should disqualify it. There’s also no reason to think that it would “improve” policy, whatever that means. What are good policies? Politics is precisely where we don’t agree on the answer. We should reject his claim that “raising the average information level of voters by truncating the lower tail of the education distribution is a practical way to raise the probability of getting good policy.” (p. 106).
What do Jones, Brennan, and others amenable to epistocracy mean by “good” policy? As mentioned above, they consider policy good when it reflects the biases of professional economists (reduce the minimum wage, reduce trade barriers, deregulate, cut social programs). Given how the American economy has performed over the past half-century under such guidance we might be inclined to do the exact opposite of what professional economists want.
The views of all these thinkers also reflect a strange and unjustified political sociology. They think low-income, low-education citizens, who vote, donate, contact representatives, protest, and so forth in disproportionately low numbers, are somehow responsible for the flaws of American government. And their solution is to even further disenfranchise (formally and informally) the worst off. These worst off, in actuality, have the least power and representation in our current system. If there is anyone not responsible for disasters like the Great Recession or the War in Iraq, it is America’s least educated, least wealthy citizens.
10% Less Democracy covers a number of other topics worthy of discussion, including the EU, the Eurozone, and Singapore, and each issue discussed above could be delved into more deeply. The book is a lively and enjoyable read and these issues genuinely matter, now as much as ever. Nevertheless, I have tried to make the case that Jones’ suggestions should be entirely rejected, save for the one which would not actually weaken democracy (appointing city treasurers). Try as Jones and his ilk might, the problems facing the representative democracies of the world cannot be laid at the feet of too much democracy. Indeed, one of the biggest threats facing the world today is more or less the very opposite, the march of authoritarianism pushing across much of the globe.