Facts and Arguments about the Introduction of Initiative and ...

2. What is democracy?
Democracy varies from country to country, from age to age.
A hundred years ago, the universal single vote system for
men was disputed and votes for women appeared unthinkable.
It now seems inexplicable that a time ever existed when
women were not allowed to vote and a rich man might have
more votes than a poor man. The same will happen with the
referendum. The time will come when nobody will remember
that there were earlier times when the people were not
able to decide their fate directly.
Democracy evolves. What – after the diversity of forms of
democracy in different countries – are currently the essential
characteristics of democracy? What enables a democracy
to be distinguished from a non-democracy? A dictator who
calls himself ‘democratic’ is still a dictator. There have to be
objective criteria to make the distinction possible. We call the
entirety of these criteria the ‘archetype’ of democracy.
In search of the archetype
Democracy means: ‘government by the people’. There are, of
course, many other forms of ‘government’ or state power. In
an ‘oligarchy’, for instance, a small elite group governs. In a
‘timocracy’, the rich people rule. In a ‘theocracy’, God is supposed
to exercise the power.
The term ‘democracy’ gained a much more positive reception
from the twentieth century onwards. Virtually all states
refer in one way or another to the democratic ideal, even if
their regime is totalitarian. Democracy has prevailed, at least
at the ideal level. Things were different in the 18 th century.
‘Democrat’ was a frequent term of abuse in those days.
Because state power is expressed via legislation, ‘democracy’
means that the people make the laws. In a democracy, the
laws derive their authority from the fact that the people approve
them in one way or another. The legislative power in an
oligarchy relies on the approval of a minority, and on divine
blessing in a theocracy. In a democracy, there is no authority
higher than the people.
Laws impose obligations, not on the people as a whole, but certainly
on individual citizens. The individual members of society
are expected to recognise the authority of the law because in
principle they also had the opportunity to help shape the law.
This is how we arrive at Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of
the ‘social contract’: legislation is the result of a social contract
between equal and responsible citizens. In the democratic view,
a law is only legitimate when those who are expected to comply with
the law are also able to contribute to shaping that law.
The concept of the ‘social contract’ is best approached ‘negatively’,
so to speak – by a process of elimination. If the authority
of legislation is not derived from the authority of God, of
the nobility, of owners of land, money or knowledge, then the
social contract is the only remaining possibility. Laws derive
their authority from the fact that there are voluntary agreements
made between the members of the legal community.
Politicians often refer to the ‘social contract’ as an agreement
between the people and the politicians. The contract is then
renewed at each election, so to speak. But the philosopher
12
Thomas Paine already refuted this view in The Rights of Man
(1791): “It has been thought a considerable advance towards
establishing the principles of freedom to say that government
is a compact between those who govern and those who
are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting
the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before
governments existed, there necessarily was a time when
governments did not exist, and consequently there could
originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves,
each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a
compact with each other to produce a government: and this
is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise,
and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”
(Paine, 1791, 1894, part 2, p. 309). A ‘social contract’ is therefore
a contract between citizens, and a political system only
emerges as a result of this.
How can citizens enter into a social contract with each other?
Obviously they must come together, discuss it and agree
it. This creates the first specific instance of the democratic
meeting: the public assembly.
These public assemblies are also an historical reality. In
some small communities, for instance in the United States
and Switzerland, public assembly still plays a role today [see
2-1]. It is clear that the public assembly as such cannot work
in a modern constitutional state with millions of citizens.
But, at the same time, the public assembly still provides an
initial practical example of the democratic ideal. Therefore,
let us first examine the essential characteristics of the democratic
public assembly.
The principles of the public assembly
Certain principles exist in every democratic public assembly.
The principle of equality
The principle of equality forms the basis of the public assembly:
all mature (in the sense of accountable) members of
the community can take part in the public assembly and are
accorded equal weight in the decision-making.
It is not easy to base this principle of equality on a positive
principle. It is, however, very easy to establish the principle
of equality in a negative way. After all, the democratic
ideal is based on the fundamental principle that there is no
authority higher than the people. This principle means by
definition that all appear as equals. If some of those attending
have more weight than others in the decision-making,
merely by virtue of who they are, we find ourselves back in
the oligarchy.
So each mature person’s vote has the same weight. The history
of democracy in the twentieth century was largely a battle
for this principle, a battle that was conducted mainly on
three fronts: the universal single vote system (in which each
person, regardless of their possessions, age or competence
receives an equal vote); women’s right to vote; and the right
to vote regardless of distinguishing biological features (e.g.
voting rights for the coloured people in South Africa).