What is Democracy Good For Anyway?

The last several readings have covered the numerous failures of democracy and majority rule. From low voter turnout, to rational ignorance, to cycling and intransitivity, democracy is plagued with issues that undermine several of its founding myths. Since civics class simply inculcated falsehoods like “every vote counts”, we cannot rely on widely accepted beliefs to evaluate democracy. What advantages, if any, does democracy provide over other forms of government?

When listing the advantages of democracy, most people would point to the vote as the sacred mechanism by which every individual can make their voice heard. If you don’t like something about your government, you can vote against it and move policy towards your preferences. This falls apart when you realize that there is almost no chance that any individual actually affects the outcome of a democratic election. No matter which way you vote, the outcome of every election is almost guaranteed to be decided by everyone else’s vote, not yours. This means that the individual’s preferences are completely disregarded in a democracy. If my vote represents the influence I have over my government, then I may as well be living under a dictatorship. 

Democracies are, in general, much nicer places to live than dictatorships. How can this be explained if democratic governments are not beholden to individual’s preferences? In most dictatorships, the government is controlled by a small group of powerful people. The majority of Sparta’s population were slaves, and Saudi Arabia is run by an insular royal family. Democracies, on the other hand, are dictatorships of the majority. This is a significant improvement over oligarchy. Powerful inner circles can still benefit even while the majority of the population starves. In democracies, things that greatly harm the majority like famines and total authoritarian control over freedoms are usually avoided. This still leaves room for total oppression and exploitation of the minority, the disenfranchised, and the non-citizens, however. Democracies, like all power structures, create civic religions that propagate flattering lies about the way they work. It is important to separate myth from reality and evaluate democracy on its true merits and true failures.