The Meaning of Democracy in Nine Words
Noah Salzman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
With everything that appears to be at stake in this presidential election, it sounds off-key to refer to it as a coin-flip. But given the odds of either candidate and party prevailing over their opponents, that is what it is.
The situation has prompted me to return to a pithy definition of democracy from the political scientist Adam Przeworski: “Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.”
The simplicity of these nine words is deceptive. Consider seven others that they imply:
Contestation – Parties and their candidates offer voters partial and competing views of what government should do.
Uncertainty – The outcome may at times be predictable (or not!), but it is never predetermined. Voters decide who wins and who loses.
Recurrence – “Elections” is plural. The game, if you will, continues in an ongoing series. With each round, the contestation and uncertainty returns.
Rules – The “system” of recurring contests entails procedures capable of governing the electoral competition and resolving disputes.
Decision – There is an outcome that is authoritative, resolving the question — until the next election — of who won and lost, i.e., “who governs?”
Toleration – Winners agree to submit to future elections. More importantly, losers accept their (temporary) status and agree to play again.
Non-violence – There are other ways to decide who governs than a system in which parties lose elections. But the alternatives rely on violence.
The conflicting visions cast by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, combined with the knife edge over who will prevail, are astonishing. The candidates and their partisans portray the election not as the next round of a recurring competition but rather as an apocalyptic showdown. This is not a framing that sets up those on the losing side to accept their defeat.
Based on his past actions and statements leading up to this election, we can expect Donald Trump to declare victory prematurely and continue insisting that he won, even if he loses. In his view, only a rigged contest in which his opponents have cheated can deny him the office that he and many of his supporters see as rightfully his. If this scenario comes to pass, they will once again take their cues from him.
We have one silver lining in this scenario. There is a substantially reduced risk of the sort of violence we witnessed on January 6, 2021 from a mob of electoral losers. The buttressing of the Electoral Count Act, and the prosecutions of 1,500 rioters (so far) who took part in that debacle, make its repeat less likely. Public officials will not be caught off-guard this time, and the sitting president will take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
But what happens if Trump wins outright? I expect in that case that Vice President Harris would concede the election, consistent with her prior statements to this effect. There would be a peaceful transfer of power, ironically back to the leader who did all he could to thwart one four years ago. This continues to be a profound and fundamental discrepancy between the parties.
When it comes to at least some of the Vice President’s supporters, however, I am less confident they are prepared to lose the election. They have been repeatedly told (not that they needed to be convinced) that Trump is a fascist, and that the fate of democracy in America hinges on his defeat. And they have been encouraged to conflate their policy preferences on abortion, immigration, climate change, racial justice, etc. with an expansive definition of democracy.
Should Harris lose, will these partisans stand back up, dust themselves off, and seek to broaden their coalition so that they have a better chance of winning next time? Or will they attribute her defeat to voter suppression, foreign interference, or racism among Trump’s supporters such that they do not regard his election as legitimate?
The unwillingness of many partisans to lose an election does not mean that democracy in America is dead or dying. But it is a serious comorbidity we must remedy. At the same time, we also need to remember that there are approximately 520,000 elected offices in this country. In the next election to determine who should hold 99.9% of these positions, there will not be sustained disputes over who has won or lost them. We have that going for us.
Regular readers of this blog might think, hang on — isn’t Daniel always telling us that democracy in America cannot be reduced to who wins (or loses) national elections? Doesn’t Przeworski’s definition of democracy suggest otherwise? Not really. It presumes a civic culture with sufficient strength and a sense of shared citizenship such that it can encompass and help us work out our political disagreements in peaceable ways.
Ultimately, it is our civic culture that prepares parties and partisans to lose elections (or not). If some are refusing to do so, the remedy will be found not in the domains of politics or government but in the renewal of our civic culture. Whatever the outcome of today’s election, for those wishing to defend democracy, that is the work that lies ahead.
