Unlike most liberal commentators, I have little love or admiration for the Israeli Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court doubles as a High Court of Justice and it can and does hear petitions by any person (not only citizens or residents) against public bodies and governmental authorities it is frequently thrust into an enormous range of disputes in Israeli political and administrative life. The Court’s implied check on legislative action, has also allowed irresponsible elites to promise the electorate one thing (often against their private better judgment) secure in the knowledge that the court could be counted on to prevent it from happening.
A broader point is that for most people, most of the time, policy outcomes trump* process. When the central government is more progressive than the states/provinces, rightwingers are big fans of states rights, and leftists are centralists. When the situation reverses (sanctuary cities, for example) Similarly for judicial activism, executive vs legislature and so on.
* Pun deliberate. Trumpism is the extreme example, where US conservatives have been entirely happy to dump all of their views about democratic processes to score some policy wins.
I agree, but as Axel picked up on I wasn't thinking of politicians or ordinary people, but theorist in my comment. (That was sloppily worded; so no criticism of you.) I am pretty Platonic skeptic about public life--people say a lot of things that are very tenuously connected to consistency or truth.
Is there in fact a Jewish majority in the territory under Israel's control? A quick look at the population numbers for Israel+Palestine suggests that the numbers are about equal, and moving towards a non-Jewish majority. Given that there is no real prospect of a two-state solution any more, I'd say that recent developments are really about entrenching the power of minority rule.
Well, I suspect you also included Gaza in that number, which I wouldn't count in such a number. Either way, it's hard to really address this because of the ambiguity of what the borders are. Technically, for many purposes, even the Israeli government treats much of the westbank as occupied. Obviously, if that were to change I would agree with your comment.
I also worry that part of your argument leads to the thought that real democracies cannot do wrong; something I am not sympathetic, too. (Would you call the direct democracy of Athens not a democracy because it de facto gave privileges onto males and was slave owning)?
I'm certainly not claiming that real democracies can do no wrong. It's perfectly possible that Trump could win a legitimate majority in the US, for example. More generally, having been on the political defensive most of my life, I'm a supporter of subsidiarity, proportional representation, bicameralism and other checks on majority power.
I'm just saying that you can't infer much about democracies from a polity that isn't in fact democratic. The entrenchment of the Jewish majority within the Israeli electorate has to be understood in relation to their lack of a legitimate majority status in Israel-Palestine as a whole.
Except that this reasoning is never applied to other 'democracies'; we don't say it about Ancient Athens (and other ancient republics) it wasn't a democracy because it didn't give a franchise to women or slaves. We don't say this about the imperial liberal democracies like France and England in the mid twentieth century while clinging to remnants of colonial empire, etc. I think a more sober and truer understanding of these cases is that, in fact, democracies (in their variety) are not infrequently quite willing to rule over other nations and peoples not that they violate majority principle. It's this point that is somehow hard to swallow for democratic theorists. I do agree that in cases where voting privileges are denied to actual citizens your point is a natural one to make, but Israel is less a case of that than some of the others on this list (and some others we might think of).
I apply this reasoning to all the cases you mention. In my usage of the term, a group that rules over others without their consent gives up any claim to live in a democracy, however they resolve disagreement among themsleves.
Most notably, I'm totally in line with the 1619 project (and Dr Johnson) in viewing all discussions of pre-1860 US politics through the lens of slavery, and most subsequent US history as being driven by its consequences. I don't, for example, regard Jefferson and Jackson as democrats, and welcome the abandonment of Jefferson-Jackson celebrations by modern Democrats
George Orwell had a good piece on the position of the left in an imperial democracy, with a title that's now unprintable (Not Counting N***s). It's more or less relevant to the extent that the issues in question have a disproportionate effect on the subject population (for example, the debate over the Beveridge reforms in Britain didn't have much effect one way or the other on India), but it should always be considered.
Your position has the appearance of consistency, which I can hardly object to. But notice that "a group that rules over others without their consent" also includes those (like very young children and animals) who cannot give the requisite consent. Even in cases you are inclined to call 'democracy' (I bet) that may well include the majority. So we end up claiming that real democracy has never been tried (and may be very difficult to set up). I don't think that's a healthy stance if one wishes to learn from actual experiments in living.
I'll rephrase "without their consent" as "against their will", so I don't worry about those who are incapable of consent (including animals).
As I said, incomplete democracy isn't a problem if decisions don't disproportionately affect those who are excluded. But I would regard the Brexit referendum as illegitimate in democratic terms because those excluded from voting were most affected, and clearly opposed.
AS always, a very intriguing and well argued piece. I am just very unsure whether the contemporary left is properly described when the kind of unconstrained electoral legislative majoritarianism within the forms of representative democracy (aka populism) is suggested as one of their ideals (which you suggest in the first two sentences of paragraph #10). As a matter of fact, most leftists (and left social democratic theorists) I know of are terrified by that sort of government. The reason is that --apart from the Althusser-inspired theorists of "left" populism who follow the footsteps of Laclau and Mouffe-- by now, it is part of social democratic commonsense that opposition- and minority co-legislative arrangements and -protections are a crucial part of democracy (quite regardless of who is in government), and in particular of the democratic institutional arrangements in the form of a state. From Habermas through Rawls to the contemporary left (say, Urbinati, Lafont) and even Varoufakis all social democrats define progressivism as "liberalism plus X", not as "something else instead of constitutional representative liberal democracy" (say, a Soviet system of majoritarianism or something like that). The times when leftism was almost defines by simplistic "direct democracy with fewer institutions to dilute the power of the people" ideals (say, Pateman's 'democratizing democracy') is relatively long gone. True enough, in the "X", one usually will find institutional (but NOT direct) arrangements to increase civic participation in government over and above political parties' representation claim; but no one is naive enough to believe that this should bottom out in majoritarianism --most leftist theorists do no longer believe that the latter would mean an increase in either legitimacy or correctness of governmental policies.
Hi Axel, thank you for your response. Well, two things. First, I view traditional social democracy as a mixture of left liberalism and socialism, and I completely agree with you that it likes protections for minorities and a rights based regime. And while I don't self identify as a social democrat, I would never consider it as a problematic doctrine (and arguably Popper's open society is meant to be social democratic in character). But, second, we are often told (even by Habermas) that liberalism fails to embrace the will of a self-legislating demos. And this rhetoric emanates even stronger from the new kewl kidz who enamored by more radical chic. And some of the people you mention play both sides of this game, often accompanied by incredibly hostile claims about liberalism in which the rule of law is presented as a shell game for property rights. Anyway if confronted with real majoritarianism the left returns to the hard-worn truths of liberalism, swell.
A broader point is that for most people, most of the time, policy outcomes trump* process. When the central government is more progressive than the states/provinces, rightwingers are big fans of states rights, and leftists are centralists. When the situation reverses (sanctuary cities, for example) Similarly for judicial activism, executive vs legislature and so on.
* Pun deliberate. Trumpism is the extreme example, where US conservatives have been entirely happy to dump all of their views about democratic processes to score some policy wins.
I agree, but as Axel picked up on I wasn't thinking of politicians or ordinary people, but theorist in my comment. (That was sloppily worded; so no criticism of you.) I am pretty Platonic skeptic about public life--people say a lot of things that are very tenuously connected to consistency or truth.
Is there in fact a Jewish majority in the territory under Israel's control? A quick look at the population numbers for Israel+Palestine suggests that the numbers are about equal, and moving towards a non-Jewish majority. Given that there is no real prospect of a two-state solution any more, I'd say that recent developments are really about entrenching the power of minority rule.
Well, I suspect you also included Gaza in that number, which I wouldn't count in such a number. Either way, it's hard to really address this because of the ambiguity of what the borders are. Technically, for many purposes, even the Israeli government treats much of the westbank as occupied. Obviously, if that were to change I would agree with your comment.
I also worry that part of your argument leads to the thought that real democracies cannot do wrong; something I am not sympathetic, too. (Would you call the direct democracy of Athens not a democracy because it de facto gave privileges onto males and was slave owning)?
I'm certainly not claiming that real democracies can do no wrong. It's perfectly possible that Trump could win a legitimate majority in the US, for example. More generally, having been on the political defensive most of my life, I'm a supporter of subsidiarity, proportional representation, bicameralism and other checks on majority power.
I'm just saying that you can't infer much about democracies from a polity that isn't in fact democratic. The entrenchment of the Jewish majority within the Israeli electorate has to be understood in relation to their lack of a legitimate majority status in Israel-Palestine as a whole.
Except that this reasoning is never applied to other 'democracies'; we don't say it about Ancient Athens (and other ancient republics) it wasn't a democracy because it didn't give a franchise to women or slaves. We don't say this about the imperial liberal democracies like France and England in the mid twentieth century while clinging to remnants of colonial empire, etc. I think a more sober and truer understanding of these cases is that, in fact, democracies (in their variety) are not infrequently quite willing to rule over other nations and peoples not that they violate majority principle. It's this point that is somehow hard to swallow for democratic theorists. I do agree that in cases where voting privileges are denied to actual citizens your point is a natural one to make, but Israel is less a case of that than some of the others on this list (and some others we might think of).
I apply this reasoning to all the cases you mention. In my usage of the term, a group that rules over others without their consent gives up any claim to live in a democracy, however they resolve disagreement among themsleves.
Most notably, I'm totally in line with the 1619 project (and Dr Johnson) in viewing all discussions of pre-1860 US politics through the lens of slavery, and most subsequent US history as being driven by its consequences. I don't, for example, regard Jefferson and Jackson as democrats, and welcome the abandonment of Jefferson-Jackson celebrations by modern Democrats
George Orwell had a good piece on the position of the left in an imperial democracy, with a title that's now unprintable (Not Counting N***s). It's more or less relevant to the extent that the issues in question have a disproportionate effect on the subject population (for example, the debate over the Beveridge reforms in Britain didn't have much effect one way or the other on India), but it should always be considered.
Your position has the appearance of consistency, which I can hardly object to. But notice that "a group that rules over others without their consent" also includes those (like very young children and animals) who cannot give the requisite consent. Even in cases you are inclined to call 'democracy' (I bet) that may well include the majority. So we end up claiming that real democracy has never been tried (and may be very difficult to set up). I don't think that's a healthy stance if one wishes to learn from actual experiments in living.
I support votes for children. https://johnquiggin.com/2019/08/17/give-children-the-vote/
I'll rephrase "without their consent" as "against their will", so I don't worry about those who are incapable of consent (including animals).
As I said, incomplete democracy isn't a problem if decisions don't disproportionately affect those who are excluded. But I would regard the Brexit referendum as illegitimate in democratic terms because those excluded from voting were most affected, and clearly opposed.
AS always, a very intriguing and well argued piece. I am just very unsure whether the contemporary left is properly described when the kind of unconstrained electoral legislative majoritarianism within the forms of representative democracy (aka populism) is suggested as one of their ideals (which you suggest in the first two sentences of paragraph #10). As a matter of fact, most leftists (and left social democratic theorists) I know of are terrified by that sort of government. The reason is that --apart from the Althusser-inspired theorists of "left" populism who follow the footsteps of Laclau and Mouffe-- by now, it is part of social democratic commonsense that opposition- and minority co-legislative arrangements and -protections are a crucial part of democracy (quite regardless of who is in government), and in particular of the democratic institutional arrangements in the form of a state. From Habermas through Rawls to the contemporary left (say, Urbinati, Lafont) and even Varoufakis all social democrats define progressivism as "liberalism plus X", not as "something else instead of constitutional representative liberal democracy" (say, a Soviet system of majoritarianism or something like that). The times when leftism was almost defines by simplistic "direct democracy with fewer institutions to dilute the power of the people" ideals (say, Pateman's 'democratizing democracy') is relatively long gone. True enough, in the "X", one usually will find institutional (but NOT direct) arrangements to increase civic participation in government over and above political parties' representation claim; but no one is naive enough to believe that this should bottom out in majoritarianism --most leftist theorists do no longer believe that the latter would mean an increase in either legitimacy or correctness of governmental policies.
Hi Axel, thank you for your response. Well, two things. First, I view traditional social democracy as a mixture of left liberalism and socialism, and I completely agree with you that it likes protections for minorities and a rights based regime. And while I don't self identify as a social democrat, I would never consider it as a problematic doctrine (and arguably Popper's open society is meant to be social democratic in character). But, second, we are often told (even by Habermas) that liberalism fails to embrace the will of a self-legislating demos. And this rhetoric emanates even stronger from the new kewl kidz who enamored by more radical chic. And some of the people you mention play both sides of this game, often accompanied by incredibly hostile claims about liberalism in which the rule of law is presented as a shell game for property rights. Anyway if confronted with real majoritarianism the left returns to the hard-worn truths of liberalism, swell.