Democracy

DEMOCRACY. - According to its etymological sense, government of the people, or, according to the definition of St. Thomas, potestas populi.

I. HISTORY

Both as a concept and as an institution, it goes back to Greek culture. Aristotle lists it among the legitimate forms of government, together with monarchy, the rule of one man, and aristocracy, the rule of a few of the best.

In the East, the classic land of despotism, there were no forms of popular self-government, nor could they even arise among the Jewish people, subject as it was to a theocratic regime, except in the times of the Maccabees, when some trace of a popular assembly is recorded.

They appear, on the other hand, in full flower in the Greek cities, particularly in Athens, where Solon established a tempered democratic government. In the constitutions of these cities the principle of equality was generally absolute, but in its application regard was sometimes had to census rating, so that certain magistracies could not be aspired to without a given economic condition. To remedy this drawback and place the citizens on a footing of some equality, it was decided to give compensation to those entrusted with public functions. The assembly of the people was invested with all powers, nor was it subject to any control or veto or limitation of any sort. Nevertheless the democracy of the Greek cities, modeled on the social life of the time, confined within the bounds of the citizen body, and on the particularistic conceptions that dominated it, took on a particular physiognomy, which brings it close to bourgeois oligarchy, because of the small number of citizens who were recognized as having the right to exercise public functions, forbidden to the mass of slaves and servants devoted to work on the rural estates.

In ancient Rome there was never a government in which the people exercised a prevailing and decisive influence. Even after the expulsion of the kings, for a considerable time the patriciate dominated the commonwealth unchallenged. Despite the institution of the tribunate, the gulf between plebeians and patricians always remained deep. Only the latter had access to political and religious offices, and only after bitter struggles did the plebs obtain a share in the consulate, the pontificate and public power, which never took on a truly democratic structure. Greek and Roman culture lacked the great universal concepts on which alone democracy can be grounded. Nor did the State recognize limits to its own power, nor was a sphere of personal freedom attributed to the citizen as a demand of his high dignity. Moreover, in a society that maintained the institution of slavery, justifying it theoretically by the distinction between slaves and free men by nature, any form of popular government necessarily had to become oligarchic, with the rule of a restricted number of citizens over the great population of slaves and servants.

A broader concept of democracy could be grafted only onto the peacefully revolutionary movement of Christian thought, which, having made the supposed natural differences between slave and free man disappear before God, the father of all men, also overturned the political schemes of pagan society, subordinating social life to the universal ends of man and assigning to these a preeminent position within the collective organism. The concept of the original dignity of the human person has activated the gradual movement toward man's emancipation from political servitude and his more direct participation in public life.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, democratic institutions remained unknown under the feudal regime; they asserted themselves, instead, in the Italian Communes, where the artisan people, freeing themselves from the servitude of the barons, constituted themselves as a municipal republic. A brief period of flourishing social life, in which, however, the idea of equality of rights among citizens was not attained, nor was there an integral democratic form with rule reserved to the artisan and bourgeois classes. Traces of popular intervention are found here and there in the Middle Ages in the constitutional charters agreed upon between the people and the sovereign, in which the former arms itself against the possible abuses of power; but they are only traces deriving from the then dominant conception that power comes from the people.

Greater continuity and a more organic development did democracy obtain in England, where from the most ancient times the people participated in assemblies and obtained communal charters. The impulse, however, toward a true democracy came under the Stuarts, through the party of the Independents, which succeeded in overthrowing Charles I, dealing a decisive blow to the preponderance of the Crown and the Lords. Almost in parallel in time and in conceptions developed the two democratic movements that open the modern era: that of the American republics, constituted first as autonomous States founded on popular self-government and then associated in the federal State, which maintained the same institutional principles, and that of the French Revolution, which had its culmination in the declaration of rights of 1789 and in the republican constitution of 1791.

The rapid expansion of democratic institutions observed after the French Revolution was caused by the changed economic and social conditions of the modern era. On the one hand, the introduction of the machine and the progressive industrialization of the European countries, while they overturned the economic order that had existed for centuries, producing the great mass of so-called proletarians, agglomerated in the city centers in precarious living conditions, allowed these to become conscious of their strength and to wish to insert themselves actively into public affairs. On the other hand, the continuous extension of the State's interference in all sectors of social coexistence, partly required by new needs of order, partly a consequence of a false concept of its powers, held for the most part to be unlimited, has made ever more felt the necessity of a defense and of public control. To keep the movement alive there was added the livelier consciousness that man has acquired of his worth and his dignity and the jealous sense of personal freedom, which must always be joined to it.

II. THEORETICAL ELABORATION

To complete the historical picture so sketchily outlined, it is well to touch upon the movement of ideas, particularly in the Catholic field. Inherited from Roman law, throughout the Middle Ages the conception held almost unchallenged sway according to which the original subject of sovereignty is the people, and by whose investiture the physical or moral person who exercises its attributions in the government of the community possesses it as a secondary and derived subject. Thus there arose a constant doctrinal tradition, which interpreted in a democratic manner the origin and foundation of public authority, resting it upon an act of free election on the part of the people.

This tradition manifests itself in all its vigor in St. Thomas, in whom the distinction is clear between the origin of the power of the leaders and kings of the Jewish people, who received it through a direct intervention of God, and the origin of power in other societies, in which the prince possesses it through the consent of the people, whence his expression vicem gerens multitudinis used to designate the sovereign. With the democratic conception of the origin of power there is joined in the Aquinate a theoretical evaluation of the various forms of government, in which democracy does not hold the last place. From Aristotle he derives the well-known tripartite division into monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, but in evaluating them he transcends the strict Aristotelian vision. Bearing in mind the requirement of the internal unity of the social organism, he holds that to attain it the government of a single ruler is more perfect and efficient, and the polyarchic forms less perfect. Nevertheless, when he takes as the criterion of his judgment the abuses to which each form of regime can give rise, he objectively notes that monarchy is the most exposed to the danger of degenerating into tyranny, on account of the sum of powers gathered in a single person, and he inclines to prefer a government tempered, in which other citizens chosen by popular suffrage participate. The perfect constitution, according to St. Thomas, exists when it is at the same time composed of royalty, inasmuch as one alone possesses the power, of aristocracy, inasmuch as many govern according to virtue, and of democracy, inasmuch as those who govern can be chosen from among the people and their election belongs to the people. Of the principles that will become the basis of modern democracy, there already appear in St. Thomas, namely popular suffrage and the electivity of the subjects destined for government.

The Thomistic conception continues uninterrupted down to the whole of the 17th century. Vitoria, Suárez, Bellarmine and others are its representatives. Particularly distinguished are the last two, who clarified and systematized it the most, in order to oppose it to the pretensions of royal absolutism, personified in the theologian-king James I of England, against whom they entered into polemic. The cardinal points of their theory can be reduced to the following: the original subject of authority is the people organically considered, which possesses it by immediate communication of the law of nature, from the moment when it has gathered into society; the physical or moral subject that actually exercises it receives it immediately from the people, potestas or Deo per populum, by virtue of a voluntary act of transfer that is not revocable, required by the impossibility in which the people finds itself of exercising it by itself. Once the transfer has taken place, the monarch becomes the holder of the sovereign right; nevertheless the people, according to the integration made of it by Bellarmine, continues to possess it in root, in the sense that it has the permanent right to watch over the manner in which it is exercised and to take it back, in the case in which it should degenerate into tyranny or external causes should impose an institutional change (v. AUTORITÀ).

Although these solutions remain on the abstract plane of political theory, one cannot nevertheless ignore the living elements that are contained in them, with a view to a more accurately scientific reconstruction of democratic institutions and to the criticism of more modern conceptions.

III. CONCEPT AND ELEMENTS

It is more difficult than ever to disentangle from the forest of conflicting opinions the essential notes that belong to the concept of d., so as to have gathered in a comprehensive definition the elements that distinguish and constitute it. "Nothing," wrote Toniolo already, "is more vague, more entangled, more rebellious to a theoretical formula than this word d." Having become the common watchword of opposing and irreconcilable political movements, it has been subjected to an extensive and profound deformation of meaning, to the point of including, with the addition of some specifying adjective, forms of police and oppressive regime. Not only that, but the very ideas that should constitute its soul continue to wander in the sphere of the undefined, mingled with false theoretical orientations that make its content even more vaporous.

For a more systematic exposition it is necessary, from the outset, to distinguish social d. from political d. The first, as Toniolo defined it, consists in "that civil order in which all social, juridical and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate proportionally to the common good, flowing in the final result to the prevalent advantage of the lower classes." Its specific element is therefore given by the end of the concordant promotion of the common good to the advantage of the less fortunate classes. It consists consequently in a social movement in which all the forces operating within the community remain oriented toward the reform of civil and economic institutions, in order to attenuate injustices and the too glaring disparities of life. To this movement, which began with socialist demands, the Catholic currents soon associated themselves, guided by the teaching and example of eminent sociologists, such as Kettler and Windhorst in Germany, De Mun and Harmel in France, Manning in England, Toniolo and Talamo in Italy. Its lofty human aims in favor of the disinherited classes were recognized and officially consecrated by Leo XIII in the encyclical Rerum novarum, called the magna charta of workers, by Pius XI with Quadragesimo anno, and by Pius XII in various discourses and radio messages on the social question.

While in the sector described we advance in the full light of clearly defined concepts, we remain in semi-darkness when we pass to the study of political d. This is commonly defined in a wholly approximate manner, according to the well-known phrase of A. Lincoln, government of the people for the people, or simply government of the people, but as soon as one begins to analyze the individual terms, difficulties threaten to overwhelm the concept. It is intuitive, first of all, that the end assigned to d. by Lincoln's definition is not an end properly specific to this form of regime, since all the others have as their essential purpose the good of the people, which by intrinsic mission they must serve. Once this element has fallen away, there remains only the simpler formula, government of the people, around which it is necessary to shed light.

The term people is the object of various interpretations, among which a selection must be made. For individualist theories the people results from the arithmetical sum of individuals, and therefore in its concept there can be no place for the lesser societies in which man is born, such as the family, or which he joins by elective affinity. The people, understood as a dust-cloud of atoms, is set against the State in each single individual, bound to the others by no organic tie. The progressive movements, socialism and communism, in turn arbitrarily restrict the extension of the term, using it to signify only the mass of manual workers, so as to perform a vivisection within the community, in homage to the more general principle of the irreconcilable opposition of classes. Democracy thus comes to take on the meaning of class government or oligarchy of the proletariat.

The two conceptions referred to are to be rejected. The people, in living social reality, is not composed of isolated individuals or of their simple sum, but of individuals united by an internal principle that companions them into a social organism, and of the lesser societies, natural or voluntary. Moreover the people cannot be identified with a single class, since all who in any manner contribute to the common well-being belong to it, nor, by an arbitrary cut, can those who represent a burden on the community be excluded from being part of it: children, invalids, the old, the sick, all are people and belong to the people. On this broad concept a true d. can be founded, which, as is easy to deduce, can in no way be classist.

Greater difficulties of interpretation are created by the term government. Government of the people in its full meaning can be realized only in direct d., and this in turn, to function tolerably well, requires small communal or political bodies, in which it is possible to gather the citizens in deliberative assemblies. Outside this supposition the government of the people is an unattainable utopia. Considered, therefore, realistically, the problem leads to the conclusion that contemporary d. can only be indirect or representative. The presumed government of the people is consequently reduced to a sporadic participation of the people in the management of public affairs, through the periodic election of representatives, and to the continuous vigilance of the same over the action of the public powers, so that they do not betray the social ends.

Reduced to this minimum, modern d. cannot be defined otherwise than as the participation of the people in the management of public affairs, through the exercise of the right to vote, for the election of its representatives, and vigilance over the work of the State carried out by public opinion. A more modest concept than the high-sounding government of the people, but one more responsive to the data of experience.

Representative d., however, raises a cloud of questions that are anything but settled. Two of them are fundamental: on what title does the right of the people to active participation in the management of public affairs rest; and in what way is political representation consequently to be understood? According to the well-known individualist thesis, expressly condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (prop. 60), extracted from the allocution Maxima quidem of 9 June 1862, every man living in society, by virtue of a supposititious original and total autonomy, would be in possession of a particle of sovereignty, which, summed with the others, through the expression of individual will, gives rise to social sovereignty and to the general will, which becomes law to which even the minority must submit. On the other hand, sovereignty being inalienable, the people remain always sovereign, so that its representatives come to be configured as true mandatories, who act solely in its name and on its commission. This is the concept of popular sovereignty elaborated by contractualist Enlightenment thought, whose entire groundlessness juridical science, adopting a judgment taught by Catholic theologians, has demonstrated, maintaining with good reason that sovereignty is a unitary and original power of the entire social organism, to which alone belongs the right to order and govern its own life.

The d. must therefore be founded on a different conception, and this is offered by the Catholic theory on the democratic origin of power, which has already been mentioned. If, in fact, the original subject of sovereignty is the people, and the people freely chooses the democratic form, it retains the right to interfere in public affairs on a twofold title: one original, since, assuming a definitive transfer, it retains, in Bellarmine's expression, radicaliter the right of sovereignty, with the faculty of watching over its exercise; one derived from the democratic organization positively chosen by common consent. In this theoretical construction its representatives are not simple mandatories, and they act as vices gerentes multitudinis only insofar as they are organs of the collectivity and must interpret its will. Thus political representation enters into crisis, since it will be difficult to apply to it the figure of the private-law mandate without an analogical interpretation (v. RAPPRESENTANZA). This shows all the more how problematic the d. is.

Keeping to the empirical plane, one may affirm that contemporary d., even amid the extreme variety of forms, displays the following properties: derivation of authority from the will of the majority, legal protection of certain fundamental rights, called rights of liberty, free and periodic election of rulers and public control of their conduct, division of powers among several constitutional organs, to each of which one of the functions of sovereignty is entrusted. Each of these gives rise to complex juridical and theoretical questions, which there is no occasion even to touch upon.

IV. IDEOLOGICAL PREMISES AND DEMOCRATIC INSTRUMENTS

Democracy is also defined as a regime of liberty, both because it protects the rights of liberty and because the exercise of elective power attributed to the people cannot be exercised unless the people enjoys a relative autonomy. One must, however, beware of attributing to liberty an absolute value. Even in democracy it has intrinsic limits, as the faculty of doing good, and extrinsic limits in the demands of the common good. True democracy does not consist in permitting the unbridling of liberty, but in the conscious protection of order, which cannot be obtained without enforcing its just and necessary moral and juridical limitations.

One of the aims toward which the democratic regime tends is equality, not only formal before the law, but also effective, with the bringing of the social classes to a, as far as possible, common standard of living. However, even in this regard one must not lose sight of the fact that social equality is not arithmetical but proportional, and therefore cannot consist in the leveling of all disparities.

The instruments of democracy are universal suffrage and parties. Popular suffrage as an institution, directed to the election of representatives and to the ascertainment of the will of the people, raises no difficulty, nor do the most varied forms in which it is organized, provided they ensure the secrecy of the vote and the greatest freedom of choice. Numerous objections have been raised, on the other hand, particularly in the Catholic field, against egalitarian universal suffrage, judged a fiction, since as a rule a great number of citizens remain excluded from the right to vote, and contrary to the living reality of the human consortium, in which there does not exist that perfect equality on which it rests, and in which there are, besides individuals, lesser associations that would have the right to exert influence as such in public life. The criticisms, particularly if one adds the danger of demagogic degeneration, are grave, if directed against equal suffrage; they diminish in weight against a qualitatively differentiated suffrage, which nothing prevents from preserving the character of universality.

Like the convenient organization of suffrage, the presence of parties is also essential to democracy. Although, in fact, all the subjects of the collectivity tend toward the common good, divergences of ideas and programs can arise regarding the means most suited to attaining it: ideas and programs that spontaneously form a center of attraction, around which wills polarize. The plurality of parties is therefore a natural effect of social life, if it unfolds under the sign of liberty. The single party is the death of democracy.

V. THE CHURCH'S TEACHING

The Church has never been hostile in principle to democracy. The fundamental point, to which its teaching has always adhered, is that the forms of political regime, in which men may freely organize their own social life, are in themselves legitimate, provided they respect morality, religion and justice. The Church is more concerned with good rulers than with forms of regime. If on some occasion it may have seemed that it took sides against democratic institutions, this derived from the fact that it found itself faced with ideological errors which vitiated their content and made them dangerous.

Thus, for example, the aforementioned condemnation in the Syllabus of popular sovereignty was not intended to strike at democracy as such, but at a particular theory in which mechanism and materialism were mingled, both enemies of the true concept of sovereignty, reduced either to the tyranny of the majority or to the levelling force of the State. Leo XIII continued to follow the furrow traced by his predecessor. In the encyclical Diuturnum of 20 June 1881, having reconfirmed the reprobation of popular sovereignty in the sense given it by contractualism, he reaffirmed the genuine concept of authority as a power deriving from God, and, linking himself to a tradition of thought by then well established, declared that for the Church there is no reason why it should not approve "the principate of one or of many, provided it be just and directed to the common advantage." Justice being safeguarded, "peoples are not prevented - he adds - from procuring for themselves that kind of government which best suits their character, or the institutions and customs of their forebears."

The same ideas were then repeated in the encyclical Libertas of 20 June 1888. He treats of democracy more directly in the encyclical Longinqua Oceani of 6 January 1895, addressed to the bishops of America. In it he points out how in a State governed under a popular regime a deeper formation of the people is indispensable, so that it may become conscious of its duties, honest in its morals and a lover of justice. That is, against the easy abuses of democracy and the dangers of corruption, already glimpsed and described by Tocqueville, he brings into relief the warning, adopted by writers even far removed from the faith, that democracy is a regime for mature peoples. Of the same Pontiff one must also recall Graves de communi of 18 January 1901, devoted to determining the exact meaning of the term Christian democracy.

Pius XI in his turn, in the encyclical Ubi arcano of 23 December 1922, dwells on the danger of democracy sliding toward demagogic disorder, when parties enter into struggle not "for a serene divergence of opinions concerning the public good and for the sincere and disinterested pursuit of it, but out of greed to prevail and in the service of particular interests to the detriment of others." This happens with greater ease "in modern representative orders, which, although not in themselves opposed to Catholic doctrine, always reconcilable with every reasonable and just form of regime, are nevertheless more exposed to the subversion of passions."

The most important pontifical document after Graves de communi is the radio message of Pius XII at Christmas 1944, in which, having reconfirmed the legitimacy of forms of tempered regime, the Pope deals with democracy, "in order to examine according to what norms it must be regulated, if it is to be called a true and sound democracy." In it the citizen must have the right to express his own opinion on the duties and sacrifices imposed upon him, and must not be constrained to obey without being heard. For the correct functioning of the democratic method it is required that he be placed in a position "to have his own personal opinion and to express it and to make it count in a manner conducive to the common good." Hence the need for education, which raises the people from an amorphous, inert mass moved from without to the level of a living association with a life of its own and moved by consciousness of social ends. Liberty and equality must be contained within just limits: the former must not degenerate into the "tyrannical pretension of giving free rein to human impulses and appetites to the detriment of others," the latter cannot lead to "a mechanical levelling, to a monochrome uniformity."

The State, even in democracy, must be "invested with the power to command with true and effective authority," while respecting the rights of the human person and the natural limits of its function in the social organism, showing itself resolutely opposed "to that corruption which attributes to the legislation of the State a power without bridle or limit, and which makes even of the democratic regime, despite contrary but vain appearances, a pure and simple system of absolutism."

Antonio Messineo