Opinions, Publics and Pressure Groups

An Essay on 'Vox Populi' and Representative Government

Graeme C. Moodie, Gerald Studdert-Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000478136
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the late 1960s representative democracy was under fire from various directions even in countries, like Britain and America, where it had appeared to be most secure and successful. Must democracy be a sham, either because of the power of pressure groups and other established decision-makers, or because 'the people' are too ignorant and irrational? What, in any case, does or can representative government mean in a complex industrial society – and what does it mean to be rational in politics?

It is to these and other vital issues that this book, originally published in 1970, directs itself. In the course of their argument the authors, who feel no contradiction between their academic and their 'radical democratic' commitments, draw extensively upon recent empirical studies of voting, pressure groups, and of the sociological and social psychological aspects of political behaviour in Britain and the USA at the time. Problems of the nature of such evidence, the conduct of attitude surveys and opinion polls, and the relationship between modern research and the traditional themes of political theory are also analysed.

1 Politics and Democracy

Any group, any collection of two or more people, if it is to survive, will on occasion have to agree on common action and to decide, in common, which situations or issues require common action and which do not. Failing such agreement the group is likely to disintegrate or be destroyed. But not even in the most harmonious and loving of voluntary groups—an ideal marriage, for example—can such agreement be assumed always to exist without directing some activity or attention to securing it. Habit and mutual understanding will take the group a long way, but faced with any change in the environment or any other new situation agreement will have to be reached. In the ideal marriage envisaged, it may be easy to reach agreement, but in most groups it may not be possible always to build on ‘natural’ harmony, and in some it may be very difficult indeed, given the members’ differing aims, tastes, perspectives and interests (i.e. their humanity). Difficult or easy, agreement may be essential: the children must go to some school, however deeply the parents are divided about private and public, selective and comprehensive schools; the rambling club must ramble somewhere, however much some members prefer the wolds to the dales; and to take the starkest example, the two owner-riders of a tandem bicycle must travel together, however much they disagree about the route. In each case they must all agree, or dissolve, and in each group there must be some process, some activity, whereby the arguments and conflicts are resolved. That process or activity is what we mean by ‘polities’.

In its simplest form the human predicament which gives birth to the activity of politics is this: the members of a group face a situation which demands a common response, but disagree as to what the response should be. All are aware, however, that the response must be common, i.e. must be made or accepted by all members, including those who may have opposed it. Furthermore, the debate is predicated upon either the need or the desire for the continuance of the group (there is no problem if members can duck the issue of common action merely by ending their membership—an option which is, in fact, surprisingly rare or difficult to exercise).¹

Not all disagreements need give rise to politics. Relevant are those only which relate to necessary common action, to those matters which come within the realm of the group’s common, or public, affairs (the definition of which is obviously part of the public realm). For it is only in public affairs that competing policies (i.e. principles of action) have the distinctive characteristics of being binding on the group as a whole once adopted and thus of being mutually exclusive: the riders of a ‘tandem’ cannot simultaneously take the right- and left-hand forks; the Church of England cannot be both Established and disestablished. The essence of the political problem is that while one may succeed in having the best (or worst) of both worlds, yet it is never possible to have all of both worlds.

As a group survives, its political activities tend to follow regular, known, and predictable lines, to acquire a pattern. And depending upon how decisions about the group’s public affairs are customarily taken, so the pattern may be labelled as autocratic, democratic, oligarchic or whatever else may be appropriate. In principle, moreover, political labels may be attached to any and every human group since, according to the view being put forward, politics is an inescapable attribute of all human groups; to all social life there is a political dimension.² It may not, of course, be the most important dimension in all cases, nor may a group’s political patterns be its most distinctive feature, but the quality of life within any group is always, at least in part, a function of its politics.

1 This analysis of politics derives from S. E. Finer, ‘The Study of Politics’, The University Quarterly, Nov. 1953. He, however, does not stress, as we believe it essential to do, the constraints of group continuance. 2 To talk, for example, of ‘office politics’ is not merely to speak metaphorically.

Politics, we have said, is a dimension of all social units, but not all units are equally significant in terms of the decisions to be taken, or, putting it another way, of the centrality of their public affairs to the quality of existence. For most people it is still the case that the nation-state is the most important unit to which they belong. It is the state, and not the city, church, industry, or trade union, which is the ultimate guarantor of the fundamental order on which any meaningful life depends and which, therefore, is entrusted with the power to maintain it and, usually, the right to make those decisions believed to be necessary to define (or redefine) it. Above all, of course, the modern state is so large a social unit, involving such a complex differentiation of social roles and functions, that it is inevitable that there should also have developed an elaborate division of labour in attending to the unit’s public affairs and political processes. It is true even of the most democratic political systems yet known that some members of the society play a more active and public part than others in the decision-making process. Whatever the patterns, certain features are common to all political processes—more or less open articulation of different viewpoints on public affairs; more or less restricted (both in respect to what is said and who may say it) participation in discussing these viewpoints; more or less successful or legitimate attempts to persuade, coerce or silence those who disagree; and some recognized patterns or structures for conducting these activities, taking ‘official’ decisions on behalf of the unit concerned and trying to implement or apply those decisions. In all these respects social groups and units will vary immensely—from, for example, the patterns associated with Nazi Germany to those of the Society of Friends —but universal is the need to secure common action on public affairs by members who differ, or are liable to differ, in their preferences, interests and perspectives. The larger and more complex the unit, moreover, the more complicated and elaborate are the political patterns likely to be and the more difficult to label, let alone to describe or understand.

In this book we will primarily be concerned with trying to understand certain aspects of political processes, especially those which, like the British and American, claim usually to merit the label of ‘democratic’. One of our purposes will be to examine this claim. But what, first of all, does it mean to claim that a political system is ‘democratic’?

At the level of principle democracy, as we intend the concept, is three-dimensional, the dimensions being those of discussion, power and security. It is, to offer a minimal definition, a system of government in which decisions arise from a process of discussion, in which power is evenly and widely enough distributed for no single group or section within the polity to be able continuously and without challenge to exercise preponderant power, and in which each individual is secure enough from arbitrary external control, by private or governmental agencies, to be able freely to participate in the process of discussion and fearlessly to use the political resources at his command. This is not the place to offer a full defence of this definition, but some explanation and justification is obviously necessary. Let us examine the three ‘dimensions’ in turn.

1. Discussion. Much of the rhetoric of democracy, and many of its most characteristic institutions, are rooted in the notion of government by or after discussion. ‘Ballots, not bullets’, the central roles of assemblies and parliaments (places to talk), free speech, the ‘market-place of ideas’, and the Open society’ are obvious examples. The view that discussion, and not violence or other forms of coercion, is the distinctive method of democratic government (not that any form of government can totally dispense with coercion) derives from the liberal democrat’s conviction that no man or group of men know, with absolute and exclusive certainty, the answers to all human problems. All thought and action must therefore be open to criticism; and especially must those in power be criticized for the sake of efficiency, acceptability, and the avoidance of rigid orthodoxies. Among free and equal men argument and persuasion are, in the last analysis, the only appropriate means to secure both change and the agreed decisions on which social cohesion may depend.¹

2. Power. At first sight the power dimension—the ‘populist’ emphasis upon the people as the source of authority and the ultimate decisionmakers—may seem to have little connection with, even to be opposed to, the civilized vision of government by discussion. ‘Government by the people’ (the root meaning of ‘democracy’ after all) is to many only slightly less frightening than phrases like ‘all power to the people’ or ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ which conjure up pictures of bloodthirsty revolutionary mobs or the ruthless collective tyranny of a bogus majority will. That, on occasion, popular government may amount to this cannot be denied. Nevertheless, a theory or definition which totally excludes all reference to the central inspiration of self-government, to the ideal of universal citizenship, has nothing to do with democracy as it has always been understood. The point is that, while government by discussion amongst a circumscribed elite may be preferable to an elitist rule of some other kind, yet for it to constitute democracy, all the people must be given at least the opportunity to take part in the debate. If, moreover, the case for discussion rests to some degree upon the denial of all human claims to a monopoly of truth, then to deny to any sane adult the right to join is arbitrary and unjustifiable.² And the only way to ensure that Ordinary people’ will be accorded this participatory right is to back it with popular power—otherwise the unprivileged, the unwealthy, and the prestigeless will for ever also be the exploited, the dispossessed and the unheeded.

1 On this dimension, see, in particular, A. D. Lindsay, The Essentials of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 1929 and 1935), and Bertrand Russell, Philosophy and Politics (Cambridge University Press for NBL, 1947). On the general topic of liberal democracy, see G. Sartori, Democratic Theory (Praeger, 1965). 2 Unjustifiable in terms of the first dimension, that is. We are, of course, well aware that there are problems about the use of such words as ‘sane’ and ‘adult’ and we would in fact insist that the voice of many non-adults must be heeded. But these problems do not affect the general argument.

There is another reason why a democratic process of discussion requires a substantial sharing of power. One cannot talk of a genuine discussion unless all the participants accord one another a genuine hearing—a discussion is not a one-way process. This is to say that they must all regard the others with a sufficient degree of esteem and respect to listen as well as to talk or give orders. It is rare, however, at least in political and public life, for men to listen seriously and comprehendingly to those who are in a position of continuing and marked inferiority of status and power. In a democracy, not only must the exercise of power (even by a majority) be guided and tempered by the rules and processes of discussion, but, it follows from what has just been said, preponderant power must ultimately inhere only in the generality of its members.

3. Security. The kind of security we have in mind is not merely or even primarily security against the effects of social misfortunes like sickness, old-age and maternity, desirable as it is. Rather it is that security against injustice and the arbitrary exercise of power which, in traditional liberal doctrine, is attained through the rule of law and the defence of such individual ‘rights’ as life, liberty and property. In saying this we are not unmindful of the objections which have been made to particular theories of rights and particular formulations of the rule of law. It must also be admitted that the liberal tradition has at times been unduly concerned with security against state power (and not enough with the dangers of and from ‘private’ organizations) just as it may have been insensitive to that aspect of ‘property’ which consists solely in being legally protected.¹ Nevertheless, the liberal insistence upon the need to defend man’s life, livelihood and dignity against avoidable human deprivations is not dependent for its value upon the arguments of (say) Dicey or Locke. The fact remains that unless individuals are secure against such personal dangers their share in popular power may be worthless and their ‘right’ to participate in public discussion as meaningful as the ‘right’ to vote ‘yes’ in a Nazi plebiscite. If discussion be an ‘essential of democracy’,² it in turn is dependent for its reality upon the diffusion of power and the existence of the rule of law, each of which are mutually dependent in sustaining a system of democratic government.³

1 That any job may be a form of property no less, and possibly more, sacred than real estate is only now being tacitly accepted in the spread of schemes for ‘redundancy’ payments below the ‘golden handshake’ level. 2 See footnote 1 on page 14 above. 3 It is arguable, however, that the rule of law is historically prior, in that it alone provides the governmental environment in which popular power can grow and new ideas spread. Perhaps there is a moral here for those countries which, as yet, only aspire to democracy.

Even in such a brief and highly general discussion of democratic principles, it is not possible to avoid making some reference to actual political structures and processes, if only to illustrate our meaning. It is even less possible to do so as we become less abstract and move on to look at two other key concepts, both of which are more commonly articulated characteristics of democracy: representation and legitimate opposition.¹

If one accepts the fact that, in any modern state, there must continue to be some division of labour between those who hold formal governing positions and those who do not, even if one does not take the further step of equating this distinction with that between the ruler and the ruled or the elite and the mass (a step which is by no means logically necessary), then...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• 1. Politics and Democracy
• 2. The General Public
• 3. Leaders and Voters
• 4. The Pressure-group Universe
• 5. Groups in Action
• 6. Representative Government: Vulnerability and Rationality
• Index