Class 4 - The Global Roots of Democracy

Welcome back!

Welcome back. We’re going to start with a writing exercise. Write in response to the following question:

What is democracy?

We’ll bracket and share afterwards.

Today’s class

Thanks for all your views on democracy. There’s a lot to think about here. But today we’re going to be looking at another perspecitve from the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. Sen sees democracy as a kind of collective deliberation and reasoning. He starts by giving the Greek term. Democracy, he says, derives from the Greek words for “people” (demos) and “authority” (kratia). But what does it mean for the people to have authority?

Sen’s argument is an important one. He says that democracy is not something that is unique to the Western world. Many ethnocentric Western historians trace Democracy to back to Ancient Greece. But as we’ll see today, collective, deliberative approaches to decision making are much more universally human.

Why does this matter? For lots of reasons. It matters because it can help us find multiple resources for supporting democracy. It works against racist claims that democracy is something that must be imposed from the outside. And it also works against autocratic claims that democracy is something peculiar only certain cultures, while in other cultures, it is not appropriate.

To get ready for the class, we’re going to start by watching a very short video on what is often called deliberative democracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1qXrd-NlVA

Introduction to Sen

The paper you have read is by Nobel prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen. In his paper, Sen starts by talking about democracy as the “exercise of public reason”. This comes from the political philosopher John Rawls. For Sen, if we see democracy as only about holding elections - the democracy of the ballot box - we are going to miss its global roots. Ballots and elections are one example of the exercise of public reason. But if democracy is seen as only about a vote or a ballot every four or five years, it is a pretty thin kind of democracy.

So the notion of collective deliberation in the service of decision making is a powerful one, and it allows us to see that democracy is not just limited to the Western tradition, as some theorists have claimed.

Reading exercise

Let’s now look at the text. There’s a long beginning, where Sen sets up his argument. But I want you to go to page 29, in the final section where it begins “The championing of pluralism…” We’re going to read through for a few paragraphs to get a feel of the argument.

Deliberative Democracy in daily life

Our Experiences of Democracy (in the sense of the exercise of public reason

So what we’re talking about is a broader use of public reason, one that works against the tendency of autocracy (which is rule by one person or one single power). You can see why democracy might be a good thing — at least ideally. Collective decision-making is powerful. It allows us to subject arguments to scrutiny. It gives us more data to work with, more perspectives to inform our decisions.

So I want you to write for five minutes about a context where you have experienced this. In what contexts have you experience of collective deliberation for the sake of making decisions? These may be

1. Family groups
2. Friendship groups
3. Political groups (for example, the CDM)
4. Religious groups

Make a few notes. Now in groups, share your experience of this collective decision-making, and talk about the following questions:

1. How do people in this context make and evaulate arguments?
2. What is the experience of taking part in this democractic decision making?
3. Are the decisions that are made good ones?

We’ll share your experiences after the discussion.

Public Reasoning

Sen’s paper explores lots more historical examples of this kind of public reasoning. For example the Buddhist sangha, some have claimed, was originally modelled on relatively democratic structures of tribal republics in the foothills of the himalayas. In the second half of our session today, we’re going to talk more broadly about public reasoning. We’ll share section V of the text (on page 34), then we’ll split into groups to discuss the following questions:

1. What does Sen mean by “the defects of democracy demand more democracy, not less.”
2. Is he right?
3. What are the weakenesses in Sen’s argument?

Homework

As a framework for thinking about this, we’re going to go right back to ancient Greece, and to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which is available on canvas. We’ll just read a short six-page section. Please answer the questions on Canvas before the next class.