The Danish commentator, Jørgen Leth, exclaimed "It is democratic" when Alexander Vinokurov (great cyclist and a hard worker) fetched water for the man in yellow, Alberto Contador. This is a typical misconception which needs to be addressed in order to fully understand what democracy is. Let us again return to Robert A. Dahl's four criteria regarding democratic process. He says, 1) everyone should have the ability to participate, to vote, to be enlightened about what is going on, and to have influence on the agenda (Dahl, 1989: 113f). Notice the absence of the "water bearer". It is not one of Dahl's criteria.
What is democracy
Democracy is not something you just define, and then you have one definition. There are many different definitions. Minimalist thinkers would argue that voting is all there is needed, while maximalist thinkers such as Dahl stresses other things such as enlightenment. Before I return to a critique of the contemporary usage of the term, democracy, a further elaboration on the term itself is needed.
Democracy is according to Dahl equal rights of participation and voting. This means that everyone defined suitable for participation, can do it (Dahl, 1989: 109). Malnes and Midgaard quotes Aristotle for saying that "It is typical for democracy that the right to vote and to be elected are not dependent on property [...]." (2004: 47). They do quote that it is possible to set a property demand although it is set low (ibid.). The property demand can be translated into properties not related to estates etc. but to your mental capacities. It is not uncommon to deny mentally ill persons the right to vote and to be elected. There is really nothing new here. However, Dahl becomes maximalist when he talks about enlightenment and control of the agenda.
Enlightenment
This is, as already mentioned in another post, about the citizen's possibility of validation. To be able to do such a society needs multiple outlets of information (newspapers, TV-stations etc.) (ibid.). Validation is in other words the citizen's attempt 1) understand what is going on, and 2) to facilitate reaction when election is up, or 3) to resist any proposal. The political scientist, David Easton, describes this very well in his model of the political system. Here the system needs feedback when it proposes a proposal (Easton, 1965: 111). This feedback is typically provided by the electorate. However, to get the good feedback, the system needs an enlightened electorate. Otherwise, one could fear that they would just nod to anything the politicians say.
Control of the agenda
The control of the agenda is something a bit different from enlightenment. Here the electorate has the control of what is debated. In other words the politicians are not completely capable of doing everything on their own. The electorate must have the possibility of pushing forth topics that they believe should be dealt with (Dahl, 1989: 109). This is where populism steps in. I will deal with that in a future post.
In other words and a critique
Democracy is either (put it boldly) a minimalist society where only voting defines the regime or a maximalist definition. There is good arguments for using both. However, the argument I would like to stress here, which is in favour of the latter definition, is that decisions without thinking can be quite blunt. They can have devastating effects for society. Imagine if we all reacted emotionally. Would we be able to have scientific progress? Perhaps no but on the other hand, it is not the scope of this post to explore emotions in democracy.
So what about Jørgen Leth and his remark? There is nothing wrong with it and there is everything wrong with hit. He reduces democracy to something about equality among people, which is not untrue but yet again, it is not the complete maximalist understanding. As real democrats we need to have a greater ambition than just make people vote. This is part of our European heritage from the Age of Enlightenment. People must be educated in order to be able to respond to the complexities of this planet.
An example of wrong use. I typed "demokratisk" (the Danish word for democratic) in the Google searchengine. The fourth hit was a link to a community called "Demokratisk Forening" (Democratic Association). It sounds like a group of people that works for promotion of democracy, but in fact they work for children in Romania as well as other that badly needs. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just not work for democracy. Rather it is for humanity. In other words an example of a misuse of the word.
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