Pun Salad

A very good overview of the concept of "democracy" by Jason Brennan. With a philosopher's care, he sets out the book's purpose (pp. 4-5):

My goal is to give you a guided tour of the best and most important arguments for and against democracy over time. I want you to understand why a reasonable person might think democracy is the ideal form of government and that all the problems of democracy can be fixed with more democracy. I also want you to understand why a reasonable person might think democracy has built-in flaws that must be contained, or why democracy is simply bad. I want you to see why a reasonable person might think democracy is the end of history, and why a reasonable person might think the era of democracy should give way to something better.

Brennan looks at five values that thinkers have, at one time or another, held up as reasons to value (or criticize) democracy: (1) its stability; (2) its ability to promote virtue in the citizenry; (3) the wisdom of the choices it produces; (4) its effects on personal liberty; and (5) its effects on equality. Each value gets two chapters: one cheering for democracy, the other booing. There's some overlap between the chapters, and some of the thinkers he discusses resist his pigeonholing, but overall it's a decent way to proceed.

Caveat: You might get an idea of Brennan's own views on the matter if you check out his previous book, provocatively titled Against Democracy. And just so you know where I'm coming from, I liked that one a lot too. So I'm perhaps not the best one to judge how fairly Brennan presents his for/against arguments. Are Spooner's and Nozick's views presented too sympathetically? Rawls' and Rousseau's too critically? Judge for yourself.

For people concerned with personal liberty, I found the strongest pro-democracy argument to be a strictly empirical one: the strong correlation between (independently-judged) levels of democracy and freedom in international comparsions. Can't argue with results! Well, you can, and Brennan does, but…

Whatever, I found Brennan's "guided tour" to be approachable and jargon-free, perhaps appropriate for the fabled "bright undergraduate" in a political science course.