Between reason and will: On Christopher Meckstroth’s The Struggle for Democracy

Christopher Meckstroth’s The Struggle for Democracy is an ambitious and thought-provoking book. If only for this ambition, and the lucidity with which it poses and attempts to solve some of the most fundamental problems raised by philosophical reflection on the notion of democracy, it deserves to be considered a major contribution to the field of contemporary democratic theory. Its intellectual context is defined by what Meckstroth calls the ‘democratic turn’ in normative political theory since the end of the Cold War. This refers the fact that, after the collapse of ‘really existing socialism’, which has left liberal democracy virtually unchallenged as the normative bedrock of political legitimacy, the kinds of questions and issues political theorists have been primarily concerned with have changed.

While throughout most of the twentieth century, the struggle between liberalism and socialism – and their respective conceptions of social justice – was the centrepiece of debate in this field, over the course of the past two and a half decades, attention has increasingly shifted to questions that are internal to the theoretical horizon of liberal democracy itself. This, Meckstroth claims, has renewed interest for a set of problems that had already been central during other periods of western political thought (most notably, during the brief spell of democratic rule in ancient Athens, and in the aftermath of the so-called ‘democratic revolutions’ between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries), but which were subsequently obscured by the rise of the ‘social question’ in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Without suggesting that this question has in any way been resolved by the collapse of ‘really existing socialism’, Meckstroth contends that it should now be posed in a different way, in light of the fact that democracy has emerged as the intellectual cornerstone of normative political theory. ‘It is democratic politics itself’ he writes ‘that on this theory provides the content of justice’ (220). From this perspective, the key theoretical puzzle Meckstroth addresses stems from the recognition that, despite its currently almost universal prestige, the actual meaning of democracy remains highly indeterminate. To be sure, even schoolchildren are now taught that democracy is a word that derives from ancient Greek, where it literally meant ‘rule by the people’. However, both the operative terms in this minimal definition are so abstract and open to further question that they end up being insufficient to determine what democracy means concretely.

Who are the people to begin with? What does it mean to rule? And how can these two concepts be combined in a political system where it can be meaningfully said that the people rule themselves? These are some of the central questions normative political theory has been grappling with since its most recent ‘democratic turn’. Nonetheless, Meckstroth contends that the answers that have so far been put forwards are largely unsatisfactory, for reasons that provide the springboard for his own discussion, while at the same time setting the stakes of his book.

Meckstroth begins by classifying recent attempts at spelling out the political content of democracy in two broad groups. A first and dominant school of thought has sought to deduce this content directly from the material conditions required to instantiate the abstract principle of ‘rule by the people’ in practice. This has yielded what Meckstroth refers to as ‘timeless’ theories of democracy, which basically consist in lists of practical conditions a given political regime must satisfy in order to qualify as democratic. ¹

The problem Meckstroth identifies with this way of proceeding is that since the actual work of spelling out the political content of democracy is here being done entirely a priori by the political theorist, it is doubtful whether the resulting regime type can meaningfully be said to instantiate a form of popular self-rule. For, after all, it is the theorist that is here deciding how a given polity ought to be governed, in order to qualify as democratic. Thus, it appears that the theorist is substituting himself or herself for ‘the people’ in deciding how the polity ought to be ruled.

This is the core of what Meckstroth refers to as the ‘paradox of authorization’, which may be counted as an insightful contribution to democratic theory in its own right, since it alerts us to a fundamental problem confronted by all attempts at spelling out the concrete meaning of democracy in a ‘timeless’ way. A useful parallel might be offered here by the notion of a ‘paradox of constitutionalism’ which has long been theorised by constitutional scholars. ² The key idea is that the process of drafting a democratic constitution is inevitably confronted with the problem that, in order to be democratically legitimate, it would seem to have to be authorised by ‘the people’ themselves – but that supposes it is already known what counts as an expression of ‘the people’ in the first place, which is precisely what the formal procedures to be set out in the constitution are supposed to establish. It therefore seems that a democratic constitution cannot be written democratically.

What Meckstroth is suggesting is that a similar paradox also applies to the practice of democratic theory itself. For, on the assumption that the point of democratic theory is to aid ‘the people’ in establishing what it means to ‘govern themselves’, it follows that any attempt at answering that question entirely a priori ends up substituting the theorist’s own arbitrary preferences or beliefs for those of ‘the people’, thereby contradicting the very nature of the kind of regime that is being defined. To fully appreciate the significance of the problem, however, it is necessary to adopt a perspective from which democratic ‘theory’ is not seen as a categorically distinct kind of activity from democratic ‘practice’, but rather as part of an ongoing theoretical and practical process of self-definition of the nature of the democratic polity itself. For, it is only on the assumption that democratic theory is a form of political practice, and that all forms of such practice are implicitly predicated on background theoretical presuppositions, that the short circuit between the act of defining democracy a priori and the process of collective self-government becomes manifest. Another signal virtue of Meckstroth’s text therefore consists in challenging – or at least softening – the distinction between democratic ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, by pointing out that the two are confronted by many of the same conceptual problems, and therefore cannot be separated out as neatly as some forms of democratic theory would seem to presuppose. ³

The second and more recent strand of democratic theory Meckstroth considers can be read as an attempt at addressing this ‘paradox of authorization’, but puts forward a solution Meckstroth finds unsatisfactory for a different reason. The basic idea here is that democracy ought to be understood as a dynamic system of ‘reflexive’ self-interpretation of its own constitutive principles. ⁴ From this point of view, ‘the people’ can be said to define what democracy means for them, on the basis of procedures established by previous iterations of the same process. Although the resulting theory of democracy cannot entirely avoid the ‘paradox of authorization’ (since it begs the question of who is entitled to define the procedures that set the process in motion), the claim is that this theory can redeem the desideratum of an internally democratic conception of democracy over time, because the inherent arbitrariness of the initial premises becomes progressively less relevant as ‘the people’ work through successive iterations of the process of reflexive self-interpretation.

The problem Meckstroth identifies with this strand of democratic theory is that it unduly constrains the range of possible interpretations of democracy that are available to the people in the present, by requiring that they be authorised through norms and procedures already established in the past. This, he claims, is blind to the possibility of ‘inherited biases’ from presently indefensible decisions made by previous iterations of the process of democratic self-interpretation. Thus, while ‘timeless’ theories of democracy cannot avoid what Meckstroth calls the ‘paradox of authorization’, ‘reflexive’ theories may imply another kind of usurpation of popular sovereignty by the past over the present (19–20).

In order to steer clear of both these pitfalls, Meckstroth delineates an alternative path, drawing on a tradition of argumentation which for him has its roots in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, but whose elements are also present in the work of both Kant and Hegel. Its key idea is that competing claims to ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ can be evaluated on their own terms on the basis of their capacity to live up consistently to their own presuppositions. This is what Meckstroth refers to as the method of ‘elenchus’ with reference to Plato’s Socrates, and ‘immanent critique’ with reference to Kant and Hegel. ⁵

Applying this method to the problem of the definition of ‘rule by the people’ yields what Meckstroth calls a ‘Socratic’ theory of democracy, whose political content is determined in a contingent and historical way, by examining competing claims to represent the people’s will in a given historical situation, and progressively weeding out those that fail to live up to their own presuppositions. Meckstroth formalises this in terms of two fundamental principles that are meant to serve a function analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative within the framework of his moral theory: to provide a criterion of interpretation through which political actors can evaluate actual claims to represent the people’s will, in order to establish what democracy requires in the present.

The first such principle is formulated as follows:

A legitimate democracy must (a) respect all citizens’ equal freedoms, both in the content of its decisions and in the process through which those decisions are authored; and also (b) do so through a political system those citizens have chosen for themselves’ (11).

The second principle, on the other hand, is meant to provide a criterion of adjudication between conflicting interpretations of Principle I by requiring that: ‘In contests over democratic change, that party counts as representing the choice of the democratic people which more consistently meets its own interpretation of Principle I than any other party’ (23). ⁶

The key wager of Meckstroth’s book is that understanding democracy in terms of these two principles overcomes the problems he has pointed out with existing theories of democracy, while at the same time offering a convincing answer to the time-worn problem of defining democracy’s political content. First of all, Meckstroth claims that these two principles do not depend on the importation of any ‘external’ values apart from those entertained by political actors themselves in putting forwards their interpretations of what democracy requires in a given historical situation. For this reason, he maintains that they do not end up substituting his own arbitrary preferences for those of ‘the people’ themselves, and therefore avoid what he has called the ‘paradox of authorization’.

Second, Meckstroth also claims that his two principles do not fall into the pitfall of ‘reflexive’ theories of democracy, since they do not constrain the range of legitimate interpretations of the people’s will to a requirement of consistency with previous iterations of the democratic process. From their perspective, the people are free to put forward and pursue whatever interpretation of democracy they prefer in the present, as long as the political project that is being thereby pursued is consistent with its own implicit premises.

As I hope this account is already sufficient to show on its own, this amounts to a sophisticated and original theory of democracy. Its main strength is to shift attention from abstract theorising about the meaning of democracy to concrete claims to represent the people’s will in specific historical situations, while also providing a normative criterion to adjudicate between them on the basis of their internal consistency. In this way, Meckstroth succeeds in squaring the circle of providing a theory of democracy that is at once historical and normative.

One important implication of his theory is that the meaning of democracy can only be determined with reference to the specificities of a given historical situation. However, this does not mean that the political content of democracy can simply be ‘read off’ the description of this situation, as a purely empirical datum. Rather, the point is that a genuinely democratic theory of democracy needs to be constructed rationally out of the conflicting claims to represent the people’s will in a given historical situation, by progressively weeding those that fail to live up to their own presuppositions. Reason and will (i.e. theory and practice) therefore prove to be reciprocally indispensable in Meckstroth’s proposed solution to the so-called ‘paradox of authorization’, just as they must be related to one another to see why this is a problem to begin with.

All this is argued with care and erudition, and in a style that is at once accessible and engaging. If, in what follows, I will raise some objections, it is therefore not to suggest that Meckstroth’s theory fails, or is not worth engaging with, but rather to foster further progress in the interesting and fertile direction he has opened up. After all, it is in the spirit Meckstroth’s own conception of the ‘struggle for democracy’ that a philosophically acceptable definition of democracy ought to be arrived at through a constant process of internal critique of existing theories.

Most of the concerns I will raise are related the key notion of ‘consistency’ Meckstroth relies upon to establish which claims to represent the people’s will can be considered truly ‘genuine’, and which therefore functions as the veritable deus ex machina of his theory. To begin with, one might ask why ‘consistency’ ought to be considered of normative significance at all. Especially on the assumption that some claims to represent the people’s will can fail to satisfy this requirement, this appears to be in tension Meckstroth’s claim that his theory does not import any ‘external’ normative premises in the evaluation of such claims. After all, it is commonly recognised that individuals can have contradictory desires. So, what prevents us from admitting that a people’s will can contain irreconcilable contradictions with itself too? One way to think about this might be to suggest that a truly ‘democratic’ theory of democracy must be capable of respecting – and therefore expressing at the political level – any contradictions that might exist within the people’s will, rather than effectively dismissing them by definitional fiat, as Meckstroth’s effectively ends up doing. ⁷

A second potential line of objection asks whether the criterion of internal consistency is sufficient to supply Meckstroth’s theory with the normative content it seeks. For, even assuming that self-contradiction is enough to disqualify a political project from the possibility of being normatively acceptable, it still does not follow that an interpretation of the people’s will that satisfies this criterion must necessarily be considered normatively acceptable. Consider for instance a situation in which a single and self-appointed ‘representative of the people’ were to put forward a definition of democracy as the legal enactment of what he or she claims the people’s will to be. By its own standards, such a theory of democracy would not seem to be internally inconsistent, since the person advancing it could coherently also claim that what the theory posits as the legitimate interpreter of the people’s will (i.e. himself or herself) supports it. By any other standard, however, such a theory would seem to involve an evident usurpation of the people’s right to rule themselves. Thus, it seems that the requirement of internal consistency might ultimately fall short of establishing that a claim to represent the people’s will is indeed ‘genuine’.

Finally, a third potential line of objection stems from the fact that the criterion of internal consistency might not be capable of specifying a unique political outcome in every conceivable situation. For, nothing seems to prevent the possibility that in a given context there might exist multiple mutually exclusive but internally consistent interpretations of what democracy requires – especially once it is admitted that there is no a priori right answer to this question, and therefore that the people’s will must be contingently and ‘historically’ on the basis of the specificities of the given historical situation. In the situation just described, Mecsktroth’s theory would therefore seem to be incapable of specifying which specific interpretation of the people’s will ought to considered ‘genuine’, and thereby fail in providing an answer to the problem he set out to resolve in the first place.

To be sure, none of these objections is damning. The fact that Meckstroth’s conception of the ‘democratic elenchus’ indicates a potential way out of the ‘paradox of authorization’, without at the same time falling back in the pitfalls of ‘reflexive’ theories of democracy, is enough to make his theory a valuable contribution to contemporary democratic thought. Nonetheless, the points I have raised do suggest that, as it stands, Meckstroth’s theory remains somewhat under-determined – and therefore that there is more work to do in this direction.

Many of the problems I mentioned, in fact, come to the fore in the last part of Meckstroth’s book, where he attempts to apply his theory to a number of real-world cases. This is certainly a brave and commendable effort, which alone distinguishes Meckstroth’s book from most of the rest of contemporary democratic theory. Unfortunately, this part of his book also ends up highlighting many of the limitations of his theory, alongside its strengths.

This can be illustrated with reference to his attempt at evaluating the democratic legitimacy of competing claims to represent the people’s will in the contemporary struggle over the admissibility of same-sex marriage in the USA. Meckstroth begins by analysing the relative merits of the actual arguments advanced both by the opponents and the supporters of same-sex marriage over the course of the past few decades. Soon enough, however, he reaches the conclusion that both are ‘perfectly admissible ways of mobilizing electoral support’ since neither involves any ‘evident contradiction’ on its own terms (221–223). In order to establish which side can lay a better claim to representing the ‘genuine’ people’s will, Meckstroth therefore resorts to evaluating what he takes to be their relative degree of popular support.

This leads him to advance a complex argument according to which the outcome of simple-majority voting procedures (which – at the time of writing – had still consistently resulted in victories for opponents of same sex-marriage) cannot be considered to definitively establish democratic legitimacy, because majority rule is by definition blind to the possibility that minority rights might be violated. Instead, Meckstroth proposes a criterion based on the search for evidence that there exists a ‘convincing supermajority’ both within the public as a whole and within the minority that its basic rights are not thereby being violated (212–213).

Applying this criterion to the case of the democratic legitimacy of same-sex marriage in the USA leads Meckstroth to conclude that the Supreme Court acted democratically in the cases of US v Windsor (2013) and Holligsworth v Perry (2013) – which effectively legalised same-sex marriage at the federal level, even though this required overturning statutes that had been passed by legally constituted democratic majorities – on the grounds that the voting procedures through which these statutes had been passed were not sufficient to establish the democratic legitimacy of the proposals in question, and that circumstantial evidence also showed that public opinion at the federal level had been ‘shifting’ since California’s watershed referendum on Proposition 8 (223–224).

Quite apart from the independent cogency of this argument (and of course also of the merits of one’s substantive opinion on the admissibility of same-sex marriage) what is noticeable here is that the above hardly constitutes an application of Meckstroth’s theory of democracy to the case under consideration. For, the evaluation of the internal consistency of different claims to represent the people’s will proves to be inconclusive. Thus, Meckstroth ends up putting forward his own criterion of democratic legitimacy, based on his complex notion of a ‘convincing supermajority’ both amongst the public at large and within the relevant minority. This suggests that the spectre Mecsktroth had striven so hard to exorcise from his own theory to begin with – i.e. what he calls the ‘paradox of authorization’ – ultimately ends up coming back in through the back door, because of the conceptual under-determination of his criterion of ‘consistency’. ⁸

One way to overcome this problem might have been to provide a theoretically ‘thicker’ notion of consistency, which would have allowed Meckstroth to weed out more concrete political projects, without being forced to introduce his own independent criteria of evaluation. Upon reflection, however, this too runs up against the same problem, because it opens up the difficult question of establishing who is entitled to determine what ‘consistency’ means in the first place. A more promising way out of the conundrum Meckstroth places us in might therefore have been to concede that – at least in some situations – theory alone cannot be sufficient to establish what democracy requires, without incurring in the so-called ‘paradox of authorization’.

Far from a way of conceding defeat, this could lay the grounds for advancing that what Meckstroth calls the ‘struggle for democracy’ – that is, the critical evaluation of competing claims to represent the people’s will, carried out by political actors, in the name of democracy itself – is not really something that can really be called to an end, but rather functions as the true essence of this kind of political regime.