In the previous chapter I sought to justify democracy as a form of government in terms of the requirement to attend to common interests that would otherwise be neglected. The argument moved from the need to institute protection from arbitrary government through a thought-experiment about the most plausible alternative to democracy to considerations of political equality under conditions of human fallibility. This last point has particular implications. The principle that any conception of government needs to recognize the fallible character of human judgement is especially related to that class of goods that I have identified as distinctively political, involving the provision of institutions to settle disagreements in situations where a common policy is essential. If there are disputes about the supply of public and primary goods, and if each member of society has an interest in the peaceful and civilized resolution of those disputes, then no one person or group of persons will have sufficient knowledge to secure the right answer to any particular problem. Some form of public reasoning about feasible alternatives, involving citizens in general, will have to be instituted. From this point of view, the problems of politics are problems of deliberation. That is to say, where there are differences of opinion about what collectively is to be done, then some set of institutions will be necessary to deliberate about the different points of view that are advanced. Just as individuals confronted with the need to make a practical choice in the face of conflicting reasons will need to deliberate on the relative strength and force of those reasons, so the members of a political community will need to deliberate about their common course of action in the face of competing opinions.
Most modern democracies are the heirs of liberalism. One of the many consequences of this historical fact is that they contain an ambiguity in their institutional structure and principled rationale. On the one hand, they provide the means by which the people govern, or at least elect the representatives who are to govern. On the other hand, they usually contain constitutional devices, like the separation of powers or a system of checks and balances, that limit the scope and application of the principle of majority rule. Accordingly, constitutional democracies are typically governed according to two sets of principles: constitutionalism, which prescribes that governments should conduct their business according to rules that limit their freedom of action, and a populist principle, which prescribes that governments should implement the will of the people.
The traditional problem of political obligation has been treated in large part as one about the obligation to obey the law or the commands of civil authority more generally. This is an important topic to which there are many possible answers (Horton, 1992). But to frame the problem of democratic obligation in this traditional way is both too wide and too narrow. It is too wide because it poses the question of obligation in relation to political authority as such, leaving aside the variety of forms that such authority can take. Even if one can show not only that there is some general obligation to obey the law under most forms of political authority but that there was some special obligation within a democracy, issues would still need to be resolved around the content and extent of these supposedly special obligations.
In the last twenty years, there has occurred a 'global resurgence of democracy' (Diamond and Plattner, 1996). The collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe, the democratization of Latin America and the transformation of some African one-party systems into multi-party systems have had profound effects upon patterns of government throughout the world. Democratization in places as diverse as Zambia, Argentina, Poland and South Korea has occurred with a speed and vigour that has surprised informed and knowledgeable observers. Formerly closed, authoritarian political systems have become open to new influences and political ideas. These events and trends have prompted many observers in recent years to claim that 'we are all democrats now', having reached 'the end of history' (Fukuyama, 1989) or, to put the point less poetically but more accurately, the end of political controversy about systems of government. Democracy — it would seem — has ceased to be a matter of contention and has become a matter of convention.
