Really interesting! In fact, I love how LW has a lot of posts in the same vein: written by people who – presumably – aren’t in fact specialists of their topic, and who engage little with the literature on the subject, but who nonetheless manage to have an interesting thing to say, and say it differently – often better – from how someone actually in the field would have said it.
I’ve only taken a few introductory political science courses in college, but in those classes, we learn that:
‘Democracy’ originally referred to Athenes-style direct democracy, to the point where 18th c. philosophers explicitlysaid that what they wanted (which we now describe as a democracy) was not a democracy.
At this point, the ‘Polsci 101’ professor will say that the reason they didn’t want a ‘democracy’ was just because that’s massively easier to do when you‘re 40k people than when you’re 10 million. That definitely was one of the main reasons brought forward at the time. But the 18th c. revolutions were made by a social group (merchants and intellectuals who didn’t have the same rights as the nobility, or the same rights as their fellows on the other side of the Atlantic) who felt disenfranchised: they mostly wanted a fairer distribution of power in the sense that they wanted to have their fair share of it.
Also, they mostly took inspiration from the most important European country with a well-functioning parliament: England. And that parliament had always been established as an organ for the representation of the nobility and other factions in the decision-making process – just like the Magna Carta (≈bill of rights) had been forced upon the king by the nobility in 1215.
Now, we’re already pretty close to what you describe, with democracy mostly being a way to give a platform to each major faction. But the most important part is the part where they get each a veto. And again, that had been done quite explicitly when the English parliament had gained more power, in the 1680s, and again when 18th c. philosophers were preparing our current political systems. A big reason for that was the religious wars between catholics and protestants in the 16-17th c. Just as Scott Alexander explains here, that’s when liberalism (respect the other guy’s freedom so they respect yours) started emerging: 18th c. philosophers were completely in that intellectual tradition, so they would definitely have agreed with you as to what they were trying to build – and intellectual tradition which imho we would do well not to toss overboard, since it’s such a great way to have a functioning society.
Beyond just the historical part, there’s a lot of literature on how different features of a democratic system can be suited to different contexts or achieve different goals. To focus on complex negotiations between people with clearly different preferences, I assume a political scientist would point you toward consociationalism, but many other concepts could also be relevant.
Really interesting! In fact, I love how LW has a lot of posts in the same vein: written by people who – presumably – aren’t in fact specialists of their topic, and who engage little with the literature on the subject, but who nonetheless manage to have an interesting thing to say, and say it differently – often better – from how someone actually in the field would have said it.
I’ve only taken a few introductory political science courses in college, but in those classes, we learn that:
‘Democracy’ originally referred to Athenes-style direct democracy, to the point where 18th c. philosophers explicitly said that what they wanted (which we now describe as a democracy) was not a democracy.
At this point, the ‘Polsci 101’ professor will say that the reason they didn’t want a ‘democracy’ was just because that’s massively easier to do when you‘re 40k people than when you’re 10 million. That definitely was one of the main reasons brought forward at the time. But the 18th c. revolutions were made by a social group (merchants and intellectuals who didn’t have the same rights as the nobility, or the same rights as their fellows on the other side of the Atlantic) who felt disenfranchised: they mostly wanted a fairer distribution of power in the sense that they wanted to have their fair share of it.
Also, they mostly took inspiration from the most important European country with a well-functioning parliament: England. And that parliament had always been established as an organ for the representation of the nobility and other factions in the decision-making process – just like the Magna Carta (≈bill of rights) had been forced upon the king by the nobility in 1215.
Now, we’re already pretty close to what you describe, with democracy mostly being a way to give a platform to each major faction. But the most important part is the part where they get each a veto. And again, that had been done quite explicitly when the English parliament had gained more power, in the 1680s, and again when 18th c. philosophers were preparing our current political systems. A big reason for that was the religious wars between catholics and protestants in the 16-17th c. Just as Scott Alexander explains here, that’s when liberalism (respect the other guy’s freedom so they respect yours) started emerging: 18th c. philosophers were completely in that intellectual tradition, so they would definitely have agreed with you as to what they were trying to build – and intellectual tradition which imho we would do well not to toss overboard, since it’s such a great way to have a functioning society.
Beyond just the historical part, there’s a lot of literature on how different features of a democratic system can be suited to different contexts or achieve different goals. To focus on complex negotiations between people with clearly different preferences, I assume a political scientist would point you toward consociationalism, but many other concepts could also be relevant.