Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, ... except for all the others that have been tried."
But for many people, democracy has become a sacred cow.
There is probably no form of government that we ought to get too excited about. Our basic relationship with government is an involuntary association, since the essence of government is its ability to impose sanctions (deprivations of life, liberty, or property) on its subjects.
Nobody consents to being executed, imprisoned, or fined.
Like all involuntary associations, government is bad, but it is justifiable because it is potentially better than the private involuntary associations that would proliferate in its absence. As Thomas Hobbes described life without government, it would be a "war of all against all" and "nasty, brutish, and short."
To be a lesser evil, government must refrain from imposing sanctions on anybody who has not violated a general rule of action — a law applying to everybody. The "rule of law" allows people to protect themselves by obeying the law, and since the law must apply to everyone, its restrictions are unlikely to be outrageous.
Democracy is a further protection from high-handed treatment. Together with the rule of law, it further reduces the danger that laws will be outrageous.
But democracy does have its limits.
For example, democracy does not guarantee that the best candidate will win elections. Majorities are not always right.
Democracy is merely one possible method of determining who will hold an office, for better or for worse.
It is worth pointing out, though, that no other form of government can guarantee that better people will occupy public offices. The heir to even a good king can turn out to be scoundrel or a blithering idiot.
Successful revolutions often put extremely unscrupulous people, like Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, or Mao Zedong, in power.
Many good things we associate with democracy are not democracy itself, but the social preconditions necessary for it to exist.
There has to be ample freedom of speech, since the right to vote means nothing if candidates cannot speak freely about their platforms and criticize their opponents.
There has to be freedom to join with other people to form political coalitions or parties.
There have to be voting systems that people can trust to report an honest tabulation of ballots.
There has to be a general consensus — in society and among the political elite from whom officials are chosen — that candidates who lose an election and those who voted for them will accept that result and recognize that someone else won.
Since the social conditions necessary for democracy do not exist everywhere, democracy is impossible until social conditions have changed — and social conditions are generally rather slow to change.
It is, therefore, unwise to try to force foreign countries that are not ready for it to democratize. It cannot work, and it will be resisted and resented by those currently ruling there. After all, it would threaten current elites' ability to continue "feeding at the public trough."
A better American foreign policy would encourage countries that are not fertile soil for democracy to abide by the rule of law. This does not threaten the existence of those who rule, but merely limits their arbitrary power somewhat.
Without democracy, a decent society would still be possible. For most people, the rule of law is far more important than democracy.
Under the rule of law, people can be deprived of life, liberty, or property only if they are duly convicted of violating a general rule of action, one applying to everybody's actions. Abominable rules like "non-white people must ride in the back of the bus" are incompatible with the rule of law.
Of course, an ideal regime would both be democratic and respect the rule of law.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981. His most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon and other states. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.