Failure of the Demos

 I see headlines talking about risks to democracy after the election of a far-right party in Italy. I do not see headlines suggesting that that election shows the weaknesses of democracy in action.

Populist leaders tend not to be antidemocratic, at least by inclination. Many of the distinctive policies of the right-wing populist parties have heavy popular support - though they are policies which tend not to be supported by the major parties, and are frequently policies which run directly into constitutional limits in countries which have such limits (sorry, UK).

A simple example is the death penalty for murder.  In Canada, for years if not decades after the death penalty was abolished, it had broad general support in the population. None of the major political parties supported it (partly because it's very hard to find lawyers who support it - they are too much aware of the possibilities of miscarriages of justice) and so it remained off the agenda of Parliament.

The policies of the current Quebec government under Legault regarding dress and religious symbols, and restricting language choice, have broad support in the province as a whole - so much so that the various federal parties are unwilling to oppose them publicly - but would run directly into Charter challenges were it not for the use of the Notwithstanding clause.

Anti-immigrant policies play well with general populations almost everywhere. Opposition tends to come from an odd alliance of progressives and business groups (who need the labour pool).

The recent experience of COVID, and the current rush back by a majority of the population to "normalcy", including not wearing masks in public (which is, when you consider it, a pretty minimal-cost step) isn't just driven by oligarchic leaders (however much they want people back in the office [1]) but comes up from the grassroots. It does lead to a lack of confidence in the judgement if the people asawhole on other issues.

Populations in general are covering their ears regarding appropriate steps to take on climate change. Acceptance of anthropogenic causes has become general, but willingness to take steps with any immediate cost is present in only a tiny segment of the population.

Much general discourse treats democracy as an end in itself. It isn't. To begin with, "representative democracy" is not, at least as practiced, democracy; it's a way of selecting between governments generally made up of representatives of much smaller slices of the population, generally in the top quintile of income.  This is further tempered in many jurisdictions by permanent civil services (ENArques in France, at an extreme) who represent a broad professional consensus of what policies are acceptable.

Secondly, most jurisdictions constrain political rulemaking by constitutional bills of rights.  These provisions regularly get applied. In some cases (the US Second Amendment, for example) there may be serious issues around the nature of the constraints, but most such rights are unambiguously "good" in principle. Consider the regular striking down of things like minimum sentencing provisions under the Charter, or rulings providing immigrants with some rights of review of immigration board decisions.

Democracies have typically worked better than other choices because they impose more constraints on arbitrary exercise of power. These constraints are intermittent - Liz Truss is essentially an unelected dictator until the next general election (unless she falls to internal party revolt) but they do exist.

I, at least, do not as such want a democratic government so much as I want a just, prescient, and wise government. Unfortunately, nobody has ever devised a method to select for justice, prescience, and wisdom in the rulers.

Churchill's aphorism applied to this. The ideal government may very well be a truly enlightened despot, but it's difficult to find good monarchs, let alone genuinely enlightened ones.[2] Democracy has been the leat bad model we have.

Democracies seem to have worked at their best when rising tides are lifting all boats. But if one current factor in the failure of governments generally to confront issues such as climate change is the failure to counter the pressure of money in politics, a more fundamental failure is the visible strong tendency of populations as a whole, when insecure, to prefer easy but obviously wrong nostrums peddled by populists to realistic but more challenging fixes.

So we have figures like Johnson and Truss, in England, or Poilievre and Smith, in Canada, or Trump and De Santis in the US, or Meloni in Italy, who  peddle long-term poison not despite, but because of, the broad wishes of the population.

The problem, as always, is finding a better solution. There is no obvious practical one - i.e. one reachable from here - on the horizon. And any path which could reach a different structural model would likely have to wade through a fair amount of blood to get there.

[1] Going by the messaging of my own employer's higher echelons, I think that they would be happy to see the offices full of employees all wearing masks, especially as the latter reduces the incidence of sick leave. Instead what they are getting sparse attendance, but almost everyone who shows up is not wearing a mask.

[2]Most monarchs historically were not unconstrained despots; they did a careful balancing act between competing groups of nobles. If the nobility as a whole turned against you, you were gone, or at least in deep trouble (John, Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, at least, in England).