By Ethan Hollander, Wabash College
The dangers of too much democracy are nothing new; they were there right at the beginning. Democracy always had the potential for mob rule. Reflecting on these dangers led Winston Churchill to call democracy “the worst form of government … except for all the others”.
First Critics of Democracy
The ancient Athenians, who basically invented democracy, were also the first critics of democracy. Socrates, as reported by Plato, feared mob rule, and argued that the most just republic would be one that was ruled by an elite, educated caste of philosopher kings. (As it turns out, Socrates was right to be fearful of democracy. He was later convicted and sentenced to death by a majority of his fellow citizens!)
In Aristotle’s book, Politics, he argues that aristocracy is the best form of government because it avoids the dangerous extremes of one-man rule (monarchy) and mob rule, which he feared is what democracy would turn into.
Fear of Mob Rule
America’s Founding Fathers also feared that majority rule might turn into mob rule. That’s why they invented all kinds of institutions to try to keep the majority in check. The US Senate is an example of this. It kept the majority in check by overrepresenting small states. It also wasn’t directly elected until 1913, with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment. Until then, US senators were elected by state legislatures.
The Founding Fathers had a lot of reasons for wanting the government to have non-majoritarian institutions, and fear of mob rule was certainly one of them.
French Revolution and the Reign of Terror
And they were right to be concerned. At the very same time that they were embarking on the experiment called American democracy, French revolutionaries were embarking on an even more radical experiment. The French revolutionary government had far fewer checks on majority power, and arguably it did result in mob rule.
Among the most infamous chapters of the French Revolution was the Reign of Terror, when—in the name of defending the revolution—the parliament appointed a Committee of Public Safety. That committee went on to send tens of thousands of people to the guillotine, sometimes on the mere suspicion that they didn’t love democracy enough. Nothing says democracy more than killing people because they’re not democratic enough!
This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the US Government. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Lack of Checks and Balances
But the Reign of Terror wasn’t so much a deficiency of democracy as an excess of democracy. At the time, the French National Assembly was majority rule in its purest form. There weren’t checks and balances or limits on the Assembly’s power. There was no second legislative body, like the US Senate.
The Assembly’s decisions were a direct reflection of the will of the people. So, when the people, caught up in revolutionary fervor, went after the so-called enemies of democracy, there really wasn’t anything to stop them. A lot of democracy’s critics and defenders have had to grapple with that legacy for years to come. And we still grapple with it today.
Democracy Contradicts Itself
The fear that the masses—or the mob, or just the majority—might act in destructive ways is at the root of one of the most fundamental critiques of democracy. And it’s a critique that strikes at the heart of democracy itself, because it calls into question what democracy is.
Citizens of a functioning democracy need some rights. You can’t have free and fair elections if some citizens are systematically denied the ability to organize, or assemble, or share and disseminate ideas. But public order requires that you put some limits on these things—and there aren’t a lot of ways to empower the majority to decide what those limits should be without putting minority rights at risk.
In a democracy, some group of people—presumably, the majority—is going to have to decide what limits there should be on the rights that people have. But what counts as free speech, and what counts as a dangerous threat to public order—well, that’s always going to be a matter of interpretation. And because it is a democracy, presumably the majority’s interpretation is what matters the most.
Dangers of Empowering the Majority
In a democracy, the majority has the potential to be lawyer, judge, jury, policeman, prosecutor, and prison warden all rolled into one. That’s a lot of power to put in anybody’s hands, even (and maybe especially) the majority’s.
Democracy is an ingenious way to protect people from government, because it puts people in charge of government rather than the other way around. But democracy doesn’t so much eliminate the oppressive potential of government as it replaces it with a new danger: the danger of a tyrannical majority.
Self Destructive Nature of Democracy
When government becomes the agent of a pitchforked mob, or torch-wielding Brownshirts, democracy becomes its own worst enemy.
Over the centuries, theorists, legal scholars, constitutional engineers, and philosophers have devised countless ways to try to save democracy from itself. But no solution is perfect. And that’s why people from Socrates to Churchill have been so mindful of democracy and its discontents.
Common Questions about the Fear of Mob Rule in a Democracy
The ancient Athenians, who basically invented democracy, were also the first critics of democracy. Socrates, as reported by Plato, feared mob rule, and argued that the most just republic would be one that was ruled by an elite, educated caste of philosopher kings.
Democracy doesn’t so much eliminate the oppressive potential of government as it replaces it with a new danger: the danger of a tyrannical majority. When government becomes the agent of a pitchforked mob, or torch-wielding Brownshirts, democracy becomes its own worst enemy.
The fear that the masses—or the mob, or just the majority—might act in destructive ways is at the root of one of the most fundamental critiques of democracy. And it’s a critique that strikes at the heart of democracy itself, because it calls into question what democracy is.
