The election, nothing more, nothing less

What can we expect from elections? A. Przeworski urges us to be minimal: elections provide only imperfect control over the actions of governments and are not enough to counteract the political effects of inequalities, but they are the best way to resolve conflicts without taking up arms.

Since the French and American revolutions of XVIIIe century, the election has established itself as the royal road to thinking about democracy, but the reflection on the vices and virtues of elective democracy is far from being closed. While some philosophers have been interested in the election as an ideal type, Adam Przeworski invites us instead to a realistic, contextualized and historically informed reflection on the benefits and limits of elections as we have known them until now. In his new book What’s the point of voting?the influential political scientist draws a nuanced and accessible assessment of the value of elections. Originally published in the language of Shakespeare by Polity Pressthe text receives here an excellent French translation by Salim Hirèche, in the no less excellent publishing house markus haller, dedicated to the translation of essays in human and social sciences.

This synthesis, both general and sensitive to national and historical particularities, moves back and forth between the first moments of modern electoral democracy—Przeworski takes as his symbolic starting point the election of the first American Congress in 1788—and the more recent tribulations of elected leaders like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. Similarly, Przeworski does not hesitate to deviate at times from contemporary research to also draw on the classics, from Montesquieu to the American Founding Fathers, including Edmund Burke, Karl Marx and others.

The book’s guiding principle is that elections should not be expected to achieve too much; they cannot achieve the ideals of political equality or popular self-government, because they are only a means of choosing leaders. They are highly imperfect, but “no other mechanism for selecting rulers can do better” (p. 18).

A revolutionary idea

Przeworski begins by drawing a realistic portrait of elections and their history. The idea that political leaders should be representatives chosen by the people through the ballot box appeared, according to the author, at the end of the XVIIIe century, on the occasion of the French and American revolutions. The first standard-bearers of this democratic vision, such as the Abbé de Sieyès in France and James Wilson in the United States, overturned the dominant political ideology, according to which the right of sovereigns to govern derived from divine will, the natural order of things or their identity of interests with the population (the reader will regret here the absence of discussion of the first thinkers of popular sovereignty, such as John Locke). Election in its embryonic form – initially excluding women, the poor and “savages” – spread with “extraordinary speed” (p. 37) during the XIXe century, in several European countries, but also in Latin America (first in Paraguay in 1814) and in Liberia in 1847. It was established everywhere in a “sudden” way (p. 40) according to Przeworski. The myth of the government of the people by themselves was born.

The immeasurable gap between rulers and ruled

Indeed, for the author, this is largely a myth, because the election perpetuates a division of political labor where those who govern have the effective power to impose the rules that the governed are forced to respect. The electoral control that a population exercises over its rulers and their mandate is a flawed mechanism. Prospective control—the choice of a government for its platform and electoral promises—is limited because of unforeseen circumstances during the mandate and the possibility for a government to betray the majority that elected it, even if it means seducing another majority in the next election. In retrospect, the electorate can hardly punish a government (by voting against its party) for having deviated from its interests, in particular because of the imperfect information that voters have about the government’s real actions and the real consequences of these actions. Moreover, the actions taken by a government are multiple – budgetary measures, diplomatic actions, various bills, etc. Thus, a government can deviate from the interests of the governed on issues that will not be decisive in the evaluation of its record.

This very imperfect control of the rulers therefore leaves them with a great deal of room for maneuver, in particular to manipulate elections and their modalities in order to maximize their chances of remaining in power from one electoral cycle to the next. The opportunities for manipulation and electoral repression are legion: county boundaries, choice of election day and location of polling stations, manipulation of the media, rules for financing parties and electoral campaigns, instrumentalization of public administrations, repression of the opposition, fraud, and so on. For Przeworski, “(o)ne cannot reasonably expect parties to refrain from doing everything possible to increase their chances of winning elections.” (p. 135) Although more mature democracies have equipped themselves with institutional bulwarks such as a body independent of the executive to orchestrate elections, opportunistic strategies remain within reach. For example, while David Cameron was subtly questioning the legitimacy of the student opposition in England, Nicolas Sarkozy was obtaining police reports to keep an eye on the private lives of his opponents in France.

Although the extension of suffrage and the gradual legitimization of the opposition are real conquests, the fact remains that dubious electoral maneuvers allow the elite to maintain power normally. Indeed, it is the members of the wealthy and educated classes who become the representatives of the people. The will of the American Founding Fathers was to favor the election of the “best”, and not of the individuals most representative of the population or of citizens from all backgrounds. This is why the profoundly “aristocratic” nature of the election has been emphasized. Przeworski recalls that in France, as in the United States and England, the first voters were rich men. This aristocratic nature was also felt in the application of measures putting pressure on the vote of disadvantaged people, such as public voting, where employees could be subjected to undue pressure by voting under the gaze of their boss. Even today, we find traces of this aristocratic nature, for example in the eligibility criteria for running for public office, as in France where candidates for the presidential election must first obtain the support of 500 elected officials. In the United States, it is imperative to raise private funds to run a campaign, and to have a voter registration card to vote, conditions that harm the poorest. Przeworski finally reminds us that, generally speaking, it is the most privileged citizens (academics, religious leaders, career politicians, etc.) who enjoy a greater presence in the public debate.

Elections should not be expected to achieve the impossible and overturn the unequal structures of private property. For Przeworski, the main factor explaining the inability of elections to combat economic inequality is the conversion of money into political power, thus creating a “vicious circle” (p. 203) in which economic inequality and political inequality reinforce each other. Despite the electoral conquests of the population, the elites manage to design a multitude of barriers to protect their economic interests.

The virtues of election

In short, elections fall far short of the ideals of self-government and political equality. But compared to alternative methods of appointing rulers, such as force or hereditary transmission, elections do have some virtues. If, as Przeworski does, we adopt a minimalist definition of political rationality, namely the fact of properly reflecting the plurality of citizen voices, then elections are indeed the “least bad” of collective decision-making methods. The control exercised by elected officials over rulers and their mandates is certainly imperfect, but not completely ineffective. And in electoral democracies we find economic stability that offers, even in the presence of strong inequalities, more interesting prospects for material well-being than in autocratic regimes.

The most important virtue of elections for Przeworski is the peaceful resolution of social conflicts that inevitably run through any pluralistic society. Przeworski thus remains faithful to his “minimalist” conception of democracy: elections are often manipulated along partisan lines, they more often lead to the maintenance of the party in power and the status quo regarding the unequal distribution of property, but at least they allow us to avoid resolving our disagreements by force of arms. By revealing the antagonistic forces at play, they remind us that conflict is never far away, and at the same time offer a substitute for repression and violent insurrection. This virtue is far from negligible, given the upheavals of history:

Until very recently, defeats of incumbent leaders were rare, and non-violent changes of government were even rarer: on average, national elections resulted in defeat of the incumbent government only about one in five times, and even less frequently in a peaceful transfer of power. (pp. 22-23)

This electoral pacifism materializes as per capita incomes rise and elections become a familiar and predictable collective habit.

And the fate?

The main criticism that can be made of this essay rich in erudition is the choice of the counterfactual: Przeworski contrasts election with the transfer of power by force or by hereditary means. This choice obscures the long history – and contemporaneity – of drawing lots as a method of designating rulers. The reflection would benefit from comparing (or combining) electoral democracy with lottocratic democracy, which offers certain advantages from the point of view of the normative criteria retained by Przeworski. For example, while Przeworski sees bicameralism as an additional brake on the expression of the majority principle, one could imagine a deliberative upper chamber made up of citizens drawn by lot, a chamber that would perhaps better satisfy the requirements of rationality of collective decisions and independence from private interests.

The essay may have the flaws of its strengths: its accessibility makes it a valuable read for the general reader, but it sometimes leaves the more sophisticated reader wanting more, as when a chapter on the important link between elections and economic performance ends after only nine pages. But overall, this overview of elections, drawn up by a leading scholar, is an essential contribution for anyone interested in the past of democracy, its virtues, its limits, and its uncertain future.