The Cost of Realism: Contemporary Restatements of Democracy
| Date | 01 March 1964 |
| Published date | 01 March 1964 |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591296401700104 |
| Author | Lane Davis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
37
THE
COST
OF
REALISM:
CONTEMPORARY
RESTATEMENTS
OF
DEMOCRACY
LANE
DAVIS
University
of Iowa
URING
the
last
thirty
years,
there
have
been
a
number
of
efforts
to
restate
democratic
political
theory
in
terms
which
would
be
more
satisfactory
to
the
needs
of
the
present
day.
This
reconsideration
of
the
theory
of
democracy
extends
to
writers
of
many
diverse
points
of
view
responding,
as
one
might
expect,
to
the
challenges
raised
by
alternatives
to
political
democracy
and
to
problems
internal
to
democratic
societies.
The
weaknesses
which
these
restatements
seek
to
remedy
are
various
and
re-
sistant
to
any
neat
summary.
They
range
from
the
philosophical
foundations
of
democratic
values
through
conventional
notions
about
conditions
conducive
to
the
success
of
a
democratic
polity
or
particular
democratic
institutions.
From
this
broad
range
of
possibilities,
this
essay
will
consider
those
recent
statements
which
exhibit
a
particular
concern
for
the
descriptive
accuracy
of
democratic
political
theory.’-
These
contemporary
writers
seek
to
delineate the
descriptive
weaknesses
of
existing
democratic
political
theory
and
to
present
an
amended
theory
of
political
democracy
more
in
line
with
contemporary
knowledge
of
empirical
political
reality.
It
is
the
argument
of
this
essay
that
the
effort
to
make
democratic
theory
more
realis-
tic
has
brought
many
other
changes
with
it;
that
the
effect
of
these
restatements
goes
considerably
further
than
just
improved
descriptive
realism.
The
values
and
expecta-
tions
which
justified
political
democracy
have
been
changed.
The
rationale
for
popu-
lar
political
activity
which
is
at
the
very
center
of
much
democratic
theory
has
been
rejected.
In
short,
the
cost
of
realism
has
been
the
practical
abandonment
of
what
has
been
the
distinctive
moral
function
of
democratic
politics
and
government.
I
The
object
of
criticism
and
restatement
by
this
group
of
contemporary
demo-
crats
is
the
so-called
&dquo;classical&dquo;
theory
of
political
democracy
which
prescribes
popu-
lar
rule
after
the
model
of
the
New
England
town
meeting
or
the
seventeenth-century
nonconformist
church
congregation.
This
theory
posits
the
existence
of
rational
and
1
The
classic
expression
of
this
point
of
view
is
found
in
Joseph
Schumpeter,
Capitalism,
Social-
ism
and
Democracy
(2nd
ed.;
New
York
and
London:
Harper,
1942),
Part
IV:
it
is
still
the
clearest
and
best.
For
recent
and
explicitly
theoretical
statements
see,
among
others,
Bernard
Berelson
et
al.,
Voting
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press,
1954),
chap.
14;
Samuel
H.
Beer,
"New
Structures
of
Democracy:
Britain
and
America,"
and
Louis
Hartz,
"Democracy:
Image
and
Reality,"
in
W.
N.
Chambers
and
R.
H.
Salisbury
(eds.),
Democracy
in
Mid-20th
Century
(St.
Louis:
Washington
University
Press,
1960) ;
Walter
Lippmann,
The
Public
Philosophy
(New
York:
New
American
Library,
1956);
S.
M.
Lipset,
Political
Man
(Garden
City:
Doubleday,
1960);
Henry
Mayo,
An
Introduction
to
Democratic
Theory
(New
York :
Oxford
University
Press,
1960).
Mayo
is
particularly
useful
as
a
relatively
complete
statement
of
this
position.
This
point
of
view
informs
many
recent
studies
of
American
politics.
See
James
Q.
Wilson,
The
Amateur
Democrat
(Chi-
cago:
University
of
Chicago
Press,
1962),
for
a
persuasive
defense
of
this
position
and
an
excellent
brief
account
(pp.
341ff.)
of
how
it
finds
expression
in
the
literature
of
American
political
parties.
In
the
discussion
which
follows,
I
will
use
the
relatively
neutral
label
of
contemporary
to
refer
to
this
particular
conception
of
democracy
and
those
who
espouse
it.
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