Tyranny by Facebook or by Leviathan?

• Author: Lemieux, Pierre
• Position: How Democracy Ends - Book review

How Democracy Ends

By David Runciman

256 pp.; Basic Books, 2018

Despite being authored by a professor of politics at the grand old Cambridge University, How Democracy Ends sometimes feels light. Its catchy formulas and cheesy pronouncements get annoying. A biological analogy is over-exploited: "Western democracy is going through a mid-life crisis"; "American democracy is in miserable middle age. Donald Trump is his motorbike."

This should not distract us from the thesis of the book and the questions it raises. David Runciman argues that democracy is threatened by new sorts of predicaments. Military coups d'etat are passe. Even Trump (or, I would add, his successor) doesn't represent the main danger; the new threats are subtler. Even people who subvert democracy, like populists do, believe or pretend that they are defending it. An environmental or nuclear catastrophe could end democracy, but a technological takeover is more likely.

Democratic failure / Runciman goes from a "minimal definition" of democracy as that which chooses its political leaders via regular elections, "which remain the bedrock of democratic politics," to a more general and fuzzy one that includes such features as "democratic legislatures, independent law courts and a free press." What about other individual liberties? Perhaps democracy also includes those, or perhaps not. The word "liberty" is absent from the book, although the less committal "freedom" occurs once every 15 pages or so.

Runciman believes that democracy is undermined by the decline of representative democracy and the rise of populism, which revolves around the idea that "democracy has been stolen from the people by the elites." If democracy worked well, he believes, there would be no populist backlash. Working well implies providing a "collective experience." This so-called collective experience is more difficult to pull off in the absence of war--or, at least, of a traditional war, not waged by drones--and when great social reforms have already been accomplished, decades ago. In the Progressive Era, democracy was able to tame populism because of social reforms and World War I. In Runciman's view, war also has the benefit of reducing wealth inequality (because wealth is destroyed) and thus keeping populism at bay.

Runciman argues that referenda provide only the appearance of democracy, while elected representatives can manage the inconsistent, unrealistic, or inefficient demands of the electorate. Pure democracy is "reckless" and "terrifying." But he also admits that representative democracy implies more power for the politicians and the experts.

At any rate, he writes: "The threat to democracy is not manipulation. It is mindlessness." Both pure democracy and technology are fueling mindlessness.

One reason why modern democracy tends to destroy itself, argues Runciman, is a tension between individual dignity and "collective benefits." Individual dignity is better satisfied by pure or direct democracy, but such democracy's inconsistent or irrational policies compromise the "collective benefits" of efficiency and economic growth. The resulting mess is easily...