Excellent articles, I was like Mustaga Akyol not long ago, but today I am convinced that a pure and hard liberalism is an acid for the traditional morality resulting from Islam (and monotheistic religions). Your Debate reminds me of the "liberalism vs communatarianism" debate and in my opinion here that Muslim political thinkers should work. The religion and Islam in particular is communatarianism, but that does not imply authoritarianism, a happy medium between liberalism and communatarianism can be found. With in particular, a multi-denominational state where liberal secular morality would not have to be imposed on religious. This multi-confessionalism would have its limit, with a freedom to change denominational community, for example going from an Islamic community to a liberal community. This point of view requires a State with a local democracy where each city and region could leave the choice to its population to apply liberal or religious standards. What do you think ?
Firstly thank you for having this debate / discussion so openly (both not in private, and being open changing your mind/s).
I agree that in a democracy we need to be open to ideas that we don’t like, and that one’s ideas (or the representative of those ideas) losing as much as winning. This is essential for democracy to function.
However, my query is how do you define democracy? I note in your previous post you define it as “a set of procedural mechanisms for managing political competition, selecting leaders, and alternating power between parties and individuals.”
Keep in mind then, that there are many different types of procedural mechanisms, currently in play in what we would call ‘democracies’ around the world, and that choice of mechanism can lead to very different outcomes (take a simple example of ranked-choice voting versus first-past-the-post voting). Some of these are better than others and I suspect you might agree we should be improving them? If so, to what end? (I don’t think the end can be divorced from the means).
Equally electoral representation has only really been synonymous with democracy since Tocqueville in the 1830s. And even then it was a very different version than what we would call democracy today. Which goes to suggest that democracy is no better an anchor for good government than liberalism? And perhaps worse?
Or to put the question more openly, what is the essence of democracy that you hold as the core here?
Yes, exactly. In my book, I also define it as "a system and means of governing and rotating power with no prejudice to substantive ideological outcomes." Since I'm outcome-agnostic, the fact that ranked-choice voting might produce a different result than first-pass-the-post doesn't, for me, have any bearing on the legitimacy or democratic nature of the mechanism. In other words, as long as the mechanism itself is a product of a democratic process, that's fine with me. That said, I do have my own policy preferences. I think, for example, that FPTP is generally a pretty bad system for polarized societies since it allows the winner to take all. So, I and other citizens who agree can and should organize and gather support in the hope of promoting other systems, such as ranked-choice, but if we fail, we fail.
I agree that our understanding of "democracy" has changed, and that what the founders had in mind is quite different than what we moderns associate with the word. But i'm not sure I follow why that would mean that "democracy is no better an anchor for good government" than liberalism.
I go into much more detail in my book, but if I had to sum up the essence of democracy in a sentence (which is probably not advisable), I'd say it's the "right to make the wrong choice" through the ballot box. Liberalism is a value system that offers a distinctive conception of the Good, and therefore it is much more contingent. It also implies a restricted role for religion which is a nonstarter for religiously conservative societies. My goal is to make the idea of democracy accessible without asking people to buy into a set of value propositions that may conflict with the religious convictions.
Thanks for your reply. To go to your middle point, the reason why I wonder whether democracy is no better an anchor for good government than liberalism is because it isn’t clear to me yet (in this discussion) what exactly democracy is at essence (which was my point about how the word has changed over time, and how processes of democracy vary so substantially).
I don’t think ‘a system of governing and rotating power’ quite gets there (for starters, it implies ‘sides’ between which the power must be rotated). The closest I have got is something like ‘government that is accountable to the collective will’. But I acknowledge there are lots of problems with this definition too! (for example 'collective will' is hard to define... though I do think part of the inherent value of democracy is in accountability, which must necessarily change the policy choices a government makes).
And I think the ‘mechanism’ matters, and I suspect I place more emphasis on this than you do (though haven’t read all your work yet!). To your point “as long as the mechanism itself is a product of a democratic process, that's fine”, I think here is an essential (and probably circular) problem here: different mechanisms will express the ‘collective will’ differently. Indeed, even individuals will often reach different conclusions on the same topic if they are placed in a different decision-making environment (take for example, the way a person might react to a headline on social media, versus that same person reading and understanding the essence of the problem that headline captures through investigation, dialogue and discussion).
So what are the ‘democratic process’ that the (presumably electoral) mechanism is decided by? I think how that is chosen, and yes what outcome it produces, matters. By ‘outcome’ here I don’t mean the ‘substantive ideological outcomes’ that you exclude from your definition (I think that is a separate argument) but the extent to which the process is a good reflection of collective will (or ‘democratic’, hence the circular problem).
To simplify, a democracy could choose to change the mechanism by which government is formed and policy enacted. Let’s say it develops three models and puts these to a ‘vote’. That vote could happen in a number of different ways. One option is to put the models to a vote in which every person with red hair has 10 votes, and every other person 1. I think we would both say this is ‘undemocratic’. A second option would be to put all three models up and have the highest voted outcome chosen. A third option would be to put all three models up and allow a single transferrable vote, which may produce a different preferred model to the second. Or finally, the three models might be directed to a deliberative process and the outcomes of this deliberative process shared with the wider population before they vote. Which could also produce a different result to the second and third. Where then is the line between a mechanism that is democractic and a process that isn't? And if two or more are decided to both be 'democratic' is there a case for a mechanism to be 'more democratic' (a better expression of collective will) than another?
The last of these examples also touches on other elements that I think are essential to ‘democracy’ and which make a simple, process definition of democracy insufficient, such as the information environment and the way individuals are allowed to make decisions. The is the ‘collective will’ (or at least individuals’ positions) will be different depending on the information they can access (or are allowed to access) and, as I said before, the circumstances in which they are considering and making up their minds.
So I very much agree with you that in a democracy we should be open to our idea losing and ‘the right to make the wrong choice’. And the little I have dug into your posts (and one podcast) to date has certainly opened my view up to the tension between some versions of liberal democracy and alternative (e.g. religious) democracies. However I wonder in rejecting liberalism as the core good, whether enough attention has been paid to what the core good of democracy is? And how this is reached and decided upon? (Perhaps I need to read your book!)
Excellent articles, I was like Mustaga Akyol not long ago, but today I am convinced that a pure and hard liberalism is an acid for the traditional morality resulting from Islam (and monotheistic religions). Your Debate reminds me of the "liberalism vs communatarianism" debate and in my opinion here that Muslim political thinkers should work. The religion and Islam in particular is communatarianism, but that does not imply authoritarianism, a happy medium between liberalism and communatarianism can be found. With in particular, a multi-denominational state where liberal secular morality would not have to be imposed on religious. This multi-confessionalism would have its limit, with a freedom to change denominational community, for example going from an Islamic community to a liberal community. This point of view requires a State with a local democracy where each city and region could leave the choice to its population to apply liberal or religious standards. What do you think ?
Firstly thank you for having this debate / discussion so openly (both not in private, and being open changing your mind/s).
I agree that in a democracy we need to be open to ideas that we don’t like, and that one’s ideas (or the representative of those ideas) losing as much as winning. This is essential for democracy to function.
However, my query is how do you define democracy? I note in your previous post you define it as “a set of procedural mechanisms for managing political competition, selecting leaders, and alternating power between parties and individuals.”
Keep in mind then, that there are many different types of procedural mechanisms, currently in play in what we would call ‘democracies’ around the world, and that choice of mechanism can lead to very different outcomes (take a simple example of ranked-choice voting versus first-past-the-post voting). Some of these are better than others and I suspect you might agree we should be improving them? If so, to what end? (I don’t think the end can be divorced from the means).
Equally electoral representation has only really been synonymous with democracy since Tocqueville in the 1830s. And even then it was a very different version than what we would call democracy today. Which goes to suggest that democracy is no better an anchor for good government than liberalism? And perhaps worse?
Or to put the question more openly, what is the essence of democracy that you hold as the core here?
Yes, exactly. In my book, I also define it as "a system and means of governing and rotating power with no prejudice to substantive ideological outcomes." Since I'm outcome-agnostic, the fact that ranked-choice voting might produce a different result than first-pass-the-post doesn't, for me, have any bearing on the legitimacy or democratic nature of the mechanism. In other words, as long as the mechanism itself is a product of a democratic process, that's fine with me. That said, I do have my own policy preferences. I think, for example, that FPTP is generally a pretty bad system for polarized societies since it allows the winner to take all. So, I and other citizens who agree can and should organize and gather support in the hope of promoting other systems, such as ranked-choice, but if we fail, we fail.
I agree that our understanding of "democracy" has changed, and that what the founders had in mind is quite different than what we moderns associate with the word. But i'm not sure I follow why that would mean that "democracy is no better an anchor for good government" than liberalism.
I go into much more detail in my book, but if I had to sum up the essence of democracy in a sentence (which is probably not advisable), I'd say it's the "right to make the wrong choice" through the ballot box. Liberalism is a value system that offers a distinctive conception of the Good, and therefore it is much more contingent. It also implies a restricted role for religion which is a nonstarter for religiously conservative societies. My goal is to make the idea of democracy accessible without asking people to buy into a set of value propositions that may conflict with the religious convictions.
Thanks for your reply. To go to your middle point, the reason why I wonder whether democracy is no better an anchor for good government than liberalism is because it isn’t clear to me yet (in this discussion) what exactly democracy is at essence (which was my point about how the word has changed over time, and how processes of democracy vary so substantially).
I don’t think ‘a system of governing and rotating power’ quite gets there (for starters, it implies ‘sides’ between which the power must be rotated). The closest I have got is something like ‘government that is accountable to the collective will’. But I acknowledge there are lots of problems with this definition too! (for example 'collective will' is hard to define... though I do think part of the inherent value of democracy is in accountability, which must necessarily change the policy choices a government makes).
And I think the ‘mechanism’ matters, and I suspect I place more emphasis on this than you do (though haven’t read all your work yet!). To your point “as long as the mechanism itself is a product of a democratic process, that's fine”, I think here is an essential (and probably circular) problem here: different mechanisms will express the ‘collective will’ differently. Indeed, even individuals will often reach different conclusions on the same topic if they are placed in a different decision-making environment (take for example, the way a person might react to a headline on social media, versus that same person reading and understanding the essence of the problem that headline captures through investigation, dialogue and discussion).
So what are the ‘democratic process’ that the (presumably electoral) mechanism is decided by? I think how that is chosen, and yes what outcome it produces, matters. By ‘outcome’ here I don’t mean the ‘substantive ideological outcomes’ that you exclude from your definition (I think that is a separate argument) but the extent to which the process is a good reflection of collective will (or ‘democratic’, hence the circular problem).
To simplify, a democracy could choose to change the mechanism by which government is formed and policy enacted. Let’s say it develops three models and puts these to a ‘vote’. That vote could happen in a number of different ways. One option is to put the models to a vote in which every person with red hair has 10 votes, and every other person 1. I think we would both say this is ‘undemocratic’. A second option would be to put all three models up and have the highest voted outcome chosen. A third option would be to put all three models up and allow a single transferrable vote, which may produce a different preferred model to the second. Or finally, the three models might be directed to a deliberative process and the outcomes of this deliberative process shared with the wider population before they vote. Which could also produce a different result to the second and third. Where then is the line between a mechanism that is democractic and a process that isn't? And if two or more are decided to both be 'democratic' is there a case for a mechanism to be 'more democratic' (a better expression of collective will) than another?
The last of these examples also touches on other elements that I think are essential to ‘democracy’ and which make a simple, process definition of democracy insufficient, such as the information environment and the way individuals are allowed to make decisions. The is the ‘collective will’ (or at least individuals’ positions) will be different depending on the information they can access (or are allowed to access) and, as I said before, the circumstances in which they are considering and making up their minds.
So I very much agree with you that in a democracy we should be open to our idea losing and ‘the right to make the wrong choice’. And the little I have dug into your posts (and one podcast) to date has certainly opened my view up to the tension between some versions of liberal democracy and alternative (e.g. religious) democracies. However I wonder in rejecting liberalism as the core good, whether enough attention has been paid to what the core good of democracy is? And how this is reached and decided upon? (Perhaps I need to read your book!)