What is 'Democratic Minimalism'?

When it comes to majorities doing whatever they want, the question is where to draw the line.

One of the major objections to my book The Problem of Democracy and specifically my theory of “democratic minimalism” is that the latter can all too easily devolve into tyranny of the majority. In other words: you can try to disentangle small-d democracy and small-l liberalism but all you’ll end up getting is a mess. Up to a point, this is true, because democracy is supposed to be messy.

But first, what is “democratic minimalism”? It’s about reconceptualizing democracy as a system and means of governing and rotating power with no prejudice to substantive ideological outcomes. In other words, if democracy produces liberal outcomes, great. If it produces illiberal outcomes, it might not be what we as liberals might prefer or hope for, but our hopes and preferences are not binding on the electorate. Our liberal preferences are certainly not binding—or really relevant—in other people’s countries, people who presumably have different values and political and ideological commitments than we do.

Take Italy, Israel, or Egypt, three countries that at various points in the past decade or so have produced right-wing and even far-right electoral outcomes. These elections were free (no evidence of systematic fraud), reasonably fair (no electoral process is ever completely fair, anywhere in the world), and competitive (opposition parties have a reasonable shot at winning).

To return to the original question, is there a risk of of “democratic minimalism” devolving into tyranny of the majority? Yes, but only insofar as any and every democracy entails an electoral majority imposing its preferences of an electoral minority. The question, really, is what sort of majority imposition we’re willing to tolerate. If voters can’t agree on the “limit,” then the only available option is to resolve that disagreement through some sort of democratic give-and-take.