American Democrats, left-wing populists, and democratic romantics have kept a secret for so long that it now comes down from generation to generation as the forgotten grain of sand inside a pearl of received wisdom; the pearl being recognition of popular sovereignty, and the secret being that such a sovereign won't prove much wiser or more virtuous than a hereditary monarch. Granted that we the people are entitled to have our way, it doesn't follow that our way will be good for us. We're a sovereign in need of help. To the extent that we accept help in the forms of gatekeeping, power-balancing, and enlightened mediation, the result will be less democracy. To the extent that we insist on democracy, the result will be a heightened risk of disaster. Political power may be a God-given right, but political wisdom is not a God-given power.
Yesterday, Matt Yglesias posted an essay on the apparent correlation between democracy and national prosperity. His thoughts led him to observe that, while democratic states are more often prosperous than autocratic ones, democracy is not essential to prosperity.
Unfortunately, the last 25 years have cast serious doubt on the theory that democracy and growth necessarily go together. China has zipped ahead of countries with considerably more democratic political systems in a way that makes it harder to dismiss Singapore or the Gulf monarchies as weird stuff happening in small countries.
A new account from Christopher Blattman, Scott Gehlbach, and Zeyang Yu suggests that regime type does matter for economic growth, but what matters is not democracy but institutionalization.
The regimes that suffer a growth penalty aren't simply autocracies, they are "personalist" regimes in which "rule is characterized by the consolidation of power and decision-making in a small group of elite decision-makers, often organized around a single person." They suggest that the People's Republic of China is likely becoming more personalistic in recent years in ways that may hurt the country's economic performance.
Yglesias goes on to reflect on the negative implications for the US economy of Donald Trump's personalism, but his observation points to a broader, positive, implication as well. If institutionalism can be the saving grace of an autocracy, surely it's the essence of good government in those regimes we call democracies; and not only from the point of view of economic performance.
After all, when we speak of "democracy" in today's world we're never speaking of direct democracy or even, so far as I know, of representative democracy without any power center other than the assembly. Nor is the assembly itself simply an array of conduits delivering streams of political will from the various constituencies. It's a place of negotiation among (one hopes) James Madison's "chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations." Sometimes it seems that we say "democracy" when we're really thinking of freedom, which does not depend on democracy either in theory or in practice. At any rate, we use the word democracy as a simple name for any of the complex liberal polities we see around us; the kind of polity, such as America's, that sustains democracy in the form of a representative assembly (an institution) checked and balanced by other power centers (institutions), all incorporated in an organism dependent on freedom and the rule of law (a unifying institution).
The thing Donald Trump threatens to destroy — the thing Democrats are called upon to preserve — is not mere democracy. It's that noble beast, The American Way.
