Objections to Democracy

Anti-democratic arguments abound, and they differ on several dimensions, including which particular features of democracy the objection centers on, such as multiparty elections, the protection of civil liberties, or check on the executive. Some arguments are more general in character, whereas others center mainly on the fit of democracy in particular historical or cultural contexts, such as post-colonial or Catholic countries. Moreover, different arguments have roots in, or are at least associated with, different ideological positions – from Anarchism and Marxism to Conservatism and Fascism – and they also vary notably in the historical and intellectual contexts where they have been prominent – from the great philosophers in Ancient Greece to present-day debates about crisis management, including the climate crisis. Several prominent arguments question the intrinsic value of democracy, that is, whether the democratic ideal has value in itself. Other arguments mainly question the extrinsic value of democracy, that is, whether democracy is instrumental in achieving (other) desirably outcomes, such as economic development, social stability, or climate change mitigation. All the arguments against democracy have been met with counter-arguments and their form and prevalence have changed across time and space. Nonetheless, the basic lines of reasoning concerning many if not most of them have not changed much since Plato’s fierce criticism. In this paper, we develop a classification scheme that comprises this wide variety of arguments objecting to democracy, with the main dividing line running between arguments that refer to democracy as an ideal versus those that object to democracy as an instrument, typically through its tendency to create trade-offs and inhibit the realization of other normatively desirable outcomes. We further subdivide the arguments into seven more specific categories, whereof three pertain to democracy as an ideal (insufficient, injust, impossible) and four to democracy as an instrument (inflammatory, imbalanced, incompetent, impotent).