ELITIST DEMOCRACY

Societies require governments for a host of reasons, many involving the need to overcome collective-action problems that would exist in a world of purely private action. Governments and legal regimes can increase the flexibility, the usefulness, and the effectiveness of a normative order that is used to resolve disputes, can help people effectively and maybe fairly coordinate private behavior, and can encourage productive or “prosocial” behavior. The question is what type of government would best perform these functions. At least one analysis suggests the answer is democracy, but democracy of a distinctly limited sort.

Good governments must routinely respond to problems that are technically complex. Governmental interventions are often most effective if implemented before people even experience a problem. Effective responses frequently rely on intricate economic and scientific analyses. Most people have neither the interest nor the ability to understand, much less to devise solutions for, the problems that government should address. Experts and specialists at understanding the economic, human, and natural environments must do the bulk of the government's decision-making work. As Walter Lippman argued seventy-five years ago: “There is no prospect … that the whole invisible environment will be so clear to all men that they will spontaneously arrive at sound public opinions on the whole business of government. And even if there were a prospect, it is extremely doubtful whether many of us would wish to be bothered, or would take the time.”

More recently, Vince Blasi questioned whether citizen involvement describes either the “reality” or the “shared ideal of American politics.”