A danger to democracy?

In modern democracies unelected bodies now take many of the detailed policy decisions that affect people's lives, untangle key conflicts of interest for society, resolve disputes over the allocation of resources and even make ethical judgements in some of the most sensitive areas. By contrast, our elected politicians often seem ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of public policy, lightweight in the knowledge they bring to bear, masters not of substance but of spin and presentation and skilled above all in avoiding being blamed for public mishaps.

The rise of the unelected is spread across the democratic world. Unelected bodies take different legal forms and different names are used to label them in different democratic settings. The variety of forms and terminology obscures the underlying growth in their importance. The key question is whether the increasing dependence of modern democratic societies on unelected bodies presents a new danger to democracy.

The alarm signals triggered by the rise of the unelected are not warnings about any sudden reversion away from democracy but about the risks of attrition. There appear, at particular points of time, to be good reasons why a problem area in public policy should be entrusted to an unelected body; but when this is repeated again and again over many of the practical issues that people face in their lives, the combined effect is a cumulative transfer of public power from elected politicians to unelected officials.