Democracy is widely accepted today, perhaps as never before, as the most suitable form of government. But what is democracy, and does it always produce good government? There is a tradition in popular thinking and in political science that associates democracy with the existence of competitive elections. This follows the tradition of Schumpeter (1950) and Downs (1957) in public choice. Competitive elections are undoubtedly a necessary condition for democracy. But they are not sufficient for true democracy or for democracy to function reasonably well. For example, the fathers of the American Constitution expressed their fear of factions and of mob sentiments. One problem with competitive elections is that they provide no protection for minorities. A second is that they may not express the long-term interests of the electorate itself, or their attitudes in sober second thought. Yet a third is the well-known Arrow problem of cyclical majorities – perhaps one of the central discoveries of modern public choice. A fourth is the recurring tension between the two principles of government by majority on the one hand and the rule of law on the other.

Contemplating the failures of democracy in theory, one early tradition in public choice theorizing was based on the idea that, whatever its failings in theory, democracy works well in practice. This puzzle arose early in public choice theory, and the question, “Why so much stability?” that is, specifically, “Why do democracies appear so much more stable in practice than in theory?

INTRODUCTION: STABILITY AND CHANGE OF ELECTORAL SYSTEMS

Civic and economic freedoms depend on the competitiveness of a political system, a competitiveness fostered by the constitutional division of powers, the rule of law, and the contestability of the elective positions. Regarding the last issue, this chapter deals with the citizens or representative relationship and moves from the factual remark that the rules governing the appointment of the members of legislative assemblies are not sanctioned in any contemporary constitution. Leaving the framing of people's consent to statutory laws amounts to entrusting the regulation of political competition to the very ones who should be regulated. Notwithstanding the whims of partisan politics, however, those rules prove to be remarkably stable. Hence a first question, why so much stability? If we agree with Roger Myerson (1999) that political leaders meeting and negotiating in the halls of government cannot be exempt from Adam Smith's remark on the risk of conspiracies against the public, we face a subtler question: Is any trick behind that stability, often accompanied by apparently minor innovations consented to by incumbent representatives?

As often occurs, it is the subtler question to have attracted scholars' attention when discussing political opportunism. The first question, however, remains unasked and political economists resort to assuming, explicitly or implicitly, the constitutional status of electoral rules (see, e.g., Buchanan and Tullock, 1962; Mueller, 1996). A weak assumption indeed in a relationship where it is the agent more than the principal who has the whip-hand.

Political extremism is a complex and difficult subject. Indeed, the very concept “extremist” sometimes makes people uncomfortable. Is not extremism always relative to some set of values, whose rightness is open to debate? As citizens of democratic countries, we often find extremism inside our polities distressing. On the other hand, when extremism occurs in non-democratic settings it often appears to many of us as liberating. Thus, we are often forced to distinguish between the “decent” extremism of those “fighting for political liberation” and the “indecent political brutality” of domestic extremists. And even when we are sympathetic to the aims of the latter, we are often led to wonder why human rationality is unable to eliminate the social waste implicit in the violence and disruption often associated with extremist activities.

As is widely acknowledged, we owe our political liberties today to some extremists of the past and too much conformity is a danger to our intellectual life and to social progress. At the same time, the conformity often observed within extremist movements is sometimes even more remarkable and disconcerting than the conformity within the wider society to which such movements sometimes set themselves up in opposition. Thus, another contraposition is that, in some ways, extremism and conformity are opposites; in other ways they are simply different aspects of the same phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

Extremism is a label covering a variety of behaviors characterized by goals and methods not shared by the majority of the people. Extremism is a matter of freedom in terms of personal choices and it becomes a social issue when it generates externalities. Progress in many areas, from science to politics, is due to people challenging the common values of their times (think of the abolition of slavery and of the extension of political and social rights). That raises the question as to whether the long-run interests of a community are better served by conformist or by critical individual attitudes. Too much conformity makes the lemmings' trap inescapable, 1 but systematic criticism generates uncertainty and can undermine the cohesion of the community. In the political case, democratic societies are supposed to reduce both risks while fostering open confrontations of ideas and modulating conflicts through adaptable rules. Yet, the relationship between domestic political violence and political and economic freedom is not univocal (Muller and Weede, 1990) and Hardin (1997) calls into question the ability of democracy in dealing with major conflicts.

Extremism, interpreted as a challenge to the existing rules and values of politics, is a phenomenon that features in any constitutional order, democratic or non-democratic alike, and its evolution. We circumscribe our analysis, however, and submit that in a more or less democratic setting the presence of extremist leaders posits a problem in so far as they show apparently steadfast attitudes and an unwillingness to compromise.