The Crisis of Democracy
Christopher Achen, “Managing Democratic Crises: Some Empirical Foundations”
The current struggles of democracies in Europe, North America, and East Asia have persuaded many that we have entered an era of unprecedented crisis, with electoral forces at work quite different from those of the past. In fact, however, democracies have always fallen ill from time to time for reasons very similar to those we see currently. The normal operating mode of democratic governments provides opportunities for occasional demagogues to lay them low. Thus there is no more reason to be shocked at recent events than there is to discover that influenza visits New Haven most winters. But there is reason to think about better flu vaccines. How might that be done? Empirical scholars generally find that elections work quite differently from what most political theorists believe. The result, in my view, is that many democratic visions have too little connection to the realities of how voters think and what they need. Worse, those abstractions too often lead away from what would truly help the poor and the powerless. I will lay out what I believe is a credible foundation for thinking about democratic elections and the policy process, one on which theorists might build to create deep democratic reform.
