critical survey of politics across the regions suggests that ‘democracy’ has past its prime. If it fails to re-invent itself, aristocracy or plutocracy, even kleptocracy, may substitute democracy whose core value was egalitarianism. But how did it gain ubiquity in the first place? What are the benefits it yields for the masses?

Before democracy became a widely accepted form of government, it was met with apprehension and disgust in many countries. The apprehensions were not limited to the ruling elites who saw it as a threat to their power. The path to creating institutions and practices that would translate democratic preferences into effective governance required extensive time, creativity and careful planning.

Throughout history, political power has been held by a select few, not the masses. While it’s easy to imagine that in prehistoric times, small bands of people night have had an instinctive democracy, it’s just as easy to envision a strong individual exerting leadership, similar to alpha males in other animal species. Physical strength is one type of power, but wealth, tradition, mystique, taboo, religious beliefs, and genealogy — often in combination — have been even more potent forms of power, providing justification for the rule of one or a few over many.

At various points in history, people have challenged this political structure, claiming that the many have a greater right than the few to hold political power or to be its source. This claim took on its most basic form in Athens in the Fifth Century BCE when democracy emerged. The term “democracy” comes from the ancient Greek demokratia, which means “rule by the people” (from demos, meaning “the people”, and kratos, meaning “rule”).

However, Athenian democracy would not be recognised today as a paradigm, as it essentially replaced one group of people in power with a larger group. Only adult male citizens, a minority of the city’s population, had the right to vote, excluding women, slaves and Xenoi, who together made up around three-quarters of the city’s adult population.

The concept of Athenian democracy was alarming to some of its leading contemporary thinkers, including Plato, who recognised the potential danger it posed. Plato saw the risk of democracy rapidly degenerating into ochlocracy, meaning mob rule, driven by unruly emotions, self-interest, prejudice, anger, ignorance and thoughtlessness, leading to rash, cruel, destructive and self-destructive actions.

The danger is even more apparent considering the power of demagoguery, which manipulates crowd sentiment through fiery, rabble-rousing speeches targeting emotions and prejudices — the very things that are detrimental to producing sound governance. This danger is different from ochlocracy, as it is manipulation by a hidden oligarchy using appeals to democratic licence as a fig leaf to advance their agenda.

Plato’s concerns about democracy have continued to reverberate throughout history. Winston Churchill’s second comment on democracy echoes Plato’s view: “The strongest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” highlighting the ignorance, self-interest, short-termism and prejudice typical of many voters. The American satirist, HL Mencken, put the point even more sharply, describing democracy as a “pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

The cynical views dismissing the ideal of democracy miss the point intentionally or unintentionally. However, the acute dilemma of democracy lies in the justifiable claim of the many to be the holders or source of political authority and the risk of its collapse into ochlocracy or hidden oligarchy. Until the Seventeenth Century, little thought was given to how institutions and practices could enable democracy while safeguarding against these dangers. This remains the burning question: how can it be achieved?

The importance of this question is evident when considering the practical sense and self-interest of most polities in recorded history. They seemed to have only two options: rule by a dictator or a dictatorial clique and rule by a mob. Unfortunately, the former is the preferable choice due to obvious reasons that proponents need not enumerate. Those such as Plato believe that monarchy and open oligarchy are less likely to degenerate into tyranny than democracy.

Monarchs and oligarchs know that their tenure of power relies on the implicit acceptance of their rule by the populace, which cannot be secured by the exercise of coercive power alone. Hence, they resort to pomp and circumstance, bread and circuses, invocations of divine approval, appeals to tradition and other trappings to awe, inspire, or otherwise attach the loyalty or subjection of their people.

Plato saw the demos as a vulnerable body without a clear leader, susceptible to being swayed by the emotions of the moment, including the dangerous phenomena of panic and anger, which demagogues are skilled at exploiting. However, he did not consider whether there are ways to structure the application of popular consent to government administration that could harness the benefits of democracy without risking collapse into mob rule or tyranny.

It wasn’t until the late Eighteenth Century, with the devisers of the US Constitution that this work began in earnest. While the ideas involved were not new — the Levellers of the Seventeenth-Century England had advocated for universal male suffrage while the Putney Debates of 1647 explored a more conditional, property-based franchise — it was not until the English Bill of Rights of 1688 that “the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons” were claimed to represent the people, though England was far from being a democracy at the time.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their contemporaries in the revolutionary America as well as Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill in Europe, developed democratic ideas that influenced historical events, leading to the emergence of increasingly democratic constitutions. Their theory and practice shared a common theme: the dilemma of democracy could be resolved by structuring political institutions and practices in a way that reconciles two fundamental aims. First, the ultimate source of political authority should be democratic assent. Second, the government should be responsible and effective in its functioning.

The realisation that emerged from these considerations was that democracy, while a necessary and important part of sound government, is not sufficient on its own. Additional necessities and desiderata are required. The necessities include constitutional checks and balances that limit the power of the Legislature and the Executive, with remedies available when those limits are breached. The desiderata include an informed and reflective electorate and a responsible Fourth Estate that distributes information and provides a platform for debate and analysis.

Unfortunately, a brief survey of major democracies shows that both necessities and desiderata have been lacking. The years 2016-17 demonstrated how this underachievement led to a breakdown of the compromise that had been offered as a solution to the dilemma of democracy.

The argument that follows is that the political history of Western liberal democracies is the history of the development and application of a compromise that resolves democracy’s dilemma. To understand this compromise, one must know that history. It is unarguably right that the model of democracy forged by this compromise is the least bad of a lot of bad systems, and worth preserving if possible.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be reached at tahir.kamran@bnu.edu.pk