Does Democracy Demonstrate Political Authority?

Based on my reading of Michael Huemer's Problem of Political Authority.

If you read my last post you know my objections to the Social Contract theory of Political Authority. However, as Grady pointed out in the comments, most political philosophers that write on the origin of political authority do not use the social contract to justify the government’s special moral status. A far more popular theory is that Democracy is what endows coercion monopolies to their rights.

Similarly to the social contract post, we will begin with the most basic and most popular version of the democratic justification of political authority: majority rule. Why is the government justified in enforcing a drug laws? Because the people voted for it. Or, more precisely, more of the people voted for it than against it. This decision-making heuristic is common and intuitive, and it works well when the differences between options are small, and individual action is unavailable. Think about deciding where to eat with a group of friends. You all have your own favorite places, but when it comes down to it the differences between all the restaurants are relatively inconsequential. Additionally, individual action isn’t possible because if you all went to your personal favorite restaurant you will have defeated the purpose of eating as a group. Putting this decision to a vote works well because it helps the relevant group make a quick decision that at least tries to make the most people happy.

This heuristic fails to carry moral weight, however, when applied to more important decisions. Imagine that, after your group has eaten at the chosen restaurant, the check comes and you all have to decide how to pay. If it is put to a vote and the majority wants you alone to pay for everyone’s meal, would this majority give moral weight to that decision? Would it justify your friends in using physical violence to extract payment? Any reasonable person would agree that it does not; the differences between options (one person paying or splitting the check) are large and important, and individual action (each person paying their own check) is available. Perhaps if you had previously consented to put it to vote and agreed to abide by the decision, but this is just trying to use consent to justify political authority which was covered in my last post. Regardless, it is clear that a majority favoring something does not justify enforcing that onto those who don’t.

This morally intuitive fact alone steals the basis out from most theories of democratically justified Political Authority, especially those in popular discourse. There are, of course, more sophisticated theories and idealizations of democracy like deliberative democracy. This theory is like a more pragmatic version of Rawls’ original position. Deliberative democracy strives to get real people to have deep and reasoned discussions about policy and then make a decision. However, like Rawls’ theory it fails to guarantee any agreement, and fails to justify coercing others into following the conclusions produced by these systems. Even if deliberative democracy was guaranteed to create reasonable or fair compromises, just the fact that a decision is reasonable or fair does not justify killing and stealing, which are prima facie unreasonable and unfair, to enforce it

Democracy cannot provide a moral justification of Political Authority. Majority rule is far too crude of a decision making heuristic to use in decisions as important as policy enforceable by violence, and deliberation is not enough to refine this crude heuristic.