Is democracy the ‘worst’, as Winston Churchill once said? Five experts weigh in

Claims that democracy is in crisis are certainly not new, but recent history has given the claim a new urgency. Over the past decade or so, there has been no shortage of people expressing concern that democratic institutions are under strain.

Recent studies have indeed shown declining levels of trust in democratic systems around the world. The trend is evident in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. In Australia, too, a recent study found that trust in politics was at record lows.

We asked five experts to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of democratic governance, taking as their prompt Winston Churchill's famously backhanded observation that “democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others that have been tried”.

“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise,” Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947, before delivering his famous line.

Democracy is not meant to rest on blind faith. It makes room for wariness, disappointment and ambivalence. Once we accept its built-in flaws and its tendency to decay from within, a lot of the anxious commentary about “eroding public trust” starts to look misplaced.

For a start, people are mostly losing trust in the governments of the day, not in democracy itself – 95% of Australians say living in a democracy is important to them. And a certain level of scepticism toward whoever currently holds temporary power is not a crisis; it's a safeguard.

That kind of circumspection is what a living democracy depends on. Slowing down and asking how our democratic institutions are working in practice can put real limits on those who currently benefit from the status quo.

If sceptical or mistrusting citizens are not democracy's transgressors, but its canaries in the coal mine – warning us that current democratic institutions need recalibrating – the real question is how well are we listening to the dissatisfied.

Those who benefit from the current rules have weak incentives to acknowledge the flaws, let alone rewrite them.

Adele Webb is research fellow, democracy and citizen engagement, at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy, University of Canberra.

In today's world, democracy refers to a system of representative government with free, fair and relatively frequent elections. The particular institutions and the rationales for them vary greatly, but the essential criterion for a country to count as a genuine democracy is that it holds elections with realistic opportunities to remove unpopular governments through a non-violent process.

Where democratic institutions are in place, they provide a strong incentive for the incumbent government to avoid being seen as corrupt, tyrannical or simply incompetent. In practice, this should encourage governments to make efforts to avoid corruption and govern effectively in the common interest of the people. It isn't foolproof, but it does give democracy one huge advantage over other systems.

Alas, democracy is fragile and it's almost miraculous that it ever survives. The government of the day is expected to take a psychologically unnatural attitude to its opponents.

It has to maintain, firstly, that it is objectively better at governing than its opponents, whom it is justified in criticising without mercy. But then it must accept that, if it should lose an election, it will graciously hand over control of the treasury, the military, and all the agencies and powers of the state to those same opponents.

I suspect that the conditions in which this attitude seems rational and commendable are very rare, and that they are all too easy to erode. We ought to give them more thought if we really care about preserving democracy.

Russell Blackford is conjoint senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle

When Churchill spoke of democracy he spoke of a particular form: representative democracy. Political scientists and philosophers will take pains to tell you there are many forms of democracy: deliberation until we reach something close to consensus; random selection of citizens to decide laws; regular plebiscites to approve or veto policies.

None of them are perfect, but elections – even when they feel tedious and produce frustrating results – strike the best compromise.

Supporting democracy means supporting the idea that citizens will have some degree of oversight of the people making laws on their behalf. But oversight takes time and effort. As a citizen, I don't want to have to learn about and vote on every act before the parliament. I also don't want to be randomly recruited to deliberate on complex policies. I want to spend time with my family, my pets, on my hobbies and my job.

Sending representatives to Canberra to negotiate laws on our behalf and holding them to account every three years is a good deal for citizens. Do political parties work to undermine this accountability? Absolutely. Are the candidates we are offered the best available? Absolutely not. But this form of democracy hits the sweet spot of accountability and everyday life.

Jill Sheppard is senior lecturer in politics and international relations, Australian National University.

Winston Churchill's record dealing with colonised people merits review, but there are many reasons to support his claim about democracy.

Democracy is, above all, a system enshrining the accountability of leaders to the people who are affected by their decisions. The accountability is embodied principally in elections for public office, in which leaders who have failed their constituents can be thrown out.

When the democratic franchise extends to all adults, it is the system most true to the basic fact – long denied or obscured in history – that all adult men and women are capable of thinking for themselves. People have an intrinsic dignity which means they can and should have a say in decisions which affect their lives.

All other political systems hold that there are morally salient distinctions between people which mean entire classes, races or genders should have no say in how they are governed, nor means (short of revolution) to overthrow bad governments. Democracy is thus the least worst system in a stronger sense than Churchill granted.

That said, other political systems are easier to sustain. Democracies, over time, stand or fall on their ability to foster a public that is engaged, materially secure and educated enough to decide wisely. For this reason, democracy requires an independent media, willing and supported to fearlessly hold the feet of the powers of money and government to the fires of critical publicity.

There is a need for ongoing critical vigilance, so that the media and public offices remain free from capture by interested lobbies who support policies which so disadvantage so many ordinary people as to make law and governance, in all but name, their own exclusive prerogative.

Matthew Sharpe is associate professor in philosophy, Australian Catholic University.

Churchill's father was an aristocrat and “meteoric conservative”. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy New York financier. He attended a private all-boys school called Harrow – today its annual fees are £63,735.

Its mottos – Stet fortuna domus (May the fortune of the House stand) and Donorum dei dispensatio fidelis (The faithful dispensation of the gifts of God) – put family (think war-won crests and land that can be inherited) and the Anglican Christian God at the forefront.

I offer this brief genealogy to ask one question: why should we care about a quip by an elite man during a sitting of the UK Parliament in 1947? Especially one who surely understood democracy to mean the mid-20th century's inheritance of Edward Longshanks' model parliament, founded in 1295?

This was very same Edward Longshanks who colonised Wales and began the colonisation of Scotland. Churchill himself thought well of the two-and-a-half years or so he spent with the 4th Hussars in British occupied India.

So what did Churchill know of democracy? Not much. He knew of a bicameral system held hostage by a duopoly of major parties that was overseen by hereditary peers and lords. In his career, he was surrounded almost entirely by white men of means, who were elected to parliament in a medieval plurality system that permitted voting by men and women of at least 21 years of age.

Maybe he recognised this. If he did, he would have still been right to say democracy is bad, but better than all other known non or less democratic options.

Today we know there are many other ways of being democratic and developing our respective democracies.

Jean-Paul Gagnon is senior lecturer in democracy studies, University of Canberra.

James Ley is Deputy Books + Ideas Editor.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

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