The Limits of Democracy

​​The election of the militant and hitherto extra-parliamentary group Hamas in the Palestinian territories reminds us of what democracy cannot achieve. No one in a more established democratic state is surprised if one's own side does not win. Democracy is about competing parties, and, unless they form a "grand coalition," they cannot all win.

But what if an election's winners have no intention of abiding by the rules that are part and parcel of the democratic process?

One remembers Hitler, who, while his own party did not quite get 50% of the vote, could base his "seizure of power" on a parliamentary majority. More recently, elections in the post-communist countries of Europe have brought groups to power whose democratic credentials are dubious, to say the least.

Elections rarely solve fundamental problems

This is not to compare Hamas to any of these political forces. Nevertheless, one must wonder about a winning movement with quite a few elected members in Israeli prisons and others who are not likely to get permission to enter the country in which they were elected, so that the new parliament cannot function properly.

All of this tells us three things about democracy.

First, elections rarely solve fundamental problems. In particular, they do not create a liberal order. To be effective, elections must be preceded by an extensive period of debate and argument. Cases have to be made and attacked or defended.

First elections, in particular, are almost inevitably of limited value as foundations of democracy, because they take place in an emotionally charged atmosphere and largely without substantive debate. They are an invitation to assert who one is and where one belongs rather than to a competition of well-defined and comprehensive political programs.

This means, secondly, that first elections, and perhaps elections more generally, are not themselves a sufficient guarantee of liberty. As the German constitutional court judge Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde famously put it, democracies cannot create the conditions of their survival and success.

Accepted rules of the political game

What are these conditions, and who creates them? The answer to the first question is, the rule of law. There must be certain accepted rules of the political game that are binding on all, so that whoever does not accept or obey them is disqualified.

This is, to be sure, easier said than done. Who sets the rules of the game? There is an obvious logic to establishing a constitutional convention first and then holding elections under the rules agreed by it. This is what happened in Iraq, for example. But the constitutional convention, too, must be elected, and this election may run into the very difficulties that plague first elections to parliaments in new democracies.

Once the rules of the game are set, there still remains the question: who enforces them? Who could say to Hamas that unless they accept certain rules, their election is not valid? This requires a constitutional court of sorts, as well as a judiciary and institutions to enforce its rulings.

Democracy as a long-term task

In sovereign states and territories, this is highly unlikely to come about on its own. It is no accident that the democratic process has emerged most smoothly where there was some external power to back up the constitution.

The third lesson follows from such considerations. Democracy in the sense of free elections within certain rules does not allow the rest of us to say that the cause of freedom has prevailed and that we can walk away.

On the contrary, democracy is a long-term task. Some say that it is achieved only once a country has passed the "two-turnover test," that is, two changes of government without violence. One must add to this criterion a culture of debate that makes elections a genuine contest of a plurality of answers to the issues at stake.

For the Palestinian territories, this means that people's expectations of the elections were probably too high. By the same token, reducing expectations means that the significance of the results should not be exaggerated. Who knows? The result may yet turn out to be a stepping-stone towards an effective state that deserves international recognition.

In the meantime, the key task is to promote the rule of law, backed by the international community.

Ralf Dahrendorf

© Project Syndicate 2006

Ralf Dahrendorf, author of numerous books and a former European Commissioner from Germany, is a member of the British House of Lords, a former Rector of the London School of Economics, and a former Warden of St. Antony's College, Oxford.

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