Cracy, Not Crazy

Have you ever defined something by what you thought it meant, only to look it up and find out it didn't necessarily mean exactly what you thought it did? I am guilty of that myself. We hear lots of terms in the political world that reference various affiliations, systems and philosophies, yet often fall short in explanation and understanding. Our political vocabulary becomes considerably more useful for the purpose it serves when we know what those words actually mean.

Democracy, for instance. Demo comes from the Greek demos, meaning “the people.” The -cracy part comes from the Greek idea of power or rule. Democracy, then, means the people hold the power. They rule. Ideally, that is the situation, but getting people to grasp the issues, agree on the best course and not willingly give up that power under the assumption that whoever receives it will do what is right are just a few of the reasons democracy can get crazy. By the way, crazy is an adjective that can mean very foolish, wild or strange. Democrazy. Sadly, politics can certainly be made to look that way.

Autocracy concentrates power in one ruler and can closely resemble monarchy in the location of that power. This is something human societies have repeatedly gravitated toward. Kings, queens, pharaohs, chiefs, emperors, czars and sultans are among the many titles history has given individual rulers. We let individuals govern us and hope they are the right ones. Those who see, appreciate and recognize the significance of each person's unique abilities and contributions approach leadership very differently. By contrast, objectification can become a factor. Those who see themselves as above others may begin to see the people beneath them as smaller.

Oligarchy places power among a few, while plutocracy describes rule or disproportionate influence by the wealthy. These two can work together because wealth can provide the means to acquire influence, and power can provide the means to preserve wealth. The relationship between the two is worth observing without assuming that either automatically proves the existence of the other.

Technocracy places substantial authority in technical experts. I am not sure we always see this one as clearly. How much do immense digital resources affect our everyday decisions? What influence comes from media in all its forms, financial systems, universities, algorithms and increasingly artificial intelligence? Where do we get our information, who is giving it to us, what expertise do they possess, and what is their intent?

Bureaucracy places substantial governing power within administrative systems and officials. It exists throughout government and may seem particularly obvious in local government simply because of its proximity to those it serves. Regardless of how the power to rule is formally defined, much goes on behind the scenes. Public involvement can sometimes become an inconvenient formality. Once those in power have gone through the required process, for the right reasons or wrong ones, they may still have their own ideas about what should be done and how to get it done.

Theocracy locates governing authority in religion. Interestingly, the word often carries a negative connotation in modern Western political discussion. Humans, money, power and sovereignty apparently can be a difficult mix, regardless of the institution involved. I suspect much of the difficulty has more to do with the human part of the equation. Most people are good, moral and care about others. Not everyone finds their way to those beliefs in the same manner, nor do they necessarily want to be challenged over how they arrived there. Belief is deeply personal and can become part of one's identity. Taking that away, demanding another belief or forcing someone to profess one can challenge something fundamental about who they understand themselves to be.

Particracy, or partitocracy, describes a condition in which political parties become dominant centers of political power. Although that may sound like an oxymoron within a democracy, it means established political parties exercise substantial control over political choices, candidates, institutions or decisions that are theoretically supposed to originate with the people.

So where am I going with all of this? This essay started with a question: Can a democracy include socialism? What about any of the aforementioned -cracies? The answer appears to be yes. In practice, elements of several forms of power can operate simultaneously within a democratic system.

In the United States, it can seem as though we must be Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. That is not really true. We are often forced electorally to choose which available candidate or party seems to represent our overall beliefs most closely, regardless of how thoroughly we understand those beliefs ourselves. Perhaps we can begin with a simpler question: Where is the power? That question matters because calling a country a democracy does not mean every decision made within it is purely democratic.

Imagine a city in the United States proposes building a municipal gym. The proposal goes before voters as a bond referendum and fails to pass. Later, city officials discover another lawful way to accomplish essentially the same objective without another vote. Instead of building the rejected gym, they approve an indoor municipal pool that happens to contain a gym. Grants and donations bring the public financing below the threshold requiring voter approval, while taxpayers remain responsible for staffing and maintaining the facility indefinitely. Perhaps city employees even receive free access as a benefit of employment.

Was that democratic? Maybe. Maybe not. The voters may have rejected a particular bond issue rather than the underlying authority of city officials to build recreational facilities. The elected officials, themselves chosen by popular vote, may possess the legal authority to proceed through other means. The courts might find nothing unlawful about it. But citizens might reasonably ask a different question: If we followed the democratic process and voted no, what exactly did our vote control? What happens to voter morale when people believe their expressed preference can be circumvented through another procedure?

Now we have something more complicated than democracy. Perhaps the decision was bureaucratic. Perhaps a relatively small group possessed enough effective authority that the behavior could be described as oligarchic. Perhaps officials believed their expertise or access to information justified proceeding despite public opposition, introducing a technocratic element. None of those descriptions necessarily means the entire government has ceased being democratic. Sometimes those in power sincerely believe they know what is best for the people when the people may not know what is best for themselves. After all, they consider themselves people too.

That distinction seems important. The form of government and the behavior of government are not necessarily the same thing. The United States is a constitutional republic containing representative democratic institutions. Power is intentionally distributed. Citizens and the people they elect to represent them possess power. Local, state and federal governments, administrative agencies and the people they employ exercise different forms of delegated authority. Courts possess judicial authority.

A democracy can behave bureaucratically. It can rely heavily upon technocracy. Wealth can create plutocratic influence. Political parties can develop partitocratic power. Executive authority can exhibit autocratic tendencies. These words do not have to be accusations. They can be descriptions, and that is particularly important during the election cycle in any democracy.

We hear people called socialists, communists, fascists, dictators and authoritarians. We hear comparisons to Hitler. We see people protesting kings. These are powerful words, but power is exactly why their definitions matter. Kings, fascists and socialists are not interchangeable things. These are not simply different words for someone whose politics we dislike. Before applying a label, perhaps we should understand the behavior, philosophy or form of power the label is supposed to describe. I am not certain many of us do. I certainly cannot claim that I have always understood all the distinctions either. We hear people described in certain terms and develop feelings around words whose actual meanings we may never have examined.

The same is true of the Constitution. We frequently say something is constitutional or unconstitutional without necessarily knowing what the Constitution permits, prohibits or leaves to legislatures, states, courts and local governments. Sometimes something we consider profoundly undemocratic may nevertheless be lawful. Something supported by an overwhelming majority can still violate constitutional protections. American self-government was never built simply upon the proposition that the majority should always get what it wants.

There is a deeper problem. Can people govern themselves, and will they do what is necessary to remain capable of doing so? Human beings have wrestled with that question for thousands of years. Critics of democracy have long argued that ordinary citizens can be manipulated, pursue immediate self-interest, become divided into factions, elect dangerous leaders and sacrifice long-term stability for short-term desires. They can even give away their own power for the sake of ease.

Those criticisms cannot simply be dismissed. People can be manipulated. Money can distort representation. Political factions can become destructive. Democracies can become polarized. Voters can make terrible decisions. The question is: What do we do based on that observation? One answer is that people therefore require someone wiser, stronger or better informed to govern them. Perhaps experts should rule. Perhaps a political party should. Maybe an economic class or religious authorities should. Perhaps one exceptionally capable leader comes along who seems uniquely qualified to lead. But that person eventually leaves or dies. Then what?

Every one of those solutions produces another question: Who governs the governors? If ordinary people cannot be trusted with power, why should extraordinary people, self-proclaimed or otherwise, automatically be trusted with more of it? If the more intelligent or the experts should govern, who determines who qualifies? Eventually someone must possess the authority to say, We know better than you.

If one political party knows what is best for everyone, who restrains that party when it is wrong? What happens to those who challenge it? History is filled with evidence of what can happen when concentrated power becomes intolerant of opposition. Power can be far easier to give away than to take back. Freely conceded, it may later be bitterly defended. More easily given than taken, and once lost, sometimes extraordinarily difficult to recover. That is precisely why the different -cracies matter.

Technocracy may solve one problem while creating another. Bureaucracy may provide continuity and expertise while becoming detached from the people it serves. Plutocracy may concentrate resources and influence among those capable of accomplishing enormous things while allowing wealth to overwhelm representation. Autocracy may produce decisive action while removing restraints that protect everyone from a bad decision by the autocrat. Even democracy has dangers. A majority can be wrong. A majority can mistreat a minority. Fifty-one percent of the population possessing unlimited authority over the other forty-nine percent would hardly constitute individual freedom.

Perhaps that is one of the great insights behind constitutional government: do not completely trust the ruler, the majority or any particular institution. Distribute power. Restrain it by making competing centers of authority accountable to one another. Protect certain individual rights even when the majority would prefer otherwise. It is an attempt at balance.

That brings us back to behavior. A more important question than who is right may be what is right. If circumventing the expressed will of voters is wrong under a particular set of circumstances, it should remain wrong when our preferred political party does it. If excessive concentration of power is dangerous, it should remain dangerous when someone we admire possesses that power. If money corrupts political representation, it should matter whether that money comes from people and organizations we support or people and organizations we oppose. If executive overreach is dangerous, the letter following the president's name should not change the principle.

There might even be another -cracy worth considering. Hypocracy. Not hypocrisy. Hypocracy. It is not an established political-science term, but perhaps it should be: a condition in which those exercising power demand adherence to principles, rules or standards from others that they are unwilling to apply to themselves. There would be a simple test for it: Would I still believe this was right if the other side were doing it? If changing the actor changes our principle, perhaps we were never defending a principle. We were defending an interest.

This is where political labels begin becoming less useful and human behavior becomes considerably more interesting. Beneath democracy, capitalism, socialism, bureaucracy, technocracy and every other system are human beings pursuing security, opportunity, wealth, belonging, recognition, influence, purpose, status and sometimes power. Most of those desires are not inherently wrong. The difficulty begins when enough wealth, authority, recognition, ideological conformity, control, voice or legacy is no longer enough. At some point serving can become acquiring, and acquiring can become dominating.

We can begin by being trusted by the people and given power, only to find ourselves eventually overwhelmed by the weight and responsibility of it. We may begin looking for easier ways to exercise, contain or retain that power. Perhaps people misunderstand our intent. Perhaps we lose sight of our own. The purpose is not to determine which political tribe is right. It is to understand the behavior well enough to determine what is right.

History has given us names for many arrangements of power because humanity has experienced them before, but there is no reason to believe our political vocabulary is complete. Earlier political thinkers never experienced social media, algorithmic information systems, multinational corporations of today's scale, instantaneous global communication, modern campaign finance, enormous administrative institutions or artificial intelligence. New concentrations of power may emerge that do not fit comfortably inside our old definitions. We should be capable of defining things as they are, and things we haven't seen before, even when they are new forms of very old behaviors.

That requires us to begin with observation rather than accusation. Who has the power? Where did that power come from? To whom is it accountable? Who can restrain it? Can the people remove it? Can its decisions be reversed? Is the authority constitutional, delegated, assumed, purchased or simply accumulated? Then perhaps we can give what we observe a name.

The name of the system tells us where power is supposed to reside. Every system of government is ultimately an expression of human behavior. That is something that has not changed much in several thousand years. Perhaps knowing our -cracies can help prevent them from becoming atrocities.

One important factor remains in all of this: you, the people. You're one of them too. The study of Moral Science, and much of my writing, rests upon a belief in the power of the individual. The more of us who are strong in purpose, principle and values, the stronger a society can become.

Perhaps self-governance is the healthiest condition, rather than victory by either side. It is a condition in which people govern themselves sufficiently well that neither domination nor excessive external governance becomes necessary. Freedom does not mean everyone must live as I believe they should. Rather, govern yourself. Allow others to govern themselves. Intervene collectively where one person's exercise of sovereignty materially prevents another from doing the same.

That seems less like another political ideology and more like a first principle of governance.