It’s important to distinguish two types of arguments for/against democracy. One looks at what democracy does domestically; this is the potentially devastating sort of argument. The other compares democracies and non-democracies; this is irrelevant and cannot save democracy.
If democracies outperform non-democracies by certain criteria (economic, etc), but democracy doesn’t work as advertised, this means a particular propaganda regime (+ whatever democracy is really doing, if anything) outperforms non-democracies. At best you have a ‘noble lie’.
The killer argument here is that if democracy doesn’t work as it is claimed to work in liberal democratic discourse, then it is PROPAGANDA that conceals how the political system actually works. By all regards it is highly effective AS propaganda, hence pernicious.
You could argue that ‘democracy’ doesn’t work as advertised and therefore we need to change education, media discourse, etc, to reflect this. But then you’re just conceding the argument and advocating for a different (more honest) regime.
Here’s one alternative account of democracy I’ve seen given in political science: even though the public has no real input, it at least leads to stable succession. Okay, but then democratic rhetoric is propaganda and stable succession without the propaganda would be better.
The argument here is always the same:
Alternative account: ‘Democracy doesn’t work as advertised, but leads to this other good thing’
Flaw: Okay, but then democratic rhetoric is propaganda and we’d be better off if we could have the other good thing without the propaganda
Alternative account: ‘Democracy doesn’t work as advertised, but leads to this other good thing’
Flaw: Okay, but then democratic rhetoric is propaganda and we’d be better off if we could have the other good thing without the propaganda
The only way out of this is to argue that we NEED the propaganda, that there is no alternative to being lied to. It’s a noble lie. But how much good does the lie need to do to be noble? How much extra economic growth (or whatever) are we getting for being lied to?
Note that the propaganda includes all the theatrics of the elections themselves. If stable succession is all we’re getting then the primaries, the campaigns, the elections, etc, are all propaganda. Picking a name out of a hat would be MORALLY SUPERIOR.
