Note: I originally wrote this piece in 2008 when I was a US European Command Deputy J5. I have done some light editing, primarily in format and grammar. I’ve divided the long paper into a series for easier reading on a blog. The National Security Strategy referenced here is dated, but I think the overall content is still valid and important in today’s environment.This is part 3 of the series on democracy and national security.
Democracy is not a Swiss Army Knife
Now, let us return to our three questions.
The answer to the first question, whether the United States is a democracy, is no, not really. The United States is a republic, not a democracy. Many people, to include politicians and scholars, use the two words interchangeably. There is, however, a significant difference. The more a country tends to democracy, the more the people directly vote on the issues—or at least the representatives. The more it tends toward a republic, the greater the chance that enfranchisement and voting will be restricted to certain groups, with a remoter connection between the voter and the decision. Moreover, the US took quite a long time to evolve to our current “democractish” form of government.
If we look at the two seminal documents in United States political thought, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the word democracy is not used at all. The closest we come is in the enumeration of abuses in the Declaration in which King George is accused of dissolving representative bodies or causing the legislative bodies to meet “at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures”. The Constitution discusses the legislative branch and, in Section 4 of Article IV, guarantees each “State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. But a legislature is not necessarily synonymous with democracy. As noted below, the US Senate was not popularly elected for nearly 125 years and the right to vote was originally constricted.
When we look at the Constitution before several amendments in the twentieth century, the second question regarding proving that democracy works is also somewhat less clear. One can make a fairly good case that the framers of the Constitution were as concerned with the abuse of power by the electorate as they were with empowering the electorate. Section 3 of Article I state that the state legislatures will choose the senators from each state. This was not changed until the Seventeenth Amendment was passed in 1913. We see the same concern in Section 1 of Article 2. The President is elected not by popular ballot, but rather, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
Clearly, there was concern about placing key parts of the federal government in the direct hands of the electorate.
So what did the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution intend if it wasn’t democracy?
Let’s look at two parts of these documents.
The Declaration of Independence states:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The preamble to the Constitution states:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
These two paragraphs are arguably the most important paragraphs written in the corpus of American political thought. They do not specify a form of government. Rather, they talk about human rights. It is human rights that are paramount, not the specific form of government that ensures these rights are maintained and protected.
Many of the original signers of the Constitution were concerned that it did not adequately protect human rights. As a result, it was amended four years after ratification with the first ten amendments, commonly called the Bill of Rights. The common theme among these amendments is protecting the rights of the individual.
Clearly, the US perspective, at least historically, has been focused on human rights and liberty. The structure of the government was devoted to ensuring liberty and actual enfranchisement was limited to those the framers of the Constitution felt would best protect these rights and constitute an informed electorate. James Madison, in Federalist 47, addressed some concerns that the structure of the government envisioned in the Constitution would not protect liberty. Two sections of the paper are particularly interesting.
In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu.
The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim [separation of powers to protect liberty] are a further demonstration of his meaning. “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,” says he, “there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner. ” Again: “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR. ” Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author.
To quote an architectural term, “form follows function”. The primary function of the government, then, is to ensure liberty and human rights. The form then must support and guarantee this function. The question then, is there only one form that guarantees this function? The follow up question is does democracy entail a separation of government into three branches as Montesquieu envisioned and the US constitution created? Is democracy really even enough to secure liberty or does it need a specific structure as well?
Madison, Montesquieu and other western writers, drawing from their historical and cultural perspective, argue for a republican form of government, with clear separation of powers. From their cultural perspective, this structure is eminently logical. The question, however, is, are there other structures that would work based on other cultural perspectives? Is there only one structure that will support liberty and human rights or many? This is more than an academic question. As the US and other developed counties continues to engage throughout the world, they need to ensure that their strategy accomplishes their goals. The goal should be the protection of human rights and liberty.
The protection of human rights rests on the rule of law. The rule of law governs how citizens interact with each other, how the government interacts with the citizens and sets the legal framework for what rights the citizens have and what rights the government has, as well as the legal framework for security, commerce, and other key issues.
The rule of law rests upon a philosophical foundation, which is heavily influenced by religion, history, culture and perhaps geography. If we look across the globe, across history, we can see how systems of law developed based upon these concepts. From Hammurabi through Moses, to Confucius to Mohammed, we can see the religious influences. We can study the evolution of philosophy and law in the Greek and Roman texts. We can study the development of the Chinese bureaucracy and the Japanese samurai culture. We see how the English system of common law evolved.
In most of Europe and the west, this foundation starts with Greek philosophy and then adds the codification of Roman law. During the Enlightenment, western philosophers extended this concept to “natural law”. Jefferson clearly invoked the concept of natural law in the Declaration of Independence and the US rule of law can be clearly traced from the Greeks to the Romans, to the British and to the philosophers of the Enlightenment. This philosophy was based upon a well-developed construct of government and liberty.
But in other parts of the world, the philosophical foundation for the rule of law developed with different governing forces. Not all systems of law grant the individual the same rights or have the same cultural basis as western law and philosophy. Not all places in the world evolved the same system of government that evolved in the west.
The rule of law requires it to be maintained, executed and adjudicated. These base functions cut across virtually all philosophical foundations and governmental systems and are the functions that Madison quoted from Montesquieu. (However, in those forms of government based upon a religious law, the maintenance function may be more of a commentary function than that of legislation. We can clearly see this in legal systems based upon Sharia.) The differences in functional architecture are in whom or what body performs these functions and the degree to which the people are involved. In some forms of government, one person performs all three functions or at least controls them. In others, a tribal council may perform some or all of them. In the US government and many other representative forms of government, the three functions are separated into two or more bodies.
Thus, as the US and other developed countries engage throughout the world, we will find different philosophical foundations and different structures. The question then becomes, can we successfully export western philosophical foundations and governmental structures to regions that have a long history of their own foundations and governmental systems?
To answer this question, let’s turn back to the Declaration of Independence again. It enumerates three critical rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These three rights mirror, in many ways, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow constructed a pyramid of needs with physiological needs at the base, moving up to “Self Actualization” at the capstone of the pyramid. Jefferson’s three rights match this concept extremely well.
The right to life, the need for security and the essentials for life are at the base of the rights pyramid. The right to liberty is in the center, delineating the rights to freedom to act in self-interest with minimal coercion, bridging Maslow’s safety and social needs. The Pursuit of Happiness is the capstone of the pyramid, matching up well with Maslow’s capstone and self-esteem and social needs. While Jefferson didn’t specifically delineate a hierarchy of rights, they do flow like one and are listed in the correct order for a hierarchy. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need to articulate a hierarchy based upon the philosophical foundation and existing governmental structures in which he was operating.
As we engage throughout the world, we may benefit by keeping Jefferson’s hierarchy of rights in mind. If we try to export the concept of the “Pursuit of Happiness” to a part of the world that is still struggling with the right to life, then we may well be frustrated.
The same thing may be said for governmental systems. If we try to export the US or western structure to a society based upon a tribal or feudal system, again we may be frustrated.
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