Realistic Pluralism: What Can We Expect From Elections?

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel re-evaluates the consequences of political competition and elections for the health of representative governments. Elections have long been considered the crucial bastion of liberal democracy. Democratic theorists of all stripes have championed electoral competition precisely because it promotes pluralism within heterogeneous polities, thereby maintaining a democratic dispersion of political power (Dahl 1956; Przeworski 1991). When compared to institutional mechanisms such as sortition and meritocracy, elections and the competition they engender are often hailed as the most “realistic” institutional means to promote democratic self-governance (McCormick 2011; Achen and Bartels 2018).

The papers on this panel reappraise what can be realistically expected of governments that rely on elections to ensure democratic outcomes. The authors raise the following questions: What is the relationship between pluralistic polities, representative institutions and democracy? In what ways does political competition promote pluralistic representation of “the people” and/or mobilize the expectation that representative polities be governed “by the people”? What other consequences – clientelism, plutocracy, and demagoguery – can also be realistically assumed when voting becomes the primary organizing mechanism of a polity? By identifying both the salutary and pernicious effects of political competition on democratic outcomes, this panel seeks to delineate the extent to which elections facilitate pluralism, and consequently, the appropriate role of political competition in twenty-first century democracy.

The first two papers highlight the insufficiencies of electoral paradigms and their effects on democratic disillusionment. Natasha Piano revisits the Schumpeterian roots of electorally based definitions of democracy and contends that Schumpeter in fact warned against exclusive reliance on election to ensure democratic survival. As Schumpeter would have it, Piano argues, party competition is a necessary but insufficient condition to guarantee acceptance of electoral outcomes and he therefore urges readers to not lose sight of the supplementation required to make electoral competition meaningful and lasting. Employing quantitative analysis of political journals from the turn of the millennium, Lise Herman, James Dawson and Aurelia Ananda attest to this more pessimistic orientation: their findings show that overreliance on Schumpeterian procedural definitions of democracy—ones that champion electoral competition—led the contemporary political science discipline to ignore its insufficiencies and the resulting democratic stagnation in Central and Eastern Europe.

The second set of papers provide a corrective to these inadequacies through a normative defense of pluralist competition. As political realists, Samuel Bagg and Udit Bhatia readily assume that some forms of clientelism will always accompany electoral competition, and their paper provides a robust normative framework for combatting the particularist distribution of state resources as an inducement for political support. Alexander Kirshner analysis offers a normative, non-instrumental defense of party competition even within unjustifiably inegalitarian regimes in order to demonstrate the democratic and pluralistic features of party competition in-and-of itself. By admitting democratic insufficiencies of party competition, these papers redefine a realist orientation toward pluralist electoral politics: instead of assuming that competition provides the best of non-ideal options, the authors realistically identify the unintended consequences of competition, and offer democratic supplementations to promote genuinely pluralist politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• A ‘Schumpeterian’ Utopia: Schumpeter’s Realistic Assessment of Competition - Natasha Piano, University of Chicago

• The Fall of Democratic Optimism in Central Eastern European Studies (2000-2015) - Lise Esther Herman, University of Exeter; James Dawson, University College London; Aurelia Ananda, Royal Holloway, University of London

• Political Competition Is Under Attack: Does It Merit Defense? - Alexander Kirshner, Duke University

• Acting Democratically Under Clientelism - Samuel Ely Bagg, Nuffield College; Udit Bhatia

Chair

• Lisa J. Disch University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Discussant

• Russell Muirhead Dartmouth College