民主是手段，不是目的(Democracy is a Means, Not an End)
[美]Michael Munger著
Michael Munger:
"If all we mean by democracy is a civil myth, a conceit, it could be useful. The idea of democracy honors common people, calming the mind and pleasing the agora. If democracy is a fraud, however, then we are in bleaker and more sinister terrain. The pretense that in the multitude we find rectitude is dangerous: many of us would love to impose our "wisdom" on others. Saluting the collective wisdom is simply a way to hold other citizens down whilst we steal their purses, or pack their children off to war."
每個人都熱愛民主。如果你問一個美國人是否還有更好的政府形式，他們會覺得受到了侮辱。你信仰民主，對吧？你信仰的“民主”到底是什麼？人們所說的“民主”往往是一些含混不清的概念的組合，其中包括好政府、對人權的保護、極為寬泛的政治參與、以及對經濟繁榮的廣泛分享。一個人可能認為民主還包括理想的身體質量指數和各式各樣的馬鈴薯餅的製作方法。這種說法當然都是對的，但並不能說明很多問題，而且很少有人願意去思考民主到底意味著什麼。
一旦民主制度穩固地建立起來了，人們就會去慶祝民主的偉大成就，這當然很好。但是這樣的慶祝卻混淆了因果。其原因是，民主國家具有個人自由、財產權和法治這些特徵並不意味著這些特徵就是民主。更正確地說，具有這些特徵的國家體現了關於好政府的一整套西方傳統。要求政府必鬚根據被統治者的同意而行動，這是將那些民主的特徵連接在一起的紐帶，但卻非（民主）特徵本身。 Fareed Zakaria準確地描述了這個“特徵”問題：
“對於西方人民來說，民主指的是'自由民主'：不僅是一個以自由和公正的選舉為標誌的政治體制，而且它還包括法治、分權，以及對於言論自由、集會自由、宗教自由這些基本自由和財產權的保護。但是這些特徵具有自由屬性——可以被稱之為“立憲自由主義”——它不是民主的固有屬性，而且兩者並不總是一致的，即使在西方也是如此。畢竟，阿道夫.希特勒是通過自由選舉而成為德國元首的。”（Fareed Zakaria著，《自由的未來》第17頁）
那麼，到底什麼是民主？我們的頭腦中有個模糊的印象，好政府會有民主。但是什麼是“好政府”？基本的一點是選舉和多數決定原則：多數人代替全部人口做出選擇，多數人可以把他們的意志強加在少數人身上。
這種多數人可以代表少數人的機制讓我懷疑，民主是否是一種欺詐或自負。正如William Riker在他於1982年出版的《自由主義還是民粹主義》一書中指出的那樣，主張進行所謂“公平”處理常常會導致不顧制度和製度變革的所謂“好”的結果。即使有人不同意，即使有許多其他選擇，也可以通過操縱民主實現某個特定目的，甚至實現獨裁。在Kenneth Arrow提出這個問題之後，在現代政治學中，它被稱為“艾羅（Arrow）難題”。
如果我們頭腦中的民主是一個民眾神化，是一種虛幻的自負，那麼這種民主可能也還是有用的。這種民主的理念可以讓平民大眾感到榮耀，可以鎮靜他們的情緒，可以使集會的群眾感到高興。可是，如果民主只是一種欺詐，我們就會被置於黑暗、凶險之地。聲稱大眾代表公正是危險的：我們大部分人都喜歡把我們的“智慧”強加在別人身上。讚頌集體的智慧只不過是想把其他人打翻在地，然後搶走他們的錢包，謀害他們的孩子。
但這樣的事總是層出不窮。正如波利比奧斯（Polybius）所說的那樣：
“雅典人（的民主）就像一艘沒有舵手的大船。如果由於害怕受到敵人的攻擊，或者一場暴風雨就要到來，這時他們只能一心一意，服從舵手的指揮，此時什麼問題都不會發生；但是一旦他們不再害怕，就又開始蔑視他們的船長，並且互相爭吵，因為他們已經不再一心了，——一部分人希望繼續航行，另一部分人卻要求舵手拋錨停船；一些人要扯起風帆，另一些人卻要拉下風帆，——他們的不和、爭吵讓觀察者覺得很痛心，使這艘船上的所有人都處在危險之中；其結果經常是這樣：在躲過了無邊的大海之中的許多巨大風暴之後，在進入港灣就要靠岸的時刻，他們卻把自己的航船弄得徹底傾覆。”
——波利比奧斯著，《歷史》第四卷，第44章（Evelyn S. Shuckburgh譯, 1889年）
但是，我們並不是要呼喚獨裁。艾羅難題的實質是：這樣的社會或者是希特勒式的專制暴政，或者是像波利比奧斯所描述的那樣一盤散沙。我的結論是，沒有立憲自由主義護衛的“民主”既是專制暴政又是一盤散沙，它是人們可以想像的最壞的政體。
美國不是民主國家
這些道理對於美國的創建者們來說都不新鮮。選舉制度不見得能讓公民控制住被選舉出來的公務員。這種懷疑當時確實存在，正如《聯邦黨人文集》第10篇論文中所說的那樣：
“一種純粹的民主政體——這裡我指的是由少數公民親自組織和管理政府的社會——不能製止派別鬥爭的危害。幾乎在每一種情況下，整體中的大多數人都會感到有共同的情感或利益。聯絡和結合是政府形式本身的產物；沒有任何東西可以阻止犧牲弱小黨派或可憎的個人的動機。因此，這種民主政體就成了動亂和爭論的圖景，同個人安全或財產權是不相容的，往往由於暴亡而夭折。贊成這種政府的政治理論家錯誤地認為，如果使人類在政治權利上完全平等，同時他們就能在財產、意見和情感上完全平等。 ”
美國是個聯邦共和國，橫向地，權力在行政、立法、司法部門間分立；縱向地，權力在中央政府和州之間分立。獨立宣言說得明白無誤：美國體制的基礎在於，所有公民都具有權利，並且“為了保障這些權利，才在人們中間成立了政府。而政府的正當權力，則來自被統治者的同意。”這就意味著，選舉仍然是重要的。從字面上看，我們需要選舉，以便讓整個體制能夠運轉。但是選舉並不是政府的目標，而只是公民收回授給政府的權力的手段。
問題是，作為手段的選舉，其規則、程序和基本的“組織機構”無法滿足人民對於作為目的的民主的信念。我們想得複雜一些，試著推測一下人民的願望、他們的意圖。我們先忘記2000年的佛羅里達州，當時那兒的官員們將選票舉過頭頂，似乎想看看是否有光線從撕出口子的紙片上透過來。
在一個跨越四個時區的國家（在此還沒有考慮阿拉斯加和夏威夷），不能按這樣的方式進行選舉。即使在其他方面我們需要很快得到消息，選舉的公平性卻要求在投票全部結束之後再公佈消息。選區必須犧牲效率（新的無紙化選舉技術今後也許能夠保證效率）以獲得合法性，此時紙質單據是有效的，選票的一張張重新統計也是有效的核實方法。
正如你所知道的，這個問題主要是技術性的。我將試圖說明，還有一個不同的問題，它至少同樣重要：我們不僅需要盡量簡單的民主程序，也需要盡量多的民主參與。對於學生們來說，美國的教育系統是不成功的，因為我們不知道沒有限制的民主選舉的界限在哪。我們告訴學生一致同意本身就有價值，即使我們知道一致同意只會出現在獨裁或者其他極其罕見的場合。正如James Buchanan和Kenneth Arrow以及其他許多公共選擇學派學者所指出的那樣，不能把團體看成像個人那樣具有偏好。換種說法來說，從可能性、合法性、合理性方面說，人們都可以表示不同意。民主的作用不是消除不同意見，而是防止政治上的不同意見轉化成武力衝突。
那麼在什麼意義上政府依賴於“被統治者的同意”呢？美國的體制在此顯得好像是笨拙的，但是它結合了共和的觀念，在這里政治抉擇是間接的，而且立法權是分散的，此時需要有一致的共識。在眾議院通過議案需要人口的大多數的同意，在參議院通過議案需要大多數州的同意。在議案成為法律前，還需要得到總統個人的同意，總統的選民是全國人民。其結果遠非是“民主”的，但是它符合基本的民主原則：除非得到我們被統治者的同意，政府就不能對我們做任何事。選舉是對專制暴政的防範，而不是實現人民意願的魔法。
我們今後走向何方？
政策制訂者要注意兩個時代錯誤，這兩個錯誤使美國的選舉制度和民主意識形態的失敗情形更為複雜化。這確實是兩個明顯的時代錯誤，其中的每一個都需要立刻予以注意。
首先，我們的民主技術太古老，已經到了被濫用、或者至少是到了難以被信任的程度。我們必須把這種選舉技術帶入21世紀，因為我們對可能的技術了解得很少。我們必須解決劃票和計票的信用機制問題，這方面的問題已經受到廣泛責備。正如2004年的選舉所表明的那樣，我們的機制已經幾乎是不合時宜了。
第二，我們的民主意識形態，我們對於民主能做些什麼的觀念，也是一個時代錯誤。但是，這個時代錯誤不是由過去的時代繼承過來的，而是從對於未來的烏托邦科學幻想小說中傳過來的。所以，我們也必須將選舉意識形態帶回到19世紀，它屬於那個世紀。我們對民主和民主制度期待得太多，完全超出了其可能性。
這篇文章可能讓我看起來像是民主的敵人、精英主義的瘋漢。當然，這種看法也並非完全錯誤。但是討論民主的缺陷並不就是讚賞精英統治或獨裁專制。我只是認為，對於民主實際是什麼、民主實際能做些什麼，我們應當持有一種謹慎的懷疑態度。許多政策矛盾都有賴於公眾是否能夠告訴個人應當做些什麼。在政策辯論中有一個細微之處常被忽略：公眾決定和集體決定不是一回事。公眾決定將來會影響到做出決定的每個人自己：我們大家只有一個國防預算；污染了河流不僅弄髒了我的水，也弄髒了你的水。
另一方面，只有在多數被授權將他們的意願施加在每一個人身上時，集體的決定才影響到我們所有人。這樣的政策決定不具備真正的公眾特性；我們只是根據舉手的人數去做出決定，並將暴力放到一幫暴徒手中。
現在是一種非常好的情況，許多集體決定也是公眾決定。但是我們必須看到個人選擇和集體選擇之間的分界線，並且很好地保護它。正如PJ O'Rourke所注意到的那樣，多數喜歡某種東西並不意味著多數要為每個人選擇那種東西。
“現在多數決定原則成為寶貴的、神聖的東西，值得用生命去追求。但是——像其他寶貴的、神聖的東西，例如家庭一樣——它並非唯一值得用生命去追求的東西，它也可能讓你覺得還不如死了算了。設想一下所有生命都由多數決定原則確定。每餐都吃比薩。每條褲子，甚至每套套裝，都用機洗斜紋布來做。名人食譜和練習本成為圖書館的書架上僅有的東西。並且——因為婦女是人口的多數，我們都得和梅.格伯森結婚。”（O'Rourke著，《無賴們的議會》，1991年，第5頁）
自由的真正關鍵作用是使人民免於多數暴政的統治，或者叫免於民主的暴政的統治。這種民主就是Fareed Zakaria所說的“粗鄙的民主”。下面的特徵有助於我們理解自己的事情，它也包含了我們試圖告訴別人的東西：
“對於大部分當代史來說，能夠刻畫出歐洲、北美的政府的東西，並且將它們與世界上的其他政府區別開來的東西，並不是民主，而是立憲自由主義。'西方政府模式'的最大象徵不是大量的公民投票，而是公正的法官。”（Fareed Zakaria著，《自由的未來》，第9頁）
美國憲法的締造者們深刻認識到，民主本身並不能，而且根本不能確保人們的自由或財產。當我們建議其他國家如何構造比較好的政府體制時，只是因為我們能夠自擔風險，我們才能忽略我們自己歷史上對純粹的民主的懷疑。在我們幫助發展中國家設計政府時，我們需要苦口婆心地推薦像美國這樣的模式。 Thomas Hobbes說過：“沒有利劍保障的條約，只不過是一張廢紙。”現在這句話也可以這樣說：“沒有人權法案保障的民主，只不過是一種暴政。”
注：本文作者Michael Munger是美國杜克大學政治學會的主席。
Democracy is a Means, Not an End
by Michael Munger
January 10, 2005
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Mungerdemocracy.html
Democracy is a Means, Not an End
Michael Munger*
FEATURED ARTICLE | JANUARY 10, 2005
"The reason democratic nations have personal liberties, property rights, and rule of law is not that they are democracies. Rather, nations that have those things embody the entire package of the Western tradition of good government."
everyone loves democracy. Ask an American if there is a better form of government, and they'll be insulted. You believe in democracy, don't you? And what exactly is it that you believe in? What people mean by "democracy" is some vague combination of good government, protection of individual rights, extremely broad political participation, and widely shared economic prosperity. One might as well throw in an ideal body mass index and a great latke recipe. It's all good, but doesn't mean much, and few people like to think about what democracy really means.
It is fine to celebrate the great achievements of democracies, once they are firmly established. But such celebrations confuse cause and effect. The reason democratic nations have personal liberties, property rights, and rule of law is not that they are democracies. Rather, nations that have those things embody the entire package of the Western tradition of good government. Requiring that government actions hinge on the consent of the governed is the ribbon that holds that bundle together, but it is not the bundle itself. Fareed Zakaria identified this "bundle" problem perfectly.
For people in the West, democracy means "liberal democracy": a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. But this bundle of freedoms—what might be termed "constitutional liberalism"—has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West. After all, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via free elections. (The Future of Freedom, p. 17, emphasis mine).
So—just what is democracy? In our mental potpourri, good government leads the list. But then what is 'good government?' A starting point could be voting and majority rule: most people can choose for all of us, and majorities can impose their will on minorities.
Such blanket endorsements of majority rule make me wonder whether democracy is a fraud or just a conceit. As William Riker pointed out in his 1982 book, Liberalism Against Populism, the claim that "fair" processes always, or even often, lead to "good" outcomes ignores much of what is known about institutions and institutional change. If people disagree, and if there are several choices, democracy is manipulable, even dictatorial. For modern political science, this is called the "Arrow Problem," after Kenneth Arrow.
If all we mean by democracy is a civil myth, a conceit, it could be useful. The idea of democracy honors common people, calming the mind and pleasing the agora. If democracy is a fraud, however, then we are in bleaker and more sinister terrain. The pretense that in the multitude we find rectitude is dangerous: many of us would love to impose our "wisdom" on others. Saluting the collective wisdom is simply a way to hold other citizens down whilst we steal their purses, or pack their children off to war.
And it has ever been thus. As Polybius tells us:
The Athenian [democracy] is always in the position of a ship without a commander. In such a ship, if fear of the enemy, or the occurrence of a storm induce the crew to be of one mind and to obey the helmsman, everything goes well; but if they recover from this fear, and begin to treat their officers with contempt, and to quarrel with each other because they are no longer all of one mind,—one party wishing to continue the voyage, and the other urging the steersman to bring the ship to anchor; some letting out the sheets, and others hauling them in, and ordering the sails to be furled,—their discord and quarrels make a sorry show to lookers on; and the position of affairs is full of risk to those on board engaged on the same voyage; and the result has often been that, after escaping the dangers of the widest seas, and the most violent storms, they wreck their ship in harbour and close to shore.—Polybius, Histories, Book VI, Chapter 44, ca. 130 B.C. (Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, 1889).
This is not a call for dictatorship, however. The core of the Arrow problem is that societies choose between two evils: the tyranny of a Hitler or the potential for incoherence described by Polybius. My thesis is that "democracy" without the safeguards of constitutional liberalism is both tyrannical and incoherent, the worst system imaginable.
The U.S. is Not a Democracy
None of this was news to the American founders. Elections helped citizens control elected officials, and little more. This early skepticism is plain, as in this passage from Federalist #10:
…a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
America is a federal republic, with horizontal separation of powers among executive, legislature, and judiciary, and vertical separation of powers between the central government and the states. The Declaration of Independence is straightforward: the American system is based on the claim that all citizens have rights, and "That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…" That means that elections are still important. We need elections, literally depend on them to make the whole system work. But elections are not the ends of government, just the means by which citizens can withhold consent.
The problem is that the rules, procedures, and the basic "machinery" of electoral choice as a means have not kept up with the faith people seem to have in democracy as an end. We try to divine the will of the people, their "intent," on complex questions. Who can forget Florida in 2000, where officials held ballots over their heads, trying to see light through partially detached bits of cardstock chads?
Elections cannot work this way, not in a nation four times zones wide (not even counting Alaska or Hawaii). Even though in other aspects of our lives we demand instant information, electoral fairness requires that the states withhold information until all the polls are closed. Voting precincts must sacrifice efficiency (which new paperless voting technologies would appear to offer) for legitimacy, where paper receipts are available and where recounts involve actual physical checks of ballots, one by one.
But you knew about this problem, which is mostly technical. I am trying to argue that there is a different problem, at least as important: we don't just demand too little of our democratic procedures, we are expecting too much of our democratic process. The educational system in the U.S. has failed students, because we don't know the limits of unlimited democratic choice. We teach that consensus as a value in itself, even though we know that true consensus appears only in dictatorships or narrowly defined decisions. As James Buchanan, Kenneth Arrow, and a host of public choice scholars have shown, groups cannot be thought to have preferences in the same way that individuals do. To put it another way, it is perfectly possible, and legitimate, for reasonable people to disagree. The role of democracy is not to banish disagreement, but rather to prevent political disagreements from devolving into armed conflict.
But then in what sense does government depend on "the consent of the governed"? The American system seems cumbersome, but it combines the notion of a republic, where policy choice is indirect, with separation of powers of legislation, where an overlapping consensus is required. A majority of the population is required to pass the House, but a majority in a majority of the states is required to pass the Senate. Then the President, whose constituency is the entire nation, must separately consent before the bill becomes law. The result is far removed from "democracy," but the system does ensure the fundamental democratic principle: government can't do things to us unless we the governed give our consent. Elections are a check on tyranny, not a conjuring of the will of the people.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Policy makers must understand the twin anachronisms that complicate the failures of voting institutions and democratic ideologies in the U.S. There really are two distinct anachronisms, each of which requires immediate attention.
First, our technology of democracy is too old, and prone to abuse or at least distrust. We must bring voting technology into the 21st century, because we accept much less than is possible. We must immediately solve the problem of guaranteeing mechanisms for recording and counting votes that are beyond reproach. As the election of 2004 shows, we are nearly out of time.
Second, our ideology of democracy, our notion of what democracy can accomplish, is anachronistic also. But in this case, the anachronism is not out of the past, but out of a utopian science fiction future. So, we must also take voting ideology back to the 19th century, where it belongs. We have come to expect much more than is possible from democracy, and democratic institutions.
This essay may make me sound like an enemy of democracy, some kind of elitist nut. Well, that's not entirely wrong. But describing democracy's flaws is not the same as arguing the virtues of elitism or dictatorship. I just want to foster an humble skepticism about what democracy really is and what it can actually accomplish. Many policy conflicts hinge on whether the public can tell individuals what to do. There is a subtlety that is often missed in policy debate: there is a difference between public decisions and collective decisions. Public decisions affect everyone by the nature of the choice itself: we can only have one defense budget; polluting rivers befouls not just my water, but yours.
Collective decisions, on the other hand, affect us all only because the majority is empowered to force its will on everyone. There need be no true public aspects to the decision as a policy outcome; we have just chosen to take the decision out of individuals' hands and put the power in the hands of the mob.
Now, it may very well be the case that lots of collective decisions are also public. But we need to see the line dividing private and collective choices, and to defend it fiercely. As P. J. O'Rourke notes, the fact that a majority likes something doesn't mean that the majority should get to choose that something for everyone.
Now, majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But—like other precious, sacred things, such as the home and the family—it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diets and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And—since women are a majority of the population, we'd all be married to Mel Gibson. (O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores, 1991, p. 5).
The real key to freedom is to secure people from tyranny by the majority, or freedom from democracy. The problem, then, is what Fareed Zakaria has called "illiberal democracy." The metaphor we use to understand ourselves matters, because it figures in how we try to advise others.
For much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The "Western model of government" is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge. (Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, p. 20.)
The framers of the U.S. Constitution fully recognized that there is nothing, nothing at all, inherent in democracy that ensures the freedom of persons or property. When we advise other nations about how to devise better systems of government, our own historical skepticism about the power of pure democracy can be neglected only at our peril. When we help a developing nation design its government, we need unashamedly to advocate something like the U.S. model. Thomas Hobbes said "Covenants, without the Sword, are but words." The modern equivalent might be this: "Democracy, without the Bill of Rights, is but tyranny."
* Michael Munger is Chair of Political Science at Duke University.
For more articles by Michael Munger, see the Archive.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Mungerdemocracy.html
from (title unknown) http://www.inmediahk.net/%E8%BD%89%E8%BC%89%E5%8F%8A%E6%80%9D%E8%80%83%E5%8F%8D%E7%9C%81
