Criticism of democracy
as a concept and as a practical form of government has been the subject of critique throughout history. Some critics consider that democratic regimes often fail to be true to the highest principles expected of them, while others reject the values promoted by constitutional democracy in whole or part.
Opposition to democracy goes as far back as Plato, who argued for a 'government of the best qualified'. More recently, James Madison extensively studied historic attempts at and arguments on democracy in his preparation for the Constitutional Convention, and Winston Churchill remarked that, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Critics argue that modern democracies may fail to be sufficiently democratic and instead function in practice as oligarchies, insofar as governments are more responsive to the preferences of economic elites than to those of ordinary citizens. Numerous empirical studies across various western democracies including the United States, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Norway and Germany have consistently found that elected representatives tend to respond more to the preferences of very affluent citizens for policy outcomes than those of the average voter.
Some critics of democracy have highlighted the concept's inconsistencies, paradoxes, and limits: drawing contrasts with other forms of government, such as epistocracy or lottocracy. Others have characterized most modern democracies as democratic polyarchies and democratic aristocracies. Yet others have identified fascist moments in modern democracies. They have termed the societies produced by modern democracies as neo-feudal and have contrasted democracy with fascism, anarcho-capitalism, theocracy, and absolute monarchy.
Historical criticism
Classical philosophy
Our understanding of classical theories of democracy depend heavily on the work of critics. For example, Robert Dahl has written, "Although the practices of modern democracy bear only a weak resemblance to the political institutions of classical Greece... Greek democratic ideas have been more influential... what we know of their ideas comes less from the writings and speeches of democratic advocates, of which only fragments survive, than from their critics." Amongst those critics, Aristotle, Plato and Thucydides are notable.Aristotle was a mild critic of democracy. The essence of his critique was that he "disliked the power that he thought the expansion of democracy necessarily gave to the poor." Plato was also skeptical of the broad scope of democracy: he advocated for "government by the best qualified." Early liberal democracy paid attention to these critiques. For example, James Madison "trained rigorously in... ancient learning" as a young man, and the ideas of ancient authors explain a "facet of Madison's recorded attitude on the nature of man." The influence of ancient critiques of democracy can be seen in the way Madison spent the months before the Constitutional Convention "studying many centuries of political philosophy and histories of past attempts at republican forms of government."
According to Dahl, Aristotle and Plato would agree with most advocates of modern democracy that an aim of the society is "to produce good citizens", and that "Virtue, justice, and happiness are companions... developing citizens who seek the common good."
Thucydides, the famous Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, witnessed the fall of Athenian democracy and applied scientific history in his critique of the democratic government. At the heart of his critique was an assertion that democracy failed "in the search for truth" and that leaders and citizens attempted "to impose their own speech-dependent meanings on reality." Thucydides blamed "public orators" and demagogues for a failure of epistemic knowledge, allowing most Athenians to "believe silly things about their past and the institutions of their opponents."
Post-classical era criticism
Italian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas favored "a mixed government combining elements of democracy, aristocracy and kingship... is reminiscent of Aristotle's preference for mixed government over either democracy or oligarchy." Scholars also consider "the substantial medieval literature in support of the Inquisitions" to be opposed to modern ideas of democracy.Democracy existed in a few "city-states of medieval Italy... were ultimately submerged in imperial or oligarchic rule." The idea of "representation was not invented by democrats but developed instead as a medieval institution of monarchical and aristocratic government," and had its beginnings in "assemblies summoned by the monarch, or sometimes the nobles themselves, to deal with important matters of state." The "state of military technology and organization" in medieval Europe was "highly unfavorable in its effects" on democracy.
Medieval Jewish political philosophy, being influenced by Plato, Muslim thought and Halakhic concepts, was "monarchist, and inherently anti-democratic."
Traditional Asian societies were regarded as anti-democratic, but Amartya Sen has pointed out that "It is not hard, of course, to find authoritarian writings within the Asian traditions. But neither is it hard to find them in Western classics: One has only to reflect on the writings of Plato or Aquinas to see that devotion to discipline is not a special Asian taste."
Since the post-classical period, Islam has been an important pillar of society for much of the world, and some critics have defended this tradition from "the secular assumptions of the Enlightenment" and an "uncritical universalism" that "erodes historical continuity and the sense of community that sustains traditional societies." In many societies today, people of faith challenge the idea of "secularism as the only 'rational' way to deal with the challenges of life."
Early modern criticism
, one of the first philosophers of the Enlightenment, published Leviathan in 1651 in defense of "absolute sovereignty" and in support of the royalist side in the English Civil War. Hobbes was a critic of democracy because "the sovereign in a democracy can only exercise its power when it is actually assembled together... Only in a monarchy is the capacity to govern always exercised." Hobbes also considered that democracy would undermine the social contract because it leads to instability, conflict, glory-seeking, and mistrust. Later Enlightenment thinkers, such as Madison, who shared Hobbesian concerns about "the strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses" of human nature, would use some of these critiques to improve modern democracy.Romantic era criticism
critics of democracy include Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, James Fitzjames Stephen, Henry Maine, and William Lecky. In his study, Benjamin Evans Lippincott wrote that "they opposed democracy fundamentally for the same reason as Plato—that democracy led to disorder." However, their historical contribution was to critique democracy under capitalism in modern industrial society. They believed that democracy produced anarchy in society, not simply anarchy within the individual as Plato believed.Lippincott argued that this group held three fundamental doctrines: "the common man's inferiority, the title of the few to rule, and authority." They found sources for these principles in Puritanism, middle-class ideas of power, and the classical education that they had received in their youth. The three doctrines were "most perfectly represented in Plato's Republic," while classical history seemed to provide examples of "the common man's inferiority" as in the cases of Athens and Rome, "which showed the populace turning to disorder." The three doctrines had been developed during the Reformation and the Enlightenment by writers like John Calvin, Edmund Burke and David Hume.
Political and philosophical criticism
Competence of the electorate
's view was that the ability of common men to vote was one of democracy's key failings. This aspect of democracy means that the vote of an expert has equal value to the vote of 'an incompetent'. Jason Brennan believes that low information voters are a significant problem in America, and that this is the main objection to democracies in general because the system does not incentivize being or becoming better informed. He cites a study in which it was found that less than 30% of Americans could name two or more of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights. He believes an informed voter should have extensive knowledge of the candidate's current and previous political beliefs/tendencies. He concludes that an epistocracy, which would only give a vote to those with an elite political understanding, would be better than a broad democracy.Charles Maurras, a supporter of the Vichy regime and principal philosopher of the right-wing Action Française movement, believed in biological inequality and natural hierarchies. He argued that the individual is naturally subordinate to collectivities such as the family, society, and the state, and so those are doomed to fail if they are founded on the "myth of equality" or "abstract liberty". Maurras criticized democracy as being a "government by numbers" in which quantity matters more than quality, and the worst is favored over the best. Maurras denounced the principles of liberalism as described in The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as based upon the false assumptions of liberty and equality. He claimed that the parliamentary system subordinates the national interest, or common good, to private interests of a parliament's representatives where only short-sighted interests of individuals prevail. Other studies have found that attempts, such as those proposed by Maurras, to replace democratic meritocracy with authoritarian meritocracy face challenges since power can override merit.
In his criticism of Western liberal democracy, academic Zhang Weiwei argues that liberal democracy is insufficiently meritocratic and fails to choose trustworthy leaders.