Analysis Of Democracy By John L Anderson

Democracy has been a topic discussed for hundreds of years and a general idea of the topic would be the “governing of people by the people”. Many people have attempted “to sketch characteristics, or outcomes or preconditions, because democracy itself” (4) has been seen to be a difficult concept to define. In John L Anderson’s ‘What is Democracy?’ (2004) he takes an alternative approach to understanding democracy. Anderson explains that there is no “tidy set of ideas”, but rather “an indirect approach to defining democracy” (4) in order to understand and teach the concept of democracy. He states that there are four notion to achieve this: seeking the public interest helps us develop a morality based upon concern for others; governing others

The first section is ‘Public Interest’. He looks at Aristotle’s era for a “basic analysis of democracy” (5). Democracy, in Greek, meant rule by the masses (kratein demos). The word Demos was not a positive outlook at the people, but meant their worst form and depicted them as selfish and only interested in achieving their own goals. Aristotle believed that “governments are problematic when people rule with their self-interest in mind” (5). However, we are all selfish, and what matters is how our self-interest impacts the rest of society. Plato, a philosopher before Aristotle’s time, explains in his book The Republic, that we are inherently selfish and the only thing that keeps chaos out of reach are the rules we abide by. As selfish humans, we look for like minded people and proceed to give them the power to make their selfish desires acceptable by law - we call them governments. However the difference between a bad government and a good one is one that can distinguish our desires from the bad and the good and make good decisions for the greater number of

He talks about how we inherently acknowledge the laws and norms of society, even when we are not being judged by the members of society. I agree to a degree on this notion. I agree that trust is important, but I think it is a concept that see-saws on the fence of our sub-conscience against doubt. We start out trusting our society because of the laws in place. However, after someone has broken the law and has had consequences, we begin to slowly drop the trust in the society we sub-consciously believed in and the doubt rises a little. Let us take the example Anderson presents in his article. He explains that we all know the rules of the road. If we see a stop sign we stop we automatically know we must stop, regardless of whether there are other cars or not. However, let us presume that at a stop sign a driver does not stop because they know it is usually a quiet street, and actually speeds up. A pedestrian, knowing the same rule, assumes a driver will stop because it is a stop sign. However the driver, not having slowed down, accidently hits and kills the pedestrian. Following that accident, our trust in society falls, but our want to follow the rules rises. Even in our own laws. We buy insurance when driving, not because we believe we are bad drivers, but we believe others might be. As important as trust is, we take everything with caution,