Democracy and its Critics.

As AMERICANS self-confidently embark upon a third century of democracy, and as the people of Eastern Europe throw off oppression and demand free elections, one of our most influential political scientistsRobert Dahl, Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale-presents a surprisingly pessimistic interpretation of what democracy means today, and under what conditions it will survive in the next century.

Dahl describes two great historical transformations: the birth of democracy in the independent cities of ancient Greece, on a scale so small that all citizens could assemble to participate directly; and the evolution of representative government during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries-a development that made self-government possible on a truly national scale. Dahl observes that in small city-states such as Athens, where citizens shared common circumstances and a common vision, the good citizen observed the ideal of public virtue, always putting the good of the polis above his private interests. This ideal of public virtue "is so lofty and charming that a modern democrat can hardly fail to be attracted to it," Dahl writes. But modern nations bring together so many diverse, even conflicting, economic interests, cultural viewpoints, and local concerns that it is no longer even possible to aspire to this goal, he believes, let alone to achieve it.

As in several of his previous books, Dahl presents the "pluralist model" of modern representative government, and contemporary voter motivation. It's a gloomy model. It regards politics as a marketplace, in which individuals and interest groups struggle to advance self-interest by electing representatives who will serve as their advocates. The legislature, in Dahl's model, is a meeting of agents from different and competing constituencies, each struggling to gain the most from government and surrender the least. He contends that conflicts arising from the complexity and diversity of a nation like the United States (particularly between the working class and the economically powerful) make it impossible for citizens to be inspired by any vision of a common national purpose. Dahl calls the ideal of virtuous leadership for the common good a "lost tradition" and "irrelevant" to modem life. But he underestimates the importance of the ideals of virtuous leadership and national purpose in the development of democratic institutions. In Democracy and Its Critics, he traces the history of democratic thought without even mentioning the contributions of America's founding generation, although he sparred with James Madison in an earlier work, A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956). Like Dahl, the Antifederalists who opposed the U.S. Constitution two hundred years ago doubted that a nation as vast and diverse as the United States could share common interests and be governed on the principle of public virtue. The Antifederalists would be pluralists today. In response to these men of little faith, James Madison composed one of the most important political treatises ever written, The Federalist No. 10, in which he explained that virtuous leadership was more possible in a large, heterogeneous nation than in a small city state such as Athens. In the United States, Madison observed, each election district was so large and included so many different constituents that representatives would be compelled to serve many different interests and be servile to none. When the Antifederalists demanded that members of Congress be elected annually and submit to instructions and recall by their home districts, defenders of the Constitution replied that congressmen should not be so dependent on their local constituents that they could not take a broader view of national issues. Congress was to be more than a mirror of public opinion. As Madison explained in The Federalist, the purpose of the new Constitution was to encourage the election of wise, virtuous leaders and afford them enough independence to govern for the good of the whole.

In 1836, the year Madison died, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Americans would reject the ideals of the founding generation; that in their passion for equality Americans would deny their political leaders the ability to govern for the common good by making their representatives in Congress mere spokesmen for local interests. But Tocqueville's prediction proved only half true. Few of us today would say we vote for the virtuous candidate, but when we elect our representatives, we entrust government to them which means we expect them at times to echo our opinions and barter for our interests, but at other times to exercise their disinterested judgment and broad vision. Dahl's pluralist model reduces a legislature to a trading floor crowded with agents, each hustling for the biggest share of the nation's wealth, while Madison's model elevates the legislature to a deliberative assembly of statesmen working for one nation and pursuing one interest, the public good.

Dahl's underlying motives are revealed in the book's final section, Toward a

Third Transformation," wherein he suggests what changes democratic nations will have to make in the next century to achieve "the vision of a people governing themselves as political equals." Like other pluralists, Dahl is troubled that the politics of self-interest do not always result in the fairest distribution of goods and rewards, because not all citizens are equally effective at asserting their interests. The rich and economically powerful, he contends, wield the most political clout and win more than their share of the spoils. Dahl presents a radical agenda for change that includes restructuring corporate ownership and control, doing away with outside investors, and allotting to each worker an equal share in the ownership of business and an equal vote in corporate decisions. He is outraged by economic inequality, and he is passionately committed to a redistribution of wealth and economic power. (Although many social critics look to the judiciary to correct the imperfect or unjust results of the democratic process, Dahl refuses to make the judges our Platonic guardians.)

Far from clouding the issues, the tone of moral outrage in this section clarifies what has been a shadowy, half-hidden theme throughout the book. Democracy, with the improvements Dahl suggests, is finally revealed to be a means not an end. In Dahl's vision of ideal democracy, every citizen seeks out political information, analyzes it, and makes enlightened judgments about what political choices will maximize his self-interest. Yet Dahl's agenda for change makes almost no mention of the urgent need to improve basic public education. What are we to do about the swelling underclass of illiterate, politically alienated young people who are products of our failing inner-city schools? Redistributed wealth in the hands of illiterate citizens will not preserve self-government. A drastic commitment of resources to public education, not the restructuring of capitalism, is needed to prepare the nation for another century of democracy.

Dahl ends by proposing a "minipopulus," or congress of one thousand adults drawn randomly from the population, which, he argues, would reflect public opinion more accurately than our elected legislatures. Dahl assumes that any randomly chosen person can represent another person with the same socio-economic interests, and consequently argues that this randomly composed body would legitimately "represent" the nation. However, true democrats, whose political motivations are broader than self-interest and who expect their elected leaders to do more than mirror public opinion, will find Dahl's proposal demeaning.

No wonder that when Dahl looks toward non-democratic nations (in Eastern Europe, for instance), he judges it unlikely free governments can be established there. There is no place in Dahl's theory of political behavior for the noble aspirations that inspired Vaclav Havel, and moved people throughout Eastern Europe to revolt; for many at the cost of their lives. Dahl lists five conditions favorable to the birth of democracy and finds them lacking in unfree nations. Unfortunately he left leadership off the list. He failed to account for Lech Walesa. Of course, no one dreamed that democratic revolution would occur in Eastern Europe just as this book was being published. But those who appreciate the impact of principled leaders on the political aspirations of ordinary citizens waited hopefully and were rewarded. Was Dahl disappointed? Probably not, although he may have blushed a bit as the Berlin Wall came down.

This is a provocative, scholarly, and elegantly written book treating questions about self-government that philosophers and nation builders have been probing for centuries. But Dahl's underlying assumptions, about the character of our citizens and the purpose of the political process, are uninspiring. Anyone who hopes that the nation will strive toward good government and moral leadership, and the preservation of self-government as well, will find The Federalist a more useful guidebook for the twenty-first century. The central principle of that book remains true today: the aim of every democracy must be to choose leaders who have "the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue, the common good of society."