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WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DEMOCRACY? REFLECTIONS ON AN ESSENTIALLY
CONTESTED CONCEPT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO POLITICS AND PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Michael W. Spicer
Cleveland State University
ABSTRACT
This paper argues that democracy is what philosophers have termed an essentially contested
concept, in the sense that its meaning and applications appear to be subject to endless
contestation, but that the origins of such contestation are to be found in our political practices
rather than in the concept per se. It is argued, therefore, that an acceptance of the essentially
contested character of democracy, as well as of other political concepts, is important in
protecting and fostering these political practices. It is also argued that the idea of contestation
itself is important as a part of our own historically situated understanding of democracy. The
implications of these arguments for how public administration scholars should think about
democracy and constitutionalism are examined.
The idea of democracy has been a subject of ongoing concern for American public
administration ever since its inception as a self-conscious field of enquiry. In fact, it can be
argued that the academic field of public administration in America itself arose originally out of
the question as to how best to reconcile somehow the requirements for an efficient and energetic
Continental-style public administration with the values of democracy. However, whereas much
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that is insightful has been written about the relationship of public administration to democracy,1
it is frankly not always clear what public administration writers mean exactly by the term
democracy or, for that matter, that they always mean the same thing by it.
Many writers have followed in a sort of Hegelian tradition of political discourse set forth
by Frank Goodnow over a century ago and have sought to express the idea of democracy in
terms of the formulation and expression of some sort of democratic or popular will as expressed
through our elected political institutions, a will that administrators should seek to carry out as
efficiently and as effectively as they can. Public management writers, Anthony Bertelli and
Laurence Lynn, for example, would appear to express such a view when they suggest that
“accountability or answerability to the collectively expressed values and will of citizens is … a
long recognized dimension of responsible public management” (2006, 44). Seeking to legitimate
the role of public management in our constitutional system of government, these writers claim
that it is the job of public managers “to divine the often cryptic expression of popular will” that is
“embedded in their mandates” (47).
On the other hand, other public administration writers, perhaps hankering for a more
classical and direct form of democracy, have sought to offer what they see as a more democratic
and participative type of administration in which administrators engage directly with groups of
citizens in public-spirited dialogues. Robert Denhardt and Linda Denhardt, for instance, in
advancing their vision for what they call a “New Public Service,” have argued that public
administrators should “take an active role in creating areas in which citizens, through discourse,
can articulate shared values and develop a collective sense of the public interest” (2000, 554-
555). According to these authors, “rather than simply responding to disparate voices by forming
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a compromise, public administrators [should] engage citizens with one another so that they come
to understand each other’s interests and adopt a longer range and broader sense of community
and societal interests” (2000, 555).
That such differences in views should exist within public administration as to the
meaning and application of the idea of democracy should perhaps not be surprising. This is
because, as Bernard Crick once reminded us, there are, in fact, “many meanings” that “attach to
the word democracy” and “if there is one true meaning then it is, indeed, as Plato might have
said, stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us” (2002, 1). In fact,
as Crick argued, “democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public
affairs. She is everybody's mistress and yet somehow retains her magic even when a lover sees
that her favours are being, in his light, illicitly shared by many another” (1993, 51).
Even among scholars who have studied democracy at some length, there frankly appears
little consensus as to what exactly the term means. In his widely-cited book, Models of
Democracy, David Held, for example, drawing on the long history of political thought, presents
an array of no less than eleven different variants of democracy. These include what Held terms
classical democracy, protective democracy, two variants of developmental democracy, direct
democracy, competitive elitism, pluralism, legal democracy, participatory democracy, and his
own model of democratic autonomy. In fact, there seem so many variants of democracy that one
is almost tempted to conclude, as did Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall over half a century
ago, that “just to list each and every one of the apparently conflicting current definitions of
democracy would be the task of a lifetime” (1951, 434).
In other words, democracy seems to be, as Crick observed, “what some philosophers
have called 'an essentially contested concept', one of those terms we can never all agree to define
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in the same way because the very definition carries a different social, moral, or political agenda”
(Crick, 2002, 1). The purpose of this paper is to examine the conflicts or contests in meanings of
democracy and the implications of these conflicts for American public administration. In order to
do this, the paper draws on the idea of “essentially contested concepts,” as discussed by W. B.
Gallie, as well as others such as William Connolly,2 to explore how and why it is historically that
we have used the term democracy in so many different and contesting ways. It is argued here that
the origins of the essentially contested character of political concepts, such as democracy, are to
be found in political practice rather than in scholarship and that a recognition of the idea of
essentially contested concepts is, therefore, important in protecting and fostering politics, by
encouraging parties to disputes to settle their difference by means of argumentation rather than
force or violence. Following this, the paper explores also how the notion of contestability itself is
important to our historical understanding of the meaning of democracy. Finally, the paper
explores the implications of the essentially contested character of democracy for public
administration. It is argued here that public administration scholars should recognize that, when
they talk or write about democracy, they must inevitably implicate themselves to some extent in
the contestation of practical politics and that, if they wish to understand democracy better, they
would do well to pay more attention to the history of the concept, which, in an American context,
includes paying attention to our constitutional ideas and practices.
DEMOCRACY AS AN ESSENTIALLY CONTESTED CONCEPT
It may be helpful to begin here by thinking about the possible reasons for the various
disagreements or disputes that arise regarding the meaning of a term such as democracy. One
reason, of course, may be that one or more of the parties to the dispute, while well-meaning, are
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frankly confused or ill-informed as to the meaning of the term and simply cannot see their
particular mistake or error. Another reason may be that one or more parties to the dispute are
being deceptive and are cynically promoting what they themselves fully recognize as a false
definition of the term so as to promote either their selfish interests or, perhaps more charitably,
those of a group to whom they feel a particularly strong loyalty. However, notwithstanding the
fact that many disagreements about the meaning of democracy arise for precisely these reasons,
the argument advanced in this paper is that many disagreements also can and do arise and,
moreover, will likely continue to arise over time because democracy is what Gallie has termed an
“essentially contested concept.”
An essentially contested concept may be said to exist where, historically, there has been
an ongoing and genuine disagreement among different parties as to the exact meaning and
applications of the concept. Moreover, each of the parties to this disagreement appears quite
capable of advancing reasonable arguments in defense of its interpretation of the concept in
question. To use Gallie’s words, essentially contested concepts or terms are those, such as “art,”
“democracy,” or “justice” where “when we examine the different uses of these terms and the
characteristic arguments in which they figure we soon see that there is no one clearly definable
general use of any of them which can be set up as the correct or standard use” (1956, 168).
Rather, such examination, in fact, gives rise to disputes that are “centred on the concepts” and
that are “perfectly genuine” and “which, although not resolvable by argument of any kind, are
nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence” (169). In such cases, as
Gallie puts it, any discussion with respect to “the proper uses” of these concepts “inevitably
involves endless disputes” (169).
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When a concept is essentially contested in this manner, according to Gallie, such a
concept is typically, among other things, not simply descriptive. It is also “appraisive” or
evaluative “in the sense that it signifies or accredits some kind of valued achievement” (1956,
171). In other words, what is described in using or talking about the concept is something that is
normally thought of as being good or desirable. However, at the same time, such a concept is
also “variously describable,” so that, depending upon which different aspects or parts of the
concept happen to be emphasized, as Gallie notes, “there is nothing absurd or contradictory in
any one of a number of possible rival descriptions of its total worth” (172). Furthermore, as he
sees it, an essentially contested concept is also “open” in that it “admits of considerable
modification in the light of changing circumstances; and such modification cannot be prescribed
or predicted in advance” (172).
In light of the above, democracy would appear to be precisely such an essentially
contested concept. Certainly, it must be conceded that democracy has always had more than its
fair share of critics going back to Plato and even today, as Alasdair Roberts (2017) has pointed
out, there are still continuing complaints levelled against it. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say
that, across the past century and half or so, democracy has come to be thought of, at least within
the developed world, almost universally in affirmative terms, as something to be sought after and
protected, so much so, in fact, that even the shabbiest dictatorships have attempted to appropriate
the term for themselves to characterize their own regimes and to justify their repressive practices.
To use Ranney and Kendall’s words, “‘democracy’ has become, the world over, what social
psychologists call an ‘honorific’ word. It is like ‘truth,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘decency’ in that it evokes
such pleasant associations in most of us that we wish to identify ourselves and our ideas with it”
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(1951, 431). In fact, it can be argued, as Gallie puts it, that democracy has become “the
appraisive political concept par excellence” (1956, 184).
Moreover, as indicated earlier in this paper, the concept of democracy has certainly
proven, over its long history, to be “variously describable” and it is the case that more than a few
“rival descriptions” of it have been offered and continue to be offered over time, provoking
ongoing disagreements or contests over its meaning. Ranney and Kendall, for example, note the
disagreements that exist “between those who regard democracy as merely a form of government,
and those for whom it is also a social system, an economic system, and/or a ‘way of life,’” as
well as disagreements “between those who identify democracy with majority rule and those who
refuse to do” (1951, 434). William Connolly, drawing on Gallie, observes similarly “how for
some the central concept of democracy is the power of citizens to choose their government
through competitive elections” whereas “for others this factor is less important than the equality
of opportunity of all citizens in attaining positions of political leadership; for still others both of
these criteria pale in significance if the continuous participation of citizens at various levels of
public life in not attained” (1993, 10-11).
More recently, in his conceptual history of democracy, Oliver Hidalgo has enumerated
various conflicts that exist between “direct (or radical) vs. representative democracy … elitist vs.
deliberative (or participatory) democracy … liberal vs. republican democracy … pluralistic (or
market) vs. social democracy … ancient vs. modern democracy” and “Western vs. non-Western
democracy” (2008, 192). Furthermore, making quite evident both the “variously describable,” as
well as “open” character of democracy, Hidalgo argues that “the overwhelming success of the
concept [of democracy] is most of all due to its ability to subsume very different historical ideas
and realities under its semantic field” and that “the historical evolution of the concept reveals
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that no unequivocal definition is possible because of the significant paradoxes, aporias, and
contradictions it contains” (176)
THE POLITICAL ROOTS OF ESSENTIALLY CONTESTED CONCEPTS
In summary, therefore, democracy seems to possess important characteristics, ascribed by
Gallie and others, to an essentially contested concept.3 However, when considering these various
characteristics, it is misleading, in this author’s view, to lapse into a sort of linguistic
determinism and to think, as Gallie often appears to indicate, that it is the characteristics of the
concept of democracy themselves that somehow per se cause democracy to be a contested
concept, that these characteristics are somehow the original source or well of contestation.
Rather, it seems more useful to say that the concept of democracy has in fact come to acquire
certain characteristics over time because of its actual use in the contestation that is characteristic
of practical politics. In other words, it is not that there is something inherent in the original
meaning of the word “democracy” itself that automatically triggers contestation, but rather that
the practices of contestation, which are inherent in practical politics, have, historically, shaped
the meaning of the word ‘democracy” in ways that are contradictory and contested.
Such a view is certainly lent support by Eugene Garver who argues that there is no
“demarcation criterion” that can be used to “determine which concepts are essentially contested
and which are not. Concepts are essentially contested only derivatively, because they are
employed in essentially contested arguments” (258). To put this in another way, “two
conceptions are instances of a single essentially contested concept if they compete for its title,
not the other way around” (257). It is for this reason, as Garver sees it that it is “partisans, not
theorists” who actually “determine whether a conflict involves an essentially contested concept”
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(1990, 258). Robert Grafstein argues, in a similar vein, that essentially contested concepts arise
“because politics is the terrain on which competing forces of society collide, where the
consequences of conceptions are felt by all” (1988, 22). For Grafstein, “it is the political
character of certain concepts that makes them essentially contestable in the fuller sense” because
it is this character that “transforms a relatively inert divergence between distinct definitions of
concepts into an active contest among them” (1988, 19).
It follows, therefore, that theoretical disputes over what exactly political concepts mean,
as well as how these concepts should be applied, cannot be separated from political practices,
but, rather are inextricably tied to them. As Connolly puts it,
Contests over the correct use of partly shared political concepts are themselves an
intrinsic part of politics. In convincing me to adopt your version of ‘democracy,’
‘politics,’ or ‘legitimacy’ you convince me to classify and appraise actions and practices
in new ways; you encourage me to guide my own conduct by new considerations. And if
I decide to repudiate your use, I am likely to range myself with others opposing the
interpretations, strategies, and policies that express the judgment you would have us
accept (1993, 37-38).
Furthermore, making clear the intimate connection that exists between essentially contested
concepts and political practice, Connolly argues that,
When groups range themselves around essentially contested concepts, politics is the
mode in which the contest is normally expressed. Politics involves the clash that emerges
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when appraisive concepts are shared widely but imperfectly, when mutual understanding
and interpretation is possible but in a partial and limited way, when reasoned argument
and coercive pressure commingle precariously in the endless process of defining and
resolving issues (38).
It is because of this, as Connolly observes, that “one can hardly study our politics without staking
out a position on some of these contested concepts” and that “to enunciate a public position on
these issues is to implicate oneself to some degree in our politics” (205).
This notion that essentially contested concepts should play an important, if not central,
role in politics should hardly be surprising. After all, politics is about trying to reconcile conflicts
not just among interests, but also among the competing moral outlooks or conceptions of the
good that different groups in any reasonably complex society hold to be important to them.
Political practices emerge in such societies, as Stuart Hampshire has pointed out, because “there
will always be conflicts between conceptions of the good, moral conflicts” and because “there is
everywhere a well-recognized need for procedures of conflict resolution, which can replace brute
force and domination and tyranny” (2000, 5).
One should expect, therefore, that different groups contending within such societies
would tend to adopt their own favored variant or interpretation of political concepts in order to
help them to articulate and to advance their own particular interests or conceptions of the good.
This is why, as Connolly argues, “conceptual debates over the meaning of contested concepts
such as democracy are inevitably connected to “debates over the form of the good life” (230). As
he notes, these debates are “so often intense” precisely “because we tacitly understand the
relation of these debates to our deepest commitments” (38). John Gray likewise observes that
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contests over the meaning of concepts are “indicative of conflicts between divergent patterns of
thought--which are often, if not typically, partly constitutive of rival ways of life” (1977, 344).
Understanding this interconnectedness between essentially contested political concepts
and our real world political practices is important because it helps to explain why human beings
have exhibited so many different and contradictory uses of these concepts over time. It helps to
explain why the concept of democracy has, on some occasions, been used to justify or to
legitimate certain policies and practices of government, whereas, on other occasions, it has also
been used to resist similar policies and practices. For instance, the role of government in
protecting property rights has often been seen, historically, by some advocates of democracy as
crucial to protecting the institutions of a truly liberal democracy, whereas it has often been seen
by other advocates as anathema to a truly socialist democracy. Also, seeing the connection
between essentially contested concepts helps to shed light on why it is that the concept of
democracy has frequently been employed in political struggles to promote very different and
conflicting values or conceptions of the good. Democracy has often been used, for instance, to
advance the idea and practice of freedom, but, on the other hand, it has also been employed just
as often to advance and justify the idea and practice of equality despite the fact, as many would
argue, in the case of communist democracies, the pursuit of such equality in the name of
democracy has significantly lessened if not actually destroyed freedom.
Finally, in pointing to the rootedness of essentially contested political concepts in our
political practices, it must be emphasized that this is in no way to deny the role that language
itself plays in affecting human perceptions and actions. While essentially contested political
concepts have their origins in political practices, as they are used, these concepts, in turn, shape
how people view and how they engage in these practices. As Hanna Pitkin has argued, drawing
12
on the ideas of Wittgenstein, “what we say or think discursively about [the world] must be said
or thought in language” and “that means that in saying it, we must introduce the assumptions
and implications built into our language” (1993, p. 113). In doing this, as she notes, “we invoke a
conceptual system” that “governs what we can say about reality” and that “also affects what we
perceive” (p. 114). This is why, as Connolly argues, “to understand the political life of a
community one must understand the conceptual system within which that life moves” (1993, 29).
In other word, as Wittgenstein himself once put the matter, “to imagine a language is to imagine
a form of life” (1958, para. 19) and, in politics, this language, as is argued here, is a language in
which the concept of democracy, along with other political concepts, appears be perpetually
contested.
NIHILISM, REASONING, AND CONTESTATION IN POLITICS
If one accepts that democracy is an essentially contested concept, in the sense that this
term is given here in this paper, then it is reasonable to ask what precisely are the implications of
this type of contestedness? This question is not without importance because the idea that the
meaning and uses of certain political concepts must be subject to “endless disputes,” coupled
with the notion that such disputes are rooted, not in any objective characteristics of the concepts
themselves, but rather in the contestations of practical real-world politics, may strike some
readers, to put it bluntly, at best, as theoretically barren and, at worst, as radically relativistic and
even downright nihilistic. Such a view seems to be expressed by Gray, when he expresses
concern that that “any strong variant of an essential contestability thesis must precipitate its
proponents into a radical (and probably self-defeating) skeptical nihilism” (1977, 343). Barry
Clarke observes likewise that to accept “the notion of an essentially contestable concept” comes
13
“at the cost of introducing a radical relativism into all discourse using such disputable concepts,”
as a result of which, “any one idiosyncratic usage of an essentially contestable concept would be
[just] as valid as any alternative idiosyncratic use” (1979,136).
However, to my mind, this charge of radical nihilism or relativism is unwarranted. This is
because to accept the idea that essentially contested concepts such as democracy are likely to be
the subject of seemingly perpetual contest or debate is in no way to assert that reason plays no
role at all in dealing with these concepts in the particular concrete situations that arise in practical
politics. Rather, it is simply to suggest that, to use Connolly’s words, while “the universal criteria
of rationality available to us may limit and inform such debates,” they are “insufficient to resolve
them determinately” (230). Gallie argues, in a similar fashion, how, whereas, as already noted ,
disputes regarding the meaning and uses of an essentially contested concept can be “sustained by
perfectly respectable arguments and evidence” (169), at the same time, there can be no “general
principle,” as he puts it,” for deciding, in a manner that would or might conceivably win ultimate
agreement, which of a number of contestant uses of a given concept is its ‘best use’” (1956, 189).
Indeed, for Gallie, any “account of reason” as “essentially something which demands and
deserves universal assent … fails completely as a description of those elements of reason that
make possible discussions of religious, political and artistic problems”(196).
In this regard, it is important to emphasize that, given the “appraisive” and “variously
describable” character of democracy and other essentially contested political concepts, any
reasoned disputes involving the use of these concepts must inevitably rely upon some form of
practical moral reasoning, as opposed simply to abstract logical or demonstrative reasoning. This
requires, in turn, that participants to such disputes, if they are to think, speak, and act rationally,
in the broad sense of the word, possess what Gallie terms “the habit and equipment for
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discussing the morally relevant pros and cons of any proposed line of actions” (1968, 207). As
he puts it, “in morals, as much as in religion and politics, the notion of discussion is of far greater
importance for the definition of rationality … than is the notion of demonstrative proof” (207).
Furthermore, if the implications that one can derive from an essentially contested concept
are limited, at the same time, they are by no means trivial. At the very least, it may be argued that
a recognition of the essential contested character of political concepts, as well as the rootedness
of this contestation in political practice, carries with it the implication that any permanent
resolution of the differences among conflicting or rival descriptions of political concepts, that is
to say, any permanent decontestation of these concepts, could only occur in a world without the
contestation that is, in fact, characteristic of political practice. To put the matter more bluntly,
eliminate essentially contested political concepts and one ends up eliminating much if not all of
politics, at least as it has come to be understood historically within our habits and traditions of
practice. Connolly, in critiquing the practices of his fellow political scientists, clearly sees and
appreciates this when he argues that
The desire to expunge contestability from political enquiry expresses a wish to escape
politics. It emerges either as a desire to rationalize public life, placing a set of ambiguities
and contestable orientations under the control of a settled system of understandings and
priorities, or a quest to moralize public life thoroughly, bringing all citizens under the
control of a consensus which makes politics marginal and unimportant … By
depreciating politics at the level of theory, a politics of depoliticization is … endorsed in
public life (1993, 213).
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On the other hand, a recognition of the fact that political concepts, like democracy, are
essentially contested arguably can serve to protect and to enhance politics because such a
recognition can encourage a measure of willingness among parties to a political dispute to hear
the arguments of their opponents and also to engage themselves in practices of argumentation in
dealing with the dispute. Gallie sees this, specifically in the context of democracy, when he
argues that recognizing “the essentially contested character of concept of democracy … points to
an area which calls for moral tolerance” (1968, 210-211). Connolly argues more generally that
acknowledging that “there are essentially contested concepts in politics” and that “opposing
uses” of these concepts “might not be exclusively self-serving but have defensible reasons in
their support” can have the effect of introducing “into these contests a measure of tolerance and a
receptivity to reconsideration of received views” (1993, 40-41). In other words, recognizing that
political concepts are essentially contested can help promote the practice of adversary argument
or what Hampshire terms “audi alteram partem (hear the other side),” a practice that, he argues,
is central to politics.
Of course, when considering any linkage that might exist between essentially contested
concepts and politics, one must always bear in mind there is no logical necessity at all that the
parties to a particular dispute over the meaning of a given concept should always choose to deal
with their differences by means of political argumentation. To the contrary, as Gallie rightly
reminds us, such parties, once they realize that the subject of their dispute with their opponents is
essentially contested and thus cannot be settled solely by means of demonstrative argument, may
well choose instead, in the name of democracy or, for that matter, some other political concept,
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“to cut the cackle, to damn the heretics and to exterminate the unwanted” (1956, 263). It follows,
therefore, that the choice of an individual, a political group, or a government to deal with
differences over the meaning of essentially contested concepts by means of argumentation rather
than by force or violence will be seen more often as simply a matter of political tactics rather
than as a matter of any sort of ethical or political principle.
However, as Garver points out, while it is quite true that “arguing as though one is
advocating one version of an essentially contested concept is a tactic, it is not just one among
others” (1990, 263). In particular, the practice of engaging in argumentation over the disputed
meanings of a concept can itself over time come to change the manner in which parties come to
see their disputes with their opponents. To use Garver’s words, “to treat one's opponent as
possessing another version of a single essentially contested concept is … to include that
opponent in a single community” rather than simply erecting “a boundary between one's
community of discourse and that of one's opponent” (1990, 263). Thus, as he suggests, to engage
“one's opponent in essentially contested argument” can “have a civilizing function, elevating
one's understanding of the subject in dispute, and of oneself and one’s opponent” (259).
It is true, of course, as Garver emphasizes, that this “civilizing function” of practices of
argumentation in no way logically implies any sort of “universal duty to treat disputes as
involving essentially contested concepts whenever possible” (1990, 259). Scientists, for example,
are not morally obliged to engage in arguments with creationists as to whether or not creationism
is really a science. Nor are advocates of liberal democracy morally obliged to argue with Anti-
Semites or other racists as to whether or not Nazi Germany was truly a democracy. As Garver
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bluntly puts the matter, “just because something can only be achieved through argument does not
make its achievement always desirable” (259)
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the absence of any sort of universal and unconditional duty
to engage in arguments, it is true that, at least in those cases where parties to disputes cannot
simply ignore their opponents and are obliged, therefore, to interact with their opponents in some
fashion or other, there is a much to be said in favor of handling these disputes by means of
broadly accepted political practices of argumentation rather than simply by force or violence.
This is because the use of such practices, when compared with the use of force or violence, is
helpful in avoiding what Hampshire terms the “great evils,” the evils that are “truly perennial”
(2000, p. xi). These evils are “the unchanged horrors of human life, the savage and obvious evils,
which scarcely vary from culture to culture or from age to age” (Hampshire, 2000, p. 43). They
include, for example, “the mutilations of war, tyrannies, massacres and starvation” as well as
“the evils of great poverty, and of sickness and physical suffering, and of the misery of
bereavement” (p. xii). It is precisely the avoidance of such perennial evils that, as Hampshire
observes, is “the proper business of politics” (2000, p. xi). Making very clear the alternative and
echoing Hobbes, he warns that, when conflicts can “no longer be resolved in the political realm,”
then, they “will be resolved by violence or the threat of violence, and life will become nasty,
brutish, and short” (2000, p. 98).
CONSTESTATION AS A PART OF THE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY
Acknowledging the essentially contested character of democracy, as well as other
political concepts, far from promoting a radical nihilism or moral relativism, therefore, can be
18
valuable in facilitating and fostering the political manner of governance to which we have
become accustomed and which helps protect us from the perennial evils of human life. However,
there is a further reason why it might be a good idea to understand and appreciate the essentially
contested character of democracy. This is that, at least within European and Anglo-American
traditions of political thinking and practice, the idea of contestation has, in fact, come to
constitute an important, if not central, part of the very meaning of democracy itself.
The importance of contestation as an element in how democracy has been conceived is
certainly evident, for example, in Machiavelli’s praise of the tribune of the people or “plebs” in
the Roman Republic, which had a veto power over actions of the Roman Senate and magistrates.
Machiavelli observes here how the resulting “disunion of the Senate and the people” had
rendered “the republic of Rome powerful and free” (1950, 118). According to him, “good laws ...
spring from those very agitations which have been so inconsiderately condemned by many”
(1950, 120). These political agitations, to Machiavelli’s mind, had “neither caused exiles nor any
violence prejudicial to the general good,” but instead had “given rise to laws that were to the
advantage of public liberty” (120). For this reason, as he sees it, “every free state ought to afford
the people the opportunity of giving vent, so to say, to their ambition” because “the demands of a
free people are rarely pernicious to their liberties,” but, instead, “are generally inspired by
oppressions, experienced or apprehended” (120).
Writing some two centuries later, Robert Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, two English
republican Whigs, known collectively as Cato (and whose work was widely read by American
colonists), drew explicitly upon Machiavelli’s ideas about democracy, to argue that British
liberties were secured by “a constitution, in which the people have a large share” and “the sole
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power of giving money; which includes in it everything that they can ask for the publick good”
(1995, 177). Trenchard and Gordon saw the role of the elected House of Commons in Parliament
as providing that “balance of property and power” that is “necessary to a democracy” (648). In
making this argument, they fully understood that the presence of such an elected body, within a
mixed form of government, had the effect of raising the level of political contestation but, far
from lamenting this contestation, as did Hobbes, they, like Machiavelli, welcomed it. As these
writers saw the matter,
Whilst men are men, ambition, avarice, and vanity, and the other passions, will govern
their actions; in spite of all equity and reason, they will be ever usurping, or attempting to
usurp, upon the liberties and fortunes of one another, and all men will be striving to
increase their own. Dominion will always desire increase, and property always to
preserve itself; and these opposite views and interests will be causing a struggle: But by
this struggle liberty is preserved, as water is kept sweet by motion (504).
Consistent with this emphasis on the desirability of ongoing political contestation,
Trenchard and Gordon mounted a vigorous defense of freedom of speech. They saw it as “the
great bulwark of liberty” and “the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them”
(p. 114). As they put it, “it is the part and the business of the people, for those whose sake alone
all publick matters are, or ought to be, transacted, to see whether they be well or ill transacted”
and “so it is the interest, and ought to be the ambition, of all magistrates, to have their deeds
openly examined, and publickly scanned” (p. 111).
Later in the eighteenth century, James Madison, in defending his design for the American
Constitution, went further, giving voice to what was in later centuries to be termed a “pluralist”
20
conception of democracy, one in which contestation plays an essential element. Madison made
clear that what he sought was a republican form of “government which derives all its powers
directly or indirectly from the great body of the people” (Wills, 1982, 190). However, Madison
also recognized that this “great body of the people” would inevitably group themselves into
contesting factions because, as he noted, “as long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he
is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed” (43). Fearing that a faction of the
majority of the people could too easily become as tyrannical as any king, he sought to limit the
power of such a faction by means of an extended republic. As he argued,
Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it
less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights
of other citizens; or if such a motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to
discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other (Wills, 1982, 48).
In other words, Madison’s response to what he believed were the potentially harmful
consequences of political contestation within a republic was not to try and limit such
contestation, but instead to increase the political, religious and economic scope of such
contestation by creating an extended federal republic. In this manner, as Madison saw it,
individual rights would be protected by a “multiplicity of interests” and a “multiplicity of sects”
(264). They would be defended, as one might say today, in a democratic fashion, not “by
creating a will independent of the majority, that is, of the society itself,” but instead “by
comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens, as will render an unjust
combination of the majority of whole, very improbable, if not impractical” (264). In this way, as
21
Madison argued, a “Republican remedy” would be provided “for the diseases most incident to
Republican government” (49).
In addition to providing this Republican remedy, Madison, consistent with the ideas of
Machiavelli and Trenchard and Gordon before him, deliberately sought to inject a strong dose of
political contestation right into the very heart of the federal government itself by using a
separation of overlapping powers in such a way as to make sure that “those who administer each
department” had “the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist
encroachments of the others” in order that ambition could “be made to counteract ambition”
(Wills 1982, 262). Madison’s aim here in separating power was “to divide and arrange the
several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other” (263) and to design a
system of government such that “its constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the
means of keeping each other in their proper place” (261). As Lawrence Hatab, drawing on
Nietzsche, has written, what Madison sought to accomplish here was to provide a structure of
government in which “tyranny” was to be “avoided not by a principle of harmony but by
counterposing elements of strife” (p. 163).
This idea that contestation is not just inevitable, but, in fact, also desirable within a
democratic, or as early writers preferred to call it, republican form of governance is obviously
itself contestable. This idea was not and, for that matter, is still not accepted by all proponents of
democracy. It was disputed, of course, most notably by Rousseau, who believed that citizens and
their government should always be guided in their words and actions by what he termed the
general will, which, as he saw matters, “is always right and tends to the public advantage” (1913,
25). When they all do this, according to Rousseau, there is no longer any need for contestation
because “all the springs of the State are vigorous and simple and its rules clear and luminous;
22
there are no embroilments or conflicts of interests; the common good is everywhere clearly
apparent, and only good sense is needed to perceive it” (90). In order to secure this happy
consensus, it was necessary, in Rousseau’s view, of course, that children, through public
education, “under magistrates established by the Sovereign,” be “imbued with the laws of the
State and the precepts of the general will” and, in this way, learn “to cherish one another
mutually as brothers” and to will nothing contrary to the will of society” (269). Failing this, as he
also famously and chillingly observed, “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be
compelled to do so by the whole body,” which “means nothing less than that he will be forced to
be free” (18).
However, if one recognizes that democracy is an essentially contested concept, then there
is a good argument to be made for a type of governance, as well as political culture, that is
guided by a concept of democracy that allows for and that, in fact, encourages political
contestation, as opposed to one that is guided by a concept of democracy that seems to deny it.
This is that the former type of governance and culture allows for the expression of a plurality of
different descriptions of democracy and other contested political concepts, along with the
different values and conceptions of the good that undergird them, whereas the latter does not.
Gray sees this when he argues that
To identify a concept as essentially contested is to say a great deal about the kind of
society in which its users live. If it is the case, for example, that most of the concepts of
our social and political thought--power, freedom, justice, coercion, and responsibility, for
example have an essentially contested character, then this can only be so in virtue of the
23
fact that our social and political thought occurs in a social environment marked by
profound diversity and moral individualism (1977, 337)
It follows for Gray that “any characterization of the central concepts of social and political
thought as essentially contested, then, reflects (so far as it is acceptable) the pluralist, morally
and politically polyarchic character of contemporary Western liberal society” (337). In other
words, democracy and other political concepts can only be essentially contested in regimes and
societies where contestation over political and social ideas is accepted as something that is
normal or acceptable.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
At the beginning of this paper, it was observed that, while public administration writers
have long expressed a need to reconcile the values of democracy with those of an energetic and
efficient public administration, different writers have expressed different views in regard to what
exactly democracy means and as to what it implies for public administration. As noted, there are,
for example, those, on the one hand, who see democracy in terms of the expression of some type
of popular or democratic will, as expressed through elected political institutions, which
administrators ought generally to attempt to discern and follow, and there are those, on the other
hand, who see democracy more in terms of direct citizen participation, which administrators
ought to promote and help direct. What this paper suggests is that these differences, as well as
other differences, among public administration writers regarding the meaning and applications of
democracy, are illustrative of the essentially contested character of democracy and, therefore,
that such differences in our field are likely to continue indefinitely into the future, without any
24
foreseeable resolution. This is not only because, as noted, different conceptions of democracy are
appraisive and, as such, reflect different values and conceptions of the good, but also because
these disputes have their roots, not in the halls of academia, but rather in the real-world
contestations of practical politics.
If this is correct, then, public administration scholars should recognize that whenever
they talk and write about democracy and its implications for public policy and administration,
these scholars, whether they like it or not, are engaging in a form of political discourse and
action. This is in no way to criticize such political engagement. To the contrary, when we hear
leading public administration scholars, as noted earlier, talk about “democracy” in terms of how
“responsible public management” requires “accountability or answerability to the collectively
expressed values and will of citizens” or, alternatively, in terms of how public administrators
should “take an active role in creating areas in which citizens, through discourse, can articulate
shared values and develop a collective sense of the public interest,” we should feel perfectly free
to be inspired to engage in political action by such words, or even to use such words ourselves as
a means to inspire others, as we engage with them in political practice. However, what we should
never do is to deceive ourselves into thinking that, in using these terms in academic discourse,
we have somehow magically escaped the realm of ordinary political practice. Rather, we should
recall Connolly’s observation cited earlier, that to stake out a position on democracy or, for that
matter, any other essentially contested political concept such as justice, freedom, or equality is
“to implicate oneself to some degree in our politics” (1993, 205).
This being the case, if we are to understand properly the relationship between democracy
and public administration, then, we must first accept that there is no ethically or politically
neutral conception of democracy. We should recognize that the distinctions, which are
25
periodically drawn in our field between "facts" and "values" or “politics” and “administration,”
while by no means meaningless, can never be absolute and that moral and political ideas and
values will inevitably affect our enquiries concerning human actions in public administration, no
matter how hard we might try to remove them. When writing and talking about democracy, as
well as, for that matter, other contested political concepts, we must come to terms with the fact
that, as Isaiah Berlin argued, it is "nearly impossible" to "achieve neutrality" in statements about
"moral and social life" because "the words themselves are inescapably charged with ethical or
aesthetic or political content" (1979, p. 157). We should try instead, therefore, as David Farmer
(1995) and others have urged us, to be more self-conscious about the language we use in public
administration and to reflect more upon, and try to understand better, the moral and political
ideas, which are implicit in much of the language that we use to talk about the "facts" of public
administration. In this way, we might better recognize the essentially contested nature of
democracy and other important political concepts that we use in advancing our arguments and, in
doing so at least hope for what Gallie terms a “raising of the level of quality of arguments in the
disputes of the contestant parties” (1956, 193).
This requires, in my view, that public administration scholars, who seek to understand the
relationship between public administration and democracy, pay more attention than they have to
the history of their ideas regarding democracy. Gallie himself attests to the importance of such a
history when he argues that, while “we come to see more precisely what a given scientific
concept means by contrasting its deductive powers with those of other closely related concepts;
in the case of an appraisive concept [such as democracy], we can best see more precisely what it
means by comparing and contrasting our uses of it now with other earlier uses of it or its
progenitors, i.e., by considering how it came to be” (1956, 198).
26
In an American context, this means also obviously paying more attention, as John Rohr
(1986) and other have argued, to the history of American constitutional ideas and practices and
their implications for public administration. Of course, given the essentially contested character
of democracy, public administration scholars should always keep in mind that these are
historically situated ideas and practices, and as is true of all such ideas and practices, they should
never be, to use Gallie’s words, “put forward as universal political truths expressing the
necessary conditions of any genuinely democratic aspirations or achievements” (1956, 185,
footnote 3). Rather, scholars should recognize that whatever understanding of democracy they
might happen to glean from examining our constitutional ideas and practices, this understanding
will inevitably be informed by their own historically situated values and conceptions of the good
and that, as a result, it will be, like all such understandings, essentially contestable.
However, as the earlier discussion of Madison’s constitutional ideas makes clear, an
understanding of democracy, gleaned from our particular constitutional practices and traditions,
has one important advantage over at least some other understandings of democracy that are
advanced by public administration writers. This is that, rather than emphasizing such frankly
Rousseauian notions as the “collectively expressed values and will of citizens” or “collective
sense of the public interest,” notions which de-emphasize and divert attention away from “the
perpetuity of contest” that is characteristic of politics (Honig 1993, 14), an examination of our
more Madisonian ideas and practices makes it clear how political contestation itself has come to
form an important part of our particular understanding of democracy and, moreover, that such
contestation has historically included ongoing disputes over what it is that we exactly mean by
democracy. Douglas Morgan, Richard Green, Craig Shinn, and Kenneth Robinson clearly
recognize this fact when they argue that
27
The American founders gave us a constitutional system that embraces contending
principles of good republican governance. These contending principles reflect basic
disagreement as to what is required to preserve a regime of ordered liberty. The
Constitution divides and checks governing power in part to keep the arguments
perpetually in play (2013, 85-86).
Finally, in advancing this argument, it should be conceded that, whatever its virtues,
political contestation inevitably has and will continue to be constrained and skewed by the power
exercised by various interests operating within all democracies. However, this does not mean in
any way that language and ideas such as democracy are unimportant. As noted earlier,
Wittgenstein observed that “to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life” (1958, para. 19).
If one adds to this Connolly’s observation that “every assessment of real interests is mediated
through the way of life of those making the assessment,” then it becomes quite clear that
interests are not something that exist autonomously or somehow outside of language.
Rather, it is the case that language comes to shape the way in which participants in the
political process come to view their own particular interests. Indeed, as Connolly points out, “the
rise of a democratic ideology” itself is “more readily explicable if one refuses to assume that
human beings must always and everywhere be governed by egoistic impulses, assuming instead
that under appropriate conditions of social life, people can and will be motivated as well by
desires to support their interests as social beings” (1993, 57). In other words, when one considers
the role that interests play in public policy, it is also very important that one should not fall prey
to what Berlin once termed “a very vulgar historical materialism that denies the power of ideas”
28
(1969, 119). Language and ideas matter greatly and, as argued here, among these ideas are the
contesting notions we hold, in public administration and in society, in regard to the meaning and
uses of the concept of democracy.
29
NOTES
1. See especially here, the classic works of Frederick Mosher (1968) and Emmett Redford
(1969).
2. For an excellent review of the now quite extensive literature on the subject of essentially
contested concepts, including critical comments, see David Collier et al (2006).
3. Gallie actually specifies other characteristics beyond those discussed here that also contribute,
as he sees it, to the essentially contested character of democracy, as well as other disputed
concepts. However, for purposes of the argument, advanced in this paper, the characteristics
discussed here are sufficient and, in fact, are similar to those presented by William Connolly
(1993) and Robert Grafstein (1988).
30
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