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Description
Capitalism and democracy have coexisted in so many countries in the last two centuries that they appear to stand in a cause-and-effect relationship. However, it has become ever clearer that capitalism does not inevitably lead to democracy. That they frequently coexist only demonstrates that they are compatible.
Yet, despite this compatibility, the leaders of capitalist economies regularly criticize some of the central institutions of democracy, notably democratic legislatures. They are particularly quick to condemn not only the decisions of democratic legislatures, for adopting what they regard as irrational economic policies, but also the way they make decisions. The extremely negative evaluation of Congress in the last few years is typical. It is hardly a new phenomenon, nor is it limited to the United States. Over 170 years ago, the French artist Honore Daumier caricatured the legislature in the reign of Louis Philippe with a famous lithograph entitled Le ventre legislatif en 1834, which cruelly depicts thirty-four members of parliament as obese, corrupt, evil men. (1)
Legislatures are paradoxical institutions. Although historically they have been indispensable to democracy, their decision-making processes inevitably--indeed necessarily--have antimajoritarian characteristics. Although they are supposed to represent the people, the way they work mystifies most people, even members of the economic elite. Because they are meant to represent all the people, legislatures consist of many members, each with an equal mandate to be there. But it defies common sense to expect four hundred or more members to get anything done when they have no reason to obey each other.
Most people have dramatically contrasting perceptions of legislatures. On the one hand, they know that great events have taken place in legislative settings. But those events are rare. Those few people who are committed observers of the legislature--viewers of C-SPAN, for example--usually see numbingly boring scenes of members speaking to an empty chamber. Winston Churchill, who loved the House of Commons, recognized that the floor of parliament was usually empty. When it came time to rebuild the House after it had been damaged by a bomb in World War II, Churchill insisted, to everyone's surprise, that it be rebuilt exactly as it had been, far too small to seat all its members. Churchill explained:
If the House is big enough to contain all its members nine-tenths of its debates will be conducted in the depressing atmosphere of an almost empty or half-empty chamber. (2)
Few countries follow Britain's quaint example of having too small a parliamentary chamber. Most countries now televise their parliamentary debates, widely publicizing how often the floor of the legislature is nearly empty, and contributing to public despair about the institution. Solitary speeches on an empty floor--that is the scene in legislatures far more often than great events. No wonder few people pay attention. No wonder those who are successful in business in a free-enterprise economy disparage democratic legislatures, regarding their procedures as inefficient, their decisions as frequently irrational, and their members as unprincipled if not corrupt.
The contradictory characteristics of legislatures arise out of the contrast between the characteristics the institution had at its origin in medieval Europe--its genetic properties--and the characteristics it developed as it adapted to the changing political environment.
The antecedents of the modern legislature are the feudal assemblies of medieval, precapitalistic Europe. (3) Monarchs convened assemblies of feudal lords because they needed these powerful individuals for money and for military conscripts. These assemblies were not intended to govern but merely to consult--to parler--with kings.
We can trace three characteristics of what we now call a legislature to these origins. The institution was, first, an assembly of influential people who occasionally had the opportunity to give or withhold consent to the king. Second, the members of the institution represented others, such as social classes or local communities; this determined who was selected to be a member, how they were selected, and how many were selected. Third, what the members did was to bargain with the monarch, exchanging consent to the king's wishes for legal favors to their constituents.
The more frequently these assemblies met, the more they devised procedures that would enable such proud and powerful individuals to reach collective decisions. Thus assemblies of feudal lords were transformed into parliaments, but not yet--not nearly yet--into democratic parliaments. (4) But the genetic properties of legislatures--that they are a collection of influential people; that they represent others; and that they bargain with the government on behalf of their constituents--have made legislatures distinctive political institutions, recognizable in all their subsequent manifestations.
Over time the occasional assertion of influence by these parliaments took the form of lawmaking power. The term 'legislature' first appeared at the end of the seventeenth century in England. It came from the noun 'legislator,' meaning lawgiver. In the Oxford English Dictionary the first reference to 'legislature' is to Hale's History of... |
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On inventing language., June 22, 2007
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