The conceptual foundations of decision-making in a democracy

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Part One
The Democratic Society and Its Norms

1.1 Norms in General.

The coherence of actions that distinguishes a society from a loose assembly of individuals is to a large extent achieved by the norms which rule that society: ethical norms, laws, norms for standardisation of nuts and bolts, good manners etc. Norms put limits on the freedom of action (and thus of decision-making) of the members of society; that is necessary to ensure the minimum of predictability and commonality of behaviour, of coexistence and coordination, required for a viable society. They form an appropriate starting point for an investigation into social decision-making.

A norm always has two aspects:

-	its content: how things should be (done).
-	the sanction (penalty) on infringement ensuring conformity to the norm.

The sanction may be severe, like a stint in prison. Or it may just be a dent in one's reputation or the incurrence of an extra cost. For instance, if an engineer specifies a bolt which deviates from the norm, he will not be able to obtain it from available stock, it will be more expensive and have a longer delivery time. In this last case, the norm is self-enforcing and as such unproblematic, a good reason for disregarding such norms in further considerations.

An individual can set for himself rules of conduct and standards of evaluation; he is then perfectly free to follow them or not. Such standards could be called norms, but they remain a strictly personal matter which we could also call a predilection or taste. The distinguishing attribute of norms is that they are social: they are supposed to be applicable to all members of a society in their relations with other individuals and they are expected to be enforced by society through sanctions, whether that society is a tennis club, a church, a nation or an association of nations.

Because they are statements about how things should be (done), norms make sense only if we can at least imagine that more than one course of action is open to us. Unless there are options within the reach and control of individuals for both violating and respecting it, a norm would be tautological, superfluous or ineffective.

Individuals constantly have to make choices. When doing so they often keep in mind the probable reaction of their human environment. That probable reaction thus influences behaviour in much the same way as norms do. The main difference with other factors generating social behaviour is that, being known to all members of society, the reaction to a deviation from the norm is practically a certainty: adherence to the norm is expected to be enforced. That presupposes an agency who has the power to set and/or enforce such a norm. The legitimation of that power is at the core of the discussions about the organisation of society.

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The system of norms which regulates a society usually is a hierarchical one: a norm for a specific situation is deduced from a more general one. If faced with disagreement about a specific norm, it makes sense to enquire whether it was deduced from a more fundamental norm, which again might have been deduced from a still more basic one, etc. To legitimate the application of a norm, such regression must be finite: we must at some point hit fundamental norms which can be justified without recourse to other norms.

Norms define ‘how things should be’, not how they are. If you have chosen for democracy and are willing to accept the rules of democratic argumentation presented in PART FIVE, then you will agree that we cannot ground ‘ought’ in ‘is’, that we cannot find any totally objective basis for evaluating a norm and justifying its enforcement and that any such attempt must end in infinite regress. We will revert to that subject in our section about justice which deals with our most important norms: laws. In Volume Two we will devote a short addendum to norms in ‘Philosophers on ethics and morals’. The conclusion is that any justification of a norm contains a subjective element, usually a purpose, an objective, whose achievement requires coexistence and cooperation.

The legitimation of norms must then be achieved without recourse to any totally objective justification. If contested, a restraint on infringement of a norm, a sanction, can be imposed only by the use of some kind of power. The legitimation of such enforcement runs into the same problem of infinite regress. It can be solved in two ways: foregoing such a legitimation by exercising pure power (authority) or avoiding the infinite regress by achieving consensus about ultimate norms. That consensus legitimises all other norms which can be deduced or shown to be compatible with these ultimate norms.

If there is total and lasting consensus about a norm, the nature of the justification for its application is irrelevant for decision-making, as it becomes relevant only if the norm is contested. Our newspapers provide daily evidence that almost any norm will generate some dissent. That is to be expected, for we need to establish and to enforce norms precisely because there are individuals who, left to their own devices, would not act according to the norm. Clearly, consensus does not come about by itself. If we want consensus, we must create it.

If a norm is derived from a common objective, we can from that objective derive criteria for applying and justifying the norm. The common objective also provides the opportunity to negotiate an agreement on its implementation on the basis of shared interests. The standardisation of components of our products, like bolts, is a prime example of norms resulting from such negotiations. The characteristic which distinguishes these negotiated norms from the laws of justice is that they apply only to those who subscribe to them. Anybody is free to make bolts of a different shape if he can find a use for them. As the norm is not enforced, it needs no justification. Its application will depend on the number of manufacturers voluntarily producing standard bolts, and of people using them in their products.

In a work about democracy the norms at stake are those which are intended to be observed by all members of a society. If norms in the end are subjective and if they have practical impact only if enforced, and if enforcement is done by men, the appropriate starting point for any

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inquiry into norms is to investigate who in a society has the ultimate power to set, interpret and/or enforce norms without having to justify them. The fundamental normative question is: WHICH MAN OR GROUP SHOULD BE THAT ULTIMATE AUTHORITY?

History has produced three types of ultimate authority:

a)	Priests, bishops etc. in a theocratic society
b)	Kings, dictators, oligarches in an autocratic society
c)	everybody and nobody in a democratic society.

a) In a THEOCRACY, the basic norms are defined once and for all by some text, some' scripture which is objective in the sense that it really exists and that no individual can change it. It is a datum, a ‘given’ for that society. Examples are the Bible and the Koran, and even some secular works like ‘Das Kapital’. But their interpretation will carry the (subjective) imprint of the current human authorities who enforce them.

Being in that way ‘objective’, certain theocracies have some pretence of democratic justice, because they consider their norms equally applicable to all members of society. Any semblance of democracy is however an illusion, for few of the ‘objective’ and revealed norms have the form of unequivocal and directly applicable prescriptions. Originating in a conveniently inaccessible past and written in times ignorant of most of today's problems, they need interpretation which the current theological authorities are all too willing to provide.

The unavoidable and often intentional authoritarian character of theocracies betrays itself by the claim of ultimate authority of interpretation by specific individuals or groups such as congregations, priests, bishops, popes, ayatollahs, politbureau's: always human individuals invoking an irrefutable divine inspiration, or referring to a scientific and therefore ‘objective’ evidence which usually is - as we will see - just as unprovable.

The Bible contains very few unequivocal prescriptions; the few which are, turn out to be totally compatible, some even basic, for any just society, also a secular one. A Christian society based only on these few unequivocal do's and don't's would be totally compatible with the democratic society proposed here. The others are so open to different interpretations that if we deny any human creature an authority above our own in the interpretation of the Bible, we would never reach consensus about them. Certainly ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's’ pleads against any theocracy.

The Koran's explicit prescriptions are even more numerous and - in today's world - contestable; an Islamic state will still have to rely on the authority of certain individuals to impose these prescriptions on those who do not interpret the Koran in the same way or who do not acknowledge the authority of the Koran. Any theocracy will de facto always be an autocracy, a totalitarian state which elevates the authority of some individuals over that of others.

b) In an AUTOCRACY, the norm is always imposed and sanctioned by the autocrat.

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c) In a DEMOCRACY - as defined in the next paragraph - any a priori human authority of one individual or group of individuals over another is rejected. Everybody therefore is free to set his own norms and nobody can impose such a norm on others.

That statement seems in contradiction with our experience. Norms do exist in a democracy and they are enforced vis-à-vis those who break them. For a democracy to function, there must be a mechanism which generates and enforces such norms even though no single individual can impose his own; this book attempts to expose the principles, the axiomatic foundations, of such a mechanism.

In addition to principles, there is a practical, economic, side to them. For norms come at a cost. They limit our freedom of action by putting a price - the penalty - on the options forbidden by the norms. And the institutions for designing norms, getting them accepted and enforcing them cost money: they carve a sizable chunk out of our national income.

Even the seemingly innocuous standardisation of bolts has its cost: production to nonstandard specification will become more expensive. For if standardisation had not come about, producers of bolts would have had to gear up in a much larger and more efficient way for producing to specification, which would then have been much cheaper and easier to obtain. The history of industrial norms illustrates the effort required to get such norms accepted. Why then this standardisation? Obviously because of its advantages: cheaper and available out of stock, with a choice of suppliers; these benefits will far outweigh the loss of freedom of engineers to specify nonstandard bolts and - if they really have to - the extra cost of having them designed and produced.

Establishing and enforcing laws makes (economic) sense only if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Advantage and disadvantage for whom? Who has the authority to make this cost-benefit analysis? That depends entirely on the kind of society we live in.

In a theocracy the cost-benefit aspect will have - at least officially - little impact on the decision-making process. In an autocracy, the relevant factors will be the cost and the benefit to the autocrat. His heaviest cost factor will usually be the enforcement costs, at least if the norms conflict with those of his subjects. The better the cost-benefit ratio, as perceived from the point of view of those governed, the lower the enforcement costs. These costs then provide the best incentive for the autocrat to consider the interests of his subjects, but the community's cost-benefit ratio is not the decisive factor.

In a democracy the cost-benefit ratio is decisive, as we will see later on. The very fact that its aggregate cost-benefit ratio over all members of society is negative usually justifies the rejection of a norm, while a positive ratio can provide the means to compensate all those who are negatively affected by the norm so that its imposition can be justified.

SUMMING UP: any investigation into norms must start with the question: who has the authority to set and enforce them? The justification for a norm then is found in the extent to which it contributes to the objectives of those authorities.

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Choosing for a certain type of society means in practice: choosing for a specific type of social decision-making. That choice will explicitly or implicitly be swayed by some idea, some norm, to which that society as a whole should conform and which can serve as a criterion by which to measure all other norms established and enforced by that society. In totalitarian societies based on an ideology, that norm is to be found in its ideology, usually some written document like the Bible, Koran or the works of a writer like Marx. What criterion, what norms must a society respect if it is to be called a democracy?

1.2) What Is Democracy?

Most societies on this globe call themselves a democracy. Western type parliamentary democracies usually consider as a litmus test for democracy the presence of a functioning parliament elected by universal suffrage plus the eligibility of all members of age to public office.

Is that sufficient to warrant the qualification of ‘democratic’? Are all laws enacted by an elected government ipso facto democratic? If - before Hitler became a dictator - a majority of Germans had voted for the racial, antisemitic laws of the Third Reich, would such a Germany still deserve to be called a democratic society? And what about the cradle of democracy, ancient Athens? Could that be called a democracy even though it practised slavery?

If war threatens, Switzerland elects an absolute ruler for the duration of that threat. Does it then cease to be a democracy? What about the claims of Marxists that universal suffrage and a parliamentary government are insufficient to qualify for democracy because they do not ensure that individuals count as equals when it comes to shaping their own economic destiny and to reaping the fruits of their own labour?

That is the paradox of democracy. On one hand, an open-ended one-voice-one-vote decision-making institution like an elected parliament seems to be an absolute prerequisite for any society to be called a democracy; if so, then we cannot put any priori limit on the decisions to be taken by such a parliament. For by the very fact of being a priori, such a limit has not been established through a vote by the decision-making institution, it has not been taken in a democratic procedure and therefore can be revoked by a democratically elected parliament. On the other hand, there clearly are decisions such as racial laws which seem blatantly undemocratic. We must conclude that having a parliament elected by universal suffrage is insufficient to define a democracy, and that a more fundamental principle is required from which we can deduce both:

-	decision-making procedures like a parliament
-	some basic conditions which decisions taken by this procedure must meet.

There is a nearly universal compulsion to justify the organisation of one's society by claiming that it is democratic; that word seems to appeal to some widely held value, some deeply seated human need. What is that value, that need? What do people really want when they choose for democracy? I have not been able to find a single empirical study on that subject!

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One feature shared by all western democracies is the rejection of any absolute, a priori, power of some individuals over others. Apparently people want to reserve the ultimate authority over their decisions for themselves, want to live their own lives, want to preserve their autonomy. Autonomy here means the right to decide for yourself what is good or bad, the right and ability to set your own norms (see part 4a.7). The common denominator of democracy seems to be this rejection of any ultimate, unconditional human authority above our own and the claim of everyone to be accepted as a full member of society, on the same terms as anybody else. That is how I understand democracy, and this book is addressed to those who feel the same way about it. We can translate that value, that respect of our autonomy, into one single criterion for social decision-making, one norm that is both necessary and sufficient to ensure that the decisions qualify as democratic in the above sense. That criterion will enable us to pass judgement on the democratic pedigree of various types of decisions and institutions.

That norm is the unconditional principle of respect of the subjective equality of all members of the society. It entails that any time a community must take a decision, all members have one vote and all votes carry the same weight. It means that no individual or group can impose his choice on the others. It requires that any opinion be in the first instance considered as equivalent to any other. There can be no a priori ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on the same or higher level than this democratic principle.

THE DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY. All members with a stake in the way their society is organised have already made one choice: to live in that society. Provided that all others can opt out of it, for instance by becoming a hermit or by emigrating, we can neglect their view because by that very fact they have forsaken any say in the way that society is organized. Together with the principle of subjective equality, that leads to the definition:

DEMOCRACY IS A VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION OF PEOPLE HAVING CHOSEN FOR:

-	A VIABLE, HEALTHY SOCIETY ensuring the necessary coexistence and cooperation
-	WHICH RESPECTS the ultimate authority of all individuals over themselves, their autonomy, and thus THEIR SUBJECTIVE EQUALITY.

Together, viability of society and subjective equality form the DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE.

Only decisions which are taken by consensus meet the democratic principle. A total consensus is practically nonexistent. The democratic principle can work because THERE IS ONE CASE IN WHICH WE CAN JUSTIFY THE IMPOSITION OF A NON-UNANIMOUS DECISION: WHENEVER THE OPPOSITION TO THAT DECISION IMPLIES RENEGING ON THE FUNDAMENTAL CHOICE FOR DEMOCRACY.

As the democratic principle presupposes the decision to live in a society, non-unanimous decisions are compatible with that principle whenever they are vital to the survival of the society and provided they are taken in a procedure which respects the above subjective equality. It is the interplay between its two, often conflicting, elements (society and autonomy) which gives democracy its dynamism.

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The democratic principle excludes all autocracies, theocratic or otherwise. In an autocracy, some people have the power to take decisions which are binding for other members of society without their consent and without having to justify them. Such power is attached to a person or institution, it is absolute, a priori, because it is neither derived from, nor dependent on, the legitimation by a democratic decision, it is not conditional on obtaining a mandate from the other members of society.

True, the institutions of a democratic society may confer to certain members some specific authority over others. But that authority is never attached to their person, but derives exclusively from the function they are expected to perform. It is conferred on them on the basis of certain objective qualities required by that function which in the eyes of the members of society make them worthy of that power. To be legitimate, such authority must have been delegated by a democratic decision, and can always be revoked by another one. Power is inevitable in any society. The exclusive property of democracy is that political power is always conditional on democratic legitimation and always revocable.

To define a democracy, the respect of autonomy as expressed by the principle of subjective equality is both necessary and sufficient. In fact, no other condition can be added at the same level of priority without introducing into the social system unsolvable contradictions, paradoxes; any such addition will - in terms of the mathematical economist - make the system ‘overdetermined’.

That is easy to prove. For suppose that we add another principle at the same or higher level of priority. As long as this additional principle has been accepted in a procedure respecting the democratic principle, there is neither conflict and nor any need to introduce it at the same or higher level of priority. But if some members of the society object to the additional principle while it cannot be accepted on basis of a democratic procedure, we are forced to choose between the democratic and the additional principle, even if the last one has been democratically accepted in the past. For the democratic principle requires the existence of procedures permitting the revision of all decisions except the choice for democracy. Otherwise, choosing a principle would also bind future members whose voice was not heard at the time the decision was taken; that would violate their democratic rights. On the other hand, the rights to consider are always the rights of the present citizens. The only guarantee for survival of the democratic man and his society is the importance the present citizens attach to their progeny. Injustices committed or suffered by previous citizens generate no claims on present citizens unless confirmed by current democratic law. The relevance of that principle is evident at the turn of our millennium.

Because the democratic principle is incompatible with any other principle at the same or higher level of priority, theocracies can never be democratic. It will be shown that in a society based solely on the democratic principle:

-	we can ensure its viability because vital decisions do not require consensus but can be taken by any procedure respecting the subjective equality of all members
-	we can take all non vital decisions that are worth being taken
-	democracy implies high moral principles.

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That principle therefore is necessary and sufficient for defining democracy: communities respecting this principle can never be authoritarian, and authoritarian and totalitarian societies can never claim to meet the criteria for democracy.

The basic objective to live in a society while preserving our autonomy is a very ‘natural’ one: it reflects the existential situation of man as a freedom-loving individual, yet one who depends on social interaction for ensuring survival and proliferation. Democracy as defined here does justice both to the personal and social aspects of being human.

EQUALITY is a key word in many political discussions, yet few words have been more abused. Therefore, the meaning assigned here to ‘subjective equality’ must be made absolutely clear. Subjective refers to the thinking, decision-making ‘I’ of Descartes with its decisions, values and opinions. Because of its importance, I repeat that - translated into social decision-making - subjective equality means that every member has a vote, that all votes are given equal weight, that all opinions are in the first instance to be taken at face value, to be accepted as equally valid, and all interests as equally pressing. Subjective equality is quite different from objective equality. Objectively, no two people are alike. Subjective equality is not a property of the subjects themselves, it is an attribute which we bestow on them by our will to respect it. It is abstract and absolute.

Objective equality is always - per definition - concrete and relative, namely relative to the actual status and properties of the entity concerned. Even such eminently unequivocal conditions as pregnancy are unequivocal only if considered analytically, that is in abstraction of the other possibly relevant circumstances. For instance, the determination of the moment of conception turns out to depend on an - always subjective - convention as soon as we want to be more precise than the time interval between the penetration of the egg cell by a live spermatozoon and the completion of two new cells. Objective equality may generate a legitimate claim to equal treatment by society, but only in the field to which the equality applies: pregnancy is legitimately relevant in matters where that is the one property that counts, for example the claim to social security and unemployment benefits by a pregnant woman.

No such relativity applies to the status of subjective equality. As soon as an individual is conceded the status of a full-fledged member of society, he/she enjoys all the attributes of subjective equality; not because of any natural law, but by convention, by our personal, subjective choice for the democratic principle and its priority.

If for instance we grant paid leave to pregnant women from two months before expected delivery to six months after, subjective equality requires that all pregnant women be eligible for such paid leave. But the decision to grant a paid leave to pregnant women cannot be deduced from any notion of equality; it can only follow from a decision-making procedure respecting the democratic principle and will depend on the specific circumstances of the society, for instance its level of economic development and organisation.

The respect of subjective equality often does entail the obligation to consider everybody equal also in an objective sense and for a specific purpose. When dealing with income distribution, it

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will be shown that we can deduce from the democratic principle that everybody has the right to an equal share of the income incumbent to society as a whole, but also that we cannot deduce from it the leftist principle of an equal well-being for all.

As stated, the definition of democracy as an organisation of society based on the priority of the democratic principle does not rest on any fact nor proof. It follows from a subjective choice for that principle. Therefore a democratic society will come about and persist only to the extent that a sufficient number of individuals not only make that choice, but also are willing to make the necessary efforts and sacrifices for its realisation. Specifically, they must resist any temptation to give another principle or norm equal or higher billing. Democracy requires that act of will, backed by the necessary power. To live in a democratic society is not some God-given or ‘natural’ right; it is the product of our own will and effort.

1.3) Decisions in a Democracy.

To achieve the coherence necessary for survival, to be worthy of its name, a society must be able to take decisions which are binding for its members. All individuals are different. Experience tells us that unanimity can rarely if ever be achieved on even one single concrete issue. Can a democratic society as defined by us take any decisions at all? Is not the respect of autonomy incompatible with the imposition of any decision to which even a single individual might object? What reason do we have to expect that such a democracy can work at all?

There is just one reason: if somebody finds it really important that such a democracy can work, he has already made the decision that he wants to live in that kind of society, one which respects his autonomy. His autonomy then is compatible with accepting decisions which are not to his own liking if those decisions are necessary for an objective which he values more highly, namely to live in such a society, and if they are taken in procedures which respect his subjective equality. Accepting decisions vital to that society and taken in accordance with the democratic principle is the price he has to pay for living in a democracy.

What about people who do not want to pay that price and do not choose to live in an ordered society based on the democratic principle? As shown in PART FOUR about justice, we are justified in ignoring their objections to decisions meeting the democratic principle for they have by their own choice foregone the protection provided by this principle.

No person wanting to live in a society that is founded on the democratic principle can legitimately object to a decision which respects the democratic principle and is taken in a way which respects the subjective equality of all members. That requires that the decision meets all of the three following conditions:

1)	The total net effect on society is positive: the society must be better off with that decision than without it.
2)	If - as a consequence of that decision - some people will be worse off than without it and cannot be compensated for their loss, the decision must be shown to be vital to the society.

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3)

No one will be worse off as a consequence of that decision than he would have been without it. In case several alternatives satisfy these conditions, those whose proposal is accepted must compensate the others for their loss relative to the situation in which they would have been if their solution had prevailed (subject to the same condition of compensation). That is possible only if we choose the alternative generating the highest net (i.e. after compensation) social surplus. Because of this condition of compensation, democracy differs from classical utilitarianism precisely on that feature for which it has been condemned, namely that an individual might be sacrificed for the greater utility of society.

The third condition provides a democratic society with the means to take decisions which cannot be shown to be vital even though they will leave some people better off than others. It brands jealousy as a motivation which can never provide a justification for objecting to any decision of society. Jealousy may be human, but it is detrimental to the coherence and thus the vitality of a society.

However obvious, the first condition is a necessary link in the sequence of the argumentation. A decision which has no effect is superfluous. Any decision which does have an effect will curtail the liberty of action of some members, providing them with a legitimate objection unless we can satisfy the third condition and compensate them for their loss. The decision must then generate the surplus necessary to compensate dissenters while still remaining attractive to its proponents.

A decision which meets these conditions has the property that any objection to it is incompatible with at least one of the two elements of the democratic principles. Such objections cannot generate a legitimate cause for rejecting the decision. A decision to which nobody can have a legitimate objection is in that sense unanimous even if some citizens had preferred another one.

Having chosen for a viable society, we will have to accept as democratic any decision which is vital to the existence the society even if by itself it does not generate any disposable surplus, provided it has been reached in a procedure which respects the subjective equality of all members. A viable society must then have such procedures.

To ensure that they are democratic, such procedures should not knowingly favour certain individuals over others. To that effect they should as far as possible be established in ignorance of the particular circumstances and the corresponding personal interests, that is before the necessity for taking a particular decision has risen. Failing that, they must be established in a separate procedure which is as independent as possible from the procedure in which the particular decision is taken, a difficult endeavour. For the procedure by which one arrives at a decision will usually influence the outcome of the decision-making process and thus affect the interests involved. If no consensus can be achieved about the decision itself, it is highly unlikely that we can reach consensus on a new kind of procedure once it is known for which specific decision the procedure is required. We will have to fall back on one of the generally accepted procedures below.

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For decisions vital to society, any procedure which respects the democratic principle can be considered. A - hopefully exhaustive - list of such procedures, to be used singly or in conjunction, is:

-	voting, by absolute or qualified majority
-	delegating the authority to make (certain) decisions: electing a government and/or a parliament
-	appointing an impartial referee
-	deferring to an objective criterion such as chance (a lottery) or a performance clause.

Right after we have made the decision to live in a democratic society, we must establish criteria or procedures enabling us to decide:

-	whether condition 3) (nobody is worse off) can or cannot be met
-	if not, that the decision is vital to society
-	which amongst all democratic procedures is best suited to the case.

The very generality of their application increases the likelihood of substantial consensus on such criteria or procedures. Anyone who attempts to bias these procedures towards a specific decision, which today is of advantage to him in one special field, takes the risk that it might be turned against him, either in another field or in later times when his interests have changed. Also, the various interests one might tend to cancel each other out if the rule is truly general.

The necessity for such general procedures to establish other more specific procedures has always been evident. Every democracy has it: a CONSTITUTION. To fulfil its function, it must:

-	express the fundamental commitment to respect the subjective equality of all members above all other considerations
-	be void of any specific element by which social decisions might favour certain members over others on basis of race, religion, sex, ancestry, wealth etc.
-	provide the procedures and criteria necessary to take actual decisions, usually more detailed procedures required for decision-making on specific issues which either are vital to society or susceptible to unanimity in the limited sense of condition 3).

Being a voluntary association, democracy derives its strength from the number of people accepting the way it works. The actual design of the constitution may be delegated, but the only adequate decision procedure for turning it into law is a qualified majority so that society's most basic institution is supported by a sufficient number to make it viable. The qualification percentage should be sufficiently large to prevent, or at least decrease the risk, that idealists or special interest groups will - by achieving a simple majority - impose undemocratic laws and decisions, and shield the constitution from the vagaries of fashion. On the other hand, the required qualification cannot be prohibitive: a change of the constitution sometimes is necessary, for instance because of a change in the circumstances or of perceptions of priorities; think of issues of the environment or emancipation. The higher the threshold, the greater the risk that such a change will be thwarted by fear of change, plain inertia or a veto by special interest groups, cranks and extremists. Experience shows that a percentage of votes in the neighbourhood of two-thirds is adequate.

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By accepting a constitution, a substantial majority has agreed to relinquish the right of veto for all decisions deemed vital and taken in the procedures laid down in that constitution. There are always dissenters, there will be people who are not prepared to forego their right of veto. If the procedures which gave us the constitution, as well as all provisions in it, meet our criteria for democracy, we are justified in ignoring their objections by the same kind of reasoning which led us to ignore those who do not subscribe to the democratic principle. That principle grants everyone the right to voice his objection and to hold on to it whatever the outcome of the vote ... provided he abides in his actions by the constitution and the laws and decisions taken in accordance with it. He must also be allowed to leave our society if he does not want to abide by its democratic rules.

A democracy as defined here is the least authoritarian, the freest viable society we can Imagine. For if a person would reserve for himself the power of veto on decisions which clearly are vital to that society, the democratic principle requires that he grant the same right to all other members of society. That virtually ensures the demise of that most free of all societies and therefore the emergence of a more authoritarian one. In practice, a show of dissent will often be an attempt to surreptitiously obtain, in terms of economists, a ‘free ride’, to profit from the benefits of a free society without incurring the obligation which that entails.

Most people are born into a society. They did not make any conscious choice for our democratic principle, did not vote for the constitution and thus did not freely relinquish their veto rights for vital decisions. Democracy as defined here does not derive from some historical decision, but is based on today's and actual subscription to the democratic principle. Nothing in our democracy is definitive; commitment to it must be renewed by all of us every day. Not only latecomers, but anybody- including those who have previously subscribed to the current constitution - may later object to it and try to get it changed by democratic means. If unsuccessful, one still can remain a functioning member of society as long as one does de facto respect the choice of others for that democratic principle.

A more extensive discussion about the democratic decision-making will be found in the section about justice. Here we have shown that in a democracy we can make two types of decisions:

1)	Decisions for which we can achieve unanimity by satisfying three conditions: - they have a positive net value to society - they respect the principle of subjective equality - they leave (after compensation) nobody less well-off.
2)	Decisions which are vital to society and taken in a democratic procedure, even if we cannot achieve unanimity as defined above.

There exists a third category of decision, namely those which cannot be taken unanimously, and which are not vital to society. A democratic society must forego such decisions. That sounds worse than it is.

Our whole economy can be, and to a large extent is, regulated by procedures or decisions which can be established by unanimity as defined above. For in economic life we have a common denominator for advantages and disadvantages: money. If there is a functioning market, prices will be a reasonably objective measure of value (objective in the sense of independent from any

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specific individual). If the loss concerns a ‘good’ which has no market price, we must provide for procedures enabling us to determine as objectively as possible the value of the required compensation. We can then determine the advantages and disadvantages of various decision alternatives, and compensate those who lose by the decision eventually taken so that nobody can legitimately object to it. Defence, justice, and - in my view - healthcare and education all are vital to society and thus decidable without compensation.

A good case can be made for the assertion that any decision which is not vital to society and does not generate sufficient surplus for satisfying our condition 3) is a decision which the people who chose for democracy would any way not want the society to take, because by foregoing that decision we lose little if anything. Such a decision usually concerns immaterial issues such as laws against homosexuality or for mandatory school prayer. Such proposals are in fact attempts to impose the morals or beliefs of their proponents on others, and thus are incompatible with democracy. Decisions which cannot be taken according to our rules then are either wasteful or undemocratic; they undermine the legitimacy of the institution responsible for it, usually parliament or government. That is a very heavy social cost to pay for a decision on a non-vital subject.

1.4) Norms in a Democratic Society.

From the above rules on decisions we can deduce how a democratic society should develop its norms and what criteria these norms must satisfy. As shown further on, some can be deduced directly from the democratic principle. Others will have to be established in democratic procedures.

At first glance you may find unpalatable or even shocking the main condition for any norm that cannot be deduced directly from the democratic principle: democracy must consider such a norm to be as ethical as any other, unless there is a justification for preferring one above the other; in a democracy that justification can only be its acceptance in a democratic procedure. This impartiality towards all ethical and moral propositions other than the democratic principle is the inescapable corollary of the rejection of any a priori authority above the individual, from which we deduced that we must consider all individuals, and thus their opinions and morals, to be equal as subjects, as long as they grant the same right to all others.

Neutrality towards ethics in no way implies that a democratic society will be unethical, that it will have no morals. Democracy puts a limit to power. If unchecked power corrupts, then we may hope that the moral level of a democracy will be higher than that of any autocracy, at least if we consider actions, not words; the history of totalitarian societies, even theocracies, certainly supports that hope. Hopefully it will have a high Standard of ethics and morals, but these are a result of the application of the democratic principle and the interaction of the ethics and morals of its individual citizens; it thus cannot be higher than theirs. It can however be higher than what any individual citizen could have achieved on his own.

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As we will see in the part about life, the characteristic of a human society is that the interaction of various (generations of) human individuals generates a body of culture, including morals, far transcending the individual. It can be shown that democracy is the kind of organisation best suited to promote such cross-fertilisation, provided democracy realises its full potential, and that requires a clear understanding of its ‘foundational’ principle. This principle is the primary contribution of a democratic society to ethics and morality; the secondary contribution is the promotion of this interaction, stimulating the development of the corresponding ethics. It cannot prescribe any concrete content except to require that they be deduced from or be compatible with the democratic principle. It can subsidise religious or moral organisations; but if it does, it must subsidise all those who acknowledge the democratic principle for worldly affairs, regardless of denomination, on the basis of objective criteria such as the number of its registered members. It cannot subsidize on the basis of any a priori preference. It can and should discriminate against organisations which do not subscribe to the democratic principle. A church may require absolute belief in its teachings by its members; but acceptance of the democratic principle entails that its membership be fully voluntary, that members are really free to leave; the church must acknowledge that its teachings and laws can have no authority over a nonmember, that it cannot require that its teachings be imposed on others as laws. The inclusion of religious elements in the constitution of Ireland or Poland and the imposition of the sharia in Islamic countries is eminently undemocratic.

The conclusion that society must a priori consider all norms as ethically equal is rationally inescapable if one chooses for democracy. But that conclusion must also be ‘thinkable’, be ‘viscerally’ felt, be ‘internalised’, if it is to be subscribed to by a sufficient number of citizens, many of whom are members of a church or believe in the ‘natural’ or ‘scientifically’ established superiority of a social system. A very simple exercise to get more ‘feeling’ for this concept is to imagine in turn that you were born into Khomeini's Iran, the Spain of the Inquisition or in a country where Marxism is still the state religion.

The feature that distinguishes a democratic society from others is NOT that it lacks morals and norms; the difference is the justification of them and of their enforcement. Establishing and enforcing norms always requires a decision by society and thus is a special case of decision-making. It is subject to the rules we have established above:

1)	Norms - or their enforcement - must be of advantage to society. A necessary (but not sufficient) condition is that there must be at least some individuals who can legitimately claim to expect some advantage from application of this norm.
2)	Norms must respect the democratic principle. No norm can claim a priori prevalence over another; any prevalence has to be sanctioned by a democratic decision.
3a)	The norm either must be vital to the existence of society as a democracy or, if not, must ensure that:
3b)	No member can have a legitimate claim of being worse off as a consequence of application of the norm than he would have been without it.

A potential thief may complain about laws protecting property because they reduce his potential to acquire wealth by theft. This restriction on his earning power would at first glance seem to provide him with a valid complaint. Analysis shows that his loss of earning power is an

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illusion. By the rule of subjective equality, if we grant him the right to steal property from others, we must grant that right to everybody: there would be no law about property at all. People who want to protect their property then could and would form their own protective associations which - in addition to protecting their own property - would have the licence to steal from all those who are not members of their association. As soon as such an association builds up steam, it would attract other less well-protected individuals. By sheer power of numbers this would increase its effectiveness, induce other people to join it and promote a fusion of protective associations, until only one remains. At that point, only people who are members of that association will be able to hold on to any property at all. Our thief would be even worse off than in our democratic society. His potential victims would be just as well protected as in a democratic society, but he would be constantly robbed of the fruits of his thefts and of any other gains he may have obtained legitimately. From a point of view of enjoying material goods, anybody is in the end better off with laws protecting property than without them, and thus the objection of our thief is invalid.

Clearly laws protecting property are vital to the survival of any society. In fact, many proponents of contract theory of justice, such as Nozick, use - as a starting point for the formation of a state-of-law - precisely the need to protect property and the consequent necessity to form protective associations. Here, it is used only as an illustration of our rules and concerns only the justification of general laws protecting property.

Society constantly must decide on various norms, usually in the form of laws. External circumstances as well as culture (from ethics to technology) change continuously, requiring new norms and making existing ones obsolete. The usual process in a democracy for establishing and reviewing norms is to delegate that power to a legislative body which has been elected on basis of a simple majority.

If such norms become law in a procedure of free election of a parliament entrusted with the approval of laws and of executive power, we must accept these norms as legal. That is not the same as legitimate, which is a moral concept. Without legitimacy, compliance to such a law is for an individual a pure exercise in calculating his self-interest; it must rely totally on sanctions sufficiently heavy and enforced to deter most individuals from infringement, whatever their personal interest in such an infringement would be. Without the discipline of legitimacy, the political body is free to operate within the limits of the procedures and thus indulge in their own professional game which is epitomised by political opportunism (for which my compatriots have coined the expression ‘politiek haalbaar’). Unless we clearly specify the underlying choice which lends legitimacy to the decisions taken by the elected body, there are no ultimate standards for evaluating its decisions. That leads to shoddy legislation, to justifications based mainly on formal arguments or worse, on obfuscation of issues and even plain deception. Whatever the decision taken, it will leave citizens with objections which they have every cause to consider justified,. That is the real cause of today's loss of legitimacy of politics mentioned in the introduction.

The moral which lends legitimacy to norms in a democracy is implicit in the will to form a healthy society which respects the autonomy of the individual and its resulting principle of

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subjective equality. That is an objective and a principle worth loyalty and sacrifices. A commitment to such a society can never be elicited by just an electoral process. If we realise what forming such a society means, then it will become evident that this objective is a match for any other in terms of morality.

1.5) Democracy Is a Culture, Including Ethics and Morals.

Democracy as defined here is a free choice of individuals and therefore subject to the theory of rational choice which originated in - and is fundamental to - standard economics which deals with marketable goods. An action is considered rational if it is appropriate, given the goals of the agent. If faced with different action alternatives, it is rational to choose that alternative which promises the highest net (after paying all costs) benefits. Democratic norms differ from marketable goods in that usually enjoying their benefits cannot be tied to paying for their costs: they are public goods. While - as argued above - democratic norms will be rational in the above sense for the community as a whole, this does not apply to compliance by individuals: if it is possible to benefit from a norm without complying with it or paying for its costs, individuals following the rational choice theory will do so.... if they can get away with it. Now experience shows that in all reasonably stable societies people by and large do comply with norms, a fact for which rational choice theory has to account. It does so by introducing the notion of sanction which becomes the cost of a noncompliance: people comply as long as the expected cost (of the sanction) will exceed the benefits from deviant behaviour, for instance not paying taxes. If many people get away with tax-evasion, those who comply either face an increased tax rate or will be able to finance fewer benefits, which reduces the incentive for compliance; that in turn increases the net benefit of a non-compliance etc. Sanctions by the government mean exposing and punishing noncompliance, they mean legislators, judges, police and prisons etc. All this is very costly. In a community which is based solely on rational choice theory, the cost of ensuring compliance with even a single norm will be quite high; for all norms it will be totally prohibitive. It is also an unpleasant community for it is based on fear. Fortunately, rational choice is not an empirical theory, it is not a general explanation or description of human social decision-making. It was designed for a special kind of decision: to devise a strategy for business and the military, and as an axiom for a specific economic theory of consumer behaviour; it is not intended to deal with the compliance of the individual with social norms. While the rational choice theory has at least acknowledged the problem of obtaining information, it has not done it justice. It hardly ever mentions the time and ability factor crucial in most common decision making situations. The gravest shortcoming of rational choice theory is that it ignores the factor of how men actually process information as well as the multiplicity and interrelation of objectives and motives. This book attempts to put these factors on the agenda and also - in the part about information - presents a first sketch of how we cope with it. Even with man, conscious, reasoned and sequential information processing turns out to be an exception to the general, unconscious, intuitive and parallel process which is the only process which enables a living being to cope with that multitude and complexity within the available time frame. Also most of the rational choice theory deals with a human individual amputated of its inevitable social component, of its integrative tendencies (see 2b.6). To the extent that they are not inborn, these tendencies take the form of morals and virtues which must be integrated into our parallel information processing (mostly via social interaction) to make organised

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social life viable and - important for democracy - attractive. That integration is a major and neglected part of the organisation of democratic societies.

To be effective, the democratic principle must then be translated from an abstract creed into an ethic enabling the citizen to distinguish good from bad. It must grow into a public moral defining norms and virtues for the social behaviour in a way that all can understand and experience them as natural and self-evident. In our Western democracies we have developed such social norms, but over a long period, under very favourable conditions of ample land and resources and by trial and error. But they are implicit and are not founded on a generally accepted principle. They lack firmness and can be perverted by interest, ideology and false prophets. New democracies do not have the time we had and certainly not our favourable conditions. ‘Trial and error’ for them means the law of the jungle, rogue demagogues, civil war and dictators.

The strength of a democracy depends on the congruence of its culture with the democratic principle which must permeate every aspect of social life of individuals and shield them against all undemocratic tendencies. An adequate treatment of the subject transcends the scope of this book. To give the reader a feel for it, here follows - without any claim of completeness - a list of democratic virtues.

1)

The will to live in a society implies the virtues of: - communal sense, love of your neighbour, ‘brotherhood’ - rejection of violence to solve disagreements - the will to achieve agreement through fair argumentation and negotiation - acknowledging the duty which comes with every right. - trustworthiness empathy

2)

From the respect of our autonomy we deduce the virtues of: - respect of subjective equality in social-decision making - reciprocity, and therefore universality within the community of all principles which we invoke to justify our actions and principles - tolerance as respect of everybody's right to his own opinions values and norms and the pursuit of his own interests - responsibility for the consequences of our choices; emancipation implies accountability - respect of the rules for democratic argumentation (part 5) - intolerance for corruption of these virtues.

For a democrat this ethic expresses his own will and therefore does not imply any self-denial. Pursuing his own interests comes naturally; it can be in harmony or in conflict with the same pursuit by others. Democratic ethics and morals strive for the harmony of self-interest with the common interest, but do not put one above the other; democratic virtues must be perceived by individuals as worthy of striving for. That harmony must be constantly created, for conflict between the interest of the community and of specific individuals is the rule, not the exception. The democrat will not strive for victory of one over the other but search for a ‘reasonable’ balance between the social and the individual on the basis of criteria deduced from the democratic principle and through the democratic procedures established for that purpose.

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1.6) Truth and Justice in a Democracy.

Most decisions, most choices for a course of action of an individual are triggered by a totally unconscious or at least an intuitive information process. Some decisions are conscious and presumed to be well considered, they follow from a judgement and can be justified, either to ourselves or to others. With the exception of gratuitous gestures and posturing, decisions of society will affect, to a higher or lesser degree, the interests of at least some members. If we deny every individual any a priori authority over any other individual, those who take decisions in the name of others must be held accountable for such decisions and can be called upon to justify them. Decisions by a democratic society therefore are always (considered to be) judgements. To evaluate a judgement, we need criteria which the judgement is supposed to satisfy.

A decision which involves only subjective elements, with no material consequences for anyone, can never satisfy the conditions we have established for democratic decision-making: it can neither be vital to society, nor generate any surplus to compensate for its costs. If a judgement involves the interests of people, it must deal with some objective reality, objective in the sense of containing more than subjective elements (the existence of such an objective reality is dealt with in Volume two, CAPITA SELECTA, ‘The confusion about reality’). Any justification of a decision in a democracy then always contains a statement of facts (philosophers would say that it is synthetic). These statements of facts can be questioned and often are. Evaluation of judgements of society then always requires that we be able to justify the factual statements on which these judgements are based, that we establish their ‘truth’.

Because they affect the interests of the members of society, we also must justify that we have respected the rights of the citizens to the pursuit of their interests, that the judgement is compatible with the norms of justice reigning in that society; in short, that they are ‘just’. Any judgement of a democratic society then always involves two aspects already well known in ancient law: ‘quid jurii, quid factii’.

In our western democracies we entrust our legislative body with the task of establishing the official norms by which further judgements (for instance, by a court of law) are to be made and evaluated. Unfortunately we have never explicitly agreed on the ultimate norms which inevitably have to exist if we want to avoid infinite regress, which is why our success in establishing the ‘de jurii’ of democratic decisions is rather ‘underwhelming’.

The problem is compounded by a similar failure to agree on the other element of a judgment: the facts. The discussions in our parliaments provide the inescapable and very depressing proof that it is possible to disagree about the truth of almost any factual statement. That provides a convenient escape from the necessity to take sides in a matter of justice which will inevitably alienate those whose claim is rejected while the other party will consider that is has obtained only its lawful due. Politicians then have a vested interest in manipulating the factual elements in the justification of a decision, as long as they can do so without being exposed as an outright liar. The preferred means is getting the testimony of an ‘expert’. A diligent search can usually turn up one for just about any assertion one wants to make; finding one willing to question the assertion of an opponent - however true - is virtually guaranteed.

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Failure by politicians to agree about facts therefore is to be expected. We could live with that problem if some other organisation could limit the damage by establishing at least that level of consensus about facts which can be reached if one is willing to be as objective as possible (in the sense explained in PART THREE). The problem is not limited to politics; we run into it even where knowledge is the main objective, namely science.

By the very nature of their subject, assessing the degree to which its statements correspond to reality is especially difficult in social science. Yet the history of science provides ample evidence that the problem is no stranger even to physics. As will be shown in PART THREE, Popper's assertion that we can objectively prove at least the falsity of scientific theories provides no way out. We are inevitably forced to conclude that to establish the truth or falseness of any statement, even about the most simple fact, always requires conventions which inevitably introduce a subjective element. These conventions are a form of norms (think of the standardisation of measures and the verification of measuring tools or of the rules of argumentation such as logic and mathematics). The process of taking a social decision, like accepting or rejecting a scientific theory or the truth of a statement about facts, will affect the interests of at least some citizens. Any such decision, any conventions for truth, has an aspect of justice, requires a decision about the ‘quid jurii’.

And to establish such norms, the ‘de jurii’, we must have truth, because deciding about norms having practical impact requires judgements involving facts (for instance that the norm is necessary, or that it respects the subjective equality). A perfectly vicious circle, but one which can be broken. Not by attempting to find any objective basis either in fact or in logic, but by an act of will: the will to arrive at a decision satisfying the democratic principle. Clearly, such a decision is conventional; but, as shown, that is the best we can expect to do; fortunately it is also all we need for social decision-making in a democracy.

To that end we must investigate what our choice for democracy means for knowledge, especially science, and develop some criteria or methods for establishing the reliability, the ‘truth’, of factual statements. And we must attempt to deduce from the democratic principle a democratic concept of normative justice plus rules of argumentation. The circle will then be fully closed, but no longer vicious.

Before engaging in that venture, I will present a concept of life and information based on the recent findings of science. As stated in the introduction, its purpose is to provide a sketch of the kind of background knowledge about life and information which should be familiar to any social scientist. It will be shown that the concepts developed here about truth and justice in a democracy are compatible with the current state of that knowledge.