Democratic deficit

According to British American political scientist Pippa Norris, democratic deficit is a term that signifies "disparities between perceived democratic performance and public aspirations" that decrease the legitimacy of the central government. The term deficit, defined as "insufficiency" in economics, helps researchers to identify problems with democratic governance in formally democratic states. Rather than relying on rigid taxonomy of political regimes, such as democracy, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, the concept of democratic deficits reflects various degrees of democratic governance by pointing out shortages of procedure and structure away from the principles of liberty, equality, and solidarity. To cope with a democratic deficit, governments must strive to uphold these democratic principles for legitimacy to be restored.

Overview

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, political scientists adopted the conventional division of political regimes into democracies or authoritarian and totalitarian states. Many modern countries are formal democracies, but in practice, many regimes violate the basic principles of democracy with their populations unable to overrule government decisions via legitimate ways, such as elections, protests, and civic disobedience. The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index noted a significant increase in the number of true democracies in the first decades of the twenty-first century and an increase in autocracy. Democratic deficits encompass two large sets of problems: when institutions are developed but fail to work properly and when institutions are underdeveloped. In the first case, the deficit is seen in the difference between declared services to be delivered by these institutions and lax implementation that leads to grievances from groups that depend on these provisions. In the second case, certain groups or populations as a whole may experience disadvantages without an ability to remedy their conditions due to the lack of procedure or structure through which to voice their grievances. To maintain their legitimacy, governments must allow for more representative institutions, new accountability mechanisms, and enhanced political deliberation. By bringing civil society back into the political process, governments can retain legitimacy and improve their domestic democratic governance. Overall, the concept of democratic deficits helps researchers to identify explicit and implicit problems with shortages of governance separate from democratic ideals that are shared by their population.

The concept of democratic deficits has also been used to analyze the state of democracy in all forms of governance structures, including international organizations, such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and others. Remedying a democratic deficit in such entities is more difficult because citizens cannot directly participate in supranational bodies but can face negative consequences from international commitments pledged by their respective governments.

The term has been criticized for being too Eurocentric and too broad. First, "legitimacy" is difficult to define and measure. In other words, what is the threshold when public dissatisfaction makes the incumbent government "illegitimate"? Who is a legitimate person to voice the grievances of disadvantaged groups? Second, the term takes the liberal Western nation-state as the gold standard of democracy, even though some populations might hold alternative ideals for democratic governance. Third, all real-world democracies, Western and not, have problems violating one principle or another, sometimes governing against public aspirations.

Bibliography

Bekkers, Victor, et al. Governance and the Democratic Deficit: Assessing the Democratic Legitimacy. Ashgate, 2007.

Ford, Matt. "Europe's Democratic Deficit Is Getting Worse." The Atlantic, 23 May 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/europes-democratic-deficit-is-getting-worse/371297. Accessed 2 Jan. 2025.

Hunt Murray, et al. Parliaments and Human Rights: Redressing the Democratic Deficit. Hart Publishing, 2015.

Lang, Valentin. "The Economics of the Democratic Deficit: The Effect of IMF Programs on Inequality." University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, discussion paper no. 617, 2016, doi:10.11588/heidok.00021875. Accessed 2 Jan. 2025.

Lax, Jeffrey, and Justin Phillips. "The Democratic Deficit in States." American Journal of Political Science, vol. 56, no. 1, 2012, pp. 148–66.

Levinson, Sanford. "The Democratic Deficit in America." Harvard Law and Policy Review, journals.law.harvard.edu/lpr/online-articles/the-democratic-deficit-in-america. Accessed 2 Jan. 2025.

Norris, Pippa. "Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited." Harvard Kennedy School, www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/democratic-deficit-critical-citizens-revisited. Accessed 2 Jan. 2025.

Steffek, Jens, et al., editors. Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Vauchez, Antoine. Democratizing Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

White, Joseph, and Aaron Wildavsky. The Deficit and the Public Interest the Search for Responsible Budgeting in the 1980s. U of California P, 2021.

Yowell, Paul, et al. Parliaments and Human Rights: Redressing the Democratic Deficit. Hart Publishing, 2015.