Abstract
Societies are distinguished by what their citizens take for granted. In ‘Western societies’ most citizens agree, among other things, about the need for regular elections with near-universal franchises, how to treat strangers, the poor and the sick. These understandings are sedimented in the course of socialisation and constitute the organic face of societies; there is so much agreement that such things don’t usually feature in political manifestos. Citizens record more detailed, varying, and self-conscious choices in elections, giving rise to the enumerative face of societies. Populism deliberately confuses the enumerative face with the organic face. Citizens can make non-democratic leaders accountable only if they know what democracy means; this is the law of conservation of democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
This sentence, when presented with the option of changing ‘big’ to ‘small’, so as to change the tacitly understood reference of the pronoun, is known as a Winograd schema. These are first explained as a problem for artificial intelligence in Terry Winograd’s PhD thesis: ‘Procedures as a representation for data in a computer program for understanding natural language’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971 (p. 11).
- 2.
See Collins (2018).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
For the idea of uniformity, see Collins and Evans (2017b).
- 6.
Wittgenstein (1953) and Winch (1958). In terms of sociological theory, these kinds of organic or uniform choices correspond to the approach of Emile Durkheim, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology, who argued that sociology should be concerned with those aspects of societies that transcend individuals and provide the structure within which they live out their lives.
- 7.
The previous analysis is Collins and Evans (2017a); that work presents a much-expanded list of the norms of values of science from which we have selected just four for this abbreviated treatment. Some of the political overtones of this approach to universalism, for instance its implications for ‘identity politics’ and the giving of reasons in public debate, were foregrounded in Durant (2011).
- 8.
For a sociologist the reference might be Durkheim (see note 6).
- 9.
Which has elsewhere (Collins and Kusch 1998) been related to ‘formative action types’.
- 10.
‘The transition from communism has been guided by the principles of legal-rational authority, what I call liberalism and democracy, what I identify as majoritarian selection of the leaders, Wille der Beherrschten [the will of those who are governed]. Given the challenges of fast pace of transition, especially of the conversion of public ownership to private wealth, liberal democracy was not consolidated in most—or any?—of these countries. All of these countries—or most of them—are pregnant with a dose of patrimonialism, prebendalism, and illiberalism, and such potentialities come to fruition as long as their charismatic leaders deliver miracles by providing at least the impression of security and improving welfare.’ Szelenyi (2016, 23), see also Eyal et al. (2001). For detailed case studies documenting the failure to establish democratic structures across sub-Saharan Africa after 1990, see Diamond and Plattner (2010). Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, 8) discuss the factors that support democracies at some length. They write ‘Democracies work best—and survive longer—where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms’ (p. 8).
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Collins, H., Evans, R., Durant, D., Weinel, M. (2020). What Is Society?. In: Experts and the Will of the People. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26983-8_2
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