PrologueEpisode IEpisode IIEpisode IIIEpisode IVEpisode VEpisode VI

Let’s Talk

Democracy and Hong Kong’s Constitutional Reform

 

An Imaginary Dialogue between Two Hong Kong Citizens

 

Episode V

On Questioning the Quality of Democratic Decision-Making

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Do you know that during a pan-democrat signature campaign for universal suffrage in 2012 the other day, when invited by Audrey Eu to sign the petition, a citizen refused, saying he would not support universal suffrage in Hong Kong? His reason was that if Hong Kong people were given the right to vote, local pop singer Andy Lau might get elected as Chief Executive.

 

Visionary Kong:              Oh yeh? What’s wrong with that?

 

                                           Both the late former US President Ronald Reagan and the current Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger were once actors.

 

Pragmatist Hong:          I think saying that “Andy Lau might be elected CE” was just a metaphor.

 

The real worry is the “ignorance of the masses”! I suspect not a few Hong Kong people are apprehensive about democracy for this reason.

 

Visionary Kong:             But why? This sounds insulting of the citizens of Hong Kong!

 

Pragmatist Hong:          Let me explain. I think such a worry is not totally groundless – especially after seven years of low-quality governance under “Old Tung”. Hong Kong people feel they have suffered enough from the “ignorance of one man” under the former CE. They certainly are wary about suffering under the other extreme – the “ignorance of the masses”. I, for one, am very concerned about the quality of governance and decision-making of the future political system under universal suffrage.

 

I suspect the “ignorance of the masses” is another major concern underlying the demand of “balanced participation”. For the good of Hong Kong, the argument goes, the influence of the “masses” must be “balanced” by limiting their political participation and expanding elitists’ political participation, whoever these are.

 

I am very keen to know:

1.           Will giving equal political rights to Hong Kong people and allowing them to participate in the policy-making process improve the quality of governance in Hong Kong?

2.           Will democracy aggravate the poor quality of governance in Hong Kong?

 

I must say that the “ignorance of the masses” is not fictional.

 

Even the democrats and Anson Chan admit that democracy is no panacea for the problem of governance in Hong Kong.

 

Visionary Kong:             You are questioning the epistemic power of democracy, aren’t you?

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Pardon me! What do you mean? Please spare me professional jargons! This is not conducive to meaningful dialogue!

 

Visionary Kong:             I am sorry. Sometimes professional jargons can economize the use of words by summarizing ideas into single words.

 

What I mean is that you are questioning the capacity or power of the democratic process to generate right/correct/good outcomes and policies.

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Yes, I am. So …. .

 

Visionary Kong:              Could you elaborate on what you mean by the “ignorance of the masses” and its relation to the quality of decision-making in a democracy?

 

Pragmatist Hong:            What? Are you challenging me? Do you not agree that improving the quality of governance is a very pressing issue in Hong Kong?

 

Visionary Kong:              No, don’t mistake me. I do not intend to challenge you at all. I just want to know how you see the relationship between the “ignorance of the masses” and democratic decision-making before offering my views.

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Do you agree or not to the following?[1]

 

·          we can distinguish good political decisions from bad ones;

·          competence is relevant to making good political decisions;

·          among citizens, there are fundamental differences in the level of competence in relation to good political decision-making;

·          some citizens are less competent than others in this regard.

 

Visionary Kong:              Yes, I agree.

 

                                           Regarding the characteristics of citizens, I should like to add that :

·          as mentioned before, “individuals are rarely able to give as much as   rough sketches of their own interests in social life and most often individuals find themselves in the process of continually adjusting their conceptions of what is good for themselves”;

·          individuals are often mistaken about what their genuine interests are;

·          individuals understand their own interests better than the interests of others; they tend to interpret the interests of others in the light of their    understanding of their own interests; hence, they tend to assign lesser weight to the clearly distinctive interests of others;

·          “individuals are more sensitive to the harms they undergo than to those of others, so they may inadvertently or unduly downplay harms to others”.[2] 

 

Oh, sorry! Please continue. You were saying … ?

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Democracy, by allowing everyone to participate in political decision-making, seems to imply either

1.            that everyone is equally competent with regard to making political decisions

or

2.            that competence is not important or is irrelevant to the making of political decisions.

 

Both 1 & 2 are obviously untrue!

 

In fact, as a rule, “the less competent are more likely than the more competent to do harm”[3] – Old Tung is one prime example.

 

Given this rule and the characterization of citizens you just made, whatever other virtues it may have, if we care about the quality of political decisions, democracy is not a sensible choice!

 

This is my worry about introducing democracy in Hong Kong – it may do more harm than good.

 

Visionary Kong:              But modern democracies do not work this way!

 

Citizens or the masses do not directly participate in making political decisions.

 

Rather, they participate in governance indirectly by electing their representatives to the legislature and electing their government.

 

Political representatives and elected officials in the government make decisions on their behalf. The expertise of elected politicians is in policy-making.

 

Most importantly, when making policies, elected politicians are invariably assisted by advisors with different expertise. Modern democracies do take competence seriously!

 

Pragmatist Hong:            The expertise of elected politicians is in policy-making? You must be kidding!

 

Their expertise is in getting elected by promising “the moon to their constituents”[4] without bothering about long-term consequences.

 

To maintain their popularity, elected politicians have a strong incentive to implement “popular” policies – i.e. policies supported by the majority.

 

But “popular” policies are by no means fair/just/good policies or in the long-term interest of society, given our characterization of citizens – lack of competence in matters regarding good governance, lack of understanding of their genuine interests, and biases towards the interests of others.

 

Indeed, the institution of elections is not a mechanism for selecting the wise and the talented but only those “popular” in the eyes of electors![5]

 

In China, “even Fang Lizhi and other democracy leaders ‘have expressed only horror at a democratic formula that would give equal voting rights to peasants.’” I believe the assumption is that “China’s problems – overpopulation, pollution, increasing economic inequality, a risk of civil war – are so severe that many reformers are nervous about granting too much power to relatively uneducated people.”[6]

 

Visionary Kong:              Talking about China, do you know that Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, attributes the cause of the 1958-61 famine to China’s lack of democracy?

 

He says: “China, although it was in many ways doing much better economically than India, still managed (unlike India) to have a famine, indeed the largest recorded famine in world history: Nearly 30 million people died in the famine of 1958-61, while faulty governmental policies remained uncorrected for three full years. The policies went uncriticized because there were no opposition parties in parliament, no free press, and no multiparty elections.”[7]

 

One conclusion of Sen’s study on famines is that “in the terrible history of famines in the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press.”[8] “Famines have occurred in ancient kingdoms and contemporary authoritarian societies, in primitive tribal communities and in modern technocratic dictatorships, in colonial economies run by imperialists from the north and in newly independent countries of the south run by despotic national leaders or by intolerant single parties.”[9]

 

On the quality of democratic decision-making, the renowned political theorist, Robert Dahl, says: “[i]t is true that a democratic regime runs the risk that the people will make mistakes. But the risk of mistake exists in all regimes in the real world, and the worst blunders of this century have been made by leaders in nondemocratic regimes.”[10]

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Right! This reminds me of John Stuart Mill, the great defender of liberty who supported an arrangement that

·          “persons with greater intelligence and education should have extra votes in order that their opinions may have a greater influence”;

·          “[t]he judgment of the wiser and the knowledgeable should have a superior weight”,

and argued that

·          “[s]uch an arrangement is in the interest of each and conforms to men’s sentiment of justice.”[11]

 

Visionary Kong:              It seems you prefer a political system of “rule by the wiser” or “rule by the philosopher-kings” to a political system of “rule by the people”, don’t you?

 

But please let me remind you of some fundamental faults of such a system:

·          If we are all less intelligent than the wiser and the philosopher-kings, how can we identify them and delegate the task of governing to them?[12] I believe we will not simply delegate political power to people claiming to be in possession of super wisdom, right?!

·          If the wiser and the philosopher-kings are a lot more intelligent than us, how can we judge their performance? Shall we simply defer our judgment to them?

·          “Rule by the wiser” is founded on the principle that “knowledge or wisdom justifies power” – the wiser have a special claim to rule.[13] But “knowledge is one thing; power is another”.[14] The relationship between the two remains to be established.

·          Unless the wiser and the philosopher-kings are incorruptible, how can we prevent them from abusing their power and turning into despots? – On this, I tend to concur with William Pitt, a British statesman of vast experience in political life, that “[u]nlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”[15]

 

Pragmatist Hong:            I fully appreciate Lord Acton’s famous statement that “[p]ower tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

 

Questioning democracy’s “epistemic” power – using your jargon – does not necessarily mean that I accept a political system of “rule by the wiser”. I am just asking for evidence of the epistemic power of democracy, if there is any!

 

I cherish the value of political equality, but I consider the quality of governance no less important! If there is an inevitable tradeoff between political equality and quality of political decisions, I think I will let go of political equality.

 

To be continued….