The experience of the two last federal elections in America suggests that “the left” is more interested than “the right” in a peaceful transfer of power. (By “the left” and “the right,” I simply mean most individuals who identify with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.) Kamala Harris gave a magistral lesson to Donald Trump. But there is more to the left’s support for the peaceful transfer of power.
One reason may be that the peaceful transfer of power constitutes the main content of their thin democratic ideology. Isn’t majoritarian democracy the only thing they believe in? This hypothesis is not satisfactory because it is not clear why they would invoke the peaceful transfer of power in favor of a contender who, they claim, wishes, or is tempted to, abolish majoritarian democracy and who has already tried to interfere with it.
Another hypothesis is that the left believes in more than just the peaceful transfer of power, they believe in the peaceful transfer of unlimited power in order to engineer the sort of society defined by their century-old ideology or its remnants. But why wouldn’t they then object to a contending party gaining power to engineer a different kind of society?
The simplest hypothesis and perhaps the most plausible one is that the left believes that a majoritarian and unlimited democracy is bound to ultimately approve their program. “The people” cannot vote against itself—which, interestingly, is also what the populist right believes, a paradox that portends interminable strife.
These justifications for a peaceful transfer of power stand in stark contrast with the classical liberal tradition. For the latter, the peaceful transfer of power is not a means to impose on minorities the preferences and values of the majority, but simply a sort of veto against a totalitarian design from the party in power, to prevent unlimited power. The expression “liberal democracy” is not a pleonasm but emphasizes limited democracy.
A good (albeit a bit technical) expression of this opinion can be found in the book of political scientist William Riker, Liberalism Against Populism (1982). It is interestingly close to Friedrich Hayek’s conception of democracy as a way to keep the state constrained by long-term (thus “traditional”) and abstract “opinion” of what is just (see his book Law, Legislation, and Liberty [1973-1978], the three volumes of which are referenced at the bottom of the post just linked to). James Buchanan added a test of (plausible) unanimity for the general rules that result from an autoregulated social order; his book with Geoffrey Brennan, The Reason of Rules (1985), may be the best exposé of this theory.
If we follow Anthony de Jasay, one problem is that the left may very well be correct: in a regime of majoritarian democracy, he argues, the left will ultimately prevail. De Jasay had two arguments which, however they fit together, lead to the same result. First, in a majoritarian democracy, those who promise to redistribute from the “rich” to the “poor” will necessarily win because the 51% at the bottom of the income distribution are arithmetically more numerous than the 49% at the top. Second, electoral competition will lead politicians to try to satisfy every grievance group at the expense of other people, simultaneously generating growing government power and mounting discontent, until the government has no choice but to abolish electoral competition.
To counter this prospect, is our only recourse to James Buchanan’s call to have “faith” in the maintenance of an autoregulated social order and in the classical-liberal ideal that “we can all be free”? (See his Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative [2006].) This would still imply, it seems, that the peaceful transfer of power only makes sense for the classical liberal if it is a limited power that is transferred, and if the social, political, and economic institutions will protect this limitation of power.
The invocation of the peaceful transfer of power is generally taken to imply that power has not been gained fraudulently. This introduces another level of fuzziness. Anybody can claim that an election has been fraudulent because “the people” cannot vote against itself (even if tens of different independent courts find no technical fraud). If we expect an election to represent the “will of the people,” anybody can easily find that it doesn’t, for “the people” does not exist (see Riker again). Anybody can claim that the will of a unicorn is on his side.
It seems that the peaceful and non-fraudulent transfer of power is only meaningful if the transferred power is not unlimited and if voters consequently don’t expect too much, or fear too much, from an election or referendum. An illiberal democracy is one where, at each election, many people fear for their peaceful lifestyles—“peaceful” meaning not imposed on, or coercively supported by, others.
Another argument for the peaceful transfer of power is that a temporary break in legality or a vacancy of constitutional legitimacy raises the age-old problem of who will rush into the breach. Those who will are not necessarily the most enlightened and liberal specimens of mankind. And judges may not be able to protect anyone against them. Reestablishing the rule of law and the so-called “norms” is not a simple matter.
All these considerations depend on where we are on the road to serfdom. And except if the “we” means 100%, it is not a numerical “we.”
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La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), by Eugène Delacroix to commemorate the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France
READER COMMENTS
steve
Jan 20 2025 at 1:40pm
I dont think most people think of the peaceful transition of power as anything other than a norm which prevents violence as the means of changing power, which was often the norm before democracies. For those who think about it more seriously I think they believe that the peaceful transition indicates a single person or minority has not manipulated the outcome of the vote. That the person surrendering power acknowledges that they have legitimately lost.
Steve
Jose Pablo
Jan 20 2025 at 4:10pm
If we follow Anthony de Jasay, one problem is that the left may very well be correct: in a regime of majoritarian democracy, he argues, it will ultimately prevail.
If you look at the Communist Party electoral program in 1936, it seems that de Jasay was, for the most part, right.
The program of the CPUSA is outlined in detail, based upon the opening of closed factories, implementation of a 30 hour work week, establishment of old age pensions, unemployment insurance, and social security, continuation of the WPA and the CCC, halting evictions and foreclosures of farmers, and an expansion of civil liberties, particularly for black Americans. (…)
This agenda is to be funded by income-based “taxation of the rich.”
Mactoul
Jan 21 2025 at 1:44am
Your premise, that the Left is more interested in peaceful transfer of power, is mistaken. Just see the recent example of Romania where the election itself was cancelled since it brought a party, undesirable to the Left, to victory.
Also, the legal travails and threats to ban AfD in Germany. Similar threats exist for all right-wing parties in Europe.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 21 2025 at 11:56am
Mactoul: Yes, in some cases, “the left” may lose confidence in themselves and see some irreversible event. But this does not contradict my third hypothesis. Reread the second clause in the formulation of the latter:
Monte
Jan 21 2025 at 3:32am
With all the chinwag about “threats to democracy”, let’s not forget that we live in a representative republic. Hanging over the loop of our country’s cradle is a dreamcatcher called the constitution that guards against the nightmare of unlimited power. The ad hoc interventions so troubling to Hayek must still comport with constitutional requirements. The rule of law has continued to prevail despite the many collective efforts to erode it.
The populist movement here in the U.S. poses less of a threat to individual liberty than the conservative socialism currently sweeping across Europe. Populism, according to journalist Bill Britt, has never sustained itself in American politics. “It thrives in times of frustration, but fails to endure because of its disregard for institutional norms and its fixation on short-term fixes.”
With the election of Trump, I believe we’re at a crossroads. It remains to be seen if he’ll fulfill his promise to “state the truth in full and preserve America’s founding ideals” or attempt to take us further down the road to serfdom. As they always have, Americans will ultimately determine their own fate.
Jose Pablo
Jan 21 2025 at 1:05pm
The populist movement here in the U.S. poses less of a threat to individual liberty than the conservative socialism currently sweeping across Europe.
Well, Europeans live also, for the most part, in “representative republics” and have also “a dream-catcher called the constitution” over their “country’s cradle”.
The Weimar Republic also had a (very advanced, by the way) dream-catcher.
If you think that the Constitution what protects America, you are mistaken. The Constitution is nothing, just words on paper. The Constitution will not become alive to hit the wannabe tyrant in his/her head.
What “protects” America are its “uses and customs”, the “culture of liberal democracy” if you wish. And that is (as Reagan famously said) “never more than one generation away from extinction”. Once people walk away from this spirit (and they would do it, no doubt, with the best of intentions: most of the time in history it has been to protect the motherland, to save the country from “invasions”, to enter a new era of grandness …) the Constitution is nothing but just paper useful only to lit a fire when the lights go off.
Every banana republic used to have a Constitution before the advent of the next tyrant-savior. Some of them were even better than the American one from a “technical” standpoint. Just words on paper.
Monte
Jan 21 2025 at 3:23pm
I think it amounts to more than that, given it has outlasted all other constitutions save one.* We can attribute its longevity to the fact that its core structure and principles (federalism, individual rights, and balance of powers) have remained intact in spite of the amendment process.
If, as you say, it’s ever reduced to “just words on a paper”, it will be because the American people have rendered it so. But I have faith that they’ll always prefer “the boisterous sea of liberty to the calm of despotism.” (Jefferson)
* Statuti di San Marino
Jose Pablo
Jan 21 2025 at 10:15pm
If, as you say, it’s ever reduced to “just words on a paper”, it will be because the American people have rendered it so.
That is precisely my point. And they can do it very quickly at any point in time (remember January 2021).
I will keep watching for worrying signals (and those are aplenty), instead of sleeping confortably using just a piece of paper as a tyrantproof dream-catcher.
it has outlasted all other constitutions save one
Past performance is not guarantee of future results.
Monte
Jan 22 2025 at 1:37am
Time tells all. Duerme bien, mi amigo!
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 22 2025 at 6:43pm
Monte and Jose: Some further reflections in a previous EconLog post: “The Possibility of Despotism in America.”
Monte
Jan 23 2025 at 12:00am
I’m less concerned with its possibility than I am with its probability, which, IMO, is very low. We can worry about the next 4 years, but vis-a-vis Mark Twain, “Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.” OTOH, I seem to recall a very real push towards despotism from 46 (abusing emergency powers, suppressing free speech, talk of packing the court, attempts to circumvent or amend the constitution). But democracy prevailed and will continue to well after 47 (on which I’m willing to take bets).
We must, of course, be more than idle worshipers of our constitution. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom (Tutu). We must also heed Hayek’s warning that crisis, more than anything else, are “the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.”
In order for a U.S. president to become a dictator would require a perfect storm of constitutional erosion, weakened institutions, political chaos, and public apathy. We’ve seen some, but not enough yet to sound the death knell for the great experiment.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 23 2025 at 11:21am
Monte: I hope you are right. (But note what there is to lose is not as much democracy as liberal democracy.)
Monte
Jan 23 2025 at 4:20pm
Agreed. Freedom and liberty were meant for the individual.
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