"Democracy" has no formal definition in political science, but "dictatorship" does

 Stop me if you've heard this one before:  "Well, you know, America isn't really a democracy.  It's actually a republic."  So says the semi-educated person.  According to the line, which is insufficiently true to qualify as an aphorism, "democracy" is formally defined as direct democracy, wherein citizens vote directly on policy through referenda.  However, a "republic" is an indirect democracy, in which citizens vote for representatives, who select policy.  How many times have you heard snotty, sanctimonious people give you this lecture?  I don't need an answer.  It's bullshit.  "Democracy," derives from the Greek.  Demos, and -kratia.  Rule by the people.  Nothing within the etymology restricts the meaning to direct democracy, and all governmental systems labeled "democracies" are "republics" by this stupid definition, which no political scientist uses.  After all, why use a definition that defines a concept out of existence?  How do we define "democracy?"  When political scientists discuss the concept of democracy, we get bogged down in a multidimensional, definitional morass.

You know the old legend about vampires, about OCD?  They can't help themselves, but to untie knots, so all you have to do to stop them is to hand them ludicrously complicated knots, and they'll be distracted indefinitely.  Political scientists are like that, except that we create our own knots, with words like "democracy."  If you really want to make a comparativist stop dead in his tracks, ask him to define "revolution."  Hilarity always ensues.  (My students occasionally do this, and the funniest part is that they do it knowingly!  Hey, comparativists!  They're fucking with you!  Here's a quarter.  Buy a clue!)

The hypothetical reader who recalls what I actually write may remember such lines as "majoritarianism is a mathematical impossibility," or similar statements about the impossibility of aggregating the preferences of a group into such a thing that we can call, "the will of the people," but the word, "democracy," is more slippery.  To some, it means universal suffrage.  To others, it depends more on protection of civil liberties, and like I said, it's a multidimensional morass.  It is such a morass that Robert Dahl didn't even use the word in A Preface to Democratic Theory.  He preferred the word, "pluralism."  So the next time someone gives you that snotty line, just ignore it.  Don't argue, just change the subject.

Unless you're me.  Then you (I) can give an even more sanctimonious and self-satisfied lecture.  But I'll probably be too bored and annoyed, so unless I'm in a classroom, and paid to give that lecture, I'll just change the subject.

But you know what does have a formal definition?  "Dictatorship."

Yesterday's January 6 hearings were all about Eastman's bugfucked plan to convince Mike Pence that he had the power to declare that Trump really, truly won, or at least, unilaterally make him prez, just 'cuz.  Yes, he was out of his fucking mind, and one of the many obvious retorts is that any even perceived ambiguity in the Constitution or the law cannot be interpreted such that the VP has unilateral power to pick the winner of the presidential election.

Such an interpretation is actually the technical, political science definition of "dictatorship."

Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice & Individual Values.  Remember what I just told you about majoritarianism being a mathematical impossibility, and there being no way to derive "the will of the people?"  This all comes from Arrow.  You know what else comes from Arrow?  Our technical, mathematical definition of "dictatorship."

Here's what Kenny was all about.  Suppose you have a group of people who have different preferences over something.  Anything.  Candidates, policies, pizza toppings, anything.  You want to aggregate their preferences to come up with a group ranking, from most-preferred to least-preferred, using a rule that makes sense, and follows some defensible principles.  He sets five principles, and asks whether or not you can define a rule for combining everyone's preferences that meets all five.  He then proves, yes, proves that you cannot aggregate everyone's preferences using a rule that meets all five procedural conditions.  We call this the impossibility theorem.  This is what I mean when I say that majoritarianism is a mathematical impossibility, and that there is no such thing as "the will of the people."

The conditions are: independence of irrelevant alternatives, universal domain, monotonicity, non-imposition... and... non-dictatorship.  The first four are technical, and I'm not gonna bother explaining them today.  I think I have before, but whatever.  The point is that non-dictatorship is easy to explain.  If there is one actor whose preferences determine the outcome regardless of anyone else's preferences, that's the "dictator."

If your rule meets the other four conditions by creating a ranking that just matches the dictator's preferences, you have failed to meet all five conditions.

Under the rule proposed by Barrister Bugfuck, you know who gets to pick the winner?  Regardless of anyone else?  One guy.  The VP.

That's the mathematical, technical, political science definition of "dictator."

Democracy?  Can I define that?  I can ramble for a long time, about all of the different and conflicting ways in which political scientists define it, and then tell you why I dig Bob Dahl.  Dictatorship?  That's easy.