It is the price of democracy that the possibilities of conscious control are restricted to the fields where true agreement exists and that in some fields things must be left to chance. But in a society which for its functioning depends on central planning this control cannot be made dependent on a majority’s being able to agree; it will often be necessary that the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people, because this minority will be the largest group able to agree among themselves on the question at issue. Democratic government has worked successfully where, and so long as, the functions of government were, by a widely accepted creed, restricted to fields where agreement among a majority could be achieved by free discussion; and it is the great merit of the liberal creed that it reduced the range of subjects on which agreement was necessary to one on which it was likely to exist in a society of fierce men.--Hayek The Road to Serfdom, p. 109.
Yesterday, in the context of discussing Jacob T. Levy's attempt at a rebirth of classical liberalism, I quoted a passage in which Hayek (1939) writes, "Government by agreement is only possible provided that we do not require the government to act in fields other than those in which we can obtain true agreement." (Emphasis added) A Facebook comment by the distinguished economist, Peter Boettke, reminded me that I had not paid attention to the significance of the claims in this sentence. Hayek here is offering a (proto-)argument for limited government in name of democracy (or, perhaps, non-violence [''agreement"]. That Hayek dislikes planning is familiar enough. That he understands himself as defending democracy less so (which is one reason why the essay by Levy' that I responded to is important).
Of course, much turns on the nature of true agreement. The argument returns and is clarified by some remarks in the Road to Serfdom (a re-reading of which frames Levy's essay): "The fact is that in these fields legislation does not go beyond general rules on which true majority agreement can be achieved, while in the direction of economic activity the interests to be reconciled arc so divergent that no true agreement is likely to be reached in a democratic assembly." I think Hayek's idea is that an agreement in which a population's interests are reconciled is a true agreement. He offers as an example, the general rules that inform the (to adopt Rawl's terminology) the basic structure of society. (Of course, Hayek and Rawls would disagree, perhaps, over the content of these rules and what is part of the basic structure.) Here, in principle, everybody's interests -- in civil peace, fair play, impartial rule of law, etc. -- are in agreement. (This is why Rawls can use a representative agent in the original position.)
Because in many affairs our interests diverge or are zero-sum, true agreement over these is not possible according to Hayek. In context it is clear that Hayek is concerned both with discretionary power and the delegation of power to experts. The connection between these two issues is not obvious. But from discussion later in The Road to Serfdom (see here), it's clear that Hayek thinks that in both cases a small group will impose its ends on society. And the policies that promote those ends will not merely impact the interests of those represented; many more (non-voters, non-citizens, foreigners, etc.) may well be affected by them. The bigger the federation of states, the more likely that people with divergent interests will be affected by its policies. For Hayek, this is a desirable outcome because it will limit harmful planning and, as I noted yesterday, reduce state capacity.
Some other time, I'll return to Hayek's (much more complex) ideas on free discussion on majority rule. But here I conclude with an observation. One may wonder, how in a democracy, even one with a free press and spaces for free discussion, one would come to agree on what topics or policy areas true agreement is possible, that is, how self-limitation is embraced by a democratic populace. Here, it turns out, is a function for liberal ideology or, if one dislikes the term, religiosity ("widely accepted creed"). That is to say, on Hayek's view a liberal society can be a democratic society if its citizens accept liberal values. This puts Hayek closer to nineteenth century (classical) liberalism than to the neutrality endorsing liberalism (of later Rawls) that stakes its claims on a tenuous overlapping consensus. It also suggests that the Hayekian liberal state may well have to embrace a species of civil religion through which liberal values (the creed) and its institutions are entrenched.
What active state capacity would be necessary to the cultivation of a civil religion?
Posted by: David Jacobs | 05/18/2017 at 07:31 PM