Utopian Visions of Democracy

Abstract

This article examines representations of democratic practices in a handful of contemporary utopian novels and sketches. The analysis serves several purposes. It provides a relatively unique way of reviewing and interrogating democratic ideals and virtues, identifying their ambiguities, presuppositions, and interconnections. The analysis serves also to reveal tensions within and between these ideals and virtues, and to explain why many of these tensions are unavoidable and how they might be negotiated. Finally, the analysis facilitates assessment of the potential benefits and risks associated with alternative arrangements and strategies aimed at securing democratic ideals and virtues, and at negotiating the tensions between democratic ideals and between those ideals and other goods and values.

Keywords:

• Utopia
• Democracy
• Utopia Literature
• Inclusion
• Equality
• Freedom

Notes

[1] Copies of the unpublished manuscript are archived at the University of Missouri‐St. Louis and Pennsylvania State University.

[2] Elaborations and interrogations of these theories may be found in a very wide literature; well‐known, influential, and helpful examples include Pateman (1970), Barber (1984, 1998), Fishkin (1991, 1995), Dryzek (1990, 1996), Gutmann and Thompson (1996), and the essays by Habermas, Cohen, Mansbridge, Phillips, Young, Benhabib, Christiano, and others in the collections edited by Benhabib (1996), Bohman and Rehg (1997), and Christiano (2003).

[3] Alternatively, political liberty can be defined as participation in politics. On this understanding, having the opportunity to participate is important but only as a means to political freedom, which exists only when people exercise that opportunity by actually participating in the political life of a community. This non‐liberal, “republican” interpretation of political liberty may justify compelling participation and punishing apathy; although the texts under consideration here do not define political freedom in this fashion, we shall briefly observe that in most of them political participation is nonetheless required or strongly encouraged.

[4] A good example is Fishkin's (1991, 1995) work on deliberative democracy, which contends that, in the political history of the United States, there has been a long‐term egalitarian trend of enhancing the influence of ordinary citizens without a corresponding increase in deliberative institutions and practices aimed at improving their political knowledge and acumen. In the absence of the latter, he suggests, the former is not to be applauded.

[5] Toleration and acceptance are, of course, different concepts; the latter is more demanding than the former. For a recent discussion of conceptions of toleration, see Galeotti (2002).

[6] Recent texts variously celebrating, warning against, and assessing existing and possible forms of cyberdemocracy include Wilhelm (2000), and the edited volumes by Tsagarousianou, Tambini, and Bryan (1998) and Kamarck and Nye (2002).

[7] For details see Sabia (1999).

[8] Prescriptions for and analyses of worldwide democratic possibilities have become much more numerous in this age of globalization, of course; see, for example, the selections and the many citations in the edited volume by Archibugi, Held, and Kohler (1998). For a recent, quite thoughtful, and useful analysis and assessment of actual and possible types of multi‐level governance, both within and between modern states, see Hooghe and Marks (2003).

[9] Analyses and assessments of electoral systems and voting schemes, and proposals for improving them, constitute another increasingly popular set of topics for democratic theorists, due in large part to ongoing problems of inadequate representation, and/or ongoing marginalization or oppression, of minority groups in various societies. For examples focused on the United States, see Guinier (1994) and Williams (1998).

[10] For a critique of the conventional exclusion of children along these lines see Cummings (2001, ch. 6), and for a defense see Dahl (1989, pp. 126–127).

[11] For a recent and thoughtful account of these sorts of dangers see Young (2001).

[12] Compare to Warren (2002, p. 695) who, in outlining “guidelines” for “progressive” democrats, writes: “Although it is impossible to imagine that individuals could participate equally in the collective decisions that affect their lives, it is not impossible that individuals would have the capacities and opportunities to influence those decisions in which they choose to participate.”

[13] Consensus is required in Le Guin's utopia because it is an anarchy, where individual conscience is sovereign. On the (disputed) connection between unanimity or consensus and anarchy, see Wolff (1976).

[14] See, for instance, Mansbridge (1983) and Young (1989).

[15] One can try to avoid this conclusion, I believe, only by contending that the only permissible utopia is one which emphasizes (minimal) democratic processes rather than social arrangements, and by forgetting that processes presuppose and require both social structures and habits of mind and conduct. For an example of this sort of (unpersuasive) argument and position, see McKenna (2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dan Sabia

Dan Sabia teaches political theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina.