Thick, thin and underlying democracy

Just briefly, I want to discuss the ideas of "thick", "thin" and "underlying" democracy. This set of concepts is about the relationship between the proceduralism and institutions of democracy and the culture of democracy.

The central question here is how much the institutions and procedures help develop democratic culture, and how much democratic culture is necessary for institutions and procedures to function. Some theorists think that we can rely on one more than the other.

Thin democracy

"Thin" democracy refers to a democratic model that proposes democracy primarily comes from strong institutions and procedures, such as the rule of law, separation of powers, electoral system, and constraints on law-making and carrying out the law. There are at least three flavours.

The first is that democratic procedures and institutions are all it takes to make a democracy. Once these things are up and running, they will ensure that the people have the power, that they can scrutinise its use, that they can vote in and out their leaders, and that decisions are made with their consent. Anything beyond these rules is not guaranteed, and is open to interpretation.

The second is that democratic procedures and institutions are the things that create a culture of democracy. When people see the institutions in action, when they take part in the procedures, they will begin to trust and embrace democracy. The institutions and procedures don't just build the culture of democracy, but they build the specific culture of democracy (meaning that different institutions and procedures would build a different culture).

The third is that a culture of democracy is not just unnecessary, but perhaps a bit of a problem. There are two ways of thinking about this. The first is that it is okay to have a population that isn't all that interested in democracy all the time, because it means that when something significant happens and they suddenly are interested, politicians will have a strong wake-up call that the issue is important. So having a group of people "in reserve" rather than politically active is an excellent thing. The second is that a culture of democracy can create a kind of purity test to check whether someone is a "real" citizen by meeting some social standard that is not encoded anywhere, and giving people a reason to exclude others. If that is the case, then having robust institutions and procedures and asking for nothing more would be a good thing.

Thick democracy

The competing concept is "thick" democracy, which says that democracy comes primarily from culture. There are at least two flavours of this concept.

The first is that institutions need culture to work. Without democratic culture, no one will engage with democratic institutions and procedures in good faith, either as voters or represenatives. Voters will become complacent and either not vote, or vote for spurious reasons, and representatives will be corrupt. From this perspective, it is important to first build a type of democratic culture and then have that flow into the institutions and procedures to give them life. People need to participate in various parts of democratic life beyond voting and elections.

The second is the idea that most of the work is done by the culture, with the institutions and procedures performing a type of basic maintenance. That is, if democratic procedures should result in a collective decision to, say, have more employee-friendly business practices, or to look after the poor, then these things should really be present in democratic culture already. This makes the procedural element a little redundant, except in cases where it is useful to reinforce the point or develop some more complicated type of coordination or planning.

Underlying democracy

I want to propose a third concept, "underlying" democracy. I don't think I've come across this conception of democracy anywhere, but it seems a logical outcome of the above two. If thin democracy focuses on proceduralism and thick democracy combines proceduralism and culture, then underlying democracy would be a democratic model that focuses exclusively on culture - one that suggests democracy is the participation of people in building an inclusive society and that institutions and procedures are corruptive forces that distract from democracy proper, or funnel resources, energy and focus away from democracy to its own ends. (I can imagine, too, a rejection of career politicians as elite.)

I've expressed some scepticism that procedures and institutions are going to be sufficiently robust over the long term for democracy to function well, which is why I raise the idea of underlying democracy to address democratic culture specifically. That said, it seems unlikely that it's possible to come up with a theory of democracy that doesn't have procedures in it somewhere, though it seems a little more plausible that it could work without institutions.