A moral comparison of democracy vs authoritarianism

 

They both claim to be democratic, but

why make that claim?

Context

The emerging authoritarian government in America teaches us is that neither [moral] value, truth nor democracy, can be taken for granted. -- Michael Lynch, Truth and Authoritarianism in America, Politics and Rights Review, 2025

Comparing morality inherent in democracy and authoritarianism is not something the public significantly exposed to. It comes up in small slivers of academia, but the subject seems to be otherwise ignored, maybe taboo to some extent. Given the human condition, it is obvious as to why people inclined to accept or support authoritarianism would prefer to keep quiet. There isn't nearly as much good to tout about dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy or kleptocracy as there is to tout about pluralist representative democracy.

Rational examination of the evidence supports this view. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is clear about the moral dimension: "Normative democracy theory aims to provide an account of when and why democracy is morally desirable as well as moral principles for guiding the design of democratic institutions and the actions of citizens and representatives."

Democracy is vulnerable to authoritarianism under conditions such as when citizens are manipulated and select poor leadership that makes bad decisions, or when politicians are not held accountable for their failures or corruption. A lack of responsibility to citizens tends to undermine politicians' concern for the common good. That inclines them to make sectarian and divisive appeals to citizens, which in turn makes authoritarianism look like a better option.

America arguably is in one of those periods when authoritarianism looks pretty good to many people. Poll data backs up that assertion. However, sight should not lost of the fact that, for the most part, the political and economic forces that put us in this position are due to authoritarianism, not mistakes of democracy.

At present American radical right authoritarianism is having profound adverse effects on our democracy, rule of law, government, society, commerce, religion, education, culture, and scholarship. The evidence of authoritarian impacts is abundant.

A morality comparison

A good moral case for democracy can boil down to two major points.

Dignity and respect: One of democracy's core moral foundations lies in trying to treat each person with equal or reasonable dignity and respect. The execution isn't always perfect or even always getting better, but at least the moral ideal is generally accepted. By contrast, authoritarian systems are inherently based on hierarchical rule. Dignity and rights of individuals are conditional and contingent on the will or interests of those in power. Rather than treating individuals as ends in themselves, authoritarian rulers commonly treat subjects as means or tools to consolidate power, demonstrate obedience, or support state goals.

Research indicates that authoritarian regimes are usually associated with systematic human rights abuses, greater inequality, reduced social trust, and restrictions on individual flourishing—all directly undercutting universal dignity.

Implicit powers: Implicit in dignity and respect in democracy is a grant of certain powers to citizens. That power allows citizens have at least some say in how they are governed and under what laws they are willing to accept. In a representative democracy, elections and voting are the most direct and potent way to exercise this power. Another power grant is in citizens' right to support, oppose or criticize elected politicians and government policies and laws.

Rights inherent in democracy such as speech, protest and voting, are not just empty symbols. They are enforceable claims that empower citizens to hold leaders accountable. That is essentially absent in genuine authoritarian systems.

Accountability and adaptability: Democracy's competitive elections, independent media, and peer-reviewed research enable societies to recognize and respond to problems more effectively than authoritarian systems that suppress information and dissent. Democracies are much better than authoritarian regimes at information transfer to decisionmakers. Democratic institutions also tend to be more flexible to adapt to changing circumstances. 

Minority protections, less war: Research indicates that democracy is better at protecting minorities despite generally being based on majority rule. Constitutional civil liberties and the rule of law restrain majority power and protect individual rights in ways authoritarian systems cannot match. There aren't many examples of democracies fighting wars with each other. When democracies do engage in conflict, it's almost always with autocracies. This democratic peace theory is one of the strongest empirical findings in political science.

Circumstantial evidence: Most authoritarian regimes claim to be democratic. That assertion is demagoguery to deflect from the reality that people have very little power or say in government or how they live their lives. The dictators that run North Korea, arguably the world's most brutal and anti-democratic country on the planet, cynically call their country the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

“The sides [Russia and China] share the understanding that democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of states, and that its promotion and protection is a common responsibility of the entire world community. The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens' participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government.” -- Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, 2022 -- signed on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Some of the most brutal, murderous dictators on the planet lay claim to democracy. The reason is obvious. Few people willingly say they want to live under authoritarianism. Most people want freedom, and whether they know it or not, the power inherent in freedom. It really is just that simple.

An unpleasant truth

While signs of autocracy are clear to informed observers, mass manipulation can blind entire populations to authoritarian reality. Although most people say they think for themselves, people and whole societies can be deceived. For example, 2021 poll data from China indicated that 83% believed the communist-led People's Republic was a democracy. An amazing 91% of Chinese citizens said that democracy is important to them. Based on that data, China's dictators apparently see the moral value of democracy. They try their best to create an illusion of democracy among most of 1.4 billion when none exists. If the poll data is accurate, they succeeded. Democratic values are so powerful that even authoritarian regimes manufacture illusions of democracy to maintain legitimacy.

Discussion

If democracy is morally superior but sometimes produces bad outcomes such as extreme gridlock, excessive corruption or incompetent leadership, does that justify authoritarianism? Even if authoritarianism occasionally delivers a good result does that outweigh loss of dignity and citizen power? Is the concentration or wealth and power inherent in authoritarianism morally superior to democracy's tendency to better distribute power and wealth?

Regarding the fragility of democracy

Democracy's about reflection. It's about seeing the world, it's about self-correction. Which means that it's not at all the default form of politics. -- Timothy Snyder, authoritarianism expert, Yale U., Your brain on authoritarianism: The inside forces that drive people to turn on democracy, WBUR interview, 2025

Democracy is fragile and abnormal: Some evidence

Dissident Politics is primarily grounded in a single core belief. The belief is that various forms of representative democracy are almost always inherently better than authoritarianism. That applies to all forms of authoritarianism, including autocracy, theocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy. The asserted superiority exists in both moral and practical terms.

This is not an assertion that democracy is perfect or incapable of making major mistakes, including mistakes that kill people. Just as nearly all authoritarian regimes, democracies can be significantly corrupt and closed. Humans are not perfect. Because of that, no form of government can be perfect, error-free, or 100% honest. But on balance, democracy is morally and practically better than the alternative.

For better or worse, democracy is fragile. There are always individuals and groups who vie for significantly unrestrained power or wealth. Inherent in the authoritarian mindset is a drive to concentrate power and usually wealth among the controlling individual or group(s) of elites. In modern times, all or nearly all major authoritarians or groups with significant power claim to be democratic. That lie is the rule, not the exception.

“Democracy is more fragile than most of us like to think. Not fragile like glass. Fragile like a bomb.” -- Ray Block, senior analyst, African American Research Collaborative, Greater Good Magazine, 2024

At present, all four forms of authoritarianism are waging a full-blown direct assault on America's representative democracy, it's rule of law, our civil liberties, and society's pro-democracy morality and mindset. The assault is disguised by demagoguery and its irrational emotional manipulation, but it is real and powerful. American democracy has been under a decades-long assault by people, groups, special interests at odds with the status quo. Powerful American authoritarianism is currently grounded in radical right politics. America's authoritarian radical left is out of power and not a current threat. One can refer to the current authoritarian wealth and power movement as MAGA.

Because the legalistic autocrats deploy the rhetoric of democracy and the methods of the law, observers find it hard to see the danger until it is too late. .... These autocrats push their illiberal measures with electoral backing and use constitutional or legal methods to accomplish their aims, they can hide their autocratic designs in the pluralism of legitimate legal forms -- Kim Lane Scheppele, legal scholar and authoritarianism expert, Princeton U., Autocratic Legalism, U. Chicago Law Review, 2025

Historians can no doubt trace authoritarian impulses back to American colonial days and even to many centuries before that. The reason is grounded in the evolution and the resulting human condition. Both authoritarian and anti-authoritarian impulses are inherent to humans. Simply put, many human minds are drawn to and desire authoritarian leadership with attendant power concentrated with a single leader or one or more small groups. Other minds are accommodating to more distributed power, pro-democracy mindsets more or less.

Research findings from Political Science and Evolutionary Psychology suggest that democracy may not be 'natural,' whereas authoritarianism might be. -- Eric Haseltine, Will Human Nature Allow Democracy to Survive?, Psychology Today, 2025

Questions for thought and discussion

Is American democracy actually under serious threat from radical right authoritarianism, or are those concerns exaggerated or outright lies? Is America's radical left the true threat as MAGA rhetoric constantly asserts? Is is credible to think that authoritarianism is more "natural" to human psychology than democracy?

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Blog note: This is a mirror post from my subreddit, r/RationalDemocracy. Post content there is about the same as my usual stuff, but the tone is a little more formal than here. For the time being, I'll probably write and post content there first, then copy and post it here. That will carry the more formal tone over to here.

Gerrymandering: A moral assessment

The gerrymander issue

Trump asked for a new round of gerrymandering red states where it could make a difference. Texas was the first state to respond. The MAGA goal is to get rid of as many democrats in the House as possible. In response, some blue states responded or are considering responding in kind for the same reason. Among red states, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have redistricted to target 7 democrats, five in Texas and one each in the other two states. A few weeks ago, California voters passed a ballot measure that allows redistricting in hope of getting rid of 5 Republicans. 

Trump started the current 2026 redistricting campaign. In July 2025, he explicitly called for Texas to redistrict. This was not a spontaneous action by red states. Whether the current wave of gerrymandering will make any difference in the 2026 midterm elections is unclear. If California had not responded it is likely that the advantage shift to Republicans would be significant, probably enough to keep Republicans in control of the House until the 2028 elections. But those assessments are based only on the current situation. The assessment is complicated and could change over time.

If successful, California's five-seat gerrymander would increase the state's Democratic delegation from 43-9 to 48-4. This directly offsets Texas Republicans' intent to flip five Democratic seats to Republican, but it leaves Republicans in California almost extinct in the House.

An analysis of morality

In general, gerrymandering is anti-democratic. Democracy can be argued to be morally superior to the various forms of authoritarianism, e.g., dictatorship, military junta, theocracy, plutocracy, or combinations thereof. Authoritarianism is almost always accompanied by serious corruption, sometimes amounting to kleptocracy. America's representative democracy allows citizens at least some say in how they are governed, what the laws will be and some power to replace elected representatives when people are unhappy. Gerrymandering undercuts these citizen powers, and it can thus be considered to be inherently immoral.  

If one sees MAGA elites as inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic one can say that if MAGA politicians retain control of the House until 2028, the threat to American democracy and rule of law could wind up being lethal to democracy. 

From the point of view that MAGA is a deadly threat to democracy, one can argue that blue state gerrymandering is a moral defense of democracy. Circumstances forced an in-kind response to an unprovoked red state gerrymander attack on democracy. What is a reasonable moral analysis? The immorality of the California gerrymander cannot be denied, it was real but provoked by threat. The Texas and other red state gerrymanders are immoral but unprovoked by threat. California and other pro-democracy states had no alternative response. The state created an independent redistricting commission in 2008-2010 precisely to avoid gerrymandering, but Republican states do not do that. Instead, red states weaponized redistricting to support MAGA authoritarianism. That left pro-democracy states no meaningful counter other than an in-kind response. The California gerrymander ballot measure responds to a Republican power grab provoked by President Trump.

Do two wrongs make a right? No not in a perfect world. But we do not live in a perfect world. From a pro-democracy point of view, red state gerrymanders support MAGA authoritarianism, while the opposition gerrymanders support democracy. Compared to the political opposition, MAGA elites play asymmetric constitutional hardball. In recent years, elite MAGA Republican politicians have systematically pushed constitutional boundaries and violated democratic norms far more aggressively than Democrats. This creates an asymmetric obligation problem where one side first abandons norms, arguably leaving the other side with a moral duty to unilaterally continue following the norms.

Restraining norms used to function as a mutual non-aggression pact. But they were not a suicide pact. When one side, MAGA in this case, systematically violates these norms while the other adheres to them, the result isn't moral superiority. Instead it amounts to structural democratic and moral decay.

If that is not the situation that pro-democracy opposition to MAGA authoritarianism faces, then exactly what is the situation, e.g., moral equivalence? 

Q: Is blue state gerrymandering the moral equivalent of red state gerrymandering?

Optimism vs pessimism

 Though I have gotten worn out discussing politics, I have come to worry about how pessimism has creeped into........... mostly............. American lives.

Ditto.............to a lesser degree............in Canada.

We won't survive Trumpism. There WILL be a war in Europe. Our offspring will suffer bigger and badder environmental disasters. 

Then I think about the optimist. Those who think and will say "Yeah, it's bad, but I think it will sort itself out and I really don't want to worry myself sick about it." Whatever IT is. 

Are You an Optimist or Pessimist About Our Changing World?

• Pessimists experience more than three times more distress than optimists.
• Optimists tend to live longer, happier and healthier lives than pessimists.

However:

• It’s better to be a realist than to be an optimist or a pessimist.

Sorry, but that kinda thinking doesn't sound realistic. Even a realist is going to be optimistic or pessimistic. So say I. 

Too simplistic? I mean we all have both optimism and pessimism to varying degrees.

BUT.........................

GENERAL SPEAKING............................

ARE YOU a PESSIMIST or a OPTIMIST??

Generally speaking.