The Dilemmas of Democracy

Two questions for U.S. government officials as President Trump pushes boundaries

 

Roger Pielke Jr.

Feb 17, 2025

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In his classic 1960 book, The Semisovereign People, political scientist E.E. Schattschneider identified a dilemma of democracy: All of us are ignorant about most things, making each of us unsuitable to govern — yet we also have a belief that everyone should be allowed to participate in governance, with our political leaders chosen from among the ignorant.

A challenge arises, Schattschneider explains, because our ignorance is unavoidable (emphasis in original):

There is no escape from the problem of ignorance, because nobody knows enough to run the government. Presidents, senators, governors, judges, professors, doctors of philosophy, editors and the like are only a little less ignorant than the rest of us. Even an expert is a person who choses to be ignorant about many things so that he may know all about one.

Our modern society could not function without specialized experts doing jobs that only specialized experts can do, from captains of nuclear submarines to air traffic controllers to public health researchers. Expertise is also not the same thing as being credentialed or skilled — a parent going to the grocery store is plenty expert enough in their own household to know if the price of eggs is too high.

Effective democratic governance requires a division of responsibility among different types of experts. Schattschneider explained:

Democracy is like nearly everything else we do; it is a form of collaboration of ignorant people and experts.

I didn’t always realize it, but I have spent my entire career focused on this collaboration among ignorant people and experts. A successful collaboration — resolving Schattschneider’s dilemma — is necessary not just for democracy to work, but for all in our society to thrive individually and collectively due to the fruits of democracy.

Schattschneider explains that just like you don’t need to be an automotive engineer to buy a car or an obstetrician to have a baby, democracy depends on collaboration:

Our survival depends on our ability to judge things by their results and our ability to establish relations of confidence and responsibility so that we can take advantage of what other people know.

This brings us to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.

In a brilliant essay in The New Atlantis by Yuval Levin of AEI on the Trump administration’s dramatic reduction in allowable indirect costs by universities with research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Levin observes:

The response was predictably swift and intense. Scientists and advocates accused the administration of betraying patients and surrendering America’s leading position in biotechnology and medical research. Trump allies, from Elon Musk on down, answered them by calling elite universities spoiled, corrupt, and profligate.

Everyone involved knew their roles in this drama by heart, and fell right into them with gusto.

Partisan politics aside, Levin identifies a much “deeper problem” in play:

Lost in the rush on all sides to play right into one another’s crudest clichés was an opportunity to actually govern a little better. On this front, as on many others, Donald Trump’s election has created real opportunities for advancing needed change. But the new administration seems intent on squandering those opportunities because it does not see itself as responsible for the federal government. Eager to demonstrate how corrupt our institutions have become rather than to facilitate their improvement, it is opting for lawless and performative iconoclasm over the more mundane but potentially transformative work of governance.

In Schattschneider’s terminology, the Trump administration is refusing to take responsibility for governance, seemingly to diminish confidence in government. From a Schattschneider-ian perspective, such an agenda is profoundly anti-democratic.

Levin explains that with respect to NIH grant reform, the Trump administration could have chosen not to move fast and break things, but chosen instead to move with consideration and actually fix things:

If they wanted to, Trump’s NIH officials could have told grant recipients that these procedures would be reviewed this year and they should prepare for a change. They could have put in place a gradual adjustment in the direction of flat indirect-cost rates over several years, to let institutions adjust or propose a plausible set rate. They could have invited ideas from the field about how overhead could be funded differently. They could have made clear that they want to strengthen NIH’s ability to support promising research and that rethinking indirect-cost rates could free up funds for direct research spending. That’s how administrators who value the steadiness and effectiveness of the institutions they administer would go about such a change.

But that is not how the Trump administration has gone about it. Rather than pursue this idea as a way to improve the institution they’re administering, they have chosen to pursue it as a way to attack that institution — ridiculing its existing practice and practitioners, announcing a dramatic policy change on a Friday evening that is set to take effect the following Monday, and presenting the move in a way intended to maximize surprise and invite stiff opposition.

 

We the People . . .

In the United States, the rules of collaboration between ignorant people and experts are set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Levin, in his recent book, American Covenant, explains that the Constitution is more than just a legal framework:

. . . it is also an institutional framework; a policymaking framework; a political framework in the highest sense of the political; and, finally, a framework for union and solidarity.

Self-government of the sort envisioned by the founding fathers requires a shared sense of political myth, to use a concept introduced in 1950 by Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan. Political myth refers to “the pattern of the basic political symbols current in a society.” The U.S. Constitution is a document, of course, but it also symbolizes our our shared commitment to living and governing together as United States citizens first and foremost.

In an interview with Ezra Klein, Levin explains that continued respect for the Constitution is far more important than any substantive policy changes that the Trump administration may push through:

My biggest fear is the administration deciding not to abide by court orders. What they’re doing so far is legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s operating within the system.

A court said no, and they pulled it back. And they’re going to try again, and they’ll push and pull. That’s how our system works. It’s fine that it makes people uneasy. And a lot of what they’re pushing makes people uneasy for substantive ideological reasons. That’s how politics works.

But when the boundaries of the system itself are under threat, it’s important to think in constitutional terms. It’s not about the politics, but it’s about the constitutional structure that keeps things in order.

This brings us to a second dilemma of democracy. Respect for the Constitution certainly means that no one of us — whether a president or a regular person — will ever get everything we want in terms of policy. It also means that no faction, whether MAGA or Greenpeace, will ever get what they want, either. The dilemma is that participation in democratic governance means accepting that you will at times come out on the losing end of political conflicts.

The late philosopher and pragmatist Richard Rorty put this dilemma bluntly in 1998:

In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts.

It is no hyperbole to observe that how today’s elected and appointed officials choose to resolve the two dilemmas of democracy will profoundly shape the future of governance in the United States.

To these government officials I’d ask two questions that follow from the two dilemmas:

• Do you wish to take responsibility for collaborating with your fellow citizens in governance, recognizing the division of responsibility necessary among different types of expertise?

• Do you commit to governing that collaboration under the framework of the U.S. Constitution?

If the answer to either of these questions is “No” then that would signal a departure from the pragmatic form of democratic governance characteristic to the United States over almost 250 years. Of course, the answers need not be explicit — In response to Trump administration efforts to push the limits of executive power, Congress and the courts need to take responsibility for doing their jobs as co-equal branches of government under the U.S. Constitution. Actions speak louder than words.

Last word for today goes to Jonah Goldberg at The Dispatch, where he pointed out last week that his optimism about respecting Constitutional boundaries is tempered by:

. . . the hypocrisy and cynicism of Trump enablers—who have spent decades talking about how much they love the Constitution and who decried the tyranny or lawlessness of Democratic presidents when they exceeded their authority—who are now falling over themselves to celebrate Trump’s embrace of arbitrary power. I can also harsh my mellow by contemplating all of the progressives who cheered Obama and Biden’s pen-and-phone unilateralism, and decried constitutional restraints as undemocratic relics, suddenly fretting over the threat to constitutional checks and balances.

The point of all this is that the fight for the rule of law is never permanently lost, so long as people are willing to learn from their mistakes, get up off the floor, and fight for its restoration.

Comments welcomed! My usual caution applies — This post in not an invitation to insult those politicians you don’t like or cheer on those that you do. I invite your answers to the two questions posed above.