Introduction

Riker summarizes his case against “populism” (democracy) and then offers his case for “liberalism.” Populism is arbitrary and meaningless, there is no identifiable will of the people nor public good, he says. His liberalism, in contrast, requires only that it be possible for citizens to reject officials of whom they disapprove. Riker's alternative of liberalism fails, I maintain, because it reduces to merely the random removal of officials, and because its justification unavoidably appeals to a will of the people or a public good that Riker is concerned to reject. If Riker's larger argument were correct, then neither democracy nor Riker's minimal liberalism would survive. The chapter concludes by tracing the provenance of the doctrine of democratic irrationalism through James Burnham to the elite theorists of the early twentieth century, particularly Pareto.

The summary case against populism

Riker's case against populism depends crucially at every point on what I have called his basic argument pattern concerning the obscurity of preferences. Most commentators fail to appreciate the centrality of this premise to his total argument. His closing brief also crucially relies for evidence on his erroneous case study of the 1860 American presidential election. First in his summary case is the claim that democracy is arbitrary. If there are more than two alternatives on an issue of political concern, then any one of a number of reasonable voting rules could be applied.