Theories of Democracy: Schumpeter

Schumpeter, 'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy' (1942)
Schumpeter defines the eighteenth-century theories on democracy as follows: it is the 'democratic method that is an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions, which realizes common good by making people decide through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will.'

The first objection to this generally accepted definition, according to Schumpeter, is that "There is no such thing as a uniquely determined common good that all people could agree on or be made to agree on by the force of rational argument." This is due to the fundamental fact that the common good has different meaning to different people and groups; irreducible differences of ultimate values are faced.

The second objection is that, even if a sufficiently defined common good would be acceptable to all, the answers to individual issues would not be definite as well: "Opinions on these might differ to an important enough extent to produce [..] "fundamental" dissention about end themselves."

Schumpeter's last objection reads that, as a consequence of both preceding arguments, the particular concept of the will of the volonté générale, that the utilitarians made their own, vanishes into thin air, for "that concept presupposes the existence of a uniquely determined common good, discernible to all."  The utilitarians derived their 'will of the people'  from the wills of individuals. Unless all individual wills will gravitate into a common good, we will not get that particular type of 'natural' volonté générale. This kind of an utilitarian volonté générale is gone as soon as the concept of common good itself fails to exist.

As Schumpeter concludes: "If results that prove in the long run satisfactory to the people at large are made the test of government for the people, then government by the people, as conceived by the classical doctrine of democracy, would often fail to meet it."

Thus, Schumpeter makes clear that:
1. There is no sufficiently defined "common good";
2. Opinions on the answers to individual issues would differ such that there will be fundamental dissention about end themselves;
3. The utilitarian conception of volonté générale as derived from the "wills of individuals" proves to be a wrong conception, hence is why this kind of a general will is deemed to fail as soon as the common good itself fails to exist.

Schumpeter develops an alternative theory of democracy. "It will be remembered that the chief troubles about the classical theory is that "the people" hold a definite and rational opinion about every individual question and that they give effect to this opinion by choosing representatives to carry out that opinion."

This theory is replaced with Schumpeter's view: "The role of the people is to produce a government, or else an intermediate body. And we define: the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's voice."