Democracy Defended

Contemporary Review, May, 2004

Democracy Defended. Gerry Mackie. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]60.00 xvi 483 pages. ISBN 0-521-82708-6. Prof. Mackie, who teaches in Notre Dame University in the U.S., argues that as democracy makes progress round the world, it has come under attack among U.S. academics. He uses this book to counter 'the current version of the academic attack on democracy'.

He discusses the various problems of voting that support the 'irrationalist view' and surveys the various forms of 'democratic irrationalism in academic opinion'. His survey is both theoretical and historic and he examines the politics of the 1840s to the 1860s, in particular, the Wilmot Proviso (regarding a prohibition of slavery in the territories) and the election of Lincoln in 1860 (and the role of the Electoral College) because these cases were cited by William Riker, to whose arguments this book is an answer. The author concludes that the 'new academic attack on democracy fails, theoretically and empirically'.