"Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself"
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Schumpeter strips democracy of its halo and leaves it standing in its underwear: not a moral destination, not a sacred expression of “the people,” but a procedure for producing decisions. The move is deliberate demystification. By defining democracy as an “institutional arrangement” for arriving at legislative and administrative outcomes, he treats it the way an economist treats a market: a mechanism with inputs, incentives, and predictable failure modes, not a vessel for virtue.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to romantic theories of popular will. Schumpeter is writing against the comforting idea that elections automatically channel a coherent public interest. His famous alternative - democracy as competitive leadership selection - lurks behind this line. Voters aren’t philosophers-kingmakers so much as consumers choosing among political entrepreneurs. That framing doesn’t flatter citizens, but it does explain why mass politics so often runs on branding, coalition maintenance, and managed expectations rather than deliberative truth-seeking.
Context matters: interwar Europe and the midcentury crisis of liberal confidence. Fascism and communism had exposed how quickly “the people” could be mobilized against liberal institutions, and how democratic procedures could coexist with demagoguery, inequality, and administrative opacity. Calling democracy “incapable of being an end in itself” is a warning label: if you treat the method as the morality, you stop asking what the method is delivering - rights, stability, competence, legitimacy - and for whom.
Schumpeter’s intent isn’t anti-democratic; it’s anti-sentimental. He’s insisting that democracy must be judged by outcomes and safeguards, not catechism.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to romantic theories of popular will. Schumpeter is writing against the comforting idea that elections automatically channel a coherent public interest. His famous alternative - democracy as competitive leadership selection - lurks behind this line. Voters aren’t philosophers-kingmakers so much as consumers choosing among political entrepreneurs. That framing doesn’t flatter citizens, but it does explain why mass politics so often runs on branding, coalition maintenance, and managed expectations rather than deliberative truth-seeking.
Context matters: interwar Europe and the midcentury crisis of liberal confidence. Fascism and communism had exposed how quickly “the people” could be mobilized against liberal institutions, and how democratic procedures could coexist with demagoguery, inequality, and administrative opacity. Calling democracy “incapable of being an end in itself” is a warning label: if you treat the method as the morality, you stop asking what the method is delivering - rights, stability, competence, legitimacy - and for whom.
Schumpeter’s intent isn’t anti-democratic; it’s anti-sentimental. He’s insisting that democracy must be judged by outcomes and safeguards, not catechism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|---|
| Source | Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Part II, chapter on the meaning of democracy — defines democracy as a 'political method' (definition widely cited in commentary on Schumpeter). |
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