Freedom from elections lets a ruler plan beyond the next term

The argument

The second argument concerns time. Proponents of this position argue that the problems which matter most to a country unfold over decades: the condition of its soil and water, the stock of its housing, the state of its schools, the pensions it has promised. The benefits of acting on any of these arrive long after the costs, which means that the politician who acts bears the cost and a successor collects the credit. Proponents argue that an elected government is structurally unable to take that trade. Its horizon is the next election, so a measure whose returns lie beyond it is a measure its own members have reason to avoid, however clearly they see the need. The predictable result, on this account, is a pattern of deferral: infrastructure is patched rather than replaced, liabilities are promised rather than funded, and the reckoning is handed to whoever holds office when deferral finally fails. Proponents argue that this is not a failure of character among politicians but a feature of the incentive they work under, and that no amount of good intention within a democracy removes it. A ruler whose tenure does not depend on a forthcoming vote faces no such horizon. Proponents argue that such a ruler can begin a project that will outlast a decade, absorb the unpopularity of its early years, and be present to see it finished, and that this capacity to act on the long term is the decisive advantage. The argument concludes that because the most consequential decisions a state makes are long-term decisions, and because democracy systematically discounts them, enlightened despotism is the better arrangement.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that autocrats have the shortest horizons of all, because a ruler who can be deposed only by force must spend continuously on staying in power, and the projects chosen tend to be the visible ones that demonstrate strength rather than the slow ones that pay off later. They add that democracies do take long decisions, through constitutions, independent institutions, treaties and funds insulated from the electoral cycle, which is precisely how the problem the argument describes is handled. Critics also point out that a single ruler's long view lasts only as long as that ruler, so the plan is hostage to one mortality, whereas an elected system can hand a commitment on.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many of the most consequential decisions a state makes are immediate, including responses to war, disaster and economic collapse, so the long horizon is not the whole of what government does. [Rejecting P2] Democracies routinely bind themselves to long commitments through constitutions, independent central banks, treaties and funds insulated from the cycle, which shows the electoral horizon is a constraint that can be designed around. [Rejecting P3] An unremovable ruler must spend continuously on remaining in power and has reason to prefer visible projects to slow ones, so freedom from elections does not deliver the long view it promises. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that a particular long project may be easier to begin, not that the resulting government is better overall.