The Democratic Error

In today’s political discourse, events carry a certain value — and the data describing them carry an even greater one. “Greater” is not a random word: it suggests that descriptive data are an aggregate of various events, ideally complete but often partial. For example, a mugging in Milan — keeping in mind that only reported muggings can be recorded — is an event. The total number of reported muggings in Milan over a year is data. Private homes, to take another example, are events — or rather, phenomena — while their size or measurable characteristics are data. These can then be processed statistically, through means or modes, or cross-referenced with other data, such as the number of homes in a specific area.

At the same time, while data represent something broader than a single event, they don’t necessarily resonate in the same way in political discourse. Sometimes they become central because they’re “trendy,” other times for more opaque reasons linked to their dissemination or suppression. It’s not uncommon, then, to see politics built on single events: take, in Milan again, the case of the Roma children who ran over an elderly woman in a stolen car, or that of the off-duty police officer who hit a young man while driving drunk — both weaponized by opposing sides to serve their narrative. Yet it’s not hard to see how, when it comes to lawmaking, isolated events don’t suffice. One would think it wiser to rely on a broader sample — on what we bluntly call “data.”

One might therefore believe that data, stripped of the contingencies that make facts easy prey for populism and manipulation, could provide a solid foundation for political discourse. How many times have we heard someone defend a position by saying, “Don’t believe me, the data say so”? I’ll admit it: I, too, once placed great faith in numbers. It’s tempting to believe that something as seemingly solid as “counting” could lift discussion above its usual vices. In some disciplines — the so-called hard sciences — numbers settle the matter, provided the counting is done correctly. Do the math right, and that plane will fly, that bridge will stand.

But politics, as you might imagine, is no hard science. And even if one could somehow calculate every number of the polis and its polites, no clear prescription would follow. Yet this very assumption — the one I’ve just denied — has gained enormous popularity in contemporary political rhetoric. You might recall the young activists of Ultima Generazione and similar groups appearing on TV talk shows clutching booklets of studies that, on the basis of data, declared: either we abandon fossil fuels, or we face doom. I don’t question the legitimacy of their data per se — what I want to highlight is how their rhetorical use has bred monsters.

Anyone who’s read even a few pages of research methodology or statistics knows how contaminated data can be, especially when they attempt to capture complex phenomena like human social life. Such data are so riddled with bias — they can be corrupted from the moment of collection, or even earlier, in the simple choice of what to observe — that they can be used to defend one thesis as easily as its opposite. All it takes is rhetorical skill.

Today, we speak of a crisis of democracy, and though I don’t wish to delve into partisan politics, I acknowledge that democracy is faltering. Not because its instruments favor one faction over another, as some frustrated critics claim, but because mass democracy — whatever its ideological color — yields results deeply flawed. Like descriptive statistics, the democratic vote is subject to an infinite number of biases, beginning with the simple fact that one cannot expect voters to grasp the complexity of reality — any more than politicians do themselves.

There’s a subtle linguistic distinction, often unnoticed, between “complex” and “complicated.” Building a bridge is complicated: it requires many precise operations, but our tools can solve it. A complex problem, on the other hand, is one to which data can offer only partial explanations. Politics is a profoundly complex problem — perhaps the most complex of all. It would therefore be natural not to expect exhaustive solutions from data alone, and yet we are governed by systems that attempt exactly that, producing inefficiency or even policies contrary to citizens’ interests.

And that, I think, is where democracy stands today. The causes are complex, but one key lies in economics — the old fable of the self-regulating market, remember? I once heard it from Francesco Tuccari, my towering professor of Political Thought in Turin. To summarize his point: in a mass democracy, what truly matters is marketing. Politics, like yogurt, must be sold to as many people as possible.

Here the picture sharpens. Large-scale publicity — whatever the moral value of what’s being promoted — requires money. Whether you claim immigrants are needed or a problem, you need money to be heard. The catch is that whoever funds politics — capital, to call it by name — will eventually demand repayment. It’s unlikely to back a politician who acts against its interests. And that, sadly, is the core of the problem.

The result is that democracy, in this context, no longer functions as a tool for selecting or defending the best possible government for the public good. But how many dare say that out loud? I’d be branded a fascist if I claimed that every democratically elected government is, in a sense, illegitimate.

And now to my idiocy of the day. After all, isn’t the democratic election an attempt to collect the “data” of political discourse — to count each citizen’s position? A data-based approach, as one would say in science. But, as I’ve tried to show, using data for politics is profoundly partial — and potentially misleading.

First, not everyone actually votes (in the last general elections, only 64% of eligible citizens did). Second, as already mentioned, voters’ political positions are biased: the democratic photograph doesn’t show reality but its distorted reflection in political communication. Then there’s corruption, both petty and systemic — which we won’t even get into here. In short, stepping in shit is easy in democracy. It’s even easier when someone rich, whose first law is to grow richer, influences everyone who might restrain him — a pattern that’s been unfolding for a century.

To many, this will sound like a funeral for democracy — and in truth, it is. I sincerely believe this political system has reached a point of no return. To think it could heal itself with its own tools is to misunderstand the scale of the problem. Of course, there are those who do understand, but they’re too afraid of the alternatives. Only an idiot would dare propose one. Which is why, as idiots, we will. Not because we claim to have the answers — we’re neither trained enough in political science nor capable of turning theory into practice.

I’ll start with what I recall of Tuccari’s solution. He believed the path forward lay in local politics. Why keep electing leaders at the top when almost no voter can comprehend the scale of national problems? A smaller electoral basin would force citizens to engage with public life — their vote would weigh more. And if they refuse to vote on which day the garbage bins go out for collection (as in Switzerland), they might just find the chosen day inconvenient.

Voting only at the micro level would also shrink campaign scales: representatives would have to cultivate direct relationships with their voters, erasing the logic of mass-market political advertising. Those elected locally would then choose higher-level representatives — from neighborhood to district, district to city, city to province, province to region. A kind of federalism, Tuccari called it: decisions, resources, and responsibilities decentralized, proportionate to scale and comprehension.

It’s not a flawless system, but it’s coherent: everyone concerns themselves only with what they can understand and manage, voting for those who operate within that same scale. Democracy as we know it is simply too slow; paradoxically, a dictator who makes a bad decision can reverse it faster than democracy can even detect the first consequences of its own. Technology could speed up voting — digital IDs, for instance — but what technology cannot do is make us truly understand complex, large-scale problems, where bias corrupts every decision.

Yet, since Tuccari was no idiot, his solution lacked courage. After all, it’s hard to imagine modern nation-states — driven mainly by capital’s interests — voluntarily choosing such a path. The only remaining utopia, in my view, is that some enlightened ultracapitalist might conquer the world and decide to change it, sacrificing himself in the process. This person would need to be both a genius and a total psychopath: to reach the top by the system’s rules, only to stab it in the back. A fascinating narrative, but unlikely.

Che valore hanno i dati nella democrazia?

The real issue is that beyond these dreams, little remains. The less nihilistic might believe humanity can emancipate itself culturally through the wealth capitalism has spread, and thus vote with refined political consciousness. But the truth is that the capitalist prosperity we enjoy has always been built on oppression, exploitation, and the violence of the strong over the weak. If we benefit today, it’s because others have suffered for our comfort. Now, globalization, the internet, and migration have disrupted that equilibrium. Cultural emancipation has dissolved into a sea of poverty and ignorance — the residue of our own progress. And that’s a problem the ruling class cannot solve: it can only manage it, defending its position through the same instruments of power and exploitation that made it dominant.

The surge in conflict proves as much — geographically, war itself is edging closer to our world. But if I had to bet, I’d say war — not only the one fought at the front, but also the civil kind — tragic as it is, might be the only real chance for change. The question is: when the pitchforks rise, will we still have something to defend? And if not, perhaps it will be our turn to overturn democracy and gamble on something different.

“For me, democracy is an abuse of statistics. And I don’t think it has any value. Do you believe that to solve a mathematical or aesthetic problem one should consult the majority of people? I’d say not. Then why assume that the majority understand politics? The truth is they don’t, and they’re deceived by a sect of scoundrels, generally national politicians — men who go around spreading their portraits, making promises, sometimes threats, bribing people, and so on.”

(Jorge Luis Borges, in an interview with Bernardo Neustadt) The Democratic Error