Unavoidable and Unsatisfactory
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[in either case] sincere—of the governed.”6 In a democracy this consent is expressed by means of election. As Weber had put it more than two decades earlier, “A popularly elected president . . . is the palladium of genuine democracy.”7 This may well be the most concise definition that can be given of a democracy of authorization. A w hole tradition of thinking about democ ratic leadership has grown up since, amounting in effect to a commentary on Weber’s theory of the relation between Caesarism and popular choice. The worldwide adoption of election by universal suffrage as the preferred method for choosing a chief execu tive testifies to the force of an idea that has come to acquire a sort of in tuitive obviousness, at least as a practical m atter. As a theoretical m atter, however, it has not ceased to arouse disagreement, for it appears no less evident that election is not by itself enough to determine the proper re lationship between the governed and their governors. For want of any better alternative, it has nonetheless managed to establish itself as ac cepted wisdom, even if only in a mood of fatalistic resignation. The problem is that the limitations of legitimation by universal suf frage alone are particularly pronounced in a presidential system. A popular vote exacerbates four basic structural tensions that are inherent in a democ ratic election. The first is a consequence of the fact that an election tries to accomplish two things, selection and legitimation, by applying a single principle, majoritarianism, that determines its out come. Here the difficulty is that these two aims do not stand in the same relation to the majority principle. The usefulness of such a principle in identifying the winner is plain, for simple arithmetic is enough to produce agreement on all sides. But it is a different m atter with regard to legitimacy, which cannot be fully conferred by a result that has been arrived at on a majoritarian basis. Whereas the selection procedure has been satisfactorily carried out, legitimation remains yet to be accom plished. The discrepancy between the two is limited in the case of the election of a representative assembly, for the number and diversity of its elected members constitute an expression of a plurality of interests and opinions, though not of a truly general will (which moreover does not exist prior to its being expressed by the citizens themselves). In a presi dential election, by contrast, the choice of a single person does not bring about the sort of representative correction that to one degree or another an assembly election inevitably produces.8 The person selected to be presi dent therefore suffers from a correspondingly greater deficit of legitimacy.
