Democracy: Instrumental vs. Non-Instrumental Value

democracy identifies it with certain governing practices, and claims that it has only instrumental value. On this view, the purpose of government, like that of the market, is to satisfy individual preferences. Individual preferences are assumed to be formed exogenously to democratic processes. Democratic mechanisms of accountability are instituted to ensure that government tries to satisfy these preferences. The main such mechanism is voting, a device for choosing public officials and policies by aggre-gating individual preferences into a collective decision. Voting is the primary way in which citizens participate in democracy. Its value, like the value of other demo-cratic governing practices, is plainly instrumental. In this essay, I shall not deny that voting has instrumental value. If voting were not a means to reaching collective decisions responsive to the desires of the electorate, or if it led to results that systematically undermined the interests of the electorate, it would be worthless. But it does not follow that voting has only instrumental value. In our consumer culture, we take it for granted that shopping is an activity many people enjoy, beyond its instrumental value in enabling people to acquire goods the