• OHYA, Takehiro (Specialization: Philosophy of law)
  Professor, Faculty of Law, Keio University

"Listen to the voices of citizens"––What does it mean? The best reasoning to the conclusion that democracy is the right political system has ever been found in the fact that the peoples to be ruled rule themselves as sovereigns. Since the basis for the ruling lies in the voices of those concerned, there should be no possibility of outcomes contrary to their intentions and interests arising and, therefore, no problem of unjust control should occur.

Given this, it has been understood that the representative democracy wherein the peoples choose politicians taking charge of national politics through elections is an alternative means adopted inevitably as a consequence of the expansion of national scale. It is essentially an ideal that the voices of those concerned are directly listened to through direct democracy wherein all citizens gather in the public assembly to join discussions, as seen in ancient

Greece (a typical case would have been in Athens). It is, however, realistically impossible to create and maintain such a forum in modern nations and thereafter, and there is no option but to leave usual politics to politicians who are devoted to politics. This means that an election is a limited opportunity for citizens to speak out how they evaluate those politicians. As "We the People" appeared directly in the political arena, the revolutionary moments and "constitutional politics" (as termed by Bruce Ackerman, an American constitutional scholar) that would transform the fundamental government institutions) have been understood as privileged. Support for the national referendums that help directly gauge sentiments of citizens about specific issues in certain cases also reflects this understanding.

Meanwhile, the development of information technology has made it easier to verify real opinions of citizens and aggregate their preferences and actions. In the socialist calculation controversy over the possibilities of a planned economy, it was argued that it would be impossible to draw up production plans, for example, without finding a means by which annual consumption of toilet paper products could be identified, and it would be difficult to survey them simply because pieces of such data were scattered all over the country. However, these figures, at least considerably accurate ones, would now be available from major drugstore and convenience store chains. Actually, data on how people are moving by vehicle has been visualized to a considerable extent, thanks to the diffusion of car navigation systems with two-way communication functions. In deciding whether to build a new bridge over a river in a city, it would be possible to make more accurate and efficient investigation by conducting simulations based on such data and predicting the possible results, rather than leaving the decision to the politicians who should have been elected by us.

In this essay, I tentatively call a political approach for predicting future demands based on real behavioral records of people and realizing them "Database Politics" (as typically discussed by Hiroki Azuma in his book titled "Ippan-ishi (General Will) 2.0" (Kodansha, 2011)). It has consistently been pointed out that the means to verify self-conscious preferences of individuals, such as a survey by questionnaire, are subject to disparities from real choices.

Let me take an example. When fast-food restaurants make inquiries about new products desired by their customers through a survey by questionnaire, voices desiring healthy products would rank high constantly. However, once those products are actually launched, nobody buys them. This episode indicates that our real voices are often distorted after considering the impressions of those who listen to them or are fail to grasp our true interests. This is why the Database Politics proposes that something that appears as real behavior or choice, even though it might not have been consciously recognized by each individual, be set as the foundation for social decision-making.

What is evidently overlooked there, however, is that we only make choices from among preexisting subjects and have no inclination for something that has never existed (I noted Dr. Hannibal Lecter's statement implying that desire is activated when what satisfies it appears). And, our society has developed owing to the presence of people who create dreams for the future that might be excluded there, and what people would desire in the future. Entrepreneurs are such kind of people. Although many of them actually end in failure, we should not ignore the fact that new products and services have been created through dreams for things that do not exist there, and have transformed our preferences themselves.

In politics as well, it is essentially necessary to imagine the society to come and design systems that would be accepted by people in the future. It should be recalled that when European countries abolished the death penalty, many of the citizens there opposed it. But now, those citizens believe that a society free from the death penalty is natural. Shouldn't we think that the reason why we give politicians guarantee of status, in other words, a kind of free hand, until the next election is that we expect them to play a functional role as normative entrepreneurs who can anticipate our future voices––something that does not exist here now?

In order to listen to the voices that citizens might have in the future, it may even be necessary to refrain from listening to the voices of current citizens. The reasons why ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) sometimes remain unsolved even through social surveys and citizen dialogues lie right here.

Essay All Discours