Insights on democracy & global affairs

When Voting Replaces Governing

William J. Long

A striking headline in The New York Times this week captures something many citizens already feel. The current U.S. Congress has passed only about 40 bills, a historic low, despite having held more than 600 recorded votes, a historic high. Never has Congress voted so much while accomplishing so little.

The problem is not a lack of activity. It is a lack of deliberation.

Voting has become a substitute for governing rather than its culmination. Roll calls replace reasoning. Party discipline substitutes for persuasion. Outcomes are decided before debate begins, and debate itself increasingly serves as performance rather than problem-solving. The result is a legislature that moves constantly but goes nowhere.

This is not just an American problem. Across advanced democracies, public trust in political institutions has declined even as formal democratic procedures—elections, votes, hearings—continue unabated. The machinery of democracy still runs, but it is no longer delivering legitimacy, coherence, or solutions.

 

The Missing Ingredient

Modern democracies are built on institutions: constitutions, elections, courts, legislatures. These remain essential. But they are not self-sustaining. Democracy cannot be sustained by institutions alone.

What is missing is a shared commitment to deliberation in the common interest—the practice of reasoning together across differences, with the aim of reaching decisions that can be justified to all affected parties, not merely imposed by temporary majorities or partisan power.

Political theorists have long argued that deliberation improves decision quality, legitimacy, and social trust. Yet deliberative democracy often remains more aspiration than practice. Critics argue that it is too slow, too idealistic, or too demanding for modern societies.

History suggests otherwise.

 

An Unexpected Democratic Precedent

More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha established a self-governing community—the Buddhist saṅgha—that functioned as a direct, deliberative democracy. This was not a spiritual metaphor. It was a real political system, with rules, procedures, offices, and mechanisms for resolving disagreement.

The saṅgha was radically egalitarian for its time. Status, wealth, caste, and lineage conferred no political authority. Decisions were made in open assemblies where all qualified members could speak. Consensus was actively sought through structured dialogue, and when consensus could not be reached, carefully regulated majority voting was used—but only after deliberation had been exhausted.

Power was deliberately minimized. Leadership roles rotated. Executive authority was constrained. Rules were understood to be provisional and revisable as circumstances changed.

Most importantly, deliberation was oriented toward the common good, not individual or factional advantage. Participants were expected to justify their views in terms others could reasonably accept, not simply assert preference or power.

 

Why This Still Matters

The Buddhist saṅgha does not offer a blueprint for modern states. It was smaller, more cohesive, and culturally specific. But it does offer something just as valuable: proof that sustained, inclusive, consensus-oriented self-government is possible, and insight into the conditions that make it work.

Those conditions are not mysterious:

• A commitment to equality rather than entrenched hierarchy
• Non-harm and restraint rather than coercion
• Pragmatic problem-solving rather than ideological purity
• A shared sense of responsibility for the collective outcome

 

These are not religious principles. They are civic ones.

When these conditions erode, democracies become noisy but ineffective—full of votes, short on governance.