Decent Government: Democracy’s Minimum Floor

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Mauricio Covarrubias
December 12, 2025

In a democracy the test of governmental decency plays out at its most visible and fragile point: the president or head of government. Institutions set the channels but the executive sets the tone of power, the tempo of decisions and the manner of correction. If decency is the minimum floor—do not humiliate, self-limit, explain and repair—then the first duty of leadership is to embody that floor. A democracy is decent when it avoids institutional humiliation of its members, as Margalit argues, and treats persons as ends rather than mere means to collective projects in the spirit of Kant.

Democratic leadership does more than issue rules; it civilizes power through its form. When a president explains, accepts checks, avoids stigmatization and repairs harms, the ends do not devour the means. Otherwise, a temporary majority is mistaken for a license to do anything. The line between legitimate power and mere force blurs when coercion replaces public reason; Arendt warned as much. From that mode of power flows treatment: words from the top legitimize climates down the line, counters, inspections, campaigns. Hence not humiliating is a specific duty of leadership. It means refusing caricature of opponents, presuming citizens’ honesty and guarding the institutional voice. Dignity, understood as an equal public status of respect, should guide everyday governmental conduct, as Waldron develops.

The symbol of democratic leadership is not the sword but the belt that restrains. Self-limitation means power cannot do everything, even when it can: protect checks, make high-impact decisions transparent, submit to accountability even when it hurts, and distinguish between a mandate and a blank check. In legal terms, decency becomes public, clear, practicable rules that make compliance and oversight possible in Fuller’s terms. Repeated exceptions become norms and normlessness wounds. Governing in democracy is not only solving; it is justifying before equals. A decent leader offers legible reasons, not technical alibis; publishes criteria; communicates limits and costs; admits uncertainty and dissent. Public reason, per Rawls, is the frame by which citizens explain the use of political power to one another and progress in justice, as Sen notes, is measured by reasoned comparisons rather than utopias. Explanation invites cooperation; opacity buys only fragile obedience.

Government error is inevitable; failing to repair is optional. A decent president institutionalizes repair: public apologies where appropriate, expedited redress and protection from reprisals for complainants. Apology is not marketing; it restores the broken bond of respect and reinforces the equality of status that democracy promises. Effective accountability then requires informing, explaining and facing consequences before a forum with authority, as Bovens conceptualizes; without it, relations between rulers and the ruled fill with excuses and empty out of responsibility.

Technology adds temptation and a test. Automation may gain efficiency while losing transparency. Decent leadership imposes guarantees before delegating: accessible explainability of what the system decides, a right to correct data and human review in high-impact cases. Without sufficient public justification, technology turns into force without reason, an echo of Arendt, and erodes the substantive legality that requires comprehensible, practicable rules in Fuller’s sense. The question is not whether the algorithm is right but whether the citizen can understand, contest and correct what affects them.

Crises examine all of the above. Emergencies invite executive expansion; decency demands sunsets, ex post evaluation and a narrative of return to institutional normality. Democratic power is measured by its capacity to de-escalate its own faculties after the storm, preserving public justification and checks, consistent with Rawls and with Bovens’s accountability logic. The same applies to appointments: independent institutions are not owned; they are built with capable profiles and a cordon sanitaire against conflicts of interest. A decent leader chooses people who can contradict them without fear and who reinforce citizens’ equal status. Limits are preferred to obsequiousness because the regime’s decency depends on visible brakes.

Objections are familiar. “Idealism.” Not if translated into observable practices: plain language, decision logs, repair metrics, rules for exceptions and appointment criteria, exactly the sort of institutional scaffolding Fuller and Bovens point to. “It slows things down.” Indecency is costlier: litigation, civic resentment, abandonment of rights. Decency buys trust and lowers transaction costs, as Rawls and Sen help explain. “There is a popular mandate.” Yes, but majorities legitimate ends, not any means; self-limitation preserves the common home, Arendt and Margalit remind us of that boundary.

A president cannot make the state perfect but can make it decent: fix the floor where power does not humiliate, restrains itself, explains and repairs. That floor is not romanticism; it is the minimal grammar of democratic authority. Upon it, efficiency and innovation cease to be risks and finally become public goods.

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Author: Mauricio Covarrubias is Professor at the National Institute of Public Administration in Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Government and Public Policy at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He is co-founder of the International Academy of Political-Administrative Sciences (IAPAS). He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X (formerly Twitter) @OMCovarrubias.

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