Democracy is an improbable thing. In this book, Anne Twomey takes us back to its roots and discusses the conventions and norms upon which Westminster democracy is grounded. Writers in other fields tell us that the feature that differentiates homo sapiens from other animals is our ability to achieve cooperation between large numbers. For the great apes, the limit on group cooperation is about 150; for humans, it is limitless: Harari, Sapiens (2014). Our unique ability to unite large groups of people in joint imagined enterprises has enabled us to fight world wars, communicate through the Internet and take man to the moon. But perhaps our greatest achievement is to govern ourselves collectively in an enterprise we call democracy. That millions – sometimes hundreds of millions – of people can cooperate in a system of governance to achieve common goals is amazing. It is all the more amazing in view of the diverse ethnic, cultural and religious views of the citizenry that makes up a democracy. In the influential Democracy and its Discontents, published amid the Watergate episode of 1974, Daniel Boorstein wrote that democracy was “one of man’s most amazing and surprising achievements on this earth”. He did not exaggerate. What makes cooperation between people with different views and alliances in the project of democracy possible is a fundamental agreement, seldom fully articulated, on the terms by which people all, regardless of their differences, accept to be governed. The great political question has always been how to secure the cooperation of the citizenry on how the country should be ruled. One answer – the obvious and most ancient one – is rule by supreme leader (or sometimes co-leaders). The leader achieves power by conquest, heredity, cabal or a combination of these; and rules through fear, reverence, favour, clique or custom. The other answer, dating to the ancient Greeks and taking its name from them, is rule by the citizens themselves – in a word, democracy. Democracy is a much more complex and sophisticated enterprise than rule by a supreme leader. It depends on everyone, or almost everyone, metaphorically agreeing, tacitly or expressly, to a common set of rules of governance. Such sets of rules are called constitutions. Constitutions may be written or unwritten. Most modern countries have written constitutions. Some, like the United Kingdom, do not. Whether countries write down their constitutions or choose not to, the reality is that more than words on paper is required for democracy to function. Even countries with elaborate written constitutions cannot capture the totality of the rules and traditions that allow democracy to work. Outside the text of the constitution lie understandings and conventions of how the rules should be applied in particular situations, and what is required to make them work. Thus, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt warn in How Democracies Die (2018) that the erosion of unwritten norms of governance like tolerance of different political views – what they call “the guard rails of American Democracy” – may undermine effective democratic governance in the US. And in Canada, which boasts a written constitution, the reality is that governance would be impossible without unwritten norms and conventions. The Canadian Constitution does not contain the words “prime minister” or Cambridge Law Journal, 78(1), March 2019, pp. 200–250

中文翻译：

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面纱的权杖。安妮·Twomey。[剑桥大学出版社，2018年。xxxv+ 875页。精装本£160.00。ISBN 978-11-07056-78-7。]

民主是不可能的事情。在本书中，安妮·沃特梅（Anne Twomey）带我们回到了源头，并讨论了威斯敏斯特民主制所基于的公约和规范。其他领域的作家告诉我们，区分智人与其他动物的特征是我们实现大量合作的能力。对于大猩猩来说，小组合作的上限大约为150；对于人类来说，这是无限的：Harari，Sapiens（2014）。我们独特的能力将大批人团结在共同想象的企业中，这使我们能够抗击世界大战，通过互联网进行交流并将人带上月球。但是，也许我们最大的成就是在我们称为民主的企业中集体管理自己。数百万人（有时甚至数亿）的人可以在治理系统中合作以实现共同的目标，这是令人惊讶的。鉴于组成民主国家的公民的种族，文化和宗教观点各异，这更加令人惊讶。丹尼尔·布尔斯坦（Daniel Boorstein）在1974年水门事件期间发表的颇具影响力的民主及其不满情绪中写道，民主是“人类是地球上最令人惊讶和惊奇的成就之一”。他一点也不夸张。使具有不同观点和同盟的人们之间在民主项目中进行合作的可能是一项基本协议，很少有人充分阐明这一基本协议，根据该协议，所有人，不论其差异如何，都接受接受治理。政治上一直存在的重大问题一直是如何确保公民之间在如何统治国家方面的合作。一个答案-最明显和最古老的答案-是最高领导者（或有时是共同领导者）的统治。领导者通过征服，遗传，阴谋或这些手段的结合来获得权力；通过恐惧，崇敬，厚待，集团或风俗来​​统治。另一个答案可以追溯到古希腊人，并以他们的名字命名，由公民自己统治-简而言之，就是民主。民主是比最高领导人统治更为复杂和复杂的企业。它取决于每个人或几乎每个人都隐式地或默示地同意一套共同的管理规则。这样的规则集称为宪法。宪法可以是书面的或不书面的。大多数现代国家都有成文宪法。有些国家，例如英国，则没有。无论各国是写下宪法还是选择不写下宪法，现实都是民主运作需要的不仅仅是纸上文字。即使是拥有详尽的成文宪法的国家也无法掌握允许民主运作的全部规则和传统。宪法文本之外是对规则在特定情况下应如何应用以及使规则生效所需的理解和约定。因此，史蒂文·列维茨基（Steven Levitsky）和丹尼尔·兹布拉特（Daniel Ziblatt）在《民主如何破灭》（How Democracies Die，2018）中警告说，诸如对不同政治观点的容忍之类的不成文的治理规范的侵蚀（他们称之为``美国民主的护栏''）可能会破坏美国的有效民主治理。 。在加拿大，它拥有成文的宪法，但现实是，如果没有不成文的规范和惯例，治理是不可能的。《加拿大宪法》未包含“总理”一词，或《剑桥法律杂志》，第78（1）期，2019年3月，第200–250页