What will "democracy" mean, for the next generation?
At the moment, Western democracy has a pretty good image. It’s
associated with things like: freedom, prosperity, wealth, justice, progress. I'm not saying that democracy actually causes those things; I'm not saying it doesn't. What I mean is that when most people think of democracy, those are what springs to mind, I think. Democracy today has a pretty good image.
Many people assume that democracy will always be attractive, although only a few have been bold enough to say it. But this wasn't always true, and maybe it won't be. 10 years from now, what will people think of when they hear the word “democracy”?
That all depends what happens. Suppose things get worse in:
Egypt, Libya: Democracy (at least in theory)… violence, extremists, civil war.
Europe:
Democracy… riots, poverty, panic.
America:
Democracy… deadlock, paralysis, decline.
I'm not saying democracy really caused those problems or would be responsible if they get worse. Correlation isn't really causation, but psychologically, it feels like it is (that's why we need reminding so often that it isn't.) I'm just summarizing the news headlines from the past couple of years and assuming they continue.
I'm not saying those headlines are justified, either; the media exaggerate, but this is all about perception, and like it or not, people see headlines. And of course there are other old and new democracies around the world that are doing fine - but good news doesn't make the front page.
Put it all together and it doesn’t look so attractive.
This matters. The USSR ended because the people of the
USSR looked West and saw a better life. Now there's an assumption that something similar is bound to happen eventually in those countries that are 'still' not democratic. We assume that they will look at democracy and think: me too! For that matter, we assume that most people in a democracy would not vote to end democracy.
But what if democracy loses face?
This hasn't happened yet. It has only just begun, and hopefully can be prevented. Europe today, even Greece today, is surely more attractive than the USSR 1989... but things could get worse, and then where will democracy be?
17 comments:
Hmm
Democracy and progress.
Progress and environmental devastation.
Democracy and environmental devastation?
The delusion of progress.
The delusion of democracy?
I think the problems in Europe, UK and USA are more the result of deregulation than democracy. The deregulation which allowed the finance sector to become blood sucking parasites was done by politicians who were basically bribed by rich people to do it so the rich people could get richer. Worked a treat. So not really democracy but plutocracy. If we only had democracy there might be a way out of this mess. As it is... call me a depressive, but I'm feeling kinda gloomy right now.
Democracy is important, but it is the civic institutions that make a society good. Voting alone does not make a fair government, so many other things need to work properly before democracy starts to work in everyone's interest. Sometimes the push toward democracy comes before secure foundations are in place, elections become a sham. Also, sometimes in established democracies we forget the important foundations that keep it all going through the rise and fall of successive governments.
I don't think it is all falling apart, but I do think we need to be careful to maintain the integrity some of the most important players in society, including the press, education and judiciary.
People only think democracy has failed if they are hoping for a 'deliberative rational consensus' view of democratic participation. If what you want is the bringing together of people so that society can achieve certain goals - you are sadly mistaken. On the other hand, if you view democracy as mediating conflicting interests -the "agonist" view - then it works well to create some sense of stability. I think people only get annoyed at democracy when their team isn't winning.
Democracy only works if the majority of the participants subscribe to the underpinnings of the system.
As soon as you start importing people who don't the system falls apart. Hence the serious problems in Western European nations.
Democracy can't work in countries where the major culture is based on an ideology which directly the opposite of democracy. Obviously.
Democracy and theocracy don't mix.
Nothing surprising there.
Multicultural idealists assuming that all cultures are equal are mostly to blame.
But the snowball has started rolling, we'll see what will finally stop it.
A surrender of democratic values or a citizen's uprising.
In either case i'm glad to have an age so i can say with comfort: apres moi le deluge.
Jayarava has the right of it. As long as rich people are making the laws the social structure can go down in flames as long as a select few have their ivory back scratchers.
Unfortunately the general populace isn't educated well enough (a result of continuous defunding of school systems) to sift out the constant propaganda that the rich throw at us saying that it's someone else's fault. So who's to blame eventually comes down to who they point the finger at. I know in America democracy is safe since the rich have the laws going their way. If that changes, we'll see a shift away from democracy, but not until then.
There are types of democracies from liberal democracies to totalitarian democracies. The former SOVIET union was a democracy from my understanding and collapsed because of the 'domino effect'. Theocracies like the Vatican city, monarchies, autocracies are not considered democracies. Successful democracies are those in practice adhere to the democratic peace theory and tied to the dominant monetary systems in the world.
I just want to add democracies have collapsed in the past and still do. http://ips.sagepub.com/content/26/3/291.full.pdf
The nature of "democracy" depends, inter alia, on the nature of the demos. Take it away, John Stuart Mill:
"Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state.
Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favor of the government against the rest."
http://philosophy.eserver.org/mill-representative-govt.txt
Interesting how modern "liberals" would regard that expression of classic liberalism as heretical, hateful, verging on the fascistic, etc.
Mus et Montes
Mill was wrong of course. Take a look at India. So what is your point?
He was wrong at the time of writing too. When he wrote there were three major democracies in the world - France, the United Kingdom, and the USA - of which the latter two were both multi-ethnic states.
(You might say "But the Scottish and the Welsh and the German-Americans don't count because they were integrated" - well, that's my point.)
Even France arguably - it wasn't so long ago that the language we call "French" was only spoken in the region of Paris. But the Bretons and the Occitans still voted in French elections. They voted, many of them, to abolish their own language...
Finally - this is the last one I promise - I wonder if American "conservatives" might do well to read Mill before setting up what amounts to a counterculture in which
"The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways..."
Free institutions cannot long survive when one half the country watch Fox and the other CNN - according to Mill.
I don't know that you can call what we have a democracy! (I'm in the US, so some of this won't apply to those of you in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc.)
Every country you are writing about is a republic, not a democracy: the people don't vote directly on what the country is going to do, they vote for representatives who decide those things. This is theoretically fine, as long as they have a real choice in who will represent them. In my country, we have only two major political parties, and they are practically clones of each other on economic issues (i.e., they do whatever the big corporations and rich people want). If you don't want to vote for either the left or right wing of the Corporatist Party, you stay home. That, or, in the states where the third party of your choice gets on the ballot (my state is not one of these), you vote for them, and know that you've cast a vote for someone who stands no chance of winning, who might get something like one percent of the national vote. I think the European governments are kind of like this, too, with most of the major parties sharing a set of policy premises that the people, if those premises were put up for referendum, might not accept! But those premises are never directly voted on, and so many politicians share them --- precisely because they serve the already rich and powerful, whom most politicians seek to court --- that we'll never really know if the people also support them.
I don't know enough about what happened in Egypt, but I do know that the revolution happened because people wanted democracy, but democracy is not necessarily what they got. It looked to me like the army and religious extremists both had designs on the country post-revolution, and democracy lost in the tug-of-war.
So ... what I am saying is that we are not necessarily seeing the failure of democracy so much as a breakdown of profoundly unequal societies with large dispossessed, disenfranchised minorities. That we call this "democracy" makes me very sad indeed.
(Also, what DS and petrossa said.)
Anonymous said...
So what is your point?
One of my points about democracy, "nationality" and "liberalism" relates directly to science. Apply Mill's argument to free speech and free scientific enquiry. Like Mill, I'm a type-1 liberal and I believe in both. Type-2 liberals don't believe in free speech or free enquiry, i.e. they're "liberal" in the Orwellian way that North Korea is a "democratic" republic. I don't like seeing people locked up or investigated by the authorities for expressing opinions, however "offensive" those opinions are. I don't like the climate of fear there is around certain topics, e.g. genetic influence on psychological variables like IQ. I don't like the authorities taking freedom away from us to protect our ever-lengthening list of "nationalities" from offence. If you're a T2-liberal and support less freedom and more protection from offence, fine. Just don't pretend it's not less freedom. What happened to James Watson reminds me of what happened to Galileo, but then an authoritarian, anti-democratic cult was at work both times. The modern persecution of scientists (and others) is always justified by the need to "protect" different "nationalities". Another way in which Mill was right: science has ceased to be a "free institution". But science can't be closed down like theology. In the end, Galileo was vindicated and his cultist persecutors forgotten. Ditto for Watson. He'll be vindicated and remembered long after the likes of Steven Rose are forgotten.
Mill was wrong of course. Take a look at India.
If you want to promote India as a paragon of free institutions and smoothly functioning democracy, feel (um) free. I don't claim India's diversity CAUSES its corruption and other political problems (its communalism, otoh...), but I do claim its diversity makes them harder to cure. Take it away, Wikipedia:
The lack of homogeneity in the Indian population causes division between different sections of the people based on religion, region, language, caste and race. This has led to the rise of political parties with agendas catering to one or a mix of these groups. Some parties openly profess their focus on a particular group; for example, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's focus on the Dravidian population, and the Shiv Sena's pro-Marathi agenda. Some other parties claim to be universal in nature, but tend to draw support from particular sections of the population.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_India
Neuroskeptic wrote:
He was wrong at the time of writing too. When he wrote there were three major democracies in the world - France, the United Kingdom, and the USA - of which the latter two were both multi-ethnic states.
(You might say "But the Scottish and the Welsh and the German-Americans don't count because they were integrated" - well, that's my point.)
Your point is an evasive one, I'm afraid. What about the changes in France since Mill wrote? Is it more "multi-ethnic" now? If it is, has that been good for French democracy? Are there concerns about the "integration" of any recent contributors to French "multi-ethnicity"?
I'd be interested to see your answers. Or you could just say: Take it away, New Statesman!
France: a country at war with itself
In the poor outer suburbs of France's major cities, a generation's alienation has erupted into violent loathing. They are at war, and they call it the "French intifada", 30 March 2012
http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2012/03/france-country-war-itself
Good for democracy? Of course, T2-liberals will blame all that on racism and Islamophobia, but I'm not sure they're entirely right and it supports Mill's thesis regardless.
Jayarava said...
"I think the problems in Europe, UK and USA are more the result of deregulation than democracy."
This is an oft repeated fallacy. I worked for a bank in the years leading up to the crash and I can assure you that the one thing that was never lacking was regulation. There were 20,000 FSA employees pumping out rubbish on top of all the usual garbage churned out by Westminster and Brussels which affects employers and businesses in general. By around 2005 the whole place was run by compliance officers and the legal department.
Of course it was the wrong kind of regulation. The minutiae of terms and conditions, pointless announcements before customers get to speak to someone on the phone, health warnings about investment products not inevitably leading to endless health, wealth and happiness etc. What you want is the right kind of regulation. Like the good hearted idealistic you obviously are, you hope that next time, somehow - just somehow - the regulation we get from bodies like the FSA will produce the good stuff.
I'm sorry to tell you that it is a forlorn hope. If the kind of people who could predict things like the banking crisis worked for quangos like the FSA, then the EU wouldn't have created the euro and the USSR would have won the Cold War. We would all be living in a lovely communist utopia.
Unfortunately, when you give government regulatory control of multi-billion dollar industries, the collusion between politicians and civil servants with moguls and CEOs follows as night follows day. All that happens is that small businesses are squeezed out by the active lobbying - or simple oversight - of big business interests and politicians walk into high profile corporate jobs when they fancy a career change (doesn't hurt to imply this to them over an expensive meal when they seem to be really, er, “getting the problems facing our industry”). In short, regulation creates a corporatist state characterised by politicians who hang out with Lord Sugar, Bernie Ecclestone and whoever Dave's equivalents happen to be, and big business effectively relying on the power of the State to destroy competition. This may be something tiny like a local Tescos persuading a local council to put yellow lines along their shop front or something massive like gambling a fortune secure in the knowledge that the State will bail you out.
I haven't read the other comments so forgive me if this is repeating anything someone else said, but it seems that what you're associating with democracy isn't democracy itself, but a means to attain it.
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