tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/democratic-theory-23922/articlesDemocratic theory – The Conversation2019-04-10T08:50:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1148682019-04-10T08:50:23Z2019-04-10T08:50:23ZBrexit: the differing versions of democracy deployed by both sides of Britain’s political impasse<p>Brexit is a deeply divisive issue. Even democracy itself turns out to be a source of disagreement. For some, democracy requires the UK to leave the EU quickly and by whatever means necessary to respect the result of the 2016 referendum. For others, democracy means a second referendum with the possibility of reversing the decision to leave.</p>
<p>How can the idea of democracy support two such seemingly contradictory conclusions? One body of expert knowledge that is particularly good at helping us to make sense of conundrums of this sort is democratic theory, a form of theory that seeks to both define democracy and evaluate actual democratic practices and institutions. </p>
<p>Democracy means “rule by the people”. But since the range of possible meanings that can be attributed to the terms “rule” and “people” are so numerous, democratic theory starts from the assumption that this basic definition does not take us very far.</p>
<p>Democracy means different things to different people and so the word has been attached to a range of different concepts and supporting theories. Liberal democracy, republican democracy, socialist democracy, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy are perhaps some of the more familiar terms.</p>
<p>The fact that there are so many different theories is a reminder that the meaning of democracy is not settled and that actual democracies are a work in progress. But it becomes a problem when people who use the term democracy to defend their views are either unable or unwilling to explain what they mean by it. Which brings us back to Brexit.</p>
<h2>Liberal democracy</h2>
<p>Often those who are pro-Brexit claim that a second referendum would <a href="http://commentcentral.co.uk/the-fallacy-of-a-second-referendum/">undermine people’s trust</a> in democracy. Presumably, those who hold this view believe that a second referendum would represent a departure from “rule by the people”. Yet those calling for a second referendum argue that if parliament were to decide that a second referendum is required, then this wouldn’t represent a departure from democracy <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-vote-theresa-may-ed-davey-confidence-final-say-people-vote-a8729356.html">since parliament is sovereign</a>. </p>
<p>What’s key here is understanding what kind of democracy each side of the debate believes it is upholding. </p>
<p>Presumably, for those arguing that the 2016 referendum must be respected at all costs, democracy means that if I roll the dice and win, I cannot be compelled to role the dice again. For the sake of argument, let us suppose this to be based on <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GxjdOk-ZeccC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=Is+Democracy+Possible+Here?+chapter+5&source=bl&ots=a5lngTb49L&sig=ACfU3U0B059ySnqzwwv-ofA1qyF-gmiJZA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjc89OL9MDhAhXbVBUIHZveArwQ6AEwBXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Is%20Democracy%20Possible%20Here%3F%20chapter%205&f=false">liberal democratic theory</a>. </p>
<p>While liberal theories come in different forms, they normally insist that individuals and their rights are what matter most. As long as we act within our rights, government is duty bound not to try to tell us what to think. Each of us has a right to form a view about Brexit. It follows that government must respect those views without further question – its sole job is to aggregate those views into a collectively binding decision. And just as it is not the government’s place to tell us what to think, it is not its place to require us to reconsider our earlier decisions. </p>
<h2>Deliberative democracy</h2>
<p>So what theory of democracy might be called upon to support those who claim that a second referendum should be welcomed? One obvious candidate is <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Why_Deliberative_Democracy.html?id=1qaOH4GWG8cC">deliberative democracy</a>. On a deliberative view, political decisions ought to be decided on their merits. Of course, people are still entitled to their views. But what they cannot do is simply impose those views on others. Since political decisions are collectively binding they should be mutually justifiable. People should give reasons for their views but should be equally willing to listen to what others have to say. </p>
<p>In the ideal case, the result is a consensus. However, since in reality consensus is very hard to reach – time is often short, evidence tends to be incomplete, and risks and benefits can be highly uncertain – decisions will typically need to be treated as provisional. In other words, an initial decision can always be revisited. On a deliberative view, therefore, a second referendum may actually be required now amid the Brexit stalemate. Short of a consensus, people should continue to test their views and in principle be prepared to change them.</p>
<p>The upshot, therefore, is that different democratic theories are likely to give different answers to the same question. Even so, it’s surely better to know what we’re arguing over when we disagree about democracy than to find ourselves at odds without ever really understanding why. </p>
<p>Democratic theory is not easy. But it is parliamentarians’ responsibility to “do” democratic theory on our behalf – and be clearly seen to do so. Unfortunately, all too many of them seem ill-equipped or unwilling. The former might be forgiven, the latter should never be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114868/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian O'Flynn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What sort of democracy is now required to break the Brexit deadlock?Ian O'Flynn, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900112018-04-26T03:22:27Z2018-04-26T03:22:27ZKidnapped democracy: how can citizens escape?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214688/original/file-20180413-560-1d698i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Contemporary politics is no longer able to resist the pressure of economic power.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Day_40_Occupy_Wall_Street_October_25_2011_Shankbone_13.JPG">David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview16">José Saramago’s parable Seeing</a> (2004) explores how irrationality and stupidity become manifest when political decision-making is taken “hostage” by financial powers. The Nobel Prize-winning author warns that contemporary politics is no longer able to resist the pressure of economic power. This is because we live in amputated and kidnapped democracies that no longer protect citizens’ interests.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, this concern has become much more generalised among citizens in recent years. Journalists, activists, politicians and economists have also intuitively employed the concept of “kidnapped democracy” to describe our political predicament. The term kidnap is clearly a useful metaphor for understanding the times and power relations in which we live, especially if we can spell out its meaning, its consequences, and the stakeholders (the kidnappers and the hostages) who intervene in the process. </p>
<p>Kidnapping implies that someone is being held against their will. At the mercy of the kidnapper, the hostage loses any capacity for action and free movement. So when democracy is kidnapped, its main institutions and basic structures – parliaments, political parties, trade unions, mass media and NGOs – are held hostage. </p>
<p>Of course, there are some differences between the kidnapping of people and the kidnapping of institutions, but both situations are complex and potentially violent. And both can produce repressed, complicit victims.</p>
<h2>Meet the hostages</h2>
<p>Separating the victims from the kidnappers is no easy task. There are plenty of kidnapped stakeholders and different types of kidnappers.</p>
<p>Parliaments, governments, political parties, trade unions, mass media and NGOs all play a basic role in the political system. Despite performing specific tasks, each is expected to serve citizens and respect the maximum plurality of possible interests, or at least try to do so. Unfortunately, all these institutions are becoming less legitimate, to varying degrees, in almost all democracies. </p>
<p>More and more people believe these democratic institutions exist only to serve a select minority, having lost their capacity to act and their freedom to mediate or represent plural interests meaningfully. </p>
<p>So have they been kidnapped? How did it happen? And what hidden causes and dynamics lie behind the capture? </p>
<p>Take, for example, the Greek government: can it really act freely? Can it represent its citizens or is it hostage to international powers and organisations that dictate its policies and destiny, to the great frustration of its citizens? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214689/original/file-20180413-543-1nsqcug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Greek citizens have been frustrated by the austerity policies of their government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/0742/4386566455">underclassrising.net/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/greeks-are-overworked-and-exhausted-from-the-debt-crisis-71589">Greeks are overworked and exhausted from the debt crisis</a>
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<p>While a seemingly extreme example, Greece is certainly not the only country that must confront such questions. Other European Union nations are similarly troubled. </p>
<p>When the Spanish Socialist government (PSOE), supported by what was then the Partido Popular opposition party, reformed the nation’s constitution in 2011, a budget stability principle was passed. This gave priority to repaying public debt within the state’s general budget. This measure was considered most controversial, and was unpopular among citizens precisely because it explicitly and exclusively addressed the need to satisfy financial markets. </p>
<p>Things are not so different when we look northwards. Even in the “powerful” and economically strong Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered such captivity. </p>
<p>At the beginning of 2010 and in the face of economic crisis, Merkel considered the need to redistribute certain costs, insisting that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/nov/22/germany-ireland-eurozone-bailout-crisis">creditors should also pay part of the costs</a>. However, this proposal swiftly changed when “the markets” reacted by slightly increasing interest rates on German public debt. The idea of redistributing, albeit minimally, the costs of the country’s economic hardships was rapidly ruled out. </p>
<p>Evidently, governments have tremendous difficulty acting freely. The financing of markets, globalisation and the formation of multi-party governments all come into play. Political parties have even contributed to their own captivity and loss of freedom by taking on large debts with banks in order to win elections. </p>
<p>Other basic pillars of the democratic system are losing the capacity to represent plural interests. Trade unions and their close links with media powers, along with their concentration and progressive takeover by international corporations, come to mind. </p>
<p>So do NGOs that depend on external financing from political and economic centres. Are they not increasingly becoming hostage to propertied powers and dynamics that prevent them from meeting their original purpose?</p>
<h2>Who are the kidnappers?</h2>
<p>The kidnappers themselves are many and diverse; they vary by country and the range of strategies they employ. It is remarkable that former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson has <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/">expressed his concern</a> about the power of well-established financial oligarchies, particularly in the US, to impose systematic policies that are self-serving. Such financial elites include multinationals, rating agencies and powerful pharmaceutical and weapons industries. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214690/original/file-20180413-584-19itc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Something’s obviously wrong when even a former IMF chief economist voices concern about the power of financial oligarchies over policy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/guigui-lille/28270947186/">Guillaume Delebarre/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Of course, these stakeholders whose power goes well beyond the economic sphere to kidnap the space of politics are also prevalent in Europe, Latin America, Australia and many other “stable democracies”. The kidnappers resort to various strategies and tools, which range from providing finances and maintaining close connections with politicians to taking advantage of revolving doors and making implicit or explicit threats. </p>
<p>But their common objective is seen everywhere: to determine the destination of politics and to limit, or even strangle, the power of basic democratic structures that should otherwise grant citizens a voice. When the pillars of democracy are kidnapped, citizens become victims of the whole process.</p>
<h2>Stockholm syndrome</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Stockholm-syndrome">Stockholm syndrome</a> is a peculiar but well-known psychological reaction that sets in when hostages develop an affective link and positive feelings towards their kidnappers. It’s not a stretch to see this syndrome at work in our contemporary democracies. </p>
<p>How many voters, even those aware of their captivity, justify their kidnappers’ decisions? How many brush off austerity policies with a simple “it’s just what has to be done”? And how many economic and political leaders are paradoxically received as liberators of a population? </p>
<p>A significant part of the population, while certainly not the entire population, seems to be complacent about today’s kidnapped democracy. It is as if they have surrendered themselves emotionally and given themselves up to their captors. </p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pathologies-of-populism-82593">The pathologies of populism</a>
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<h2>These kidnappers stay silent</h2>
<p>It’s worth noting the difference in the levels of silence (or noise) when people, as opposed to whole democracies, are kidnapped. In “classic” forms of kidnapping, the criminals themselves often contact the relatives and loved ones of their hostage to make demands. In doing so, they raise the alarm, which can also be raised by anyone who may have witnessed the kidnapping. </p>
<p>Something different takes place when a democracy is kidnapped. In this instance, the kidnappers intentionally keep quiet about what is happening. They do not want to draw attention to what they are doing. They make no calls and showcase no distressed victims, nor do they seek to attract media coverage to voice explicit demands. </p>
<p>The kidnappers’ power lies in their capacity to keep their control over institutions silent. To do so, the kidnappers must develop their influence as subtly as possible. They need citizens to perceive that all is normal and suppose that democracy works. Appearances must be reassuring enough that no-one fears the power that the kidnappers acquire, so that their control is not threatened, or at least not openly questioned.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/214687/original/file-20180413-543-pt0rdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The populist leaders of our times do not appear to offer much hope for an urgent renewal of democracy for the people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/32388615916/">Lorie Shaull/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>How can citizens free themselves?</h2>
<p>Is there any way to free democracy and citizens from their stealthy, wealthy, elite captors? To date, the populists who promise us salvation do not appear to offer much hope for an urgent renewal of democracy for the people. </p>
<p>Yet some monitoring and accountability initiatives launched by civil society are finding ways to resist the silence, raise the alarm and break up the Stockholm syndrome. </p>
<p>Unveiling and demonstrating with evidence the extent to which our democracies have been kidnapped is necessary, not least to promote public reflection on the problem. But the key to renewal surely lies in new democratic mechanisms and forms of citizen participation that are capable of ending the concentrations of power that are kidnapping our democracies and victimising their citizens. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874">How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy</a>
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<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramón A. Feenstra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The financial oligarchies differ from other kidnappers by being silent about their power over institutions and policies – they don’t want to alert anyone to what they have done.Ramón A. Feenstra, Lecturer of Moral Philosophy, Universitat Jaume ILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884832018-02-07T01:25:15Z2018-02-07T01:25:15ZIf democracy is failing, why do so many lay claim to it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198452/original/file-20171211-27693-1vrfm3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong against 'Chinese-style democracy' laid bare democracy's contested meanings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/studiokanu/15327905238/">Studio Incendo/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the last in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a> series, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published by The Conversation with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
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<h2>A higher ideal, despite failures along the way</h2>
<p><strong>Patricia Roberts-Miller, University of Texas-Austin</strong></p>
<p>Democracy is always being pronounced dead by those who are trying to kill it. Perhaps because it has tended toward ambitious claims of its origins and possibilities, democracy is held to higher and often different standards from other models of governance. </p>
<p>Democracy certainly has its instances of disastrous decisions – from supporting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition">Sicilian Expedition</a> to our current problem of citizens wanting lower taxes and more expensive services. </p>
<p>In this regard, however, it’s no different from any other form of government: oligarchy, monarchy, fascism and rule by the market all have their disastrous wars, unwise economic policies, and even outright genocides.</p>
<p>Many critics argue that democracy is an inherently flawed system because “the citizenry” is not actually very good at making decisions. And, granted, the empirical research does show that voters tend to make decisions largely on the basis of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/the-dynamics-of-voters-leftright-identification-the-role-of-economic-and-cultural-attitudes/E7F5CD30B213A59C1FAEFF75F3C56CCF">identification</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CHuLCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%22voting%22+AND+%22short-term%22+AND+%22election%22+OR+%22elections%22&ots=kuS1LIFkVV&sig=3F3fuqL3Cx0IuL5a4Vd6Z8g9b44">short-term gain</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=61ZeDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=patricia+roberts-miller&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">politicians’ charisma</a>, and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=W6MY-TobYjcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=factional+politics&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">factionalism</a>. </p>
<p>Voters are prone to such cognitive biases as <a href="https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/94/False-Dilemma">false binaries</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic">availability heuristic</a>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201012/in-groups-out-groups-and-the-psychology-crowds">in-group</a> favouritism, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias">confirmation bias</a>, <a href="https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/just-world-hypothesis/">just world hypothesis</a>, <a href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/decision-making/naive-realism/">naïve realism</a>, and others. In other words, citizens are only human.</p>
<p>And that is ultimately the point. Humans are prone to cognitive biases. There is no governmental system immune to bad decisions, no set of experts with the judgement of angels, because human government is necessarily one run by humans. </p>
<p>Democracies rarely live up to the ideals of democracy, and so democracy remains an aspiration, but it is a normative one, in which our inevitable failure inspires us to try better.</p>
<h2>Basic values survive disappointment</h2>
<p><strong>Xavier Marquez, Victoria University of Wellington</strong></p>
<p>News of democracy’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. Academic measures show at worst small declines in the level of democracy in the world <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/artisanal-democracy-data-quick-and-easy.html">in the last decade</a>. </p>
<p>The constitutional documents of <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-age-of-democracy.html">almost every country</a> proclaim their democratic character, and few governments wish to be thought undemocratic. Peoples throughout the world <a href="http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-do-people-think-of-democracy.html">demand democracy</a>, and pro-democracy feeling is high even in the most unlikely places.</p>
<p>With some very minor exceptions, as historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dunn_(political_theorist)">John Dunn</a> has noted, the word “democracy” has come to symbolise the only legitimate political system in most languages. </p>
<p>Yet, despite its apparent triumph, democracy’s meaning remains disputed and disappointments with its reality are keenly felt. </p>
<p>The standard view of liberal democracy, with its emphasis on electoral institutions, checks and balances and individual rights, has been challenged both by illiberal populists, claiming to speak more clearly on behalf of “The People”, and by conceptions of technocratic management reinvigorated by the apparent successes of a Chinese model that still officially wishes to be called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_China">the people’s democratic dictatorship</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202531/original/file-20180119-80191-13rhocu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under Xi Jinping, China now has a day to celebrate a constitution that sets down the principle of ‘the people’s democratic dictatorship’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hleung/2208600327/">HKmPUA/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The contemporary high esteem for the vague idea of democracy and surprisingly low esteem for actually existing democracies suggests the source of the problem. Since the basic values of democracy – equality, freedom and consent, among others – have often been in conflict with existing hierarchies of power, prestige and knowledge, it is no wonder that existing democracies so often produce disappointment. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, democracy’s values are also alluring; it is telling that today few who wish to condemn the failures of democracy do so in the name of anything other than democracy.</p>
<h2>Governing ourselves is hard work</h2>
<p><strong>Sor-hoon Tan, National University of Singapore</strong></p>
<p>Democracy has never been the “only game in town”, just better than others in terms of offering ordinary citizens more chance or hope of having some say in the decisions that affect them. </p>
<p>No country has ever lived up to the ideal of the people truly governing themselves. Attempts to realise this ideal could only be measured by different degrees to which ordinary citizens have influenced political outcomes and achieved self-government in their daily lives.</p>
<p>It is not democracy, but rather the imperfect mechanisms for achieving it that are failing in the face of today’s challenges. Instead of jettisoning one ideology (which is unfortunately what democracy has come to mean for many) for other more dangerous alternatives, it is up to every one of us to realise that, for self-preservation, we must try even harder to find some way to prevent others from dictating how the world and our lives will turn out. </p>
<p>We need <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CIVBDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=%22sor+hoon+tan%22+AND+%22democracy%22&ots=JLiwoEImiC&sig=jNffsZCAzVkvaBoStziu3DP8Wl4">more, not less, democracy</a>. But democracy cannot be forced on another, nor can it be handed over as a free gift. Unless people want and are willing to put in the effort to govern themselves, democracy has no hope.</p>
<h2>At risk of losing its meaning</h2>
<p><strong>James Wong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology</strong></p>
<p>Recently, Rana Mitter <a href="http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2102330/mystery-chinas-eagerness-own-term-democracy">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>China is now in position to redefine democracy for the region, taking ownership and reshaping the term in its own, more authoritarian image. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If Mitter is correct, the real issue seems to be not so much about the dying of democracy but whether the world will accept China’s redefinition of democracy with fewer liberal elements.</p>
<p>China is sceptical of liberal democracy as it cannot guarantee political stability and harmony. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Przeworski">Adam Przeworski’s</a> famous definition of democracy as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Mfjv6snK0-EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=democracy+and+the+market&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">institutionalised uncertainty</a> is what China seeks to avoid. </p>
<p>At the core of so-called “Chinese-style democracy”, such an institutionalised possibility of unforeseen outcomes is not embraced. People, or at least leaders, want to know not only what is possible, but also what will happen. This explains why China is keen on restricting domains for certain assurance of outcomes – from the list of candidates screened for elections to the varieties of opinions censored in everyday life.</p>
<p>Does this redefinition make democracy a sham? To a large extent, yes. How popular is it going to be? It’s hard to say. But if people are so frustrated by the outrageous outcomes of democratic uncertainty, some may be tempted by the seemingly more assured alternatives. </p>
<p>What we need to recognise is that these alternatives come in the name of democracy and not authoritarianism. </p>
<p>In the future, we might not witness the death of democracy but rather the discursive struggles over its different definitions and redefinitions, over its mutation into something different.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199670/original/file-20171218-27595-35ga7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping both espouse their own versions of democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">President of Russia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where do democrats find common ground?</h2>
<p><strong>Camille Bedock, Université Libre de Bruxelles</strong></p>
<p>Talking about the “crisis of democracy” is consubstantial with democracy itself. Representative democracy in particular, as <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/bernard-manin.html">Bernard Manin</a> argues, is built on elections that are simultaneously aristocratic and democratic, egalitarian and inegalitarian. </p>
<p>As such, pessimism about representative democracy has always existed. What is new is the renewed intellectual and political controversy about what democracy is and what it should achieve. This is creating a sense of emergency to “reform” democracy.</p>
<p>Around the second world war, the dominant Western definition of democracy, embodied for instance by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter">Josef Schumpeter</a>, was fairly monolithic: democracy revolved around elections, which are organised to choose between political parties alternating in power, with relatively uninformed and deferent citizens. </p>
<p>Today the picture is blurrier: traditionally dominant parties in so-called consolidated democracies are paddling in troubled waters. Some are at risk of disappearing altogether. </p>
<p>Elections are less and less seen as the cornerstone of democracy. Instead we are seeing the multiplication of groups challenging representation and proposing mechanisms that attempt to go beyond elections.</p>
<p>Citizens also no longer share a unified, uncritical and enthusiastic vision of democracy. A <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora95&div=86&g_sent=1&collection=journals">substantial share of them</a> actually show little commitment to the democratic regimen. </p>
<p>Concurrently, multiple and often contradictory versions of democracy have come to the forefront in public and intellectual debates: participatory democracy, stealth democracy, advocacy democracy, direct democracy, output-oriented democracy, deliberative democracy, and so on. </p>
<p>A huge question remains unanswered: can traditional “representative” democracy be <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=70nADgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22camille+bedock%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">combined with new forms of democracy</a> without creating more ambiguity about what democracy actually is?</p>
<h2>Crisis is also an opportunity to revitalise</h2>
<p><strong>Sabeel Rahman, Brooklyn Law School</strong></p>
<p>Democracy in the US is in the midst of a crisis, but perhaps not in the way that many might think. Our current democratic crisis is both worse and better than it may seem. </p>
<p>The crisis of American democracy is not so much one of a blatant collapse into open authoritarianism; rather, the crisis arises from a deeper, in some ways more systemic, failure.</p>
<p>Democracy as a moral ideal <a href="http://www.ksabeelrahman.com/democracy-against-domination">involves two dimensions</a>: the negative value of anti-domination – resisting the concentration of arbitrary power, in individual private or public actors, or in diffuse systems like the market itself – and the positive value of agency – expanding our collective capacities for self-government. Along both of these dimensions, modern democracy is in crisis.</p>
<p>Our democracies have failed to protect their communities from the problem of domination, whether in the form of concentrated private power from too-big-to-fail finance or new corporate titans, or in the form of the diffused inequities of contemporary capitalism and subordination of different communities.</p>
<p>At the same time, however, crises are moments of reinvention. The economic and political upheavals of the current moment offer a very real opportunity to reinvent and renew democracy’s promise.</p>
<p>It is out of such moments of crisis that radically democratising movements and institutional transformations in US history have taken place: <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/35b.asp">Radical Reconstruction</a> following the Civil War; the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Deal">New Deal</a> following the Great Depression; the civil rights movement following <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a>. </p>
<p>Such revitalisation is not a foregone conclusion. But a wide range of social movements are leading the charge for a more inclusive, equitable, multiracial democratic order. Whether we can achieve this remains to be seen.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read parts 1 and 2 of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-has-a-future-if-we-rethink-and-remake-it-88239">here</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/which-democracy-what-exactly-are-we-supposed-to-nurture-88482">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabeel Rahman is an Assistant Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. In addition to his academic work, he has worked as a consultant and advisor for a variety of projects relating to democracy reform, inequality, and economic policy for philanthropic foundations and think tanks, including the Hewlett Foundation, the Democracy Fund, New America, and the Roosevelt Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camille Bedock, James K. Wong, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Sor-hoon Tan, and Xavier Marquez do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Uncertainty is built into democracy, but we are seeing more talk of crisis and more attempts at redefinition. So where does this leave citizens who want to have a meaningful say in how they live?Camille Bedock, Chargée de recherche, CNRS, Université de BordeauxJames K. Wong, Research Assistant Professor in Social Science and Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyPatricia Roberts-Miller, Professor of Rhetoric, The University of Texas at AustinSabeel Rahman, Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law SchoolSor-hoon Tan, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, National University of SingaporeXavier Marquez, Senior Lecturer, Political Science, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884822018-02-02T02:49:44Z2018-02-02T02:49:44ZIs Democracy Dead or Alive? What democracy exactly are we supposed to nurture?<p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the second part of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a>, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Imagine a new form of popular sovereignty</h2>
<p><strong>Eva Cherniavsky, University of Washington</strong></p>
<p>If we cannot imagine a future for democracy after the break-up of its historic marriage to capitalism, then I suppose we should declare it dead. But I prefer to think that capitalism’s spurning of democracy offers a context for instituting new forms of democratic governance.</p>
<p>The institutions of the modern democratic state have always stood for the interests of proprietors, upholding formal rights (equality of opportunity) over material equity (equality of condition). </p>
<p>The revolutions that threw off monarchical and colonial rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were, with very few exceptions, bourgeois revolutions. The state’s obligation to the collective interest of the people thus finds a limit in its competing and contradictory obligation to the protection of private property.</p>
<p>From this vantage point, the corporate takeover and decimation of existing democratic institutions may free us to conceive and cultivate more radically democratic organisations that centre on the welfare of peoples, rather than individuals.</p>
<p>Movements such as Occupy Wall Street clearly tend in this direction, experimenting with radical, participatory democracy in the belly of the beast.</p>
<p>On the model of Occupy, radical democracy entails the creation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lamborn_Wilson">myriad autonomous zones</a>, whether temporary or semi-permanent. </p>
<p>As ethnonationalism and authoritarianism flourish in the ruins of capitalist democracy, it remains to be seen if the Left can reimagine itself, no longer as a dissident force, hostile or marginal to the institutions of capitalist democracy, but rather as a force for institutionalisation, elaborating new forms and practices of <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ywfvCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=neocitizenship&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">popular sovereignty</a> at the local, regional and planetary scale.</p>
<h2>Democracy expresses itself in many ways</h2>
<p><strong>Jean-Paul Gagnon, University of Canberra</strong></p>
<p>When someone says “democracy is dead” they aren’t critiquing democracy itself. They’re critiquing a specific expression of it, usually the representative kind. To conflate democracy with but one of its expressions is dangerous because this dismisses <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2234-Expressions-of-Democracy.pdf">more than 2,000</a> of its other expressions. </p>
<p>Some, like deliberative democracy, are normative projects in part destined to improve the representative institutions that most of us are familiar with. </p>
<p>Others, like <a href="http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/08/23/there-are-at-least-2234-expressions-of-democracy-and-the-less-common-versions-can-teach-us-a-lot/">Waldorf democracy</a>, where “waiters and financiers, telephone girls and captains of industry, coatroom clerks and merchant princes [sit] side by side” at dinner, are historical expressions that can help us find new purchase on some of today’s more enduring problems such as class division.</p>
<p>There are also expressions of democracy in action: <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cN8YDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22kabuki+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">kabuki democracy and karaoke democracy</a> are used to explain modern Japanese politics; <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=eKIVVsIqmjQC&q=%22garbage+democracy%22&dq=%22garbage+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">garbage democracy</a> captures Fidel Castro’s opinion of representation in the US; and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9rxdQUCY6Z4C&pg=PA30&dq=%22sleepy+democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">somnolent democracy</a> is used to describe countries with docile citizens. </p>
<p>These expressions help us make sense of the democracies we live in – think in particular of unwieldy democracy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greening-of-democracy-7182">green democracy</a> and corrupt democracy.</p>
<p>So, it doesn’t make sense to say “democracy is dead”, because democracy doesn’t mean just one thing. As we come to know each of democracy’s expressions better, and make sense of them collectively, it’s my wager that this will lead to more inclusion, equality, self-rule, autonomy, fairness and non-violence within our states, between our states, and in our lives.</p>
<h2>Enemies within exploit ideology of democracy</h2>
<p><strong>Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University</strong></p>
<p>The ideology of democracy has <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3HbzAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22nadia+urbinati%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">disfigured democracy</a> and is one of the reasons for its weakness today. </p>
<p>Contemporary democracy is at the centre of this paradox: as a political system, democracy enjoys an undisputed global hegemony so that even constitutional “reforms” that curtail civil liberties and contradict the spirit of political openness are made in the name of democracy as more genuine affirmations of democracy’s values. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-venezuela-democracy-20170801-story.html">Venezuela</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-on-the-brink-in-hungary-so-why-is-no-one-talking-about-it-82163">Hungary</a> offer prime examples of this.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W38zzEX8KBI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">As well as fighting for the basics, Venezuelans are fighting to hang on to Venezuela’s 60-year-old democracy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Particularly after the Cold War, the ideology of democracy has found itself in a situation of planetary solitude. The paradox is that no other names today are available to give legitimacy to political enterprises that are not easily rendered as democratic in the constitutional and representative mode in which democracy is valued. </p>
<p>So we witness the coinage of oxymoronic terms, like authoritarian democracy, technocratic democracy and meritocratic democracy, among others.</p>
<p>One of the effects of this paradox is that political orders named as democratic are not only in contrast with democracy but are moreover primed to cast doubt on the value of democracy. How can we value political equality when our democracies promote <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-antiegalitarian-mutation/9780231169844">technocracy or national-populism</a>? </p>
<p>Not to have names to name these transformations of democratic governments is a problem because it contributes to delegitimising democracy. The ideology of democracy obfuscates political reality and leaves us with no argument against adversaries of democracy from within.</p>
<p>This is the cultural and political context in which a new form of representative government is today primed to emerge within the democratic nest, thus changing democracy from within, silently and inadvertently.</p>
<h2>A problem of shallow cultural foundations</h2>
<p><strong>Youngho Cho, Sogang University</strong></p>
<p>Democracy is still a dominant force this century. No government or political leader literally opposes democracy and openly attempts to break it down. Indeed, they instrumentally use democracy to legitimise their own rule and governance. </p>
<p>Democracy has, in this sense, absolute power over its alternatives, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama">Francis Fukuyama</a> declared more than two decades ago.</p>
<p>So why is democracy dysfunctional in spite of its <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912914532721">global and universal appeal</a> among leaders and ordinary people? One reason is that leaders manipulate the meanings of democracy and people misunderstand it. People do not understand democracy as its scholars do.</p>
<p>Moreover, a large proportion of Asians do not conceive democracy as most Westerners do. When thinking about democracy, many Chinese people imagine economic development, the domestic and regional dominance of Han China and social order. </p>
<p>Certainly, the rule of law, limited government, civil liberties, political rights and press freedom do not matter much in mass conceptions of democracy in certain corners of the world.</p>
<p>Even in advanced countries, when strong leaders such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen speak about democracy, they emphasise dominance and the rule of the majority and try to take minority rights away. We may be living in an era of democratic dominance for the first time in history, but its practices are not necessarily liberal or democratic. </p>
<p>Lamentably, democracy’s cultural foundation is shallow. We need more education about democracy and popular engagement with its diverse forms.</p>
<h2>Where is the evidence for claims of doom?</h2>
<p><strong>Dawn Brancati, Columbia University</strong></p>
<p>Dramatic claims that democracy is in peril around the world or, worse yet, that it is already dead, make great headlines. They may even be valuable in motivating governments and individuals to be vigilant against threats to democracy around the world. </p>
<p>However, there isn’t sufficient empirical evidence to support these claims.</p>
<p>Statements about democracy’s recession are often based on a few anecdotal, but salient, cases of where democracy has been genuinely curtailed, and do not take into account the number of cases where democracy has remained strong or has advanced in recent years. </p>
<p>These statements are also often about aspects of political systems that are important, but not about democracy per se. Claims that democracy is on the decline have been made based on bureaucratic incompetency, corruption, government criticism of the media, and so forth.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"832708293516632065"}"></div></p>
<p>Many democracy indices exist that can discern trends over time, but there are no indices that identify or measure all aspects of political systems, that define open and competitive elections, and that are needed, therefore, to make conclusions about which aspects of democracy are on the decline and which are on the rise around the world. </p>
<p>Such comprehensive data would make for a much less titillating view about the state of democracy in the world, but it would be a more accurate and responsible one.</p>
<h2>Democracy as equality</h2>
<p><strong>Clare Woodford, University of Brighton</strong></p>
<p>For too long political thought has muddled democracy – the enactment of the equality of all – with representative regimes we call democratic but which are in actual fact always oligarchic. </p>
<p>The equality of the people cannot be institutionalised. This does not mean that some forms of institutionalisation would not be more disposed towards democracy than others.</p>
<p>It seems pertinent to question the relationship between democracy and the regimes that go by its name. But the focus of such questioning must surely be the manner and extent to which any regime creates and supports (or represses and undermines) the ongoing conditions for democracy rather than simply institutionalising and entrenching one form of equality over others such that it becomes stale and oppressive.</p>
<p>A debate over whether democracy is dead or alive may only work to discipline the demos in an ill-fated attempt to defend it. But the very emergence of this debate highlights the urgency with which we must attend to the ways in which emancipation has become entangled with and subverted by domination through institutionalisation. </p>
<p>To misrecognise democracy is to place more barriers in its way. As long as things could be other than they are democracy is always possible. Regardless of how long it is suppressed or lies dormant, and to the perpetual chagrin of its opponents, democracy can never die.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the rest of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democracy takes many forms, some of them democracy in name only. Confusion and misappropriation complicate the public struggle for the democracy to come, but this challenge is always unending.Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraClare Woodford, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of BrightonDawn Brancati, Visiting Scholar, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia UniversityEva Cherniavsky, Andrew Hilen Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of WashingtonNadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory, Columbia UniversityYoungho Cho, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sogang UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882392018-01-17T02:33:55Z2018-01-17T02:33:55ZIs Democracy Dead or Alive? Democracy has a future, if we rethink and remake it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198445/original/file-20171211-27719-ni5dcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While some are declaring that democracy has had its day, others see this as a time to develop more truly democratic ways of living.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/leopoldcollection/masterpieces/41">Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1910</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>These comments on the global fate of democracy, the first in a three-part series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">Is Democracy Dead or Alive?</a>, are gathered by <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/democratic-theory-overview.xml">Democratic Theory</a> and co-published by The Conversation with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. Several of these comments will feature as full-length articles in a special issue of Democratic Theory.</em></p>
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<p>Consider Brexit, the election of US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-on-the-verge-of-democide-as-referendum-looms-74621">referendum</a>, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy of <a href="https://theconversation.com/philippines-cannot-build-a-nation-over-the-bodies-of-100-000-dead-in-dutertes-war-on-drugs-64053">state-sanctioned murder</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hungary-cracks-down-on-foreign-funding-dealing-a-harsh-blow-to-ngos-and-to-european-democracy-77185">Hungary’s</a> drift towards a new authoritarianism.</p>
<p>“Democracy is dead,” say the disheartened. “It’s time to bury democracy,” <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/node/1085336/world">pounds</a> one Tunisian pro-Sharia party. “Democracy has fallen, we need a new game in town,” argue Vladimir Putin’s populist and Xi Jinping’s neo-authoritarian allies.</p>
<p>These mantras, circulated widely through social media, have ricocheted around the world and were felt perhaps most viscerally in 2017. It was a year full of political events that, in hindsight, look like a string of assaults against democratic ways of living.</p>
<p>Is democracy dying, or perhaps already dead? Is it really time to eulogise democracy, or are we rather on the cusp of a new phase in its long and varied life? <strong>– Jean-Paul Gagnon, University of Canberra</strong></p>
<h2>Anguish about democracy attests to its value</h2>
<p><strong>Alice el-Wakil, University of Zurich</strong></p>
<p>It has become common that under half of the citizenry votes in most Western democracies, that anti-democratic politicians get elected, and that elected authorities are accused of failing to protect citizens’ interests.</p>
<p>Corruption and nepotism are making comebacks and inequalities of all sorts are on the rise. At this time it is legitimate to ask whether democracy is breaking apart. </p>
<p>However, this worrisome situation should not transform us into sceptics about democracy. The outcry against the problems mentioned above shows that the public notices and criticises political shortcomings to realise democratic ideals – that there is something about democracy worth mobilising for.</p>
<p>Hence, as certain existing democratic regimes risk being perverted, we should use this critical moment to reinvent and expand democracy.</p>
<p>In most parts of the world, democracy has so far only taken the form of a specific kind of institutional arrangement, namely electoral representative democracy. It relies on a valuable but limited set of institutions, which preserves an <a href="http://www.the-college-reporter.com/2017/03/05/yale-theorist-helene-landemore-promotes-open-democracy-democratic-experimentation/">exclusionary bias</a> and a fundamental suspicion of citizens’ capacity to make political decisions. </p>
<p>The current challenges to this specific set of institutions should encourage us to acknowledge alternative, emerging practices of democratic participation and to create and experiment with complementary institutions. </p>
<p>Referendum procedures, new forms of representation, or assemblies of citizens are examples of the innovations we should consider to <a href="http://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/democratic-theory/4/1/dt040101.xml">revivify</a> democratic systems. Be it only because democracy enables us to publicly, legitimately and continuously question its value and to peacefully propose new ways of realising it.</p>
<h2>Don’t look to the powerful for answers</h2>
<p><strong>Anna Szolucha, University of Bergen</strong></p>
<p>The democratic impulse rarely originates in the corridors of power. Certain political elites may have a knack for exploiting right-wing populist and nationalist narratives to rewrite history and give a semblance of democratic legitimacy to the “corporate state”, but they are hardly effective when it comes to promoting popular concerns about freedom, justice, equality and social dialogue.</p>
<p>Normally, democracy is fought for and won by <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VgkxDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22anna+szolucha%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">ceaseless struggles and popular resistances</a>. </p>
<p>During the wave of pro-democratic protests that recently swept through the world, protesters in the West were critical of the liberal representative model of democracy, growing inequalities, and the influence of business on politics.</p>
<p>It’s clear there is a need to rethink democracy. The solution, however, is not to revamp the old model but to defend and simultaneously revisit the idea of democracy. We need to do so in such a way that it fosters equality, freedom and a sense that ordinary citizens have a greater influence on politics – virtues that the liberal representative version has failed to deliver.</p>
<p>The task of rethinking democracy is pressing because we are witnessing arrogant and aggressive attempts by political elites to appropriate democratic language to expand their own powers. </p>
<p>Despite massive protests and opposition to their policies, they call on “<a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-populism-43503">The People</a>” to offer more undemocratic solutions to real or imagined problems. They curtail freedom, centralise control, divide society, destroy the climate and institutionalise their privilege in the process.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The more than 13.4 million files in the Paradise Papers revealed the workings of the tax haven industry.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The rethinking and remaking of democracy is going to take effort and perseverance, but the continuing resistance shows that now is definitely not the time to announce the death of democracy because it never belonged to those who seem to be killing it in the first place.</p>
<h2>Three keys to democratic values</h2>
<p><strong>Nancy Rosenblum, Harvard University</strong></p>
<p>Authoritarian power grabs – those grim assaults on constitutional democracy – demand political and legal resistance. Illiberal populism – those episodic rejections of the terms of political representation – demand the rehabilitation of hollowed-out parties.</p>
<p>Authoritarianism is the business of predators: the cynical exploitation of the democratic weaknesses of the moment. Populism is expressive anger: a reaction against conditions of the moment felt to be threatening and out of control. Both are caused by democracy’s own political demons.</p>
<p>We don’t need to relitigate democracy, but we do need a full-throated affirmation of its value, which comes in three different keys.</p>
<p>The aspirational key: democracy is a system of political representation rooted in the moral ground of the equal value of all the governed. No constitutional arrangement is democratic without aspirational commitment to civil and political equality in the form of civil and political rights. No bad faith “illiberal democracy” makes that commitment.</p>
<p>The outcome key: over time and in the face of vicissitudes and ineptitude, democracy aims at general wellbeing more consistently and competently than other forms of government. Democracy is the only self-correcting system. Democracies have recessions, depressions and fumbling responses to crises. They do not have famines.</p>
<p>The defence against tyranny key: civil society is the bulwark against arbitrary and total power. Only democracy cultivates freedom of association and its product: the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vnjqCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22nancy+rosenblum%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">groups, associations, networks and political parties</a> that fuel unendingly contested democratic politics and that make trouble.</p>
<h2>Our best check on elite tyranny</h2>
<p><strong>David Teegarden, University at Buffalo – State University of New York</strong></p>
<p>Democratic governance provides the best practical check on elite domination. The citizenry has numerical superiority in every state. Unfortunately, elites (wealth, military, religious) know how to atomise and render them effectively powerless: thus the persistence of narrow oligarchy and autocracy throughout recorded history.</p>
<p>However, democratic institutions such as elections, the law and the free press, along with their ideals of political equality and individual freedom, can facilitate citizens’ efforts to co-ordinate their actions, draw upon their collective strength and force their elite competitors to agree to some sort of co-operative relationship. </p>
<p>In a functioning democracy, everybody – even billionaires, generals and bishops – must obey laws made by and enforced by all citizens.</p>
<p>It is certainly true that democratic governance often breeds contentious public discourse. It can lead to terrible, even disastrous outcomes from time to time. But it is far better to endure those things than to endure the horror of being forced to bow down publicly to <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GY6GAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=death+to+tyrants&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">an oppressive tyrant</a> with no realistic hope of betterment either for yourself or for your children.</p>
<h2>Solutions start with a constructive critique</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Wilkin, Brunel University</strong></p>
<p>Representative democracy has always been regarded as problematic by <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RWLNDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22peter+wilkin%22+AND+%22democracy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">those who have sought to replace it</a> with authoritarian rule. Today many of these authoritarian trends have gained new voice and increasingly anti-democratic forces can be found.</p>
<p>But we can’t conflate all challenges to representative democracy as being the same. We can distinguish between those social forces that draw inspiration from the radical right – such as <a href="https://blogs.crikey.com.au/worldisnotenough/2017/03/03/macedonia-debates-country/">ethnonationalism</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/world/europe/europe-neo-fascist-revival-slovakia.html">neo-fascism</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/henry-giroux-joan-pedro-cara-ana/henry-giroux-public-intellectual-on-menace-of-trump-and-new-authori">militarism</a> – and those that can be seen as a novel continuation of the libertarian socialist tradition – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street">Occupy</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/08/economist-explains-15">Black Lives Matter</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/kurds-rojava-syria-isis-iraq-assad/505037/">Rojava</a>.</p>
<p>The radical right is intolerant, aggressive and wants to capture the state for authoritarian ends and to nationalise capitalism. </p>
<p>By contrast, the libertarian socialist tradition is an attempt to extend democracy into areas like the economy (for example the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-plan-to-give-everyone-a-citizens-wage-and-scrap-benefits-a6932136.html">citizen’s wage</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/universal-basic-income-is-a-neoliberal-plot-to-make-you-poorer/">universal income</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy">worker control of industry</a>). Libertarian socialists also attempt to reconfigure centralised state power and restore decision-making to communities.</p>
<p>Both movements are responding to the same conditions: the polarising impact of capitalism on social life (inequality, insecurity, poverty) and the failure of representative democracy to offer solutions to these problems. </p>
<p>Such solutions are simpler for the radical right, which has no commitment to democracy or civil liberties. The radical right wants to impose order upon society by any means, including violence and intimidation.</p>
<p>For movements inspired by the libertarian socialist aspiration to deepen, enrich and extend democracy, finding solutions is much harder. The means to be used are seen as fundamental to the society that will emerge. </p>
<p>As a result, violence, fear, propaganda and other powerful anti-democratic tools are eschewed in favour of education and organising communities through dialogue and negotiation.</p>
<h2>Overcome short-termism for democratic renewal</h2>
<p><strong>Graham Smith, University of Westminster</strong></p>
<p>In privileging the present over long-term sustainability, contemporary democracies have failed to deal effectively with climate change. But this does not mean, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/ev/2015/00000024/00000003/art00006">as some suggest</a>, that we require a more authoritarian solution. Rather, we need to understand the sources of short-termism and think more creatively about our democratic institutions and practices.</p>
<p>The sources of short-termism are multiple and mutually reinforcing. These include: short electoral cycles that incentivise limited party-political horizons; vested interests that benefit from current political and economic arrangements; our psychological preference for immediate gratification; an economic system that privileges carbon-based consumption; and unborn generations who are unable to defend their interests.</p>
<p>These examples could be seen as a litany of despair. Or they could be recognised as a new set of challenges on which to base democratic renewal. </p>
<p>The potential contours for a reinvigorated long-term democracy are beginning to emerge. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8FPFBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&dq=%22graham+smith%22+AND+%22future+generations%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Imaginative and practical democratic innovation</a> already includes: institutional experimentation such as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YfW4DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA117&dq=%22future+generations%22+AND+%22democracy%22&ots=snBzcUcH6_&sig=a9thNf8CVzAx0cSjWdxcvDkrjkA">independent offices for future generations</a> that scrutinise the decision-making of other public bodies; new rights and forms of public participation designed to orientate citizens towards consideration of future generations; and co-operatives and other forms of collective corporate governance that prioritise sustainability over immediate economic return.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199668/original/file-20171218-27568-b93qfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leading policymakers, business leaders and civil society activists gathered in 2017 for the first UN Global Festival of Ideas for Sustainable Development.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Global Festival of Action/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Time to get serious about citizenship education</h2>
<p><strong>Ryusaku Yamada, Soka University</strong></p>
<p>Civil society, voluntary associations, active citizenship, social capital – these were the rosy keywords often used in discussions of radical democracy at the end of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Now, nearly 20 years later, we are seeing that people’s active participation can be negative, driven by emotional populist movements. Social capital is not always strong enough to empower people who are alienated and excluded from decision-making. Civil society is often uncivil.</p>
<p>History tells us that the so-called democratic political system does not guarantee the improvement of democratic society. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim">Karl Mannheim</a>, for example, who analysed mass society in the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humaff.2016.26.issue-2/humaff-2016-0011/humaff-2016-0011.xml">age of fascism</a>, worried about an irrational democracy of emotions. </p>
<p>Mannheim was an advocate of social education (a concept similar to citizenship education today), which is meant to make the attitudes and behaviours of both common people and elites more democratic.</p>
<p>Although some might doubt the efficacy of such an education for the democratisation of society, it hasn’t in any serious way been tried before. As the old saying goes: we won’t know if it’ll work until we try. </p>
<p>For Mannheim and some of his contemporaries like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey">John Dewey</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot">T.S. Eliot</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandie_Lindsay,_1st_Baron_Lindsay_of_Birker">A.D. Lindsay</a>, democracy is not only a political system but also a way of life. Citizenship education is not only a matter of school education but also of people’s social practice in their everyday lives. </p>
<p>Far from saying “democracy is dying”, we need to say that “now is the time for democracy to be lived”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read parts 2 and 3 of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/is-democracy-dead-or-alive-48686">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryusaku Yamada receives funding from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice el-Wakil, Anna Szolucha, David A. Teegarden, Graham Smith, Nancy L. Rosenblum, and Peter Wilkin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is it really time to eulogise democracy, or are we rather on the cusp of a new phase in its long and varied life?Alice el-Wakil, PhD Researcher, University of ZurichAnna Szolucha, Research Fellow, Polish Institute of Advanced Studies, Polish Academy of SciencesDavid A. Teegarden, Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Classics, University at BuffaloGraham Smith, Professor of Politics, University of WestminsterNancy L. Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor on Ethics in Politics and Government, Harvard UniversityPeter Wilkin, Reader In Communications Media & Cultural Studies, Brunel University LondonRyusaku Yamada, Professor of Political Theory, Soka UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825922017-09-21T02:14:25Z2017-09-21T02:14:25ZIs populism democracy’s deadly cure?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182702/original/file-20170821-17116-1oyq2r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is populism a poison or a cure for democracy, or both, depending on the circumstances?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Londre_wellcome_institute_boilly_vaccinee.jpg">Louis Boilly/Wikipedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: What’s Next for Democracy?</a> symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au/">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
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<p>It is impossible to follow the news without catching reference to the rise of populism. A once little-used term that denoted a handful of parties in otherwise unconnected political contexts, populism now seems almost definitive of a political moment in time.</p>
<p>It also elicits a wide range of responses from specialists. The most common reaction is a negative recoil against the emergence of forces that seem to <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-unspeakable-and-democracy-in-america-68943">threaten</a> democracy. The emergence of far left and far right political forces seems redolent of the 1930s, and look where that left us.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are influential figures who argue that there is nothing to be afraid of in populism. Far from it: populism represents an appeal to <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-and-democracy-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-67421">The People</a>, and on this basis is not just consonant with democracy, but with any kind of politics that seeks universal appeal. </p>
<p>Since political parties seek power, broad, if not universal, appeal is what they crave. Populism on this account is nothing more than “the logic of politics”, assuming politics to be what is of public or collective concern. A non-populist politics is doomed to fail, or to be the preserve of groups or identities who set their face against the <em>demos</em>.</p>
<p>So populism can be defined as something menacing and threatening to democracy, but also as something redemptive, celebratory and expressive of democracy. The question is, which of these two senses is the right one? Which gets closer to the “truth” about populism?</p>
<h2>Populism as democracy’s pharmakon</h2>
<p>In a famous essay on Plato’s Phaedus, Jacques Derrida explores the concept of “<a href="http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf">pharmakon</a>” as an example of a term with apparently self-contradictory meanings. </p>
<p>Pharmakon, from which we derive the terms pharmacology and pharmacy, denotes a toxic substance used to make someone better, but which might also kill them.</p>
<p>Pharmakon is in this sense both poison and cure. It cannot be one or the other; it is both. Whether it is one or the other depends on dosage, context, receptivity of the body to the toxin, and so forth. In short, pharmakon expresses contingency and possibility, both life and death.</p>
<p>Now think back to what we have just been discussing in relation to populism. Do we really want to say that populism is always and everywhere a threat to democracy, something to be opposed or fearful of? Are there not moments or contexts where an appeal to the people versus corrupt or decadent elites might make sense in terms of saving democracy – from itself?</p>
<p>By contrast, are we really convinced that the appeal to the people is a necessary and constructive feature of politics, indeed something that we cannot avoid? Don’t we want to say, rather, that whether this appeal to the people versus the elites is to be celebrated or not depends on the position of the individual observer or participant in a vortex of political choices?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182703/original/file-20170821-17116-10xmwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Though Podemos’s populist message resonated with many on the streets, it has led the party into trouble.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paolo Di Tommaso/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The emergence of a populist discourse in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874">Spain</a> accompanied a near-complete collapse in faith in the political elites. Millions of people flooded the streets in 2011 to protest against those who were inflicting austerity from the luxury of the presidential palace. </p>
<p>It was a manoeuvre pitched in the midst of well-documented examples of corruption, clientelism and cronyism – not to mention the extraordinary waste of public money on useless megaprojects that seemed to rub the noses of ordinary people in the dirt of their own powerlessness.</p>
<p>So the emergence of the populist <a href="https://theconversation.com/podemos-find-itself-caught-between-the-battle-lines-of-spanish-politics-69771?sa=google&sq=podemos&sr=1">Podemos</a> and its potent message of “yes we [the people] can” chimed. However, it sounded a false note for others: fear of “charisma”, of leader-centred politics, and thus of the snuffing out and rendering irrelevant of the street protesters and micro-initiatives that had fostered the conditions for its creation in the first place. </p>
<p>The celebration of populism “from below” is mixed with an anticipation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/podemos-find-itself-caught-between-the-battle-lines-of-spanish-politics-69771">problems</a> to come – not least the cutting off of “the below” itself in a fanfare of triumphant, mediatised politics.</p>
<p>Consider too the emergence of France’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-emmanuel-macrons-big-gamble-to-save-the-eu-really-pay-off-81980">Emmanuel Macron</a>, centrist saviour of the European project. Through clever semantics he countered the populist charge of Marine Le Pen with a neat populist manoeuvre. </p>
<p>Le Pen was the “parasite” living off the system she criticised, not he. He was the political outsider who had given up on the elites; she was the product of the elites – or least one part of it. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182704/original/file-20170821-17144-cgfcrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emmanuel Macron as ‘Le Kid’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lorde Shaull/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Macron was the figure untainted by association with the failed political order, while Le Pen reeked of stale battles and a lost France. He embodied France’s future, she its dark and gloomy past. Not a battle royale but a bataille Republican of Pharmaka. </p>
<p>But isn’t all this talk of outsiders and elites a little iffy stemming from someone who made millions as a banker with <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/18/emmanuel-macron-is-about-to-face-five-years-of-crazy-conspiracy-theories/">Rothschild</a>? How long before this outsider rhetoric <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-does-emmanuel-macrons-presidential-approval-rating-keep-falling/2017/08/19/c48a069a-82a4-11e7-9e7a-20fa8d7a0db6_story.html?utm_term=.51e55e7861b5">collides</a> with the reality of budget cuts and labour market reforms?</p>
<h2>Will it work?</h2>
<p>Accepting the ambivalence of populism and pharmakon, so what? Why does it matter what kind of spin we put on the term?</p>
<p>Contemporary politics has by and large become a politics of reconstituting democracy after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/european-movements-could-mark-the-end-of-representative-politics-42369?sa=google&sq=simon+tormey&sr=4">collapse</a> of the narrative of representation under which we have been living for at least two centuries. We have become less inclined to believe in the benign intentions of our representatives, of politicians. </p>
<p>We have become populists in the sense of seeing elites as disconnected or uncoupled from the people, and thus ourselves.</p>
<p>We seem inclined to believe those who set themselves up as defenders of the people against the elites, no matter how preposterous a gesture that is, and there are few gestures more preposterous than that of a billionaire property developer setting himself up as defender of the people against the elites.</p>
<p>We’re not quite sure what the “cure” entails: the election of the outsider (<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728?sa=google&sq=coleman+trump&sr=1">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/progressives-should-accept-corbyns-triumph-its-the-price-of-democracy-66120">Jeremy Corbyn</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dutch-election-why-geert-wilders-failed-to-destroy-the-mainstream-government-74710?sa=google&sq=wilders&sr=2">Geert Wilders</a>) or the assumption of some non- or post-representative strategy that will reduce, if not eliminate, the distance between the people and political power (<a href="https://theconversation.com/deliberative-democracy-must-rise-to-the-threat-of-populist-rhetoric-76576">deliberative assemblies</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-mancini/wiki-democracy-begins-in-_b_934331.html">wikidemocracy</a>, <a href="https://blog.liquid.vote/2016/09/21/what-is-liquid-democracy/">liquid democracy</a>). </p>
<p>We’re not sure if the cure, the exuberant outsider, will “work” and make life better, make America “great”, or whether it will kill politics stone dead. </p>
<p>We’re not sure if there is life after representative democracy, or whether some alternative model will work better or fail, leaving our world in tatters. But we are inclined to experimentation as the certainties that have sustained our politics for the past two centuries wither. </p>
<p>We watch the toxin descend with an admixture of hope and fear – populism: democracy’s pharmakon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We’re not sure if the cure, the populist outsider, will work and make life better. but we are willing to experiment as the old certainties of representative politics wither.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/800832017-08-11T02:09:20Z2017-08-11T02:09:20ZWe frown on voters’ ambivalence about democracy, but they might just save it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177787/original/file-20170712-14452-n1dwgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voters might be quite rational in refusing to give the green light to those who wield power and benefit from the status quo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/edenius/11035402625/">Mats Edenius/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: What’s Next for Democracy?</a> symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au/">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about “democracy” as we know it.</p>
<p>Though much of the reporting of last year’s US presidential race focused on the “angry” American voter, it has been <a href="https://cer.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/cer.columbian.gwu.edu/files/Sides2016.pdf">observed</a> that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as “ambivalent”.</p>
<p>In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/vote-philippines-elite-democracy-disrupted">observers also reflected</a> that a shared “ambivalence” about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.</p>
<p>And in France, people explained the <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/4-takeaways-from-the-french-parliamentary-election/">record low turnout</a> in June’s parliamentary elections by pointing to the “<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/05/03/macron-le-pen-runoff-reveals-fault-lines-french-catholic-revival">ambivalent base</a>”. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s election, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/world/europe/france-parliament-elections-emmanuel-macron.html?_r=0">new president had</a> “yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177831/original/file-20170712-14488-15hq579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This French voter isn’t easily won over.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">radiowood/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf">on the rise</a>, and that these are anxious times politically. </p>
<p>If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.</p>
<h2>A wilful, rational response</h2>
<p>We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But it’s a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both “yes” and “no” about a person or an object at the same time.</p>
<p>Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ambivalence">coined the term in 1910</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RiTyZUYp9asC&pg=PR33&lpg=PR33&dq=Symbiosis+and+Ambiguity&source=bl&ots=pIZi_P3P3G&sig=lir2rqgmv7vz5sYeTAPoyKib_8w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB77ClpbrVAhXEHJQKHfm8BDIQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=dreams%20of%20healthy&f=false">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.</p>
<p>We needn’t be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common “<a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/635426">inner experience</a>”. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlet’s soliloquy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To be, or not to be, that is the question:</p>
<p>Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer</p>
<p>The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,</p>
<p>Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,</p>
<p>And by opposing end them…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take. </p>
<p>Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.</p>
<h2>Is this a dangerous development?</h2>
<p>When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want. </p>
<p>In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos. </p>
<p>The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in people’s minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters <a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/halalan2016/nation/05/11/16/more-class-abc-voters-picked-duterte-exit-poll">came out in numbers</a> to elect someone like Duterte. </p>
<p>As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their country’s democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy. </p>
<p>The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty. </p>
<p>Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educated-whites-not-working-class">off the hook</a>”.</p>
<p>Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=iegdiOrGugkC">noted</a>, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and “mere opinion”, the more the opposite is likely to occur. </p>
<p>Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Those in positions of power often view ambivalence on the streets as socially toxic or threatening.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jprwpics/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ambivalence can be a check on power</h2>
<p>Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of “the people” as both the source and guardians of power.</p>
<p>Consider the way <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0191453706059848">Ernesto Laclau</a> sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance. </p>
<p>While the collective identity of “the people” claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/modis-polarising-populism-makes-a-fiction-of-a-secular-democratic-india-80605">the other</a>”. </p>
<p>If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of “the people”? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?</p>
<p>Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society don’t lead to its destruction.</p>
<p>The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by “experts” in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.</p>
<p>Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006">warned</a> that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order. </p>
<p>Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change. </p>
<p>Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.</p>
<p>No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians. </p>
<p>The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to people’s desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as “true” representatives of “the people”, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rodrigo Duterte poses with the Philippines military and boxer and senator Manny Pacquiao in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rene Lumawag/Republic of the Philippines Presidential Communications Office</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A chance to rethink the status quo</h2>
<p>Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay. </p>
<p>The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who “should know better”, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.</p>
<p>A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it – even embrace it – as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.</p>
<p>Kenneth Weisbrode <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ambivalence">likened</a> ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.</p>
<p>This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo. </p>
<p>It could even be seen as one of democracy’s internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive. </p>
<p>Bauman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=ftcYAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=by+hook">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.</p>
<p>If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent “the people”? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Adele Webb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ambivalence among voters is reason to think about how democracy is working for us as a community. To keep democracy alive we need to be sceptical about the exercise of power and keep it in check.Dr Adele Webb, PhD Researcher, Department of Government and International Relations / Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/787622017-07-20T04:09:27Z2017-07-20T04:09:27ZEveryday makers defy populists’ false promise to embody ‘your voice’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173486/original/file-20170613-1873-q6f4oe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Populism celebrates laypeople without offering them any real autonomy or integrity.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/geoliv/32549211206/">Geoff Livingston/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: What’s Next for Democracy?</a>“symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au/">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Populism is not about bureaucracy, technocracy or even democracy. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogans – "America First” and “Make America Great Again” – clearly express the essence of populism. It is a moral and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/what-is-nativist-trump/521355/">nativist</a> political response to the increasing globalisation, professionalisation and individualisation of national policy.</p>
<p>We no longer live in a collectively disciplined mass society with clearly defined groups and classes along the left-right axis. The connections between bureaucracy, capitalism and democracy have long been undercut.</p>
<p>These have been reshaped to fit <a href="https://theconversation.com/neoliberalisms-failure-means-we-need-a-new-narrative-to-guide-global-economy-69096">globalist neoliberalism</a> and its celebration of the accumulation of human capital as the foundation of economic, political and social development. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism is not about hierarchy (the state), anarchy (the market) or solidarity (civil society). It’s principally about self-management. Enhancing global competition and growth is about increasing the stock value of the human capital that identifies one as a “whole person”. It is about governing individuals positively and constructively to constantly value or appreciate themselves. </p>
<p>Such chronic monitoring is required to improve their own self-appreciation and thereby their chances of success in the competitive and professionalised neoliberal world. “Co-production”, “citizen-centric government” and “evidence-based policy” are all about steering individuals, from cradle to grave, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalisms-moral-order-feeds-fraud-and-corruption-60946">seek success</a> above everything else.</p>
<p>Populism, on the other hand, springs from the idea of the exceptional moral and political leader who rises to prominence and power in order to restore and protect the nation as the home of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-people-the-charms-and-contradictions-of-populism-63769">we the people</a>”. Neoliberalism creates a democratic dilemma by identifying self-governance only with those individuals who exercise their human faculties professionally and successfully. </p>
<p>But when Trump exclaims “I am your voice”, he indicates that laypeople have no political voice of their own at all.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BEuboZ98TxE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘They are forgotten, but they are not to be forgotten long … they no longer have a voice. I am your voice.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since populism is primarily about political authority and leadership (citizenship and the political community are secondary), it doesn’t actually make the life of political “amateurs” easier. By subjecting them to an exceptional leader’s struggle for hegemony, populism doesn’t seek to make the laypeople better at governing and taking care of themselves. </p>
<p>Instead, leaders like Trump are trying to persuade them to blindly follow and support him in his battle against the establishment or the globally interconnected and collaborating “<a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-bregret-offers-timely-lessons-for-australian-voters-this-weekend-61806">professionals</a>” who purportedly trample on their feelings and values.</p>
<p>It’s Trump as political leader, not “the people”, who is re-articulating the boundaries between us and them. His is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-resist-the-political-rise-of-the-global-nativist-70173">nativist</a>/globalist opposition that precedes all other societal cleavages, including the overarching contest between the right and the left.</p>
<p>It is him, not them, who is the moral and political medium for placing Americans first and making the nation great again. Trump wants to reawaken the lonely, silenced and atomised crowd to help <em>himself</em>.</p>
<p>In short, populism considers politics:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a property of communication which takes form in retrospective demands (“Make America Great Again”);</p></li>
<li><p>a metaphysics about the “pure people” and the extraordinary leader as its physical embodiment;</p></li>
<li><p>a conflict-driven discourse, constructing the political order in terms of a binary friend/foe opposition;</p></li>
<li><p>a crisis-focused framing of the political situation in terms of a resistance identity aimed at crushing a so-called rigged and corrupt system;</p></li>
<li><p>a moralist and emotionalist political discourse that condemns everyone who neglects, devalues, or exploits the nation as the home of the pure people;</p></li>
<li><p>an anti-technocratic mode of governance that celebrates the exceptional leader’s power and will to decide and act immediately, intuitively, toughly and smartly in the face of an emerging or escalating crisis; and</p></li>
<li><p>a counter-elitist strategy for replacing the “<a href="https://twitter.com/louisfarrakhan/status/704333938723045376?lang=en">wicked</a>” political establishment of globally networked elites with “<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728">authentic</a>” political leaders who are drawn from, or more effectively represent, the interests and values of the pure people.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Rounding up the forgotten amateurs</h2>
<p>Somewhat shamefully, mainstream political theory and research did not see populism coming, just as they didn’t foresee the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">1968 Youth Rebellion</a> or the fall of the Berlin Wall. </p>
<p>One reason is that the mainstream has, in this period, paid less and less attention to the “amateurs” that populism calls upon and attempts to mobilise in its quest for hegemony.</p>
<p>This is odd, given the widespread <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-edelman-trust-crisis/513350/">reports</a> of escalating distrust in established politicians, political parties and democratic governments. New but fading social movements like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874">Indignados</a> and Occupy Wall Street also recognise that a crucial dilemma for democracy lies in its neglect of laypeople’s political capacities to interrupt how “professionals” authoritatively articulate, deliver and evaluate policies.</p>
<p>Still, had the theorists and researchers read <a href="https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/11/democratic-polarisation-pull-ground-right-wing-populism/">Jurgen Habermas</a>, they might have been forewarned. Habermas concludes <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inclusion-other">The Inclusion of the Other</a> with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The private autonomy of equally entitled citizens can be secured only insofar as citizens actively exercise their civic autonomy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Amateurs are at the core of democracy in Habermas’ conception of the lifeworld. This consists of laypeople who express themselves by connecting with each other in various networks and project communities. There can be no representative, participatory, discursive or deliberative democracy without laypeople who can and will govern and take care of themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a democracy, political amateurs should be able to organise and govern themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ted Eytan/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Populism’s main challenge to democracy, then, is its claim that laypeople lack the faculties required for governing themselves. It celebrates laypeople without offering them any real autonomy or integrity as political subjects of history. </p>
<p>Instead, the laypeople must depend for their sovereignty on an exceptional leader who can marshal them around a collective resistance identity and lead them in the struggle against the establishment.</p>
<p>And yet populism destroys the possibility of self-governance precisely by imposing a homogenising collective identity upon laypeople. Without difference, there can be no self-governance and no civic autonomy. </p>
<p>The idea of the exceptional leader as the very embodiment of the “pure people” is as metaphysical as it is anti-democratic. It doesn’t only deny laypeople a voice of their own. It also relegates those who don’t identify with the great leader to “non-people” who must be kicked out from the home of “the people”.</p>
<p>Clearly, Trump places national sovereignty before “people power”. For him, “the people” is just a collective construct that will help him <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting">gaslight</a> the establishment, seize power and sustain his own order. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=BSO1CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT129&lpg=PT129&dq=The+assumption+of+a+compulsory,+collective+identity+necessitates+repressive+policies,+whether+it+be+the+forced+assimilation+of+alien+elements+or+the+purification+of+the+people">Habermas</a> would strongly oppose this populist self-image of the leader as “unbound”, a symbol of the (pure) people’s hopes and desires. As he conceives of democracy, despotism will take over whenever and wherever people power becomes synonymous with a national quest for collective self-assertion and self-realisation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The assumption of a compulsory, collective identity necessitates repressive policies, whether it be the forced assimilation of alien elements or the purification of the people through apartheid and ethnic cleansing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump, “<a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/04/30/526199913/trump-stars-on-stage-he-built-himself-far-from-washington">The People’s President</a>”, constantly reaffirms that he will never let his voters down. But by taking responsibility for the people’s collective choices, he moves to dominate their political existence. “The people” effectively become the exceptional leader’s own construct. </p>
<p>Certainly, Trump recognised from the outset how big an asset “<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/30/2016-was-year-deplorables.html">the deplorables</a>” would be to his campaign, if only he could <a href="http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article91203222.html">convince</a> them he was their man.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up the people who cannot defend themselves … Nobody knows the system better than me. Which is why I alone can fix it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The thorn in populism’s side</h2>
<p>Without laypeople’s acceptance of what’s got to be done, a political system could not survive, far less develop, at least in the long run. The authority relationship between professionals and amateurs is at the heart of the political.</p>
<p>There must be political authorities if authoritative decisions are to be made and implemented for the population. However, it does not follow that political control must always lie in the hands of the few.</p>
<p>The difference between authorities and non-authorities is functional, not causal. In principle, at least, their relationship could be shaped to involve balanced reciprocities of power, knowledge and trust. </p>
<p>In fact, political authority could always have been shaped otherwise. As such, Habermas speaks about the lifeworld as composed of laypeople who can act spontaneously, emotionally, personally and communicatively as interconnected “fire alarms”, “experimenters” and “innovators”.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-perspectives-on-anarchism-and-liberty-59979">anarchism</a> with a twist: the laypeople’s sociopolitical integrity and self-governance are not considered the only things that matter in a democracy. Democratic action must also often be spontaneous, fast and emotionally driven. </p>
<p>This does not diminish the value of strong, collective civil action and rigorous and “slow” deliberation. It simply maintains there is often no time for any of this. </p>
<p>This is why laypeople’s chronic disruptions of how things are done are so important. Anarchists consider the laypeople a permanent thorn in the side of existing superpowers that police people power.</p>
<p>I call active laypeople who engage with one another in political networks and action communities to pursue various goals and projects <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/42117">everyday makers</a>. They:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>want to do things themselves;</p></li>
<li><p>do it for fun or because they find it necessary;</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Everyday makers at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lorde Shaull/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>on their own terms and conditions;</p></li>
<li><p>with or without experts;</p></li>
<li><p>for, against, with, or by avoiding the system;</p></li>
<li><p>on and off, when they have time for it and feel like it;</p></li>
<li><p>by connecting with others across all differences;</p></li>
<li><p>online and offline; and</p></li>
<li><p>as expressive persons who want to make a difference, when associating to articulate and pursue a common project or cause.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Recovering laypeople’s political importance for democracy means moving beyond both neoliberalism and populism. Democracy is not about homogenised or atomised individuals. </p>
<p>And democracy can only function properly with mutual acceptance and recognition of difference at all levels, from the personal to the global. To handle the existential risks it faces, contemporary democracy must essentially be “glocal”, rather than global or national in its orientation.</p>
<p>Everyday makers, then, must strive for self-governance and political integrity, not just for freedom from bureaucratic or technocratic domination. They must also push against populism by reminding political authorities that the only exceptional leaders we need today are the ones who help us to govern and take care of ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henrik Bang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The only exceptional leaders we need today are the ones who help us to govern and take care of ourselves.Henrik Bang, Professor of Governance, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765762017-06-07T02:24:20Z2017-06-07T02:24:20ZDeliberative democracy must rise to the threat of populist rhetoric<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166399/original/file-20170424-22270-1j9vug5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can we avert a populist apocalypse through good old-fashioned deliberation?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nightfall404/14346785804/">Richard Hopkins/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the “<a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: what’s next for democracy?</a>” symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>We are “living in the end times”, or so <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/968-living-in-the-end-times">Slavoj Žižek</a> tells us. We have seen the arrival of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”: the global ecological crisis, sharp inequalities in the economic system, the biogenic revolution, and exploding social divisions. </p>
<p>The global rise of populism, it seems, is only a symptom of these long-standing tragedies in the making.</p>
<p>Populist claims – the grand promises that prey on unrealistic expectations, those that dodge responsibility by conjuring “alternative facts”, and the kind that leaves citizens committed to the project of Enlightenment dazed and breathless — are both outcomes and drivers of Žižek’s apocalyptic vision.</p>
<p>How should we make sense of these realities? Wicked problems and intractable conflict have indeed marked the past few decades. But these have also been times of <a href="https://participedia.net/">widespread democratic experimentation</a>.</p>
<p>Participation in “traditional” politics such as <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/international/21716023-democracies-are-risk-if-young-people-continue-shun-ballot-box-millennials-across">voting</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-11/poll-data-reveals-waning-interest-in-politics/5662568">party membership</a> may be declining, but there has been an explosion of activities that seek to “<a href="http://realdemocracynow.com.au/page/3/">do democracy differently</a>”.</p>
<h2>The promise of deliberative democracy</h2>
<p>Deliberative democracy could once have been dismissed as pie in the sky with no bearing on the world of practical politics.</p>
<p>More recently, practitioners of deliberative innovations have generated compelling evidence to show the democratic virtues of <a href="http://realdemocracynow.com.au/1-1/">mini-publics</a>. These involve small(ish) groups of randomly selected citizens who meet several times to deliberate on an issue.</p>
<p>Random selection, similar to the logic of jury selection, underpins this process such that the forum represents a microcosm of the wider population. </p>
<p>In recent years, the case for mini-publics has been articulated more boldly, by <a href="https://penguin.com.au/books/against-elections-9781847924223">David van Reybrouck</a> and then, just this year, by <a href="https://unbound.com/books/the-end-of-politicians">Brett Hennig</a>. Both make a case for <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-due-for-an-overhaul-could-lawmaking-by-jury-be-the-answer-49037">sortition</a>, where a group of citizens drawn by lot are given a mandate to deliberate and propose, if not decide, policies that bind the rest of the polity.</p>
<p>Given the enthusiasm for mini-publics, why has this not been enough to avert “the apocalypse”? There are three ways of looking at this.</p>
<h2>1. We haven’t scaled up enough</h2>
<p>The application of mini-publics has been disparate, inconsistent and small-scale.</p>
<p>Had people, especially the so-called “pissed-off white men”, had more opportunities to participate in deliberation, they would have, potentially, taken a more complex view of issues that they feel threaten their identities, such as immigration or gay rights.</p>
<p>Had “smug cosmopolitan liberal types” engaged in deliberation with “pissed-off white men”, societies could have developed a shared vocabulary to cohabit a world with meta-consensus on the range of legitimate discourses.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forms of deliberative democracy are not only effective, but also much needed in deeply divided societies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Flood/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is evidence that mini-publics work in deeply divided societies. Examples include deliberative polls in <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/omagh-education-policy-omagh-northern-ireland">Northern Ireland</a> and deliberative forums involving ex-combatants and paramilitaries in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Deliberation_Across_Deeply_Divided_Socie.html?id=uf4ovgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Colombia</a>. </p>
<p>We can only wonder how the US elections or the UK’s Brexit referendum might have turned out had they convened a “deliberation day” where citizens deliberated systematically before the vote.</p>
<h2>2. We are scaling up incorrectly</h2>
<p>One could argue that mini-publics, by themselves, are not the answer to mass democracy’s legitimacy deficit. Even where well-resourced, excellently designed and high-quality deliberations unfold, these have little bearing if the epistemic gains and civic virtues developed in these forums do not spill over into the broader public sphere.</p>
<p>To scale up deliberation is not simply to host bigger mini-publics (mega-publics?) but to think of ways in which mini-publics can be <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11077-015-9238-5">linked to the broader public discourses</a>.</p>
<p>What use is it if we replace politicians with a randomly selected group of citizens if the public sphere is mostly still characterised by partisan point-scoring, cheap political tactics, spin-doctoring and market-driven media? </p>
<p>The reforms of deliberative politics must equally focus on reforming the broader structures that shape public discourse.</p>
<h2>3. Mini-publics are not the answer</h2>
<p>The logic of mini-publics primes participants to be respectful, public-spirited, other-regarding and open-minded. Unsurprisingly, citizens who harbour deep scepticism, strongly held views and defensiveness in their private interests may not find these forums to be the most understanding and supportive spaces. </p>
<p>In other words, mini-publics may have inherent limitations in processing populist rhetoric. This is because they, by design, aim to keep loud and insistent voices out of the room to celebrate the voice of the “average reasonable person”.</p>
<p>Discursive enclaves such as those found online, or in assemblies of populist supporters, may provide a more hospitable stage for impassioned, confrontational and sometimes bigoted discourses.</p>
<p>While mini-publics enable citizens to carefully reflect on their prejudices, one must take a step back and consider that some do not want to reconsider their views. </p>
<p>Research on climate change deniers provides evidence for this. Australian <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963662511430459">studies</a> have revealed how deliberation not only <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-novel-idea-on-climate-change-ask-the-people-1962">fails to dispel scepticism</a> but also makes the deniers feel like they are not listened to, so they become more dogmatic and belligerent. </p>
<p>Other research <a href="https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/580046">data</a> demonstrate how people with a “social dominance orientation” tend to see participatory processes as rigged if the forums do not produce their preferred outcomes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sG8gLt4GChg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">ABC’s Q&A often illustrates the limitations of some forms of deliberation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The issue of trust compounds such alienation. Mini-publics typically rely on information presented by expert witnesses and resources persons, and we now know that many people have simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-bregret-offers-timely-lessons-for-australian-voters-this-weekend-61806">had enough of experts</a>. </p>
<p>Beyond expertise, public trust in Australian politics and politicians is at a staggering low. Recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-for-the-big-question-who-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country-58723">research</a> suggests the public has little trust in any level of government in Australia. For the most part, mini-publics in Australia are instigated by or at least associated with government.</p>
<p>Even though the best-designed forums are independently organised and facilitated, we have to recognise that people may simply not trust the process, organiser or the expertise presented. “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00612.x">Micro</a>” deliberative events don’t exist in a political vacuum. We cannot design out the broader context and power relations.</p>
<h2>How can things go right?</h2>
<p>There are many reasons to consider populist rhetoric as the opposite of deliberative reason. Populism appeals to base instincts. It sacrifices intellectual rigour and evidence to the promise of quick solutions. </p>
<p>The polarising speech style of populism creates information silos, which bond rather than bridge, opposing views. Inherent in the populist logic is the division of the “virtuous people” versus “the dangerous other”. This inflames prejudices and misconceptions, instead of promoting public-spirited ways of determining the common good.</p>
<p>Given the coming populist apocalypse, then, it is worth revisiting how deliberative democrats conceptualise power and its relationship to knowledge. </p>
<p>The populist moment reminds us of the insidious legacies of power, the kind we generally take for granted, but experience every day. Drawing on the “<a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4439-race-and-epistemologies-of-igno.aspx">epistemologies of ignorance</a>”, the solution is not simply to offer facts, but to lay bare the structural phenomenon that disables people from seeing in a certain way. We undeniably find ourselves facing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… an <a href="http://shifter-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mills-white-ignorance.pdf">ignorance that resists</a> … an ignorance that fights back … an ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go away.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Deliberative democracy may have been the punching bag of those who remain sceptical of the virtues of participation governed by reason. But it has also been a beacon of hope for visionaries who keep on asking how we can make democracy better. </p>
<p>This field of democratic theory and practice has a lot more to offer, especially when we set our gaze towards spaces for reform beyond the forum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Curato receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is currently a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow ((DE150101866),</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy J Parry is affiliated with Participedia, a global project documenting democratic innovations around the world.</span></em></p>Populist politics would appear to have left deliberative democracy by the wayside, but innovations that engage citizens in reasoned decision-making have much to offer.Nicole Curato, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLucy J Parry, Research Assistant, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/733722017-03-26T23:50:25Z2017-03-26T23:50:25ZIndians’ ‘notes ban’ compliance masks a silent crisis of legitimacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161267/original/image-20170317-14640-vwn5d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Indian people felt a moral obligation to queue up and co-operate with the 'notes ban' policy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/money-transfers/31530243503/in/photolist-R3Anuo-RgSLrP-RgSLmZ-Q3degx-PZruxs-Q3dK2z-Q3dJTZ-Q3dKnz">Monito/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>India’s demonetisation, the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/india-taking-a-step-on-the-road-to-cashless-economy-70309">notes ban</a>”, began on November 8, 2016. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced that all high-denomination notes (500 and 1,000 rupees) in circulation would cease to be legal tender.</p>
<p>This was a shock. No hint of such a 1.3 billion-person-wide policy was given until the announcement. The population had only 50 days to exchange their old notes.</p>
<p>At the time <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/The-politics-of-demonetisation/article17104627.ece">more than half</a> (54%) of the population lived without bank accounts and were employed in a highly cash-driven and very large <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/%E2%80%98Serious-job-losses-are-taking-place%E2%80%99/article17046208.ece">informal</a> agricultural economy. The supporting infrastructures were far from adequate for the millions of citizens who needed to learn the management skills required in a less cash-dependent society.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, <a href="https://theconversation.com/modis-bank-note-ban-has-inflicted-pointless-suffering-on-indias-poorest-69157">daily life</a> was completely disrupted. Chaos reigned in the banks, which suddenly had to deal with the demands of India’s entire population all at once. Everyday business and trade threatened to collapse on the streets.</p>
<h2>Hyper-technocracy, or democracy in action?</h2>
<p>Leading economists and political analysts slammed the government’s move as “<a href="http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/note-ban-an-unguided-missile-amartya-sen-arun-shourie-slam-government-1653656?site=full">despotic</a>”. This policy drive discarded the norms of democratic decision-making, which necessarily involves the public, is driven by their demands and settled through their deliberation.</p>
<p>Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP argued that the sudden announcement of the notes ban was simply the most efficient way of achieving its goals. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_elections_in_India">this year’s state elections</a> in India may also be a factor. The BJP achieved another “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39228615">decisive</a>” result in the most-recent campaign. Certainly, its timing can be seen as the ruling party taking advantage of its power to jeopardise and inconvenience the very cash-driven campaign plans (think election freebies and rallies) of opposition parties.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158838/original/image-20170301-29942-14vj0mw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Political parties often recruit Bollywood stars like Salman Khan and give out freebies at election rallies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Al Jazeera English/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though the BJP portrayed the demonetisation drive as a major public problem-solving measure, the government never clearly defined the problems. This isn’t to say that it didn’t offer a range of objectives. The notes ban was going to flush out black money (assumed to be in cash only), curb counterfeiting and illegal cash transactions, and move India towards a cashless economy.</p>
<p>The Modi government drew a clear link between black (paper) money, corruption and illegal and terrorist activities in the public’s mind. Heavily loaded with the moral sentiments of “redistributive justice”, the BJP aimed to position itself as the people’s crusader against corruption.</p>
<p>Yet the immediate effect of the demonetisation process, apart from massive inconvenience (90 people so far have <a href="http://www.catchnews.com/national-news/deaths-due-to-demonetisation-since-8-nov-here-s-a-list-of-the-casualties-of-pm-modi-s-note-ban-1480484645.html">died</a> in bank queues), was that almost <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/The-politics-of-demonetisation/article17104627.ece">86%</a> of the currency went back to the banks. In short, the government’s assumptions about the quantity of black money cash were wrong.</p>
<p>And while a demonetisation drive might have several economic objectives, the lack of deliberation and public consultation left no room for clarity on either the grounds or urgency of the measure. Instead, the government’s shifting goals made it look opportunistic.</p>
<p>Still, from the BJP’s perspective, India was always going to encounter transition pains in moving towards a more modern economy. Sure enough, large parts of the population are entering the formal banking system. Major banks such as the State Bank of India have been opening <a href="http://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/301116/over-30-lakh-new-bank-accounts-opened-since-demonetisation-report.html">50,000</a> new accounts a day.</p>
<h2>Why did the public co-operate?</h2>
<p>The most intriguing political outcome of the demonetisation drive was its seeming legitimacy. The Indian people largely co-operated in spite of the inconvenience and loss of livelihoods. But why did they acquiesce to the suppression of their economic choice and security?</p>
<p>Executing a surprise policy that affects the public at every level but fails to involve them in the decision-making is undeniably undemocratic. Yet, in technocratic terms, it may appear to be the only efficient option. The public apparently believed this to be so.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S5jdpOGylfs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">While the execution of the notes ban has been attracted public criticism, the plan itself has found support.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To maintain the effectiveness of its shock tactic, the government set very short deadlines and made rapid changes to banking regulations in an unprecedented manner. Not only did most people co-operate, but they did so in silence. Except for incidents of agitation against the functioning of banks, no significant voices of protest were raised.</p>
<p>The public’s gracious behaviour can be interpreted as a result of both fear and a sense of social and moral obligation. Any dissent risked provoking a negative government reaction. Furthermore, given the tight deadlines and huge penalties involved, people thought it wiser to play by the rules rather than waste precious time questioning them.</p>
<p>And since the notes ban was supposedly about cleaning up India’s corrupt systems, it allowed the public to feel as if they were participating in the national project of wealth redistribution.</p>
<h2>A breakdown of representation</h2>
<p>The demonetisation drive was clearly based on government management of perceptions about efficiency and legitimacy. The citizens perceived it to be efficient. The government, in turn, flaunted their co-operation as a sign of legitimacy. What emerges is a perception-based democracy, a sure sign of crisis.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that the public’s lack of protest flows directly from a lack of trust in their political representatives. The opposition parties’ failure to mobilise any substantial challenge to the measure (for fear of appearing corrupt themselves) comes as no surprise. </p>
<p>Regional political parties, which have considerable control over state politics, failed to garner any public support against the demonetisation drive. </p>
<p>Public co-operation does not demonstrate public trust in the ruling BJP, either – remember that the Indian people felt a moral obligation to participate in demonetisation. They felt involved, for once, in actively solving their own problems. But they did not trust their representatives enough to think that they could take up their cause against even the functionally difficult aspects of the policy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161265/original/image-20170317-14619-1fcrizt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After the shock ban on notes in circulation, the new Mahatma Gandhi banknote series was introduced.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ps_sahana/31530585646/">Partha S. Sahana/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so demonetisation went ahead. But it is time that politicians understood the deeper significance of the Indian people’s acquiescence as a sign of representational breakdown.</p>
<p>To interpret the people’s hard work and suffering during the note ban implementation as a mark of government legitimacy is to ignore the obvious democratic crisis. A lack of democratic safeguards has overridden the public will with the BJP’s manipulative information management, political gimmicks with social and moral sentimentalities wrapped in nationalistic hyperbole and electoral mayhem.</p>
<p>As the long-term impacts of demonetisation are revealed, the citizens of India will need to acquire the skills to hold the government accountable for a policy that has caused them immense trouble and stands to affect their livelihoods for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>While elections remain the only practical opportunity for citizens to channel their political grievances in India, the BJP’s notes ban should not be allowed to get lost in the electoral theatre of political histrionics. </p>
<p>If the people are to benefit from a policy that, despite appearances of efficiency, entails unimaginable costs, they must begin to scrutinise its impacts on long-term prosperity and democratically demand the most of what can be made of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73372/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esha Sen Madhavan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public co-operation is not proof of trust in government. The Indian people did not trust elected politicians to represent them against top-down policymaking that caused enormous difficulties.Esha Sen Madhavan, University Grants Commission PhD Research Fellow, University of Madras, and Visiting Fellow, Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/740592017-03-09T03:09:39Z2017-03-09T03:09:39ZDemocracy needs more trees and less Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159469/original/image-20170306-933-18sfty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could a randomly selected tree make a better president than Donald Trump?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/theo_reth/4575144597/">Bruce Irschick/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>For almost all of its more than 2,500-year history, democracy has been thought of as an attribute of purely human societies. For most of that history democracy was generally reviled and excoriated; only in the late 20th century did it come to be widely celebrated, and indeed widely practised.</p>
<p>But now democracy seems to be on the skids. No countries are transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy anymore. Quite the reverse seems to be taking place, in countries as diverse as Russia, <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-democracy-leaves-little-room-for-democrats-51746">Turkey</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-the-wannabe-king-ruling-by-twiat-72269">the US</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/europe-is-suffering-multi-morbidity-a-conversation-with-claus-offe-in-berlin-71127">Poland</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/philippines-cannot-build-a-nation-over-the-bodies-of-100-000-dead-in-dutertes-war-on-drugs-64053">the Philippines</a> and Hungary. The people once thought to be committed to democratic citizenship now all too often reveal themselves in a far less flattering light.</p>
<p>Today many people will happily vote for demagogues. They do not seem to care that these demagogues have no interest in the truth. Voters vent their prejudices, even if it will make them worse off – poor white Trump voters will be the first to suffer and perhaps die <a href="https://theconversation.com/rural-america-already-hurting-could-be-most-harmed-by-trumps-promise-to-repeal-obamacare-71453">if Obamacare is abolished</a>, while <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-and-eu-both-need-major-democratic-reform-to-survive-brexit-fallout-55870">Brexit</a> voters will be hurt by decline in the UK economy.</p>
<p>The quality of political communication is on a downward spiral as people retreat into their social media echo chambers. Truth gives way to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17FOB-onlanguage-t.html">truthiness</a>, to use the word coined by American comedian Stephen Colbert. And, as Colbert pointed out last year, truthiness then gave way to Trumpiness, when even feeling something is true no longer matters – all that matters is the feeling.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NqOTxl3Bsbw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“Remember, elections aren’t about what voters think – it’s about what voters feel.”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political identity determines what people believe: so a large proportion of Republicans in the US still believes Barack Obama is a Muslim who was born outside the country, even though they know it to be untrue.</p>
<h2>The democratic virtues of trees</h2>
<p>If people are starting to look much worse in democratic terms, trees are starting to look much better. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/hidden-life-trees">The Hidden Life of Trees</a>, Peter Wohleben explores the subtle ways in which trees communicate with each other to their mutual advantage. Acacia trees, for example, give off ethylene if giraffes start eating them, as a warning to other trees to start pumping toxins into their leaves to deter the giraffes. </p>
<p>Both plant and animal societies feature <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trees-communicate-via-a-wood-wide-web-65368">meaningful communication</a>, as do ecosystems of multiple species. Underground fungal networks transmit chemical signals even between trees of different species.</p>
<p>Trees do not lie. They do not disseminate or believe fake news. Neither do they believe things that are manifestly false, or try to undermine and destabilise science with well-funded misinformation <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/donald-trump-climate-change-skeptic-denial/510359/">campaigns</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"265895292191248385"}"></div></p>
<p>We can further explore the relative democratic virtues of trees and Trump by examining recent interest in <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-due-for-an-overhaul-could-lawmaking-by-jury-be-the-answer-49037">sortition</a>, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-a-wise-democracy-look-like-we-the-people-would-matter-71938">random selection of panels</a> of citizens as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-elections-ruining-democracy-54962">alternative to voting</a> for political representatives. This is the way juries in criminal cases have long been selected, and we entrust them with some very important decisions.</p>
<p>We do this because we know that juries are <a href="https://theconversation.com/city-calls-on-jury-of-its-citizens-to-deliberate-on-melbournes-future-59620">good at listening, reflecting and weighing</a> evidence. Which is precisely what elected politicians are bad at – even when they are good at making arguments. The solution is surely that we need more and better listening and reflection in government, perhaps through a randomly selected upper house to replace the Senate.</p>
<p>I used to think that sortition would be a bad way to select prime ministers or presidents. Now I am not so sure. There is probably about a 90% chance that a randomly selected US citizen would make a better president than Donald Trump. There is about a 40-50% chance that person would actually make a good president.</p>
<p>I would argue further that there is a 100% chance a randomly selected tree would make a better president than Trump.</p>
<p>Now, one might think that there is zero chance this tree would actually make a good president. But that is to take a human-centred, anthropocentric view of the matter. Things might look different from the point of view of trees, which work on a much longer time scale.</p>
<h2>Pay heed to nature’s screams of pain</h2>
<p>A post-truth political world yields the unexpected benefit of enabling re-assessment of the relative merits of human and non-human communication. And if we attend to the latter, we might find that nature is screaming in pain at what we humans are doing to it – and ultimately to ourselves, for we are ecologically embedded creatures.</p>
<p>The screams might be from local extinctions, <a href="https://theconversation.com/radical-overhaul-needed-to-halt-earths-sixth-great-extinction-event-68221">crashes in species diversity</a>, drastic <a href="https://theconversation.com/nitrogen-pollution-the-forgotten-element-of-climate-change-69348">changes in the nitrogen cycle</a>, climbing <a href="https://theconversation.com/southern-hemisphere-joins-north-in-breaching-carbon-dioxide-milestone-59260">concentrations of greenhouse gases</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ocean-acidification-the-forgotten-piece-of-the-carbon-puzzle-50247">acidic oceans</a>, or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ocean-dead-zones-are-spreading-and-that-spells-disaster-for-fish-39668">death</a> of once-healthy waters. We do not hear because (with the exception of some indigenous societies) we are such bad listeners.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159471/original/image-20170306-898-9iyp95.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We’d better start listening to the Earth, and responding to its screams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Duncan Hull/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Earth scientists now think we are entering a new epoch of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-raises-risks-of-earth-without-democracy-and-without-us-38911">Anthropocene</a> – an epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system – which replaces the past 11,000 years or so of the unusually stable Holocene. As my colleague Will Steffen <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357752/">puts it</a>, the Holocene is the only state of the Earth system we know for sure can support human civilisation.</p>
<p>We can no longer assume that the Earth system is fixed and forgiving. Climate change is just a foretaste of the catastrophes in store if we do not find a way to better listen to its screams, and act in response.</p>
<p>If we can listen better and reflect upon non-human communication, we might also do better in listening and reflecting upon communication with other humans. </p>
<p>In 1927, American philosopher John Dewey famously <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctt7v1gh">wrote</a> that “the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy”. Today, we can see that one cure for the ailments of democracy is a more ecological democracy. Democracy now needs more trees and less Trump.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article comes from a talk given at the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute’s</a> <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/events/ecological-democracy-looking-back-looking-forward-2/">Ecological Democracy: Looking Back, Looking Forward</a> event on February 20. The event was co-sponsored by the University of Canberra and Stockholm University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Dryzek receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>If people are starting to look much worse in democratic terms, trees are starting to look much better. We are learning that plants engage in meaningful and, more to the point, truthful communication.John Dryzek, Centenary Professor, ARC Laureate Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719382017-03-01T02:57:05Z2017-03-01T02:57:05ZWhat would a wise democracy look like? We, the people, would matter<p>All governments would like to overcome impasses caused by contentious issues. Particularly when they turn into a political slanging match, the result is loss of money, time and public trust. </p>
<p>Take the decades-old, contentious dilemma in Western Australia of whether to build the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-11/roe-8-highway-extension-in-western-australia-explained/7923658">Roe 8 highway</a> through the <a href="https://thebeeliargroup.wordpress.com/">Beeliar</a> wetlands to reach Fremantle Harbour, or <a href="https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/greens-back-cockburn-port-ng-b88346805z">build a new harbour</a> in Cockburn, which would involve a different way to transport goods to port.</p>
<p>Communities are at loggerheads. The project affects some positively, some negatively. It’s now a key <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/state/2017/02/18/wa-labor-reaffirms-vow-to-scrap-roe-8.html">issue in the March 11 state election</a>; the incumbent Liberals will construct Roe 8, Labor will not. </p>
<p>Election analyst William Bowe <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/transport/trucking/road-planned-for-50-years-could-cost-west-australian-liberal-premier-colin-barnett-power-20170201-gu2v0o">notes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not really clear who it advantages and disadvantages, but it will be a big issue either way.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The democratic problem</h2>
<p>Communities feel like pawns in someone else’s game. What if governments applied more “power with” rather than “power over” the people? What if the people and communities involved learned to co-own the problem, co-design the solution and co-decide what to do?</p>
<p>Democracies everywhere are in trouble. Citizens are increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-for-the-big-question-who-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country-58723">losing trust</a> in politicians and democratic institutions. Precisely when far-reaching decisions need to be made (on issues such as climate change and inequality), democracies lack the public legitimacy to act effectively. </p>
<p>The political lurch to the right is one response – “we just need a stronger leader” – but this will lead us further away from a strong democracy. Instead, why not re-think and re-invent democracy?</p>
<h2>Creating a wiser democracy</h2>
<p>If democracy is “<a href="https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm">government of the people, by the people, for the people</a>”, then a wise democracy would involve the diversity of constituents in collaborative problem-solving, co-deciding and co-enacting ways forward.</p>
<p>This was the <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/Athenian_Democracy/">original democracy in Athens</a> and through Europe in the Middle Ages. Democracy was more than voting for politicians; it was a process for every major, difficult decision.</p>
<p>The appointment of public officials by “lot”, or lottery, was seen to be far superior democratically than by “election”, which was seen to be aristocratic. True, the Athenians limited citizenship to free, adult men, but the range of tasks given to citizens to resolve was remarkably broad. </p>
<p>Confidence was placed in people selected by lottery for at least three reasons. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, you got everyday people in the roles of public officials. </p></li>
<li><p>Second, with time and information to resolve an issue, these citizens developed useful solutions.</p></li>
<li><p>And, third, the more you did this, the more people got involved – strengthening democracy.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Nowadays we call this “<a href="http://deldem.weblogs.anu.edu.au/2012/02/15/what-is-deliberative-democracy/">deliberative democracy</a>”. It functions just as effectively today as it did 3,000 years ago (or better, since we no longer limit “citizenship” to adult men). Deliberative democracy stresses that if everyday people think a decision by politicians will affect them, then they should have the right to participate in making that decision.</p>
<p>Participation involves deliberation in an egalitarian and respectful environment. Disparate viewpoints are carefully considered, and a coherent/reasoned way forward is sought.</p>
<p>If all those affected cannot be involved, then a group that mirrors that population needs to be selected – one that is “descriptively representative” of the broader group. The best way to achieve that is via selection by lottery, or random selection.</p>
<p>For public participation in the process to be “meaningful”, governments need to commit to abiding by or being clearly influenced by citizens’ decisions. In short, a deliberative democracy process needs to be representative, deliberative and influential.</p>
<h2>Deliberative democracy works</h2>
<p>Deliberative democracy has been successfully applied across the globe. Examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/methods/participatory-consensus-conferences">The Danish Board of Technology</a> randomly selects citizens to deliberate technological issues involving ethical concerns to help draft legislation.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/organizations/world-wide-views-global-warming-overview-and-analysis">World Wide Views</a> randomly selected participants in countries across the globe to deliberate the topic of the forthcoming COP (UN Climate Change Conference), with their combined global report presented to the conference.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Oregon, a representative panel of citizens assesses proposals to be put to a public ballot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.indivisible.us/oregon-citizens-initiative-review/">healthydemocracy.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/methods/citizens-initiative-review">the Citizens’ Initiative Review</a> in Oregon, US, enables citizens selected by lottery to deliberate to develop the “for” and “against” cases for ballot measures, which are then distributed to voters so they have succinct, useful and trustworthy information.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/we-citizens-ireland">Constitutional conventions</a> in Ireland and some European countries apply deliberative democracy processes to resolve constitutional issues.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.participatorybudgeting.org/">Participatory budgeting</a> in around 3,000 places across the globe empowers the people to allocate a portion (around 10%) of the budget. With citizens at the helm, community groups develop projects, local citizens vote on their preferred options, and the top priorities within the allocated budget are implemented.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Examples from Australia</h2>
<p>Australia is at the forefront of deliberative democracy reform, though its application has been scattered and not mainstreamed. Examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In Western Australia in the early 2000s, a Labor minister, Alannah MacTiernan, led <a href="http://www.21stcenturydialogue.com/index.php?package=Initiatives&action=Index&static=">pioneering deliberative democracy processes</a> to resolve tough planning and infrastructure issues. These included <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/dialogue-city">Dialogue with the City</a>, Australia’s largest deliberation involving around 1,000 people, with continued public participation to develop a plan for the greater Perth metropolis. This was taken to cabinet, was accepted, and is still relevant today.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/citzens-juries-giving-power-to-the-people/5779168">Canada Bay</a>, New South Wales, <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/city-greater-geraldton-deliberative-participatory-budget">Greater Geraldton</a>, WA, and <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/experiment-pays-off-melbourne-peoples-panel-produces-robust-policy-20150628-ghzoz4.html">Melbourne</a>, Victoria, have pioneered participatory budgeting in Australia. The process empowers a random selection of the people to recommend the allocation of 100% of a city’s budget – operational and/or infrastructure. In each instance, the elected council supported all or most recommendations. Their constituents accepted often difficult decisions on service cuts and infrastructure changes without the usual uproar.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Participatory budgeting is a way for citizens – in this case New Yorkers – to help decide government spending priorities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/neotint/6267976938">Daniel Latorre/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>Numerous Australia cities have implemented deliberative democracy initiatives, including issues such as <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/187-city-of-sydney-safe-vibrant-nightlife">urban planning</a>, <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/184-moorebank-intermodal-citizens-jury">transport</a>, <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/287-vichealth-victoria-s-citizens-jury-on-obesity-2015">health</a>, and <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/316-sa-cj-nuclear-fuel-cycle">waste and the environment</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Research shows that local people trust the voice of recommendations from randomly selected people who deliberate over time, more than they trust the decisions of elected officials.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What’s the obstacle to reform?</h2>
<p>So why isn’t deliberative democracy happening more often? Simple. Those in power are wary about sharing their power. </p>
<p>Unlike the Athenians, we don’t believe that every citizen is capable of participating in important decision-making. We assume most people are too self-interested to make decisions for the common good. </p>
<p>However, this is <em>not</em> the case, as deliberative democracy initiatives across the globe have consistently discovered. As the Athenians knew, everyday people can be entrusted to come to wise decisions <em>if</em> they are given comprehensive information and the time to deliberate.</p>
<p>Presumably, the WA election will resolve Roe 8 – for now. However, the cost will be far too high, including the “collateral damage” – environmental, economic, social and political. </p>
<p>What if the issue could have been resolved using “power with” rather than “power over”, with a bipartisan undertaking to abide by the recommendations of a deliberative democracy process? </p>
<p>For instance, 100-plus participants could have been selected by lottery to carefully deliberate over time the diverse viewpoints, the data and the trade-offs, knowing that their participation would be meaningful. By integrating social media and webcasting the deliberations, the process could have enhanced inclusiveness, transparency, public education and social capital. </p>
<p>Instead, we have a lose/lose situation – even the winners will be losers.</p>
<p>Governments for whom democracy equals voting squander their most important asset – public wisdom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janette Hartz-Karp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One reason Perth’s Roe 8 project is the subject of passionate protests is that it’s a case of a government asserting power over people rather than exercising power with local communities.Janette Hartz-Karp, Professor, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722692017-02-06T19:13:36Z2017-02-06T19:13:36ZTrump, the wannabe king ruling by ‘twiat’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155395/original/image-20170202-1657-cdeeru.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump's reinvention of the royal fiat as rule-by-tweet, or 'twiat', is anti-democratic and needs to be resisted.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump?lang=en">Twitter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Just weeks after his inauguration as US president, it is clear that Donald Trump is making a further bold claim on power, one that goes beyond the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-executive-orders-and-what-force-do-they-have-in-us-politics-72088">executive orders</a> that are rightly drawing so much attention. He is reinventing the royal fiat by novel means: the rule-by-tweet, or “twiat”. This move is not an extension of popular democracy, but its enemy, and it needs to be resisted.</p>
<p>We are becoming used to Trump’s new way not just of sustaining a political campaign, but of making policy. We wake up to news of another <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/mexico-president-donald-trump-enrique-pena-nieto-border-wall/">state</a>, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/toyota-12bn-value-plummet-shares-stock-market-donald-trump-tweet-move-mexico-tax-a7512096.html">corporation</a>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-trump-berkeley-20170202-story.html">institution</a> or <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/26/511781106/trump-chelsea-manning-an-ungrateful-traitor-for-criticizing-obama">individual</a> caught in the crossfire of his tweets. Corporations and investors are setting up “Twitter Response Units” and “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/06/app-warns-investors-donald-trump-tweets-companies/">Trump Triggers</a>” in case the next tweet is aimed at them. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"827118012784373760"}"></div></p>
<p>The process is so alien to the ways of making policy that have evolved over decades in complex democracies that it is tempting to dismiss it as just funny or naive. But that would be a huge mistake.</p>
<p>A tweet of Trump’s opinion at any moment on a particular issue is just that: an expression of the temporary opinion of one person, albeit one with his hands on more power-levers than almost any other person in the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155108/original/image-20170201-12678-1gpou3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump’s opinions at any moment are subject to change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sasha Kimel/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such expressions matter, for sure, to <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump?lang=en">Trump’s Twitter followers</a>. But, although one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, they do not (at 23 million) constitute a significant proportion of the world’s population, or even a large proportion of the US population.</p>
<h2>The king holds court</h2>
<p>A Trump tweet only becomes news if it is reported as news. And it only starts to become policy if those who interpret policy, including the media, start to <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/china-weighs-response-to-donald-trumps-tweet-storm-20161205-gt4347">treat this news as policy</a>. Until then, the Trump tweet remains at most a claim on power. </p>
<p>But once key institutions treat it as if were already an enactment of power, it quickly becomes one. Worse, it inaugurates a whole new way of doing power whose compatibility with democracy and global peace is questionable.</p>
<p>Imagine you are a diplomat, trying to schedule a meeting for yourself, or your political master, with Trump in a few weeks’ time. Is it sensible for you to rely on the confidentiality of the meeting? Could a poorly chosen phrase or look – or indeed your most carefully argued reasoning – provoke a tweet that publicly mocks your whole strategy?</p>
<p>How do you deal with a figure who claims the power to broadcast on his own terms his gut reactions to whatever you say or propose? Yes, you can tweet back, but that is already to give up on the quiet space of discussion that was once diplomacy’s refuge.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"827002559122567168"}"></div></p>
<p>The impact of rule-by-tweet is potentially profound: above all, on policy, whether global or domestic, legal or commercial. A new type of power is being claimed and, it seems, recognised: the power, by an individual’s say-so, to make things happen, the twiat. Just the sort of power that <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-glorious-revolution-of-1688/">revolutions</a> were <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/201524045/The-American-Revolution-and-the-Early-Federal-Republic">fought</a> to abolish.</p>
<p>If Trump is the putative Tweet King, who are his courtiers? Surely they’re the mainstream media institutions that regularly report Trump’s tweets as if they were policy. </p>
<p>If a medieval king’s courtiers refused to pass on his word to the wider world, its impact changed. While courtiers could be replaced overnight, contemporary media corporations cannot (for now at least). So why should the media act as if they were Trump’s courtiers?</p>
<p>We must not underestimate the short-term pressure on media corporations to conform to Trump’s claim on power. For sure, there will be an audience if they report Trump’s tweets, and their financial need to grab audiences wherever they can has never been greater. </p>
<p>But, if news values still mean something, they refer not only to financial imperatives, but to what should count as news. And norms about news must have some relation to what passes for acceptable in a democracy rather than an autocracy.</p>
<h2>Why is the ‘twiat’ anti-democratic?</h2>
<p>Some might say: Trump’s tweets are just the new way of doing democracy, “get with the program” (in the words of Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer). But, as the grim history of mid-20th-century Europe shows, authoritarian grabs on power only ever worked because their anti-democratic means were accepted by those around them as a novel way of “doing democracy”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KVVTTFKRzAY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">White House spokesman Sean Spicer says officials must ‘get with the program’ or go.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “twiat” is anti-democratic for two reasons. First, it claims a power (to name individuals, pronounce policy, and condemn actions) against which there is no redress. Its work is done once uttered from the mouth of the “king”.</p>
<p>Second, and more subtly, allowing such power back into political decision-making undermines the slower, more inclusive forms of discussion and reflection that gives modern political democratic institutions their purpose and purchase in the first place.</p>
<p>Trump’s claim to a new form of charismatic power through Twitter is, in part, the flip-side of the damaged legitimacy of today’s democratic process. But, instead of curing that problem, it closes the door on it. The presidential tweeting ushers us into a new space that is no longer recognisable as democratic: a space where complex policy becomes not just too difficult but unnecessary, although its substitutes can still be tweeted.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P0sPidpwYCA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Is Trump’s Twitter feed bypassing dishonest media or bypassing the democratic process?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Can anything be done to stop this? A good start would be to stop reporting the tweets of our would-be Twitter king as if they were news, let alone policy. </p>
<p>Let Trump’s tweets have no more claim on democracy’s attention than the changing opinions of any other powerful figure. Refuse the additional claim to power that Trump’s Twitter stream represents. </p>
<p>Fail to refuse that claim, and all of us risk accepting by default a new form of rule that undermines the restraints on power on which both democracy and media freedoms, in the long term, depend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Couldry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump is reinventing the royal fiat by novel means: the rule-by-tweet, or ‘twiat’. This move is not an extension of popular democracy, but its enemy, and it needs to be resisted.Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722712017-02-02T23:28:24Z2017-02-02T23:28:24ZTo resist Trump’s tyranny, just don’t comply<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155125/original/image-20170201-12678-c0zfvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Just say no! Tyranny depends on mass subservience.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/noradbase/32298137402/">Alek S./flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>After his unexpected election win, the immediate question was what would US President Donald Trump actually <em>do</em>? Would his administration be as confused as his speeches or as cunningly effective as his campaign?</p>
<p>In the interim, far from “draining the swamp”, he has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html">assembled a team</a> of billionaires, family and members of the far-right.</p>
<p>On his inauguration – just as they were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/trump-inauguration-crowd-sean-spicers-claims-versus-the-evidence">lying</a> about the size of the audience – LGBT rights, health care, civil liberties and climate change disappeared from the White House homepage. The latter was <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/trump-officials-suspend-plan-delete-epa-climate-web-page">scrubbed</a> from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website too.</p>
<p>Rounding out his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/donald-trumps-first-week-power-executive-orders-tweets-president/">first week in office</a>, Trump signed a litany of executive orders: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/23/can-president-trumps-executive-order-unravel-the-affordable-care-act/?utm_term=.2d6e6a075796">scaling back</a> parts of his predecessor’s Affordable Care Act, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/federal-hiring-freeze.html?_r=0">freezing federal hiring</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/24/trump-gives-green-light-to-dakota-access-keystone-xl-oil-pipelines/?utm_term=.d0ccbda45fe6">greenlighting two oil pipelines</a>, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-trump-administration-orders-epa-media-blackout-contract-freeze/">halting payments to the EPA</a> and imposing a media blackout on it; and <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-ban-will-have-lasting-and-damaging-impacts-on-the-worlds-refugees-72001">denying entry to refugees</a> and immigrants from <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512439121/trumps-executive-order-on-immigration-annotated">certain Muslim-majority countries</a>.</p>
<p>He called for a shutdown of parts of the internet in the name of fighting terror. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yfEG4oWz5AY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump argues for ‘closing the internet up’ to counter terrorism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/donald-trump-mexico-import-tax-border-wall/">20% tariff</a> on imports from Mexico would pay to “build that wall”. Trump also claimed that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/26/donald-trump-torture-works">torture “works”</a>. </p>
<p>In short, Trump seems ruthlessly efficient, wiping out America’s progressive legacy with deft pen-strokes of his grasping, little hand.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CZkopd9m1lw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Project’s Waleed Aly lists everything President Trump has done in his first week of office.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Servitude under Trump</h2>
<p>For many who oppose this suite of unnerving policies, the question is how can Trump be <em>legitimately</em> resisted?</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie">Étienne de La Boétie</a> – the 16th-century French judge and writer – offered a simple, yet elegant <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6o-8P3iqf7IC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=like+a+great+Colossus+whose+pedestal+has+been+pulled+away%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=z8cLUWoT_t&sig=9R0u9Ymtm0pyvOxLLJKwLkqlb9s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKnoiDi-vRAhWCE5QKHVQsCMsQ6AEIJjAC#v=on">answer</a>: withdraw support so that “like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away”, the all-powerful ruler is forced to “fall of his own weight and break in pieces”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155120/original/image-20170201-12681-l548s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563) was a founder of modern political philosophy in France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>La Boétie reasoned that the rule of any government acting tyrannically would abruptly end as soon as its subjects withdrew their active support, for such power only comes from the “<a href="https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude">voluntary servitude</a>” of its subjects. The tyrant has “nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you”. </p>
<p>Given that governments rule by a very few – the ruling class and its functionaries – they are highly susceptible to non-co-operation of the people. </p>
<p>La Boétie’s essay, <em>Discours de la servitude volontaire</em> (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude), is his greatest contribution to political thought. It remains relevant, 440 years after it was published, in an age when the public’s understanding of political resistance to institutionalised authority is <a href="http://www.startribune.com/house-hearing-ends-amid-protest-after-bill-cracking-down-on-demonstrators-moves-forward/411660166/">largely quarantined</a> by anti-protest and anti-assembly powers.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1276&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1276&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155123/original/image-20170201-12681-1rhhnsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1276&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Étienne de La Boétie/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The essay concerns tyranny – the rule of one. America is still a democracy, of course, though it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-elections-ranked-worst-among-western-democracies-heres-why-56485">now openly</a> “<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/economist-intelligence-unit-downgrades-united-states-to-flawed-democracy-2017-1?r=US&IR=T">flawed</a>”, with some pointing to its emergent <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746">oligarchy</a>. At the same time, attacks on the media, lying to the public, denigrating facts/science, scapegoating minorities and nepotism are all hallmarks of tyranny. </p>
<p>The notable feature of La Boétie’s political theory is that the origin of tyrannical power is irrelevant: whether by election, inheritance or force, if rulership is oppressive, it is tyrannical.</p>
<p>La Boétie interrogates the mind of the ruler and the subservient, and the strategies to overcome this relation of servitude. His second key insight flows from his counter-intuitive analysis of this dynamic. He does not place political agency or power in the hands of the tyrant, but in the people themselves. He <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6o-8P3iqf7IC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=Poor,+wretched,+and+stupid+peoples+you+let+yourselves+be+deprived+before+your+own+eyes.&source=bl&ots=z8cLUWpU-v&sig=etUzfHpXdgP3BEFI91rwSZI2GYc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjb4oaVj-vR">rails</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, you let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All your “misfortune” descends “not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is”.</p>
<h2>Responsibility for freedom is our own</h2>
<p>La Boétie is unremitting in his criticism of servitude – the servile are “traitors” to themselves. They give tyranny its “eyes” to surveil, its arms to beat and its feet to trample freedom. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, La Boétie intends his work not to cajole but to awaken these voluntary servants to the understanding that their own liberation is in their power. As he <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6o-8P3iqf7IC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=Poor,+wretched,+and+stupid+peoples+you+let+yourselves+be+deprived+before+your+own+eyes.&source=bl&ots=z8cLUWpU-v&sig=etUzfHpXdgP3BEFI91rwSZI2GYc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjb4oaVj-vR">writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This principle of non-co-operation forms the root of civil disobedience movements today. If tyrannical commands cannot be enforced without subjects to do the enforcing, then withdrawal of both <em>consent</em> and <em>action</em> is a pragmatic, peaceful and legitimate means for conventional politics to resist even the most narcissistic of wig-wearers today.</p>
<p>And we can point to real-life heroes acting out this defiance today: <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/01/26/the-twitter-rebellion-badlands-national-park-is-the-latest-national-park-to-defy-president-trump/">Badlands National Park</a> breaking its gag order to tweet facts of science, or NASA with its <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-nasa-twitter-resist-national-parks-climate-change-rogue-a7546666.html">Rogue 1</a> doing the same.</p>
<p>At the same time, reliance on individual action can be confused and contradictory. For example, the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-ban/">battle at the airports</a> over the Muslim immigration ban now seems to be between federal customs and Department of Homeland Security agents enforcing the executive order, and those following the Federal Court order barring deportations. The separation of powers is reliant on people serving this separation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155119/original/image-20170201-12681-vuote7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gathered at airports around the US to protest Trump’s ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Livingston/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>La Boétie was quick to realise that the key question is not how tyrannies remain in power, but why subjects do not withdraw their support. Fear and ideology, self-interest and habit all conspire so that the many acquiesce in their own subjection. In Trump’s oft-tweeted word: <em>Sad!</em></p>
<p>So, while acts of peaceful withdrawal should be enough to cripple any oppressive regime, La Boétie’s thesis holds only on the condition that <em>the many</em> oppose <em>the one</em>.</p>
<h2>Clinging to the tyrant</h2>
<p>Here we run into two major problems. Some people lack the critical distance from their social order to question it. More problematic are those who benefit from Trump’s rule. </p>
<p>For La Boétie, this class is the <em>most</em> dangerous. Those who “cling to the tyrant”, who take “the bait toward slavery”, offer him their loyalty in return for institutionalised bribery (including, in today’s idiom, state contracts, tax breaks, administrative assistance and positions of influence). This 1% become the willing hands of tyranny, reaching throughout society.</p>
<p><a href="https://libcom.org/files/Landauer_Revolution_and_Other_Writings.pdf">Gustav Landauer</a> calls this the “internal flaw”, that the people who “feed” tyranny “must stop doing so”. At this point, however, La Boétie leaves us with pure voluntarism as some rational hope against tyranny.</p>
<p>But even this idea can be educative. Much has been made of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/politics/richard-spencer-punched-attack.html">punch on Richard Spencer</a>, the neo-Nazi who <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/richard-bertrand-spencer-0">advocates “ethnic cleansing”</a>. Some say that, rather than street violence, resistance must instead go “high”. Having a grandfather who was tortured by the SS, I am less sanguine. Spencer and his ilk promise horrific violence on a mass scale. Believe them. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aFh08JEKDYk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Richard Spencer, the man credited with coining the term “alt-right”, is punched in the head while talking with a reporter.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, such punches seem very ineffective in making allies of centrists against Trump. For those who find such acts of resistance unsavoury La Boétie presents an effective middle ground. You don’t have to do anything: just don’t comply, <em>ever</em>. This principle could even appeal to libertarians.</p>
<p>So while La Boétie offers us no panacea for freedom, especially in overcoming political structures of tyranny, he helps jar our thought into recognising that it is <em>we</em> who can act for <em>our</em> freedom. To this end, he offers a legitimate means for even the most apolitical subject to resist: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem today is that many are willing to serve in their own oppression and even more willing to serve in the oppression of others. So the real question he leaves us with is: what are we to do against the willing servants of tyranny?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mu_hCThhzWU?wmode=transparent&start=90" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Has the strategy that Michelle Obama advocated at last year’s Democratic National Convention worked?</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Brincat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The origin of tyrannical power is irrelevant: whether by election, inheritance or force, if rulership is oppressive, it is tyrannical. And the way to beat it is deceptively simple: refuse to comply.Shannon Brincat, Research Fellow in International Relations, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/697782016-12-16T21:28:09Z2016-12-16T21:28:09ZWar and democracy in the age of Trump<p>The ancient Greek historian <a href="http://www.shsu.edu/%7Ehis_ncp/Heropers.html">Herodotus</a> once observed that Persian rulers indulged the habit of getting drunk when making important decisions. When sober and sensible next morning, their custom was to reconsider their decision, and either stick to it, or revise or reject it outright. They had another method of decision-making, he noted: they took decisions when sober, then affirmed or declined them when drunk. </p>
<p>His story was probably apocryphal. But let’s for a moment take the cue of Herodotus and imagine a polity whose ruler outdoes the Persians, by a mile: a ruler who is gripped by narcissistic urges, an ethnarch who feels compelled to take decisions and do deals all day and night, intoxicated by his own power. </p>
<p>Another concocted fiction, perhaps. But on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump, speculation mounts everywhere that the world is in for trouble at the hands of a deal-making, decision-taking president high on his vast executive powers and his narcissistic self. “Trying to predict how Trump will behave is very difficult,” says Harvard’s <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/unpredictable-commander-in-chief_us_5847f77ae4b0b9feb0da4b6d">Joseph Nye</a>. “This country has never experienced a commander in chief who is this unpredictable. And that surely is dangerous.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150427/original/image-20161216-26077-1rsta8v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The power of the US president and the unpredictability of Donald Trump is a dangerous combination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Randall Hill/Reuters</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The most serious rumours in circulation centre on the possibility that Trump is either preparing to launch a major war, or that his deal-making impulsiveness will <a href="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf">lead to a major war, for instance with China</a>. Such rumours of course overlook the fact that the United States already has troops and military installations in 150 countries, and that it is engaged in constant drone battling and other forms of armed manoeuvring and engagement. The American imperium is <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2016/05/american-imperium/4/">permanently at war</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever Trump does, we can be sure that he won’t break with this pattern. He’ll preserve the all-party consensus, the peculiar fact that America has no peace party. He’ll keep the war machine switched on; succour the widespread belief among the citizens of America that their country has a global responsibility to keep the world safe, for America, in its own self-image. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150472/original/image-20161216-26137-ih71z5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US drone strike in Renay Parchao area of Afghanistan, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.dawn.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>All this suggests it’s a good moment to look at <em><a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10638.html">On War and Democracy</a></em>, the latest publication of Christopher Kutz, the leading scholar of war, ethics and democracy at the University of California Berkeley. This timely book, actually a set of essays, was published some months before Trump’s campaign victory, but the political and ethical territory it covers is more or less the same terrain in which President Trump will operate. </p>
<p>The background ethical question raised by Kutz is whether or not democracies are ethically duty-bound to protect others. Are they obliged to intervene militarily in support of people in far-away lands and cities, the infernos of Aleppo and Idlib, for instance, whose citizens are victimised by insufferable bullying, or terrible violence that crushes and destroys the lives of many tens of thousands? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150428/original/image-20161216-26062-12l93fj.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Princeton University Press (2016)</span></span>
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<p>As a fine scholar of ethics, Kutz is well aware of normative dilemmas and aporia. None is arguably so fundamental as the ethical dilemma that confronts all states that claim to be democratic: if they intervene in contexts riddled with violence, as India did in Bangladesh in 1971, and the United States first did in Mexico, the Philippines and Cuba, and has repeatedly done around the world during recent decades, then democracies are readily accused of double standards. They are said to have violated the territorial “sovereignty” and autonomy of peoples entitled to govern themselves. Democracies and their democrats are called meddlers, autocrats, colonisers and imperialists.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if democratic states fiddle while people’s lives are ruined, and choose by design or default not to intervene (recent cases include Syria, Ukraine, Rwanda, Palestine and Timor Leste), then democracies are easily accused of hypocrisy. They are condemned for their wilfully blind eyes, their duplicitous ignoring of cruelty that flouts the democratic principle that all people should be treated as dignified equals. </p>
<p>Commander-in-Chief Trump will likely tweet, and treat, this ethical dilemma as an irrelevance in the jungles of global politics. Making America strong again will for him have little or nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with threats, tough bargaining and triumphant deals. It’s a sign of the times that Kutz’s <em>On War and Democracy</em> shares a similar starting point, but for quite different reasons. Using philosophical argument rather than populist prattle, Kutz tries to set aside the ethical dilemma, and to do so by beating a double retreat. </p>
<p>To begin with, the distinguished philosopher opts for a trimmed-down understanding of democracy. For Kutz, it isn’t a whole way of life, as it was for Tocqueville, and today remains for many citizens and political thinkers. He speaks instead of “agentic democracy”. It’s an unlovely neologism, by which he means that democracy is a set of liberal norms centred on free and fair elections protected by law and the “public working out of shared values, in a process of dialogue and accommodation”. </p>
<p>Democracy in this liberal sense is for Kutz not a universal principle. It’s certainly valuable, and to be valued, by decent and reasonable people. But it’s just one political norm among many possible others, including opposite norms such as the sovereign right of states to declare and prosecute war.</p>
<p>What is interesting is that Kutz uses this cut-back definition of democracy to beat a second retreat. He argues against efforts to draw the democratic ethic into the dirty business of geopolitics, military intervention and killing and maiming people. Drawing upon the work of the American philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel">Thomas Nagel</a> and others, the true task of a theory of democratic ethics, says Kutz, is prickliness. The ethic of democracy should be crabby, querulous, ornery. Its ethical obligation is to stand back from talk of war, to sound the alarm against military folly. The democratic ethic should apply pressure on all theories and practices of war by calling into question their claimed permissibility. </p>
<p>Kutz says little about the unfinished global discussion that began a generation ago concerning the ethics of the atomic bomb. It remains relevant, if only because, in the hands of thinkers and writers otherwise as different as <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1179527.Common_Sense_and_Nuclear_Warfare">Bertrand Russell</a>, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5953283.html">Hans Jonas</a> and George Orwell (“<a href="http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb">The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle</a>,” he soberly reminded his readers in October 1945), democratic ethics was inclined not just to call for a halt to the production of weapons of war, but to demand the abolition of war itself. </p>
<p>Kutz is rather silent about this line of radical thinking born of the nuclear age. He’s also silent about a more recent version of the absurdity-of-war argument: the rising claim by many people and organisations on our planet that war provides no solution to our principal security challenges, which include species destruction and climate change. Kutz downplays these concerns. He instead wants to point out that the ethic of democracy, as he defines it, stands equally in tension with the old state-centric principle of <em>jus ad bellum</em> (the untrammelled right of “sovereign” states to declare war), the UN Charter and its restriction of war to self-defence, and muscular human rights norms that have been used, in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, to justify military intervention.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150470/original/image-20161216-26102-1mempn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homs, once a major industrial centre and third largest city in Syria, February 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">micstagesuk.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ethic of democracy, says Kutz, is equally opposed to ISIS and al-Qaeda forms of violence that don’t conform to the “regular war constellation” model of uniformed, hierarchically ordered armies. The salient point made by Kutz is that the ethic of democracy is <em>against violence</em>. It is also telic. That’s to say that the norm of democracy should be seen as “relentlessly critical”, as a restraint on “collective violence, not as a new source of war’s legitimacy”. This is the “operating conceit” of <em>On War and Democracy</em>, says Kutz: “the respect for our personhood that animates democracy demands a humility in the face of conflict, rather than the imperial assertiveness that has characterised so much democratic rhetoric, from the French Revolution to the Second Iraq War”.</p>
<p>Like all vanities, the operating conceit of this book is not without limitations, several of them far from trivial. Classicists will note that had Kutz paid attention to scholarship (by <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/war-democracy-and-culture-classical-athens?format=HB&isbn=9780521190336">David Pritchard and others</a>) on the ancient Greek democracies, he would have been forced to ponder, and to worry philosophically about, their ingrained bellicosity. <a href="http://thelifeanddeathofdemocracy.org/">The Life and Death of Democracy</a> points, for instance, to the discomforting but still little-known fact that the norm of <em>dēmokratia</em> originally harboured connotations of military rule. Usually translated as “to rule” or “to govern”, for instance, the root verb <em>kratein</em> [κρατείν] meant mastery, military conquest, getting the upper hand over somebody or something. </p>
<p>Some readers will point out that Kutz says practically nothing about the entanglement of the ethic of democracy with violence <em>inside</em> democracies. Think of the Second Amendment, and the way American democrats use it to justify the God-given right to bear arms in public. Other readers will spot the way this book is mainly silent about the worrying spread in our time of privatised violence perpetrated by <em>condottieri</em> unhindered by the “laws of war” (around 50% of the US forces that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq comprised contractors employed by for-profit companies such as Blackwater). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150474/original/image-20161216-26116-wq0pza.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Private contractor soldier in Iraq, 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Texas at Austin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still other readers will note how Kutz unwisely presumes, with Francis Fukuyama and other American liberal ideologues, that the normative ideal of “democracy remains unchallenged, even unchallengeable”. Would that things were so simple. This liberal presumption, as these field notes have been pointing out for several years, is crumbling fast. Understandably, since not only does it understate the multiple dysfunctions that are now paralysing states called democracies. The end of history thesis is equally blind to the great resilience of its competitor enemies, including the new phantom democracies of Russia, Iran and China, which are not simply species of “managerial capitalism”, as Kutz claims they are. These regimes are better understood as <a href="http://www.johnkeane.net/the-new-despotism-of-the-21st-century-imagining-the-end-of-democracy/">despotisms</a>. </p>
<p>This brings me, finally, to the most serious weakness of this book: the way Kutz’s cut-back liberal definition of democracy concedes too much ground by ignoring recent efforts (<em>The Life and Death of Democracy</em> is my own contribution) to redescribe democracy as not just one norm among others, but as a universal norm. The theory of monitory democracy tries to do this. It treats democracy as a universal norm because it defines democracy as suspicion of all talk of Grand Universal Norms, such as the Market, the Sovereign Nation or God. Monitory democracy puts pressure on all of these arrogant First Principles to admit their own particularity. </p>
<p>Democracy so conceived is a type of anti-foundationalist ethic. It is an ethic of humility and equality. It is an ethic that stands against all forms of arrogant arbitrary power, including on the battlefield. Seen in this way, the ethic of democracy is much more than a <em>prickly outsider</em> of war, and talk of war, as Kutz supposes. The ethic of democracy instead <em>demands entry into the citadels of military power</em>. It does so because it knows of the follies and idiocies of those who arrogantly plan and prosecute war. It therefore calls for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman-book-review.html">slow thinking</a>, for public openness and for the restraint of arbitrary power, especially when it is backed by weapons that kill, maim and destroy humans and the biomes in which they dwell. </p>
<p>Exactly this point about democracy as a universal ethical principle was made with great eloquence against the Blair government by the convenor of the 2016 Iraq Inquiry. In all matters of military power, said <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/247010/2016-09-06-sir-john-chilcots-public-statement.pdf">Sir John Chilcot</a> in his executive summary, “all aspects of any intervention” must be “calculated, debated and challenged with the utmost rigour”. </p>
<p>In practice, this monitory democracy principle means, of course, that many if not most proposed military interventions would simply never happen. It means, too, that whenever violence of any form is legitimately used under battlefield conditions, for instance in self-defence or for the protection of vulnerable people, those responsible for the violence cannot ever be allowed to wield their power arbitrarily. They must give reasons for what they do, or are planning to do. They must not, and they cannot be allowed to, rape, pillage and wantonly destroy. </p>
<p>When democracy is understood as a universal ethical principle, the double retreat recommended by Kutz looks much too timid, and philosophically unconvincing. It nevertheless has important merits. <em>On War and Democracy</em> is thoughtful, erudite, a cut well above the old discredited consequentialism of “<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5302.html">democratic peace</a>” theorems. The book draws our attention to subjects as varied as torture, assassination, drones, secrecy and the dilemmas posed by revolutionary transitions to democracy. But the greatest strength of <em>On War and Democracy</em> is surely that it speaks to our troubled times. It’s a philosophical abreaction against the fact that the American democratic empire – like its two predecessors, classical Athens and revolutionary France – is today permanently at war. </p>
<p>We live in an age of “belligerent democracy”, says Kutz. We certainly do. The times they are a changin’, and unless things markedly improve, democrats who aren’t already swimming may well sink like stones, into public irrelevance. In this strange new era of global war, Kutz powerfully reminds us, the ethic of democracy is being victimised by imperial interventions in the name of democracy. Against political talk of “realism”, “war on terror”, “humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to protect”, his fundamental point is that the ethic of democratic politics is irenic. But it’s much more than that. It’s a non-violent weapon that is militant; it’s a precautionary principle that is as active as it is everywhere, and at all times, indispensable. The ethic of democracy speaks against the beasts of war, as surely it will be required to do during the Trump era that has already begun. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150473/original/image-20161216-26082-1u9dp5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American-built Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet on a training exercise, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">paper4pc.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em>This column piece is also part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-14603">Democracy Futures</a> series, a joint global initiative with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The series aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus once observed that Persian rulers indulged the habit of getting drunk when making important decisions. When sober and sensible next morning, their custom was to reconsider…John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647322016-10-07T03:23:07Z2016-10-07T03:23:07ZWhat’s in a name? How a democracy becomes an aristocracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137671/original/image-20160914-4936-3n5ngf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What do you call a democracy that depends on the exclusion of whole groups from political participation?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration#/media/File:20101009_Arrested_refugees_immigrants_in_Fylakio_detention_center_Thrace_Evros_Greece_restored.jpg">Gaia/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Is there something about the deep logic of democracy that destines it to succeed in the world? Democracy, the form of politics that includes everyone as equals – does it perhaps suit human nature better than the alternatives? After all, surely any person who is excluded from the decision-making in a society will be more liable to rise up against it.</p>
<p>From ancient thinkers like Seneca to contemporary thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, we can see some version of this line of thought. Seneca thought that tyrannies could never last long; Fukuyama famously argued that liberal democracy is the end of history. </p>
<p>I want to focus instead on the person credited with giving the most direct and uncompromising statement of this thought: Benedict de Spinoza.</p>
<p>For centuries, “democracy” was a term of abuse, understood as a dangerous form of mob rule. Spinoza was one of the first in the history of modern political thought to celebrate democracy.</p>
<p>Living in the 17th-century Dutch Republic, amid political turmoil in his own country, and witnessing the disorders across the channel in England, Spinoza was intensely interested in the concrete, material basis for peace.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=697&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137673/original/image-20160914-4942-2vblac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spinoza was the one of the first to celebrate democracy as a material basis for peace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He argues that monarchies are flawed political orders because they fail to harness the power of the people. Out of a well-founded fear of being overthrown, they oppress their subjects. The subjects, hating their king, have no loyalty and obey only out of fear. </p>
<p>Also, even the most virtuous king will have difficulty making wise and constant decisions that everyone can respect and uphold. A monarchy can only improve itself by approximating a democracy: instituting a representative assembly to which the king must defer. </p>
<p>But surely an even more direct way to harness the power of the people is not to have a king at all and to simply organise society as a democracy. </p>
<p>Democracies directly engage their citizens’ loyalty by politically involving them. Having diverse voices in their collective decision-making then allows better decisions to be made.</p>
<h2>Managing inclusion and exclusion</h2>
<p>Thus, Spinoza celebrates democracy and criticises monarchy. On this basis, he is hailed as a democrat and the originator of a radical, materialist conception of democracy, grounded in the power of the people. </p>
<p>But we should be careful here. Between monarchy as rule of the one and democracy as rule of the many, there is an intermediate option: aristocracy, or rule of the few.</p>
<p>Spinoza’s view of aristocracy should give pause to radical democrats. He does not see a historical movement towards democracy, nor does he see the superiority of democracy as written into human nature. </p>
<p>To be sure, politically including everyone, as in a democracy, can harness the power of the people. But Spinoza’s analysis of the commoners within an aristocracy shows the power of the people can equally be harnessed by political exclusion, so long as the depoliticised acquiescence of those excluded commoners is secured.</p>
<h2>Everyone’s equal except new arrivals</h2>
<p>Spinoza remarks that people generally conceive of themselves as equals and therefore resist political inequality. However, he also tells us a historical story of how this self-conception might be disrupted.</p>
<p>Suppose a population settles in a new place. Nobody wants to be subordinated to anyone else, so they view themselves as equals and organise themselves as a democracy. </p>
<p>Later, immigrants arrive. The locals, <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/spinoza/benedict/political/chapter8.html">Spinoza writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… think it unfair that foreigners who come to join them should have equal rights in a state which they have won for themselves by their toil and at cost of their blood.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Do the immigrants object? No, says Spinoza:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nor do the foreigners themselves make any objection to this, having come to settle there not with view to being rulers but to promote their private interests, and they are quite happy provided they are granted freedom to transact their own business in security.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The regime is transformed into an aristocracy, with the immigrants as the commoners excluded from political participation.</p>
<p>The crucial thing to note is that the power of the commoners is harnessed to the aristocracy. They comply with the laws of the country and contribute to its flourishing, not because they are politically included, but because they are content with their private economic freedoms. In other words, their depoliticised acquiescence is secured.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e-r9E5n5FnM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Most immigrants to the US want nothing more than a shot at the American Dream.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An unequal order can be stable</h2>
<p>Spinoza believes that an unequal political order can be stable. This is because a well-organised aristocracy will have a robust collective decision-making process in its political assembly (thus not being fickle like the rule of a king) and procedures to ensure that, despite their political inequality, the commoners have legal equality and do not suffer abuse.</p>
<p>This example shows that the desire and demand for political equality is not a human universal. Rather, it can be quelled or extinguished under certain circumstances, such as when it is balanced against other desires and expectations. </p>
<p>Spinoza’s story fairly transparently reflects his understanding of the history of Venice. In Spinoza’s time, many writers viewed the aristocratic Venetian republic as the exemplar of good, peaceful and harmonious political order.</p>
<p>So Spinoza may well make a striking new move in the history of political thought by defending the idea of a good democratic regime. But he does not radically reject the common sense of political thought in his period. To the contrary, he provides a theoretical frame for understanding the real possibility of good aristocratic regimes. </p>
<p>The lesson is not that all aristocracies will be as good as Venice. A poorly organised aristocracy will face rebellion from its disgruntled commoners. </p>
<p>But if the material contentment and basic dignity of the commoners are upheld and their expectations carefully managed, an aristocracy can harness the power of the people just as well as a democracy.</p>
<h2>Democracy can be hollowed out</h2>
<p>Despite the prevalence of democracy today, the phenomenon of depoliticised acquiescence should not be unfamiliar to contemporary eyes. </p>
<p>For example, the United States is formally democratic. Nonetheless, it features two significant forms of political exclusion: migrant populations (legal and illegal) excluded from franchise; and a large proportion of the eligible voting population who (are encouraged to) <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Why-Americans-Still-Dont-Vote-P107.aspx">self-exclude</a> by not voting.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HcnoV_S9258?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">From voter ID laws to literacy tests such as this one from 1964, the right to vote in the US remains threatened.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These excluded groups are mostly depoliticised: they are not politically involved, do not seek to make political claim on a larger share of the benefits of social co-operation, and do not mount a serious challenge to the broad stability of the political order or to popular compliance with its laws and institutions. </p>
<p>The predictable result is that they face persistently unequal outcomes in wealth, health and other indicators.</p>
<p>Bringing my Spinozist frame to bear on this phenomenon, we can view immigrants and non-voters as latter-day commoners, whose behaviour reflects their depoliticised acquiescence. When their disadvantage becomes extreme, then they may become politicised and rebellious. Yet so long as this does not happen and they remain depoliticised, their unequal consideration in public policy is unchallenged.</p>
<p>The idea that human nature has some special affinity with democracy as a regime of political inclusion is too rosy. We need to recognise that human nature can equally be channelled into an exclusive kind of democracy. </p>
<p>Contemporary democracy contains within itself impulses towards inclusion, but also impulses towards exclusion. Aristocratic democracy (to use a historical term which sounds strange to contemporary ears) is a real possibility. If we are not attentive, it can insidiously empty out the substantive promise of democratic rule by the people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Leonie Field does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democracy today contains within itself impulses towards both inclusion and exclusion. Spinoza’s thinking on aristocracy should alert us to how democratic rule by the people can be hollowed out.Sandra Leonie Field, Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy), Yale-NUS CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/661202016-09-28T00:37:37Z2016-09-28T00:37:37ZProgressives should accept Corbyn’s triumph – it’s the price of democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139349/original/image-20160927-20132-1ok4una.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Labour elite doesn't think Jeremy Corbyn has what it takes to make it in Westminster. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/25743557291/">UK Parliament/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The political theorist Jacques Rancière once <a href="http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/moments-politiques">wrote</a> that we know truly political moments by their inherent instability. “The political”, he wrote, is, in its purest form, a cry for equality in the face of injustice, a crudely formed and often poorly communicated carnal explosion, which could go anywhere, nowhere, or somewhere profoundly different. </p>
<p>This image captures at least part of Jeremy Corbyn’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-corbyn-wins-labour-leadership-election-so-what-next-47449">ascent</a>, and now <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-corbyn-wins-again-heres-what-happens-now-65432">re-election</a>, to leadership of the British Labour Party.</p>
<p>Ordinary people and hardened activists support Corbyn in an <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-britains-pissed-off-constituency-found-a-leader-in-jeremy-corbyn-45576">expression of dissent</a> against the economic, social and institutional status quo (Rancière called it “the police”). As if purely from feeling, Corbyn’s base has leapt almost out of nowhere to become a formidable force in the party, and in social democratic debate more generally.</p>
<p>This doesn’t conform to simple portrayals of naive millennials (Corbyn’s challenger, Owen Smith, got more of their vote, according to an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/owen-smith-exit-poll-jeremy-corbyn-yougov-electiondata_uk_57e652e2e4b0e81629a9d393">exit poll</a>). </p>
<p>Rather, the pent-up anger against <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blairism">Blairism</a> and its perceived betrayals of the labour movement have now taken shape in a well-oiled movement intent on remaking the party as a “true” representation of working people and working-class politics.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139351/original/image-20160927-20122-dwtnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s not just ‘naive’ millennials who are angry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ron F./flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Political outrage pure and simple</h2>
<p>How, moderate social democrats ask themselves, has this happened? How has the party lapsed into such an “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dan-holliday/the-persistent-myth-of-je_b_9415606.html">unelectable</a>” wreck? Have the 1980s taught us nothing? </p>
<p>In answer to them, I believe it is necessary to take heed of Rancière and his insights into democratic politics as it occurs.</p>
<p>First, the key change that caused the explosion of Corbynism was Ed Miliband’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/well-labour-this-is-what-happens-when-you-crowdsource-a-leadership-election-45177">change to the party rules</a>. </p>
<p>Miliband, supported by much of the party hierarchy at the time, claimed that a one-member-one-vote system would benefit the party, freeing it from accusations of bias towards the trade unions. What they hadn’t counted on were the implications of this move. It was a huge democratic move, a substantial alteration of the very DNA of the party.</p>
<p>It followed that the shock 2015 election defeat proved fertile ground for this pent-up anger, this political moment, to overwhelm the party establishment. This was no <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/08/what-does-entryism-mean">“entryism”</a>; it was political outrage pure and simple, at a party that had become too technocratic, cliquish, stuffed with Oxbridge graduate SPADs (special political advisors) poring over focus group data.</p>
<p>The navel gazing in the party elite after their defeat has been quite unbecoming. Having just lost an election they should have won with Miliband, they lament “unelectability” when they failed to see Corbyn’s challenge coming. Obstinately, they hope he will run out of steam when the inevitable Tory landslide comes about.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w891AK_ZTIY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Corbyn supporters claim that Labour is ‘trying very, very hard to stop him from winning’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regardless of how true these strategic points may be, they get in the way of recognising that “Corbynism” marks an important turning point in the development of the party into a mass democratic institution again. </p>
<p>A recent New Stateman <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/09/fall-labour-s-golden-generation">article</a> about Labour’s “golden generation” – Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Miliband et al – noted that all of these politicians were nurtured in an era when the left had, supposedly, been defeated. </p>
<p>With the collapse of Soviet Communism in the 1990s, the far left was bruised and belittled, liberal democracy had won out and social democratic parties were easy pickings for centrist candidates like Gerhard Schroeder and Tony Blair. Their arguments about the need to appeal across the aisle rang true.</p>
<h2>The return of the left</h2>
<p>Following the totemic financial crises in Western Europe, this no longer seems the case. The left has returned, bolder and holding greater belief in the power of public ownership and protest politics than it ever has. Look at <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-and-democracy-friend-or-foe-rising-stars-deepen-dilemma-39695">Podemos</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tsipras-can-win-elections-but-now-syriza-needs-a-growth-plan-for-greece-48057">Syriza</a> and so on.</p>
<p>The take-home point is that left-wing ideas have gained currency again. These should be engaged in the same way the party engaged in the 1980s, with a debate on ideas rather than machinations about the party being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/10/tom-watson-sends-corbyn-proof-of-trotskyist-labour-infiltration">“infiltrated”</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, these institutional changes may well be doing exactly what Miliband wanted them to – re-engaging ordinary people.</p>
<p>The party is changing shape dramatically. Five years from now it may be almost unrecognisable, with <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/09/why-clive-lewis-was-furious-when-trident-pledge-went-missing-his-speech">evidence</a> showing increased membership from those who have never engaged with politics before. 58% of new members have never been involved in a political party <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tim-bale/jeremy-corbyn-labour-membership_b_10713634.html">before</a>. </p>
<p>This period will be one of flux, uncertainty, instability and paradox. It feels deeply uncomfortable. Inevitably, it has emboldened a Conservative Party wedded to the parliamentary system and the winning of power via a small, centralised elite party with a disciplined message.</p>
<p>But the institutional revolution Miliband started may, in time, bear fruit. And, in time, Corbyn will run out of steam (most likely through electoral defeat) and a more mainstream social democratic Labour candidate should emerge. The ranks of Labour voters have ballooned massively to over half a million. </p>
<p>This may not be the kind of party that wins Westminster parliamentary elections as they currently are, but future parliamentary politics is unlikely to remain the way it is. We are already heading for the House of Lords becoming at least partially elected, given its reluctance to implement Prime Minister Theresa May’s agenda.</p>
<p>The same argument could be applied to how progressive politicians respond to Brexit. </p>
<p>When David Cameron called the vote, he knew that a deep-seated dislike of the European Union was just waiting to bubble into a similar one of Rancière’s political moments, where all <a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-bregret-offers-timely-lessons-for-australian-voters-this-weekend-61806">“expert” judgment</a> and scientific argument gets caught in the wind of public outrage. Cameron thought he could beat it, but his case, built on technocratic arguments about economic security, meant nothing to millions of voters outraged by the EU’s profound democratic deficit.</p>
<p>Since the vote, many social democrats have discussed subverting Brexit through the courts or the House of Lords. This is deeply uncomfortable. Even if we live in a “post-factual” society, in which “expertise” is often rejected as a source of authority, insulating it from public opinion is hardly a noble resort. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139355/original/image-20160927-20105-1jivca9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evidently, the disillusioned public have had enough of the elites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Duncan C./flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Time to prepare a democratic future</h2>
<p>Progressive politicians should see how truly political moments are unstable and uncertain; they do not run by the rules that we became used to during New Labour’s 2000s hegemony. Instead of retreating into protecting the elite “experts” the public are so disillusioned with, they should see Brexit as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-and-eu-both-need-major-democratic-reform-to-survive-brexit-fallout-55870">moment</a> for democratisation.</p>
<p>Progressive politics is living through a dramatic period of “properly political” instability. This has, at least for now, put the left at centre stage in UK Labour (and indeed the far right in the US if we look at the Republicans). In many ways, periods of dramatic democratisation are ripe for this kind of ideological politics.</p>
<p>The Labour reformers should have known what they were doing. Instead, they toyed with the image of democratic participation without realising what it would actually lead to – a democratic debate. But the next step is not to backpedal against democracy.</p>
<p>It is deeply troubling that a supposedly democratic institution like Labour should be wasting energy blocking members from joining and attempting to oust a leader chosen democratically by the membership from standing in its election through the courts. </p>
<p>Instead, the Labour reformers who supported Miliband’s institutional changes should have the courage of their convictions to follow through and make their case in a democratic argument about the most desirable form of progressive politics and policy for a new era.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Wood receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. He is also publicity officer for the Political Studies Association's Anti-politics Specialist Group</span></em></p>Labour reformers toyed with the image of democratic participation without realising what it would actually lead to – a democratic debate. But the next step is not to backpedal against democracy.Matthew Wood, Lecturer in Politics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641242016-09-23T03:46:53Z2016-09-23T03:46:53ZThe price of connection: ‘surveillance capitalism’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137697/original/image-20160914-4942-18tbljt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shifts in our communication infrastructures have reshaped the very possibilities of social order driven by markets and commercial exploitation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5474442495">Marc Smith/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Imagine, if you can, a period long before today’s internet-based connectivity. Imagine that, in that distant time, the populations of every country were offered a new plan. The plan would involve linking up every space of social interaction, most sites of work, a large proportion of private moments of reflection, and a significant proportion of family interactions.</p>
<p>Once linked up miraculously, all these diverse spaces of human life would be transposed onto a single seamless plane of archiving, monitoring and processing.</p>
<p>This link-up, those populations are told, would have some remarkable consequences. Each one of those once separate sites could be connectable in real time to every other. The contents of what went on there would become linkable to and from everywhere. </p>
<p>Less good perhaps, every site would, in principle, be monitorable from every other and would be so monitored by institutions with the appropriate infrastructure. Better, perhaps, this seamless plane of connection would provide the basis for building new types of knowledge about the human world, which would never before have been linked as a totality in that way.</p>
<p>Can we imagine those populations accepting such a proposal without hesitation? Probably not. Yet this, in crude outline, is the world we are being asked to celebrate today. </p>
<p>Over the past 30 years, shifts in our communication infrastructures have enabled large-scale attempts to reshape the very possibilities of social order in the interests of market functioning and commercial exploitation.</p>
<p>Some see this as a new <a href="http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49122">“surveillance capitalism”</a>. This is focused on data extraction rather than the production of new goods, thus generating intense concentrations of power over extraction and threatening core values such as freedom. </p>
<p>I agree, but how does this threat work exactly? And what might be the “price” of this transformation along dimensions that economists cannot count?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GhWJTWUvc7E?wmode=transparent&start=259" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Corporate surveillance promises convenience and government surveillance protection, but have we given up more than we’ve gained?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The new infrastructures of connection</h2>
<p>When I highlight the price of connection, it is not connection itself that is the problem. It is what comes with connection, in particular its infrastructure of surveillance that comprises the Faustian bargain we need to evaluate.</p>
<p>Surveillance capitalism only became possible through the development of the internet. While the internet is often credited with bringing freedom, its most important feature is connection, not freedom. </p>
<p>The internet changes the scale on which human beings are in touch with each other. The connectability of all packets of information, all sites from which we access the internet, and all actors in that space – soon to be expanded into the domain of the <a href="http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/11/the-internet-of-things-bigger/">“internet of things”</a> – creates a two-way bargain: if every point in space-time is connectable to every other, then it is susceptible to monitoring from every other.</p>
<p>Deep economic pressures are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online. The spaces of social life have become open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action. As <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=m9_DyhPGhEMC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=the+centrality+of+corporate+power+is+a+direct+reality+at+the+very+heart+of+the+digital+age&source=bl&ots=M0oK9qHEFl&sig=O8sEfzy6WnoP58TtsXRphYL5kUE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiP-OuynJrPAhUJ92MKHb2ZDjsQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=centrality%20of%20corporate%20power&f=false">Joseph Turow writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the centrality of corporate power is a direct reality at the very heart of the digital age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For more than a decade now, the difficulty of targeting messages at particular consumers online has driven advertisers to reach audiences through the continuous tracking of individuals, wherever they are online.</p>
<p>Online platforms, in spite of their innocent-sounding name, are a way of optimising the overlap between the domains of social interaction and profit. Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and data processing: it is as if the social itself has become the new target of capitalism’s expansion. </p>
<p>Bruce Schneier <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_publicpriva_1.html">put it</a> bluntly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The primary business model of the internet is built on mass surveillance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what are the costs of this for social life?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D1oxOW4tgyw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Turow argues that online advertising involves ‘one of history’s most massive stealth efforts in social profiling’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstructing the social</h2>
<p>It’s puzzling we are not already more angry about this transformation. We never liked mass surveillance in its historic forms. When we watch The Lives of Others, a film about former East Germany, we feel compassion for the lonely operative condemned to a life (of watching the lives of others) that both he and we know is profoundly wrong. </p>
<p>So how can a whole infrastructure of surveillance that was, elsewhere, so obviously wrong suddenly become right, indeed celebrated, when instituted by start-up companies on the American West Coast?</p>
<p>One explanation is that this surveillance does not appear to us as an end in itself, but as the necessary means to a supposedly much larger good. Health is just one area where individual submission to continuous external surveillance is regarded as positive. The benefits of interpreting (and so necessarily gathering) big data are often <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/19/prof-bruce-keogh-wearable-technology-plays-crucial-part-nhs-future">presented</a> as clear: “a revolution in self-care” which “actually keep[s] somebody safe and feeling good”. </p>
<p>Gary Wolf, guru of the Quantified Self movement, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?_r=0">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Automated sensors … remind us that our ordinary behaviour contains obscure quantitative signals that can be used to inform our behaviour, once we learn to read them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So our lives are now seen as always already “data”.</p>
<p>The result can seem comforting. The Guardian recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/26/black-box-car-insurance-cuts-young-drivers-premiums">reported</a> an in-car observation device for young drivers that insurers are offering as part of a deal on reduced premiums. The headline in the print edition was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A helpful spy behind the dashboard is a young driver’s new best friend. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>At work here is a restructuring of social relations around data collection that is as profound as the building of long-distance networks on which the market structure of industrial capitalism depends. As that period’s great historian, Karl Polanyi, <a href="http://inctpped.ie.ufrj.br/spiderweb/pdf_4/Great_Transformation.pdf">put it</a>, the creation of new markets requires “the effect of highly artificial stimulants administered to the body social”.</p>
<p>Today, social stimulation is not needed to create networked markets – they have existed for 200 years or more – but to link every social activity into a datafied plane, a managed continuity from which value can be generated.</p>
<h2>Surrendering autonomy</h2>
<p>There is something deeply wrong here, but what exactly? The problem goes deeper than the risk of ruthless corporations abusing our data: probably most of us trust Facebook some of the time.</p>
<p>A deeper problem emerged in the wake of the Snowden <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-government-clips-nsa-wings-but-snooping-is-a-global-effort-42771">revelations about the US National Security Agency</a> (NSA) and, in the UK, <a href="https://theconversation.com/gchqs-surveillance-hasnt-proved-itself-to-be-worth-the-cost-to-human-rights-48465">GCHQ’s interception</a> of commercial data streams. Quentin Skinner <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/quentin-skinner-richard-marshall/liberty-liberalism-and-surveillance-historic-overview">noted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… not merely by the fact that <a href="https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620">someone is reading my emails</a> but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose … leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power … What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem is not so much someone reading my emails, but the collection of metadata. In any case, if the mere existence of such power contradicts liberty, why were we not already offended by the commercial power to collect data on which powerful nation-states were merely piggy-backing?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134857/original/image-20160821-30406-xcot14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We protest the arbitrary power of governments, so why not corporations?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Herbst/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The answer is that surveillance capitalism threatens an aspect of our freedom so basic that we are not used to defending it. Curiously, it is the German philosopher Hegel who can help us to identify where the problem might lie. </p>
<p>Like Kant, Hegel believed that the greatest good was free will, but he went further in clarifying what freedom might involve. For Hegel, freedom is impossible without the self having some space of autonomy where it can be in a reflective relation with itself. As he <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/nineteenth-century-philosophy/hegels-practical-philosophy-rational-agency-ethical-life?format=PB">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… freedom is this: to be with oneself in the other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here the self is not isolated, but endlessly being mediated through the world: the world of other things and people, and of its past self and actions. But it can be free if it comes to grasp such processes as its own – related to its goals and not those of others. It is just this that becomes harder to sustain under surveillance capitalism.</p>
<p>In a world where our moment-to-moment existence is already being tracked and (according to some) better understood by external data-processing systems, the very idea of an independent space of subjectivity from which one can have “freedom” collapses. </p>
<p>Corporate power is already “closer” to the subject than other humans or even the subject’s past self. This “other” – an external system with data-processing capacities far beyond those of a human brain – is not the “other” Hegel had in mind when defining freedom.</p>
<p>For some, nonetheless, the benefits of playing with the tools of surveillance capitalism still seem to outweigh the costs. But we are beginning to sense the ethical limits of capitalism’s new game. </p>
<p>Can we imagine an app that “measures” whether one is really in love with someone else? Or an app that compares how one’s processes of creativity hold up against established measures of creative inspiration? How about an app that compares the “depth” of one’s grieving for a loved one against others’ grief? </p>
<p>When does our submission to measurement hit against something we must protect as “ours”?</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/155246808" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What will we give up to be ‘connected’?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where next?</h2>
<p>It is not enough just to disconnect. What’s needed is more collective reflection on the costs of capitalism’s new data relations for our very possibilities of ethical life. </p>
<p>All social struggle starts with the work of the imagination, so which vision do you prefer? Is it Wired cofounder Kevin Kelly’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF-5CMozGWY">vision</a> of “technology stitching together all the minds of the living … the whole aggregation watching itself through a million cameras posted daily”? Or are we entering, to quote <a href="https://sebald.wordpress.com/essays/the-silent-catastrophe/">W.G. Sebald</a>, “a silent catastrophe that occurs almost unperceived”?</p>
<p>Whichever vision you prefer, what is being built is not what we have known as freedom: and that is a choice whose price we cannot avoid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Couldry receives funding for the research reported on in this article from the Enhancing Life program funded by the University of Chicago and the John Templeton Foundation: <a href="http://enhancinglife.uchicago.edu/">http://enhancinglife.uchicago.edu/</a> . </span></em></p>Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and processing – as if the social itself has become the new target of capitalism’s expansion.Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637712016-08-29T04:03:42Z2016-08-29T04:03:42ZFace the facts: populism is here to stay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135247/original/image-20160824-30252-1tqtlhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tea Party supporters have been demanding to be heard for a long time. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/valkyrieh116/4453194314/">Valerie Hinjosa/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. Benjamin Moffitt will appear in SDN’s “<a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/festival-democracy-people/">We the People</a>” populism slam on September 2 as part of the annual <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/festival-democracy-2016/">Festival of Democracy</a>.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>When it comes to politics, 2016 has been a very strange year to say the least. Things that aren’t “supposed to happen” – well, they just keep happening. </p>
<p>Pauline Hanson, written off as a serial electoral pest whose best days lay back in the late 1990s, has returned to Australian politics with a vengeance, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-the-big-winner-as-senate-finalised-63504">roaring into the Senate</a> with three other One Nation senators by her side.</p>
<p>Donald Trump, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/123228/how-donald-trump-evolved-joke-almost-serious-candidate">previously dismissed as a joke candidate</a>, is one of two main candidates for perhaps the most important position of power in the world. </p>
<p>And let’s not forget Brexit. Turning expert opinions and <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-referendum-how-the-polls-got-it-wrong-again-61639">most opinion poll results</a> on their heads, it turned out in the referendum that 52% of UK voters did indeed want out of the European Union (EU), allegedly willing to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/britain-flirts-with-economic-insanity/2016/05/01/bb8d7a4a-0e1f-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_print.html?utm_term=.faaa9ece5820">“commit economic suicide”</a>.</p>
<p>What has been the reaction to such strange events? Shock. Gasps. Grief. Shaking of heads. And, perhaps worst of all, the “tsk-tsk-tsking” at “the people” who are supposed to know better than to fall for such populist tricks. </p>
<p>In all of these situations where “the people” were supposed to “know better”, media pundits, mainstream parties, pollsters and experts of various stripes have been stunned by outcomes that seemed inconceivable. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Populism has gone global as a political style that’s working in many political and cultural contexts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stanford University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My contention is that these are not blips on the radar, not weird one-offs. These events are happening across the globe, where “the people” are spitting in the face of “the elite” and rejecting what is being offered to them.</p>
<p>We are witnessing what I have termed <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25175">The Global Rise of Populism</a>. Populism, once seen as a fringe phenomenon relegated to another era or only certain parts of the world, is now a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trendy-electoral-superheroes-from-the-americas-to-europe-the-populists-confront-us-51905">mainstay of contemporary politics across the globe</a>, from the Americas to Europe, from Africa to the Asia Pacific. </p>
<p>Populism – a political style that features 1) an appeal to “the people” versus “the elite”; 2) the use of “bad manners” that are allegedly “unbecoming” for politicians; and 3) the evocation of crisis, breakdown or threat – isn’t going anywhere. It is here to stay. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we can do something about it.</p>
<h2>What explains the rise of populism?</h2>
<p>First, “the elite” is on the nose in many parts of the world. Mainstream parties are increasingly seen as incapable of channelling popular interests, governments are viewed as being in thrall to global finance, and experts are increasingly distrusted and questioned. In many cases, <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1447-ruling-the-void">this cynicism is justified</a>. </p>
<p>Populists posit themselves as representing a break from the status quo. They claim to be able to <a href="https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-town-hall-will-brexit-bring-british-democracy-closer-to-the-people-62194">return power to “the people”</a>. This message has great resonance at this particular historical juncture, where faith in institutions has been badly shaken. </p>
<p>Second, the shifting media landscape favours populists. In a time of <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/democracy-and-media-decadence">communicative abundance</a>, populists deliver a simple, often headline-grabbing message that plays to mass media’s desire for polarisation, dramatisation and emotionalisation. </p>
<p>This allows them to “break through” the constant noise and grab free media attention. There is no better example of this than Trump, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/10/reading-6000-of-his-tweets-has-convinced-us-donald-trump-is-a-social-media-master/">whose single tweets inspire media frenzy</a>, or, on a local level, the Australian media’s willingness to report <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/oops-pauline-hanson-caught-drinking-allegedly-halal-milk-20160707-gq0nub.html">every utterance of Hanson since her election</a>. </p>
<p>Also, many populists have been at the forefront of using social media to communicate “directly” with their followers. The examples of Italy’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-brexit-keep-a-close-watch-on-italy-and-its-five-star-movement-61589">Five Star Movement</a>, the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/08/05/donald-trump-and-the-tea-party-myth-why-the-gop-is-now-an-identity-movement-not-a-political-party/">US Tea Party</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/stranded-on-a-platform-refugees-feel-the-force-of-hostility-in-hungary-47047">Hungary’s Jobbik</a> are instructive here. This type of engagement is something on which mainstream parties have tended to be woefully behind the times.</p>
<p>Third, populists have become more savvy and increased their appeal in the past decade. In fields of candidates who often seem to be cut from a very similar cloth, populists stand out by <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728">offering a performance</a> that seems more authentic, more appealing and often downright more entertaining than other politicians. </p>
<p>This is something that often gets skirted past in the panic over Trump: much of his appeal stems from the fact that <a href="https://theconversation.com/youre-fired-donald-trump-shows-rivals-how-its-done-in-entertainment-politics-5432">he is entertaining</a> and often quite funny, no doubt a byproduct of years on reality television and media training. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RPfxyFMUd1k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harking back to his days on The Apprentice, Donald Trump ‘fires’ Barack Obama as the crowd cheers.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although being entertaining and amusing may seem trivial when we talk about politics, these things matter. Populists understand that contemporary politics is not just a matter of putting forward policies for voters to deliberate rationally upon as some kind of <em>Homo politicus</em>, but rather of appealing to people with a full performative “package” that is attractive, emotionally resonant and relevant. </p>
<p>Fourth, populists have been remarkably successful at not only reacting to crises, but actively aiming to <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0017257X1400013X">bring about and perpetuate a sense of crisis</a> through their performances. </p>
<p>Populist actors use this sense of crisis, breakdown or threat to pit “the people” against “the elite” and associated enemies, to radically simplify the terms and terrain of political debate, and to advocate (their) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/donald-trump-republican-convention-speech-law-order">strong leadership and quick political action</a> to solve the crisis. </p>
<p>In an era where it seems that we pinball from crisis to crisis – the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis and an alleged widespread “crisis of democracy” among others – this tactic has proven very effective. </p>
<p>Finally, populists are often good at exposing the deficiencies of contemporary democratic systems. Populism in Latin America and Asia has in many cases been an understandable reaction to corrupt, hollowed-out and exclusionary “democratic” systems. In Europe, many populist actors’ opposition to the EU or the demands of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_troika">European troika</a> has brought to light the “democratic deficit” <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-and-eu-both-need-major-democratic-reform-to-survive-brexit-fallout-55870">at the heart of elite projects</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, populists have often posited themselves as the only true voice standing up to the economic and social forces of globalisation, which many mainstreams parties by and large support. This means the populists can effectively appeal to those at the pointy end of such processes.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2011 poster for a citizen intervention rally in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">outtacontext/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So, why the shock?</h2>
<p>If we take these factors together, it is little surprise that populism is on the rise across the globe. People have very valid reasons for following and voting for populist actors and are doing so in increasing numbers.</p>
<p>As such, let’s drop the surprise. Instead of being dumbfounded every time a populist does well: when Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, when Rodrigo Duterte is elected president of the Philippines, when Pauline Hanson is elected to the Senate, when Nigel Farage’s UKIP dreams <a href="https://theconversation.com/having-divided-and-conquered-nigel-farage-makes-a-perfectly-timed-exit-62012">become reality</a>, when Austria comes <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-era-may-be-dawning-again-for-radical-right-populists-in-austria-and-europe-61662">close to electing a far-right president</a> – a list from only the past couple of months – we need to face reality. </p>
<p>These are not mistakes, not outliers, not weird anomalies. It’s time to drop the “tut-tutting”, the shaking of heads in disbelief and the disapproval of those who vote for such characters. At its worst, this <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html">smacks of dangerous anti-democratic elitism</a>. </p>
<p>Such actions are merely self-serving and ultimately paralysing. The first step in combating populism is acknowledging that it is not an aberration, but rather a central part of contemporary democratic politics. Only after we face that fact can we begin do anything about it. When it comes to the global rise of populism, acceptance is the first step to recovery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Moffitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We are witnessing the global rise of populism. Once seen as a fringe phenomenon from another era or only certain parts of the world, populism is a mainstay of politics today across the globe.Benjamin Moffitt, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/611482016-08-12T01:52:46Z2016-08-12T01:52:46ZWestern democracy needs humility to step beyond its own shadow<p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This is part two of an essay on humility’s value for democracy in dark times. Read part one <a href="https://theconversation.com/humilitys-value-for-democracy-in-dark-times-58500">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Joshua Kurlantzick’s provocative book <a href="http://www.cfr.org/democratization/democracy-retreat/p29458">Democracy in Retreat</a> paints a pessimistic picture of the prospects for democracy in much of the world. Echoing <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/end-transition-paradigm">Thomas Carothers’ influential observations</a>, Kurlantzick strongly suggests political transitions can no longer be expected to lead to liberal democracy.</p>
<p>Reflecting on how democracy promoters should adjust to this changing environment, he concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even while reviving aggressive advocacy for democracy and human rights, established democracies also need to become more humble. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This seems like an intuitively reasonable suggestion. But what might it actually mean?</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/humilitys-value-for-democracy-in-dark-times-58500">Humility is a valuable trait</a> to possess when viewing attempts at democratisation, which is inevitably a difficult and fraught process. The frustration and impatience with the uneven and incomplete nature of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Democracy">third wave</a> of democratisation, as well as the disappointment with the inconclusive direction of the Arab Spring, is based on a superficial reading of how democracy successfully developed elsewhere.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127690/original/image-20160622-19773-1ngh5zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What should we make of the short-lived optimism of the Arab Spring?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kurbey Urner/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Samuel Huntington <a href="http://www.ou.edu/uschina/gries/articles/IntPol/Huntington.91.Demo.3rd.pdf">observed</a>, each wave of democratisation has been followed by a reverse wave in which some countries revert to non-democratic rule. Failed attempts at democratisation and the return of authoritarian regimes are hardly new phenomena, and they certainly should <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-islam-have-a-problem-with-democracy-the-case-of-the-maldives-58040">not be unexpected</a>.</p>
<p>It is remarkable how quickly optimism about the Arab Spring gave way to disappointment. The situation may not look positive right now, but the story is far from finished.</p>
<h2>An uneven and ongoing process</h2>
<p>Despite the allusion to Europe’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848">“springtime of the peoples”</a>, many seem to forget that the immediate consequences of the 1848 revolutions were thoroughly disappointing from the perspective of democracy. It took many of these countries another century of considerable bloodshed and instability to usher in stable democratic rule.</p>
<p>Democratisation is an uneven and ongoing process, one that can provide hope but no guarantees. Not until the 1960s did all citizens in the US receive full and equal rights, and problems still remain, notably in attempts to disenfranchise people through <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/01/voter-id-laws">aggressive forms of voter identification</a>. </p>
<p>It is vital to appreciate the difficult, uneven nature of democratisation and the considerable challenges of maintaining democracy. This was observed by Václav Havel, who <a href="http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9503/articles/havel.html">reflected</a> on “the limited ability of today’s democratic world to step beyond its own shadow”.</p>
<p>Too often, democracy is understood solely in reference to the Western experience with it. One recent example of this is the <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/16/the-u-s-must-put-democracy-at-the-center-of-its-foreign-policy/">open letter</a> calling on US presidential candidates to prioritise democracy promotion. It states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no cookie-cutter approach to supporting democracy and human rights, but there are fundamental, universal features we should emphasise: representative institutions, rule of law, accountability, free elections, anti-corruption, free media (including the internet), vibrant civil society, independent trade unions, property rights, open markets, women’s and minority rights, and freedoms of expression, assembly, association and religion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What is presented here as “universal” is actually a prescription of democracy that accords closely with the American experience. Many of these features are highly valuable and worthwhile, but this is an argument that should be made, rather than simply appealing to universalism, which many are rightly sceptical of.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130665/original/image-20160715-2150-ewonpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Gast’s 1872 painting American Progress shows Columbia, a personification of the US, leading civilisation and democracy westward.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A more humble approach</h2>
<p>A more humble approach would start from the assumption that political change does not necessarily mean democratisation, but, when it does occur, a desire for democracy does not automatically mean a preference for the specific liberal democratic model found in the West. </p>
<p>On this point, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Larbi_Sadiki">Larbi Sadiki</a> has argued that Western preconceptions limit our ability to understand what democratisation and democracy may look like in the Arab Middle East.</p>
<p>In particular, there is a strong need to be more attuned to the way the political and economic spheres relate in the democracy. In the dominant model of liberal democracy – one that matches the above description – the economic sphere is normally removed from democratic control. </p>
<p>In fact, it often works to constrain democratic possibilities. The strong pressure for economic liberalisation and structural reforms has had very mixed results. And where it has caused considerable hardship for people, it has tarnished democracy’s name.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/18/a-users-guide-to-democratic-transitions/">Coleman and Lawson-Remer observed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The success of emerging democracies depends fundamentally on whether democratisation can also materially improve people’s lives.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With growing socioeconomic problems in many transitional countries and consolidated democracies, the promise of democracy looks increasingly hollow or false. Democracy is meant to be about freedom and equality, but more people now wonder if it can deliver either.</p>
<p>Economics is also relevant for considering the changing ideational climate surrounding democracy. Perceptions that China has been performing strongly, combined with the economic troubles of developed democracies since the 2008 financial crisis, means there is not the same degree of confidence in democratisation being the best course for political transitions.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130670/original/image-20160715-2120-z6efqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not a universally loved brand: this mural on the wall of Tehran’s former US embassy declares: ‘We stomp on America’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/adavey/4771974342">A. Davey/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Growing doubts have been reinforced by the many problems and challenges Western democracies are facing. Brexit did little to recommend the virtues of democracy to the rest of the world. If anything, it revived classical fears that putting power in the hands of the people is a recipe for bad decisions. </p>
<p>The unravelling of America’s political system is especially <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-democracy-in-other-countries/">damaging for the brand of democracy</a>. Others are more likely to emulate America’s democratic ideals if it is widely regarded as a just, prosperous, vibrant and tolerant society. </p>
<p>Instead, it is one where inequality is rampant, gun violence is depressingly common, leading politicians are loudmouthed xenophobes, the prison population is the world’s largest, and airports and other public infrastructure are visibly decaying. This is hardly a great advertisement for democracy.</p>
<h2>A two-way approach to supporting democracy</h2>
<p>Simply put, democracy’s brand is not as attractive as it once was. In turn, this suggests supporters of democracy would benefit from turning inward and considering the limitations of their own regimes. </p>
<p>Adopting a more humble approach suggests a more open, two-way approach to supporting democracy, in which both sides learn from each other. Given that established democracies face serious problems with de-democratisation and the undermining of democratic institutions and practices, there is value in seeing what lessons or experiences they can potentially draw upon.</p>
<p>One danger of adopting a more humble approach is that it can justify or encourage inaction. This has been an accusation repeatedly levelled at US President Barack Obama for his responses to political turmoil in the Ukraine and the Middle East. </p>
<p>There are legitimate grounds for concern here. Certainly, passivity does not cohere well with a democratic ethos. But, if instead one understands humility in terms of an awareness of one’s limits and an acknowledgement of what has yet to be achieved, it has the potential to support democratic government. </p>
<p>Retreat from the world is not a viable option, but one must come to terms with the constraints on action that do limit what possible futures are open. Arthur Schlesinger junior conveyed this idea well when <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/22/opinion/reinhold-niebuhr-s-long-shadow.html">describing the worldview</a> of one of America’s most important thinkers on humility, Reinhold Niebuhr:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Humility, he believed, must temper, not sever, the nerve of action.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130669/original/image-20160715-2110-1ns7vyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western democracy is no longer the only game in town: China’s Wang Qishan accepts an autographed basketball from Barack Obama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wang_Qishan_,Obama_Basketball_S%26ED.jpg">Pete Souza/White House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much as Francis Fukuyama’s claims that we had reached “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/bring-back-ideology-fukuyama-end-history-25-years-on">the end of history</a>” were overblown a quarter of a century ago, Roger Cohen’s recent lament about the “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/the-death-of-liberalism.html">death of liberalism</a>” is equally misplaced. Excessive pessimism is <a href="https://theconversation.com/pessimism-is-rife-optimism-naive-activism-is-the-best-tool-for-now-63458">replacing excessive optimism</a>, but both offer an equally distorted perspective on democracy’s place in the world. </p>
<p>Here there is value in taking a longer view. Doing so, it soon becomes clear that the immediate post-Cold-War era was an unusual time when liberal democracy was the only game in town.</p>
<p>Part of what may now be occurring is simply a realignment; a shift back to the kind of situation that has long prevailed – a world made up of a diverse range of governments, one of which is democracy. </p>
<p>In such a context, the value of democracy needs to be restated and defended, rather than presumed. And, in doing so, there is value in adopting a more tempered stance, one that appreciates the limitations and flaws of democracy and our attempts at supporting it, while retaining a quiet confidence in the reasons we continue to value this form of rule.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Hobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The value of democracy needs to be restated and defended, rather than presumed. In doing so, there is value in adopting a more tempered stance, one that understands its worth but also its flaws.Christopher Hobson, Associate Professor, School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607782016-08-05T21:53:54Z2016-08-05T21:53:54ZWhither anarchy: the fantasy of natural law<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125846/original/image-20160609-3477-13syepb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do outdated fantasies of anarchism simply play into the agendas of the rich and privileged? Nuit debout in Paris, 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/boklm/26322384582/">Nicolas Vigier/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This article is the last of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchy and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>What is the relevance of anarchism today? Should we see a reinvigoration of anarchist tropes and themes or movements – such as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-triumph-of-occupy-wall-street/395408/">Occupy</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">Spanish Indignados</a> and most recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-frances-nuitdebout-protests-the-start-of-a-new-political-movement-57706">Nuit debout in France</a> – as a sign that anarchism is about to enjoy a resurgence?</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the slow but undeniable decline of political ideologies and sources of inspiration for political action, my feeling is that anarchism has fallen into a certain redundancy when confronted with the issues that animate activists today.</p>
<p>The anarchist focus on the state as the locus for its critique of how power and domination operate has a vaguely antique air to it. It’s an analysis that belongs to the early modern era and particularly to the period of high colonialism that inspired the classic works of anarchism in the early and mid-19th century.</p>
<p>What we see in this period is state power being used to eviscerate indigenous ownership over land. This happened both as an internal process of what Marx called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capital">primitive accumulation</a>” and as an external process of forced conquest and enslavement of subject peoples. </p>
<p>From this point of view, the anarchists’ argument that the key antagonism lies between a statist metropolitan core and various forms of collective communal existences beyond or outside of the state is compelling. Resistance to the state was thus a logical strategy for those who wish to preserve and consecrate forms of social life beyond or outside the state.</p>
<p>For anarchists such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Joseph-Proudhon">Proudhon</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Alekseyevich-Kropotkin">Kropotkin</a>, society worked best when it ran in accordance with “natural law”, which they, by contrast with the likes of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Hobbes">Hobbes</a>, regarded as essentially benign and sociable. </p>
<p>It was the state that disrupted the possibility of social peace and harmony, not “us”. The state was an imposition, an artifice whose origins are rooted in the protection and promotion of inequality and enslavement.</p>
<p>In the mid-19th century, it was perhaps still plausible to cling to the idea of the reinvigoration of “society” as potentially having a distinct life apart from the institutions and processes of the state. </p>
<h2>Battlelines have shifted</h2>
<p>Let’s fast-forward to today’s “anarchistic” movements. What provided the spark for Nuit debout? In origin it was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Khomri_law">Loi de travail</a>. And what is that about? A threat to undermine hard-won gains by generations of trade unionists who have sought to use state power to protect workers’ rights from the encroachments of the market and neoliberals.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125850/original/image-20160609-3497-mrsv2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is the problem ‘too much state’ or not enough?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Georges P/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This movement and the protests going on in France as I write are inspired not by the prospect of the state encroaching on society and “natural law”, but by the threat of the state withdrawing from the economic sphere, leaving workers exposed to the law of the market. The problem is not “too much state”, but not enough – or not enough to protect those who stand to lose from the winding back of state protection in the name of economic competitiveness.</p>
<p>The antagonisms that give rise to political mobilisation today have quite a different character to those of 19th century. Once this antagonism was between the state and society. Now the key conflict is between the state and the market. </p>
<p>“Rolling back the state” is a phrase we rightly associate with an aggressive assault on decades of collective agreements, understandings, practices and institutions. Together, these have provided the basis for commodious living under market or capitalist conditions. This includes state-provided health services, education, welfare payments, social housing and the like.</p>
<p>Rolling back the state is no longer suggestive of restoring or preserving the rights of indigenous, tribal or other kinds of “natural” association. There remains a kind of doctrinaire anarchist who is deeply hostile to seeing these facets of collective life as anything other than a sop to capitalism. They are wary of creating “happy slaves” far removed from the image of the fully autonomous individual they believe would be the result of removing the state.</p>
<p>The Occupy protesters, the Indignados, Nuit debout and all the rest know better than that. The absence of a program, ideology or manifesto from these political phenomena can be read as a nod in the direction of an “anarchistic” practice, as can the deliberative assemblies, the <a href="http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/10/can-prefigurative-politics-replace-political-strategy/">“pre-figurative”</a> gestures of soup kitchens etc.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125848/original/image-20160609-3475-bcwv59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forget about soup kitchens, what about anarchist community television?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Vigier/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the absence of demands is better read as a desire to maintain an inclusive “anger” about the direction in which our world and our politics is heading – away from social democratic, state-centric collective life towards a warts-and-all “natural existence” where the dominant ethos is “survival of the fittest”. </p>
<p>It’s a world that <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/">Stirner</a> and individualistic anarchists might be comfortable in – but not collectivists or anyone concerned about the least well-off.</p>
<h2>State or society is a false choice</h2>
<p>My hunch is that it is Donald Trump, Wall Street and Big Finance that will gain from “anarchy”, not the poor, the marginal and those whose plight animated the emergence of an anarchist theory and practice in the first place. </p>
<p>Anarchism lost its “natural” constituency in the more or less violent process of the unfolding of modernity, whether of the state capitalist, communist or free market varieties. </p>
<p>What we are left with is not a choice between “state” and “society”, but between a state that serves the needs and interests of its citizens and a state that prioritises the needs and interests of <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543178">the 1%</a>.</p>
<p>Many anarchists know this, which is why some of them are standing for election in places like Spain, Iceland and Italy – and winning. They understand that the contemporary task is not the abolition of the state, as per the classical anarchist formula, but its transformation into a vehicle that better expresses the needs and wishes of ordinary citizens. </p>
<p>It is not to rid us of political authority in the name of “natural law”, but to create the conditions for a more authentic and more involving form of democracy that protects many of the “wins” from decades of struggles by trade unionists, social movements and progressive political parties.</p>
<p>Today’s anarchists should give up the fantasy of “abolishing the state”. That simply plays into the agenda of the rich and privileged. Instead, they should join in the movement to make the state more democratic, more accountable and better able to reflect the views, needs and interests of all of its citizens.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today’s anarchists should give up the fantasy of ‘abolishing the state’. That simply plays into the agenda of the rich and privileged.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607772016-08-05T21:53:40Z2016-08-05T21:53:40ZWhither anarchy: ownness as a form of freedom<p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This article is the third of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchy and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Freedom, that most familiar of concepts in political theory, strikes us today as ever-more ambiguous and opaque. </p>
<p>While freedom has long been the ideological emblem of the liberal capitalist West, it seems increasingly difficult to identify with any real clarity or certainty. Its meaning has been contorted by the rationality of neoliberalism, which offers us only a very narrow notion of freedom through the market while, as <a href="https://medanth.wikispaces.com/Governmentality">Foucault would put it</a>, governing us through our own liberty.</p>
<p>The supposedly free individual is required to conform to certain norms and codes of behaviour, which coincide with the dictates of the market. Thus the individual, in the name of freedom, is pushed back upon himself and becomes solely responsible for his own economic destiny. This inculcates within him an eternal sense of guilt when he fails to live up to prescribed standards of success or “resilience”.</p>
<p>Furthermore, freedom has become absolutely hinged to the ideology of security that is now omnipresent in liberal societies. </p>
<p>We might add to this a consideration of the innumerable daily instances where, in liberal states (I now use this term advisedly), freedom is constrained and curtailed – by, for instance, over-zealous lawmakers, judiciaries, police and other state institutions and private corporations – not to mention the lack of economic “liberty” experienced by the majority of the dispossessed around the world. </p>
<p>We are tempted to say that the concept of freedom finds itself in a dead-end. When we talk about freedom today, we literally don’t know what we’re talking about.</p>
<h2>Stirner on freedom from within</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125843/original/image-20160609-3475-1l0ytzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Max Stirner in 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Félix Valloton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the mid-19th century, the little-known German Young Hegelian philosopher <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/">Max Stirner</a> was already arguing that the discourse of freedom was exhausted. </p>
<p>The problem with the standard notions of freedom was that they were dependent on certain external conditions and institutions, like the liberal state, or on the fulfilment of some promise of revolutionary emancipation. They thus reduced freedom to a kind of spectral ideal that always concealed new forms of domination.</p>
<p>If freedom is associated with a certain regime of law or type of community, or is aligned with a higher rational and moral ideal, this in effect alienates the individual’s freedom. </p>
<p>If freedom is associated with a form of state, then one allows the state to determine the limits of freedom.</p>
<p>If freedom is seen as an ideal to be achieved within a higher rational and moral community, then one either pursues an impossible dream, or allows freedom to be determined by a revolutionary vanguard seeking to impose its own vision on society.</p>
<p>In other words, according to Stirner, if external conditions and standards are seen to prescribe and determine the extent of freedom, one ends up disempowering individuals and robbing them of their own capacities for freedom. Such were the limits of freedom that Stirner proposed an alternative notion of ownness, by which he intended a more radical understanding of self-ownership.</p>
<p>What is ownness? Unlike the mystification of freedom, the pursuit of which has become a hollow game (the same could be said about democracy), ownness is a much more tangible experience. I understand it as ontological freedom: the freedom one always already has. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125835/original/image-20160609-3509-188hb8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radical self-ownership is a form of freedom we already have.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Huybrechts/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What does this mean? First, it is a singular form of freedom, which is left to individuals to create for themselves, rather than conforming to any universalised or institutionally defined ideal. </p>
<p>Nor is it a question of emancipation, as this simply risks another form of domination – we have seen this in many revolutions aimed at “freeing” a subjugated people. Rather, it is up to the individuals themselves, affirming themselves and their own indifference to all forms of power.</p>
<p>While this might sound like a form of wishful thinking – this was Marx and Engels’ claim against Stirner – it alerts us to what <a href="http://etiennedelaboetie.net/">La Boétie</a> saw as the <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saul-newman-voluntary-servitude-reconsidered-radical-politics-and-the-problem-of-self-dominatio">voluntary servitude</a> and wilful obedience that underpinned all forms of domination. The flipside of this was a wilful disobedience and a reclamation of one’s own power.</p>
<p>Perhaps we can say that ownness is the experience of self-affirmation and empowerment that ontologically precedes all acts of liberation. Let’s take <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own">Stirner’s example of the slave</a>. While the slave has little or no freedom in his chains, he nevertheless has ownness, a sense of self-possession. It is the one thing his master cannot take from him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That I then become free from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this situation, freedom, whether liberal or republican, whether understood as non-interference or non-domination, simply cannot account for the slave’s sense of autonomy, his understanding of himself as his own property and not anyone else’s.</p>
<h2>Lessons for today</h2>
<p>What lessons does this have for us today? In recent years we have witnessed an unprecedented breakdown and crisis of legitimacy in our representative political institutions. </p>
<p>In the hands of our political elites, all these high-minded ideals of liberty, rights and democracy no longer signify anything; they have come to be associated with the worst hypocrisies and abuses.</p>
<p>At the same time, we have learnt – rightly – to be wary of revolutionary promises of liberation and alternative forms of social order as an antidote to the current situation. The question of freedom today is located in this gap between crumbling institutions and the eclipse of utopian horizons.</p>
<p>In response to this deadlock we have seen new forms of political experimentation, in which people seek to define their own lives and their relations with others in ways that are autonomous from dominant modes of political and economic organisation. </p>
<p>Institutions are not destroyed – for what would this lead to but simply a new kind of institutionalisation? Rather they are profaned; used without identifying with or investing in them. </p>
<p>We start to think and act as though power no longer existed. This is not the freedom of the neoliberal subject, sacrificing himself to the God of the Market, but the self-determination of owners invested in themselves and, through themselves, in others.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saul Newman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Between institutional collapse and false promises of utopia, people seek to define their own lives and their relations with others by thinking and acting as though power no longer existed.Saul Newman, Professor of Political Theory, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/599792016-08-05T05:30:55Z2016-08-05T05:30:55ZWhither anarchy: perspectives on anarchism and liberty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129333/original/image-20160705-19110-1jh0g40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anarchism's opposition to arbitrary power is often militant, but liberty is no simple thing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://thetransmetropolitanreview.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/the-transmetropolitan-review-4/">Transmetropolitan Review</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. The essay is the first of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchism and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The following reflections on the subject of anarchism give a voice to the spirit of anarchy. By this I don’t mean what’s conventionally understood by the term: disturbance, disagreement and violent confusion triggered by the lack (<em>an</em>) of a ruler (<em>arkhos</em>). Rather, the perspectives published in this collection of essays brim with interest in the spirit of anarchism and its radical defence of unrestrained liberty, whose reality I first encountered on my hometown streets, with a wham and a whump.</p>
<p>At the high point of public opposition to the Vietnam War, during a rush-hour sit-down by several thousand fellow students, riot police were summoned to clear the traffic snarl we’d caused at the main CBD intersection of our city. The picture below captures something of the swelling mayhem, as helmeted constables, wielding batons, came in on horseback. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130789/original/image-20160717-2153-7bfpr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, Adelaide (June 1971).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Keane</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To my astonishment, in the midst of tumult and turmoil, the anarchists in our ranks cool-headedly whipped out bags of marbles from deep inside their pockets. Unused to rollerskating, the horses grew unsteady; frightened, they began to rear up and draw back from the crowd. The anarchist tactics were simple, militant and effective. </p>
<p>I was impressed, and that’s perhaps why I soon graduated to The Anarchist Cookbook, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarchist-cookbook-author-william-powell-out-of-print">written by William Powell</a>. First published in 1971, and oozing so much liberty that governments around the world quickly banned it, the handbook included tips for manufacturing everything from telephone phreaking devices to home-made hash brownies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129159/original/image-20160704-19094-gr2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Un Chien Andalou</em>, an early favourite.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/47357563@N06/8249357618">Jennifer Mei/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My taste for black, and for surrealist films, soon followed. <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_Chien_Andalou">Un Chien Andalou</a></em> was an early favourite: a 1928 short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí whose “dream logic” had no plot in any conventional sense. </p>
<p>Then came some serious reading: George Orwell’s <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/13594#.V3sv7JN95Bw">Homage to Catalonia</a> and Noam Chomsky’s <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/american-power-new-mandarins">American Power and the New Mandarins</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Quite generally, what grounds are there for supposing that those whose claim to power is based on knowledge and technique will be more benign in their exercise of power than those whose claim is based on wealth or aristocratic origin?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I paid attention to studies of the first self-organising affluent societies by the radical anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Pierre Clastres. Later, I sat at the feet of the priestly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/09/guardianobituaries.highereducation">Ivan Illich</a>; listened to flamboyant lectures by <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/">Herbert Marcuse</a> on feminism and repressive tolerance; and attended seminars on anarchism and ecology by <a href="http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.html">Murray Bookchin</a>. </p>
<p>I met the author of <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/greer-germaine/female-eunuch.htm">The Female Eunuch</a> and several times, in clubs so small they felt like Turkish baths, heard The Clash rail against petty injustice, plutocrats, poverty and racism. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sYbHRQ_sYGI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What’s My Name? A cry against the dole and sentence-happy magistrates (London, July 1978).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I found myself influenced by <a href="http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/powerknowledge">Michel Foucault’s writings on power/knowledge</a> and <a href="http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Obituary/debord.html">Guy Debord’s</a> theory of mediated resistance; and I listened intently to lectures by <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/castoria/">Cornelius Castoriadis</a> in defence of the idea of the autonomous individual lucid in her desires, clear-headed about reality, and capable of responsibly holding herself accountable for what she does in the world.</p>
<h2>On Liberty</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130778/original/image-20160716-2141-19ixlib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">C.B. Macpherson (1911-1987).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ocufa.on.ca</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was my doctoral supervisor, <a href="http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/possessive-individualism.html">C.B. Macpherson</a>, who taught me to combine the subject of liberty with the principle of equality, and to do so by way of serious reflection on the past, present and future of democracy. Thanks to the quiet doyen of democratic theory, I became a part-time anarchist. </p>
<p>I still today sympathise with the anarchist disgust for heteronomy and its passion for liberty, with what Saul Newman, in the third of these articles, <a href="http://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-ownness-as-a-form-of-freedom-60777">calls freedom as ownness</a>, or “the experience of self-affirmation and empowerment which ontologically precedes all acts of liberation”. </p>
<p>The formula probably underestimates what Freud taught us: that all individuals are shaped involuntarily by yearnings, unintelligible fragments, fabrications and omissions rooted in childhood. </p>
<p>Yet the great strength of the anarchist emphasis on “self-affirmation and empowerment” is the agenda it continues to set: to recognise the strangeness of our involuntary love of power, to strive to overcome our voluntary servitude, to rid ourselves of the urge “to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WvvQfxvGfpYC&pg=PR13&dq=Anti-Oedipus+Preface+Michel+Foucault&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4uaaLvdvNAhWEtpQKHdW_AfQQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=Anti-Oedipus%20Preface%20Michel%20Foucault&f=false">Foucault</a>).</p>
<p>The stress placed by anarchism on these themes, and on the principle that arbitrary power relations are contingent, and hence alterable, still rings true. In recent times, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0038x9t">anarchist sensibility</a> has again come alive in many different global settings, from Greenpeace “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/11/how-to-change-the-world-greenpeace-power-mindbomb">mind bombs</a>”, the M-15 movement in Spain, Taiwans’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement">Sunflower uprising</a> to the punk band <a href="http://thebaffler.com/blog/punk-rock-and-protest-asim">G.L.O.S.S.</a> (“Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit”). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130777/original/image-20160716-2122-n8vl51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">M-15 public demonstration against austerity in the Plaza de la Corredera, Córdoba, Spain, June 9, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/72957193@N00/5852321762">Javi/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the cause of liberty, all this is well and good. Except that anarchism has no special monopoly on these concerns. In practice, conceptually and politically speaking, democracy handles things better, or so I came to think.</p>
<h2>Institutions</h2>
<p>The following essays by <a href="http://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-freedom-as-non-domination-60776">Alex Prichard and Ruth Kinna</a> and <a href="http://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-ownness-as-a-form-of-freedom-60777">Saul Newman</a> emphasise that the anarchist ideal of freedom rejects states, private property in market form, and the “hollow game” of democracy. Such institutions are deemed antithetical to freedom as non-domination. </p>
<p>Written constitutions, watchdog bodies, periodic elections, parliamentary representation, trial by jury, public service broadcasting, education, health and welfare protections: while all these (and other) institutions are motivated by the principle of equality, the anarchists in this series are inclined to dismiss them as mere instruments of disempowerment, as violators of the lives of individuals blessed ontologically with their own “ownness” (<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/#2">Max Stirner’s <em>Eigenheit</em></a>).</p>
<p>In his contribution to this dossier, <a href="http://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-the-fantasy-of-natural-law-60778">Simon Tormey</a> notes how this conviction unwittingly aligns anarchists with the “freedom of choice” and “possessive individualism” (Macpherson) ideology of contemporary neo-liberalism; he rightly emphasises the political foolishness of jettisoning institutions that can function as levers of resistance to injustice and subordination. </p>
<p>My encounters with anarchists taught me something else: in group settings, anarchists demand informality (“structurelessness” as <a href="http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm">Jo Freeman called it</a>), yet the lack of institutional rules makes everyone vulnerable to manipulation and takeovers by cunning, well-organised factions.</p>
<p>Strategic objections to anarchist ideas of freedom as “non-domination” are compelling; but, arguably, they don’t burrow deeply enough into why anarchism has no love of institutions. Philosophically speaking, anarchism was born of a 19th-century age blind to the embodied linguistic horizons within which individuation takes place from the moment we are born. </p>
<p>Karl Marx had no developed theory of language, yet he spotted (in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundrisse"><em>Grundrisse</em></a>) that individuals “come into connection with one another only in determined ways”. </p>
<p>Rephrased, we could say, within any culture, that individuals resemble spiders entangled in laced webs of language that structure their time-space identities. What we think, who we are, how we represent ourselves to others and act on the world: all of this, and more, is framed by the linguistic horizons (Wittgenstein called them the language “scaffolding” (<em><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=bisiGaxtIlcC&pg=PT246&dq=%22part+of+the+framework+%5BGerust%5D%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWgeCP2tvNAhVLEpQKHZExDVkQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Ger%C3%BCst&f=false">Gerüst</a></em>) of our everyday lives.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130780/original/image-20160716-2153-vul26o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The totally ‘free’ individual is a misleading fiction and impossible utopia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonasb/364609049/">Jonas Bengtsson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It follows that notions of liberty vary according to the language games people play with others. Since individuals are chronically bound through language to the lives of others, the whole image of “free” individuals as “un-dominated by any other” is both a misleading fiction and impossible utopia. How “individuals” define and practise their “liberty” is shaped by their linguistic engagement with others.</p>
<p>And as these entanglements are infused with power relations, individuation is very much a political matter, a process defined by structured tensions and struggles over who gets what, when and how, and whether they should do so.</p>
<h2>Complex liberty</h2>
<p>The point is that institutions matter. Anarchists excel at criticising factual power, but their proposed counterfactual alternatives are typically weak.
The “cult of the natural, the spontaneous, the individual” (<a href="http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/1.html">George Woodcock</a>) runs deep in their thinking. </p>
<p>Yes, in certain circumstances the “passion for destruction” (<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/history/publications/2006-leier.html">Bakunin</a>) can be creative. But loose talk of “unions of egoists” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_egoists">Stirner</a>), “social communion” (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wQ2PBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA294&lpg=PA294&dq=Proudhon+%22social+communion%22&source=bl&ots=3Zt-Oo6lvl&sig=lXdQVGxhPSFcvC4xt7gyfQPrHyg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCgKyTwNvNAhWJKpQKHdLOAXIQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=Proudhon%20%22social%20communion%22&f=false">Proudhon</a>) and “camp rules” and “constitutionalism” (Ruth Kinna and Alex Prichard’s iteration) falls wide of the mark.</p>
<p>Loose talk of liberty neglects the fundamental point that the empowerment of individuals, their exercise of freedom understood as “non-domination”, requires their protection from bossing and bullying by others. That is the meaning of the old maxim that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. </p>
<p>More than a few ugly crimes have been committed in its name, which is why beautiful liberty requires restraint in order to be exercised well. Liberty is no simple thing. It is a political matter bound up with institutionalised struggles for equality among individuals, groups, networks and organisations.</p>
<p>The type of institutions matters. That’s the whole point of democracy: its power-monitoring, power-sharing institutions are designed to conjoin liberty with equality, in complex ways, in defence of citizens and their chosen representatives, in opposition to the disabling effects of arbitrary power.</p>
<p>Armed with the grammar of complex liberty tempered by complex equality, democrats warn of the dark side of anarchism, the dogmatic ism-conviction that in matters of liberty, language and institutions are trumped by the preference for simplicity over complexity.</p>
<p>There’s another sense in which the old anarchist ideology of the autonomous individual is today questionable: its neglect of the non-human. We’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-raises-risks-of-earth-without-democracy-and-without-us-38911">entered an age</a> of eco-destruction and eco-renewal marked by rising public awareness that we human beings ineluctably live as animals in complex biomes not of our choosing. The contributions below are silent about this trend. </p>
<p>Why? The part-time anarchist in me suspects that it’s because their particular anarchist vision of freedom as “ownness” and non-domination is anthropocentric. Their liberty is the all-too-human licence freely to <em>dominate nature</em>.</p>
<p>If that’s so, then the old subject of anarchy and liberty is confronted by new <em>democratic</em> questions: is it possible to include the non-human in definitions of freedom as the unchecked propensity of humans to act on their worlds? </p>
<p>How might the “ownness” enjoyed by free individuals be brought back to Earth? Can these free individuals hereon be regarded as humble “actants” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory">Bruno Latour</a>)? Are people capable of living their lives in dignity, unhindered by arbitrary power, as equals, entangled in complex biomes they know are so much part of themselves that they must be their vigilant stewards?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberty is a political matter bound up with institutionalised struggles for equality among individuals, groups, networks and organisations. This is where the cult of the free individual falls down.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607762016-08-05T05:30:51Z2016-08-05T05:30:51ZWhither anarchy: freedom as non-domination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125826/original/image-20160609-3506-1ywe8h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anarchists once took constitutionalism very seriously and might well do so again to develop radical decision-making practices. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjd/2502535352">Kim Davis/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. This article is the second of four perspectives on the political relevance of anarchism and the prospects for liberty in the world today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Which institutions are best suited to realising freedom? This is a question recently asked by the republican political theorist <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/%7Eppettit/">Philip Pettit</a>. </p>
<p>Anarchists, by contrast to republicans, argue that the modern nation-state and the institution of private property are antithetical to freedom. According to anarchists, these are historic injustices that are structurally dominating. If you value freedom as non-domination, you must reject both as inimical to realising this freedom.</p>
<p>But what is freedom as non-domination? In a nutshell, by a line of thinking most vocally articulated by Pettit, I’m free to the degree that I am not arbitrarily dominated by any other. I am not free if someone can arbitrarily interfere in the execution of my choices.</p>
<p>If I consent to a system of rules or procedures, anyone that then invokes these rules against me cannot be said to be curtailing my freedom from domination. My scope for action might be constrained, but since I have consented to the rules that now curtail my freedom, I am not subject to arbitrary domination.</p>
<p>Imagine, for instance, that I have a drinking problem and I’ve asked my best friend to keep me away from the bar. If she sees me heading in that direction and prevents me from getting anywhere near the alcohol, she dominates, but not arbitrarily, so my status as a free person is not affected. </p>
<p>Republican theory diverges from liberal theory because the latter treats any interference in my actions as a constraint on my freedom – especially if I paid good money for the drink, making it my property.</p>
<p>Neither republicans nor liberals suggest that private property and the state might themselves be detrimental to freedom, quite the opposite. By liberal accounts, private property is the bedrock of individual rights. In contemporary republican theory, property ownership is legitimate as long as it is non-dominating. </p>
<p>Republicans further argue that a state that tracks your interests and encourages deliberative contestation and active political participation will do best by your freedom.</p>
<h2>The special status of property and the state</h2>
<p>But why should we assume that property or the state is central to securing freedom as non-domination? The answer seems to be force of habit. For republicans like Pettit, the state is like the laws of physics while private property is akin to gravity. In ideal republican theory, these two institutions are just background conditions we simply have to deal with, neither dominating nor undominating, just there.</p>
<p>While anarchists don’t disagree that property and the state exist, they seek to defend a conception of freedom as non-domination that factors in their dominating, slavish and enslaving effects. Anarchism emerged in the 19th century, when republicanism, particularly in the US, was perfectly consistent with slavery and needed the state to enforce that state of affairs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125828/original/image-20160609-3475-hqnq0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anarchists denounce the institutions of dominance under industrial capitalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Quinn Dombrowski/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The abolition of slavery and the emergence of industrial capitalism were predicated on the extension of the principle of private property to the propertyless, not only slaves, who were encouraged to see themselves as self-possessors who could sell their labour on the open market at the market rate. </p>
<p>Likewise, in Europe millions of emancipated serfs were lured into land settlements that left them permanently indebted to landlords and state functionaries. They were barely able to meet taxes and rents and frequently faced starvation.</p>
<p>The anarchists uniformly denounced this process as the transformation of slavery, rather than its abolition. They deployed synonyms like “wage slavery” to describe the new state of affairs. Later, they extended their conception of domination by analysing sex slavery and marriage slavery.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/proudhon/sp001863.html">Proudhon’s</a> twin dictums “property is theft” and “slavery is murder” should be understood in this context. As he noted, neither would have been possible but for the republican state enforcing and upholding the capitalist property regime. </p>
<p>The state became dependent on taxes, while property owners were dependent on the state to keep recalcitrant populations at bay. And, by the mid-20th century, workers were dependent on the state for welfare and social security because of the poverty-level wages paid by capitalists.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/karl-polanyi-explainer-great-transformation-bernie-sanders">Karl Polanyi</a> noted, there was nothing natural about this process. The unfurling of the “free market”, the liberal euphemism for this process, had to be enforced and continues to be across the world. </p>
<p>Republicans might encourage us to think of the state and property like the laws of physics or gravity because this helps them argue that their conception of freedom as non-domination is not moralised – that is, their conception of freedom as non-domination does not depend on a prior ethical commitment to anything else. </p>
<p>But as soon as you strip away the physics, it appears that republican freedom is in fact deeply moralised – the state and private property remain central to the possibility of republican freedom in an a priori way. Republican accounts of freedom demand we ignore a prior ethical commitment to two institutions that should themselves be rejected.</p>
<p>Anarchists argue that private property and the state precipitate structures of domination that position people in hierarchical relations of domination, which are often if not always exacerbated by distinctions of race, gender and sexuality. These are what Uri Gordon calls the multiple <a href="http://news.infoshop.org/opinion/anarchism-and-multiculturalism">“regimes of domination”</a> that structure our lives.</p>
<h2>Looking to constitutionalism as a radical tool</h2>
<p>Anarchists are anarchists to the extent that they actively combat these forces. How should they do this?</p>
<p>Typically, the answer is through a specific form of communal empowerment (“power with” rather than “power over”). This would produce structural power egalitarianism, a situation in which no one can arbitrarily dominate another. </p>
<p>But is this realistic or desirable? Would a reciprocal powers politics not simply result in the very social conflicts that anarchists see structuring society already, as Pettit has argued?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128442/original/image-20160628-7851-e226ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even anarchists need rules to guide group decision-making – such as these ones at Occupy Vancouver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sallybuck/6381994175/in/photolist-aHrq5g-asTREh-bkWFhF-ayMM4U-ayK6Tc-aHXowk-avJLrY-awjZ3F-asRfxv-awfUQE">Sally T. Buck/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And what about radical democracy? Perhaps anarchists could replace engagement with the state with radical practices of decision-making? The problem is that anarchists haven’t even defined the requisite constituencies or how they should relate to one another. What if my mass constituency’s democratic voice conflicts with yours?</p>
<p>There is one implement in the republican tool box that anarchists once took very seriously and which might be resurrected: <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constitutionalism/">constitutionalism</a>. Without a state to fall back on or private property to lean on, anarchists like Proudhon devised radically anti-hierarchical and impressively imaginative constitutional forms. </p>
<p>Even today, when constitutionalism is almost uniformly associated with bureaucracy and domination, anarchists continue to devise constitutional systems. By looking at anarchist practices like the Occupy movement’s <a href="http://www.occupyboston.org/general-assembly/reaching-consensus/">camp rules</a> and declarations (We are the 99%!), we can revive anarchist constitutionalism and show how freedom as non-domination may be revised and deployed as an anti-capitalist, anti-statist emancipatory principle. You can <a href="http://www.anarchyrules.info">see more about this here</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/whither-anarchy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Prichard receives funding from the ESRC, under the 'Transforming Social Science' scheme, for a project entitled 'Constitutionalising Anarchy'. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Kinna receives funding from the ESRC, under the 'Transforming Social Science' scheme, for a project entitled 'Constitutionalising Anarchy'.</span></em></p>If anarchists reject private property and the state, they need to devise alternative, radical practices of power-sharing. Republican constitutionalism offers one way to think about this.Alex Prichard, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of ExeterRuth Kinna, Professor of Political Theory, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/488822016-07-22T22:46:40Z2016-07-22T22:46:40ZWhat animal could a democracy be? Ape, fox, lion … how about jellyfish?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116150/original/image-20160323-28111-10628e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The people in a democracy can be likened to the cells in a jellyfish.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Mike_Johnston_-_Jelly_Fish_(by).jpg&imgrefurl=https://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%25E0%25AE%259A%25E0%25AF%258A%25E0%25AE%25B1%25E0%25AE%25BF%25E0%25AE%25AE%25E0%25AF%2581%25E0%25AE%259F%25E0%25AF%258D%25E0%25AE%259F%25E0%25AF%2588&h=2000&w=3008&tbnid=acvExpKGGpMkGM:&docid=8Ex6co95FysTbM&ei=_B_yVtu7BMnSjAOOwY-QBQ&tbm=isch&ved=0ahUKEwjbqbDEgNbLAhVJKWMKHY7gA1IQMwgpKA0wDQ">Mike Johnston/Wikipedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Act I – The animals we are</h2>
<p>“If a democratic state were an organism, which one would it be?” asks the publican.</p>
<p>Silence. Some among the pub’s patrons – wanting a better view of the evening’s action – turn in their heavy chairs.</p>
<p>“Well,” speaks a man with a moustache so large it could provoke envy among walruses, “although <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kTbUAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA78&dq=the+psyche+of+a+nation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIxOyFrtPjxwIVgiCmCh1ZXAqq#v=onepage&q=the%20psyche%20of%20a%20nation&f=false">völkerpsychologie</a>, the idea that a state could have a personality, proved bunkum in the 20th century, it could help us answer this riddling question of yours.”</p>
<p>“Thus!” he booms between a gulp of beer, “if a democratic state were an organism it would be a bonobo – for these gentle cousins of ours are the democrats of the ape world!”</p>
<p>“Peaceful and co-operative the bonobos may be,” interrupts a lanky stork of a woman as she rises out of her chair, “but democratic states are often duplicitous. <a href="http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:185408">David Pritchard</a> reminds us that the ancient Athenians used their slave-owning democracy as a war-propellant, a conquest machine. Similarly, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3JjtHROah_YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=john+dinges&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Dinges</a> recounts America’s promotion of democracy as a means to cover its imperial ambitions.”</p>
<p>She flicks her hair. “I dare say then that a fox best represents the democratic state for they are cunning, realist survivors.”</p>
<p>There’s a loud noise as a septuagenarian pushes back his chair.</p>
<p>“It may be true,” he says, “as some think and have thunk it, that Machiavelli still walks the halls of parliaments. But, no offence to the fox, the idea of a democratic state as duplicitous, conniving or untrustworthy smears its good name.”</p>
<p>He stands to offer his conclusion.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116153/original/image-20160323-28081-1lu7q83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A roar
of equity?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tambako the Jaguar/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“No, a democratic state cannot be a fox. A democracy is a proud beast. It is a shining beacon in a world of threatening darkness that not only upholds, but beams the light of civic virtue, peace, economic prosperity and deliberation throughout the lands, seas and airs.</p>
<p>"A democratic state,” he pronounces, “is nought but a mighty lion whose roar is equity and whose bite is justice.”</p>
<p>Without pause he continues: “As it was said of England’s proud democracy in the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=eOFbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA38&dq=Most+noble+and+redoubted+Lion+bold&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVmZq4m8fNAhUBxpQKHQuRASwQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Most%20noble%20and%20redoubted%20Lion%20bold&f=false">Belfast prose of 1794</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most noble and redoubted Lion bold,</p>
<p>Know that the glories which you here behold,</p>
<p>Beneath this temple’s venerable dome,</p>
<p>Are to the proudest boasts of Greece or Rome –</p>
<p>Even as the spacious firmament on high,</p>
<p>Is to the frail crust of a mutton pie:</p>
<p>The wonder of all nations centres here,</p>
<p>Thy mighty image fills the world with fear;</p>
<p>What isle or desert, has not heard the story,</p>
<p>Of England’s Lion and of England’s glory!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A chorus of applause, charging drinks and cheers follow as the man, wearing a cravat so large and fine it might serve as his mane, sits down.</p>
<h2>Act II – The animals we aren’t</h2>
<p>As the evening’s opening arguments were being made, two young female students – wearing matching hats that give them that hard-to-achieve “twin penguin” look – had come into the bar and sat down to listen.</p>
<p>“I’d like to raise a point,” speaks the first student-penguin over the din of discussion that only busy pubs seem able to create. “We should talk about what organism a democratic state might be without relying on the dangerous fable of völkerpsychologie.”</p>
<p>Somewhere in the room a moustache twitched.</p>
<p>“For it was this Prussian lie that all Germans were iron tigers, Czechs fat sausages, Poles stuffed cabbages and Russians vodka leftovers that led generations to their doom.”</p>
<p>“Let’s ask instead,” she continues, “as Jacques Derrida perhaps would if he were here, what organism a democratic state would resemble if it saw its reflection <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SJqeLsASihQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=derrida+tain+mirror&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">in the tain</a> of an enormous mirror.”</p>
<p>The second student-penguin adds: “I agree. What would a democratic state see if it looked at itself in the mirror?</p>
<p>"It would see the reflection of its people,” she answers. “Thousands upon hundreds of thousands upon millions of individual souls. For a democracy, as <a href="http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783540764113">Thomas and Lidija Fleiner</a> or <a href="http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/6/2/183.abstract">Michael Zürn</a> remind us, is naught but the product of the people that once lived, that now live and that will live within its territorial boundary.”</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116154/original/image-20160323-28114-1ec84ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A democracy is a reflection of its people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">hobvious sudoneighm/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Murmuring.</p>
<p>“So a democratic state is like a flock of birds, a hive of bees, or a society of ants?” asks a red-haired woman with a mousy face from the back of the room.</p>
<p>“Surely not,” stork-lady rebuts, “for the question is asking us to name an organism. A flock of birds, nest of ants or whatever leads us to talk of many organisms.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t a democratic state irreducibly plural yet whole at the same time?” returns mouse-face; a little louder now. “It’s like Artemy Magun writes in <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/politics-of-the-one-9781441187192/">Politics of the One</a>: we can think of a democratic state as a choir collected around a conductor, or the sum of all the things that a unity of peoples – not necessarily just citizens – produce within its borders.”</p>
<p>Moustache-man re-enters the fray: “I will invoke <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WRIg3yvH2O8C&dq=Reuven+Hazan+and+Gideon+Rahat&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Reuven Hazan and Gideon Rahat</a> to cut this discussion to the bone. A democratic state is like a political party: it is a plurality, but all members act together as one. This is how a plurality can be, conceptually anyway, a single organism.”</p>
<p>“But,” the first student-penguin chimes in, “a political party, a choir, or even the logic of production suggests that there’s a central power overseeing the unity of peoples. It suggests there’s something controlling the democratic state other than the people.</p>
<p>"Lions, foxes and bonobos,” she rattles off, “fall into this trap too: they have brains, central nervous systems and biological command centres. Surely no democratic state has any structure or process similar to this?”</p>
<p>“Are you saying that democracies are brainless?” pipes cravated-man. “Such an idea would be absurd, for a unity of peoples makes decisions all the time. Democracies have parliaments and institutions and elected leaders who serve as the brain and vital organs of the state!”</p>
<p>She volleys back: “It seems the Pernod you’re drinking has dulled your mind. The things you mention are not the sum of all peoples in a state, nor do they represent or serve all people equally. If a democratic state were your vision of an organism it would, due to its insipid institutions and governmental malfunctions, have long ago gone extinct – eaten perhaps by dinosaurs such as yourself!”</p>
<p>This stab stirs the crowd and the debate becomes heated.</p>
<h2>Act III – It came from the publican’s barrel</h2>
<p>At this moment, the publican walks briskly into a small side room and rolls out a barrel toward his head table, then pulls it upright. Fetching a small tool from the bar, he uses it to pop open the barrel lid.</p>
<p>He plunges his arm into the briny liquid and pulls out a massive wet blob of a creature. Holding it up high, he yells over the commotion: “<em>This</em> is what a democratic state is!”</p>
<p>The publican then slams the blob – a jellyfish – down on his table, splattering those nearby.</p>
<p>Silence. Grins. Hands wipe off brine. Incredulity. All eyes on the publican.</p>
<p>“As you were debating,” he says, “I couldn’t help but think of something the good president Barack Obama <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00064246.2008.11413431?journalCode=rtbs20#.VfDOxvmeDGc">wrote</a> back in 2008.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116158/original/image-20160323-28176-bkac48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barack Obama: a democracy is more than the sum of its parts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pixabay</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>"He wrote that a democracy is ‘more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one’. And so, I thought, how can that be, given a democratic state has no equivalent of a nervous system, a brain, or a personality?”</p>
<p>He looks around the room.</p>
<p>“Then it struck me! If a democratic state were an organism, it would be a jellyfish.” He gestures to the blob on the table. “I then remembered I have one of the damn things in my storeroom!”</p>
<p>Paled by the thought that he may have already eaten jellyfish (it appears nowhere in the menu, which, to his mind, suggests the publican must blend it into other dishes – using it as a spice perhaps, or a thickener for puddings … who knows?), cravated-man interjects: “I’m not convinced that a democratic state hasn’t the equivalent of an organism’s central intelligence and nervous system. They have governments and bureaucracies, rules and procedures. How can you discount that?”</p>
<p>“Well, let’s examine how a jellyfish works,” the publican responds. “It’s a living organism with a defined boundary: a jellyfish has shape, texture and contours like any other living being. It lives, yet it doesn’t have a brain or a nervous system <a href="http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/8/1215.full">like other animals</a>. It thrives in the oceans and seas but has no eyes or ears. It reproduces. Has different life stages. It eats and it swims.”</p>
<p>The publican warms to his explanation: “A jellyfish is the product of millions of individual cells. They are constantly and simultaneously communicating with one another, not only about the external environment that they’re in, but also the condition of their internal environment.”</p>
<p>He pauses, collecting his thoughts.</p>
<p>“The cells,” he resumes, “group together to form all of the parts the jellyfish needs to grow and survive. Cells, to keep the organism strong, are renewed as they age or reverse their ageing as need be. At least <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?_r=0">one species of jellyfish is even "immortal”</a>. Cells sacrifice themselves by fighting off parasites and attacks and so on, all for the good of the whole. But a cell can also go rogue by turning cancerous which, of course, threatens the whole.</p>
<p>“I think, then, that if a democratic state were an organism it would be a jellyfish, because the people in a democracy are like the cells in a jellyfish. The people conceive of, build, run and repair governments but also the other institutions in their state. If they avoid the cancers, and avoid being eaten by predators or squashed by nature’s random violence, they might even be immortal. It is the people of a democratic state who define and defend their territorial boundary. And they, the ones that lived, the ones that live and the ones that will live, do this together.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128402/original/image-20160627-28395-9whc3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can the people of a democracy, like the cells of a jellyfish, group together to form, to grow and survive indefinitely?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Teddy Hartanto/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The publican turns to cravated-man. “If you take the people away, and leave only the government and the state’s bureaucracies like the military or what-have-you, the democratic state would not exist. It would be like a dead jellyfish, still able to sting, but ultimately lifeless.”</p>
<p>Nodding and cracking a smile, cravated-man says: “Fair enough. But I’ll barter my surrender for a truth. How the hell do you know this much about jellyfish?”</p>
<p>“Ha!” the publican laughs. “It was off this label of the strangest scotch I’ve yet procured. The drink’s got a jellyfish preserved right there in the bottle. High-end stuff!”</p>
<p>Sensing his opportunity to close the night’s discussion (and to rid himself of this strange brew), he adds: “Shots of it are on the house!”</p>
<p>Expecting cheers of approval and a charge to the bar, he gets silence instead. You could hear a mouse fart.</p>
<p>“No offence, publican,” cravated-man breaks the silence, “but you’ve got a jellyfish on the table, a jellyfish in the bottle, and I’ve a fair suspicion that you’ve been sneaking jellyfish into the menu…”</p>
<p>“The menu?” the publican interrupts, surprised. “I’ve heard that jellies are nice if prepared right, but goodness no. No, no…” he trails off, trying to remember what the briny blob is for.</p>
<p>“Ah! Of course,” he recalls. “It adds body to the beer!”</p>
<p>And, somewhere in the room, a moustache fell over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean-Paul Gagnon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If democracy were an animal, which one would it be? This short play, set in an Australian pub, explores this question to contrast ways we understand democracy and our roles within it.Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.