tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/non-human-democracy-23494/articlesNon-human democracy – The Conversation2015-12-23T21:15:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514052015-12-23T21:15:39Z2015-12-23T21:15:39ZNon-human Democracy: putting inspirations, lessons and analogies to work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104962/original/image-20151208-32371-4ourh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bonobos can inspire us to make our democracies more peaceful.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the final part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">three-part essay</a>. <a href="http://theconversation.com/non-human-democracy-our-political-vocabulary-has-no-room-for-animals-51401">Part one</a> asks why democratic research has all but ignored non-human species. <a href="http://theconversation.com/non-human-democracy-in-the-anthropocene-it-cannot-be-all-about-us-51404">Part two</a> argues that our all-too-human conception of democracy must evolve in the Anthropocene, so why not consider the possibilities offered by other species that have evolved key elements of democratic organisation?</em></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.bonobo.org/bonobos/what-is-a-bonobo/">Bonobos</a>, sometimes called the “forgotten ape” due to their recent discovery and small numbers, titillate the democrat’s imagination.</p>
<p>Before the 1970s, certain primatologists thought bonobos were strange chimpanzees because females govern in this primate society.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal">Frans de Waal</a>, the primatologist and popular writer, has done much to explain the fascinating lives of these “peace-loving apes” and how they are changing the <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/the-bonobo-and-the-atheist/">story of human evolution</a>.</p>
<p>We can see reflections of ourselves – the good, the bad and the ugly – in bonobos, and in other apes too. </p>
<p>Bonobos are unique among apes for how they settle day-to-day conflicts. Personalities and social standing are evident in their society. Squabbles are frequent within or between groups. Bonobos defuse the potentially violent tension in these conflicts through quick bursts of sex, mutual grooming, hugs and kisses, and mimicking the sounds each other makes.</p>
<p>The trick is to use intimate, gentle, genuine techniques to find common ground with one’s opponent. It’s the bonobos’ way to say “it’s alright” and to repair any emotional sores from the dispute. It doesn’t always happen this way, especially between rival groups, but violence is the exception to the rule.</p>
<h2>Inspirations</h2>
<p>We value peace today, so the discovery of the bonobo gives us hope that <em>Homo sapiens</em> aren’t naturally sadistic terrors kept in check only by the power of authority or the divine, the fear of the afterlife.</p>
<p>Gorillas, another <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/humans-are-apes-great-apes">close relative</a>, offer inspiration too. While a very large male protects most small groups, he’s more bodyguard than despot. Gorillas reach decisions through <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5378400.html">co-operation between the sexes</a>.</p>
<p>Baboons also offer a counter view to our supposed nasty and brutish inner nature. In a troop of <a href="http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Papio_hamadryas/">hamadryas</a> or <a href="http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/olive_baboon/behav">olive</a> baboons you’d soon be able to spot the stronger individuals. And you might assume they simply call the shots: only they don’t. </p>
<p>Baboons have a more delicate form of collective decision-making. This involves <a href="https://theconversation.com/baboons-dont-play-follow-the-leader-theyre-democratic-travellers-43482">sitting in the right place</a> and waiting to see where a majority develops. In this way, more than a few individuals share leadership.</p>
<p>Now we come to <a href="http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/chimpanzee">chimpanzees</a>, the species that has been most influential in how we picture the earliest human behaviour. They are patriarchal, hierarchical, constantly scheming to get ahead in rank and sometimes shockingly violent. Yet, if the times are good (food’s abundant), they can be consensual, mellow and peaceful.</p>
<p>Like the bonobos, chimps try to repair emotional damage after a fight because the group <em>has</em> to work or else everyone’s survival is at risk.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104954/original/image-20151208-32371-1cjo4pk.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">Bonobos live by the adage ‘make love not war’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frank Peters/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That said, bonobos, gorillas, baboons and chimpanzees aren’t a reflection of our past. As Frans de Waal and science journalist <a href="http://www.gillianmackenzieagency.com/books/authors/48">Virginia Morell</a> observe, these species have been evolving alongside us since we all split from our common ancestor. Looking at them isn’t the same as looking back.</p>
<p>However, we can relate to the behaviours in these species – we can see ourselves in them. Perhaps, we wonder, we’ve always had the capacity for peace and violence; we’ve always lived in the political spectrum between violent autocracy and peaceful democracy.</p>
<p>Our species is certainly trying to strengthen the latter now. Perhaps the bonobos, or the other apes, can help us do better by inspiring us to think differently.</p>
<p>Imagine if we could stop being violent to one another. The violence that democrats living in democracies commit online or in person, often in public among strangers, limits if not wastes our capacity to be peaceful in our everyday lives.</p>
<p>Let’s say a fight starts over a parking space. You saw it first, had your blinker on to “claim it”, when that omfg no-you-didn’t creature of a moron steals it. I’ve reason to believe that, when slighted in this way, most of us want to punch this stranger in the face or trash their car.</p>
<p>Trying to find common ground with them then and there seems bizarre. Stranger still is to entertain the thought that maybe you and the spot-thief might then give each other a hug or a smooch, mount each other for a while, run your fingers through one another’s hair and say: “You know what, it’s all right, have a nice day”.</p>
<p>I play to the absurd here because I’m not arguing that we should try to perfectly replicate the way bonobos avoid violence. Echoing a point that Laurence Whitehead once made, we shouldn’t confuse inspiration with replication.</p>
<p>We should rather try to draw inspiration from the bonobos to enrich our own practices, to enhance today’s human democracies. We might do equally well to dream about rhesus monkeys and their <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next">aversion to inequality</a>, or spider monkeys and their <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-chimps-to-bees-and-bacteria-how-animals-hold-elections-41262">patient if not wondrously just lives</a>.</p>
<p>These primates place emphasis on avoiding violence and inequality because peace keeps them working together. It helps them survive.</p>
<p>And that’s important for us: peace and social cohesion are the legs our democracies strive to stand on. </p>
<p>The opposite, violence and social division, beckons to the Beetlejuice of regimes: benevolent authoritarianism, that hated but necessary stabiliser of states when times are bad.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to remember that avoiding violence builds trust and confidence in the group and between groups. It’s what the bonobos do so well. Yet in our societies we’re still struggling to use words and care instead of fists, guns, mines and bombs.</p>
<p>Political theorist John Keane <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/political-theory/violence-and-democracy?format=PB">once</a> alluded: the future if not quality of democracy depends on our ability to exchange violence for peace. For the sake of our democracies, we need to be able to make this exchange, from those everyday moments in the carpark to those times in the lives of nations when diplomacy gives way to conflict.</p>
<h2>Lessons</h2>
<p>It’s not simply the normative visions of a democracy changed that the examples of non-human life offer. We can learn from the down-to-earth, concrete and special techniques that non-humans use to make decisions.</p>
<p>The process of evolution creates replicating systems – ones that work. It happens simply through the genes that survive millions of years of trial and error. As a result, the lives of many non-humans may offer more than a few masterclasses in social success.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106426/original/image-20151217-32609-vre4v5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=930&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 Honeybee Democracy, Thomas Seeley explains how bees decide as a group on the best site for a new hive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9267.html">Princeton University Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Take the European honeybee, for example. In his book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9267.html">Honeybee Democracy</a>, Thomas Seeley explains how bees make the life-or-death decision on where to build their next hive.</p>
<p>Once a hive reaches capacity – no room is left for making more bees or honey – the existing queen and most of the bees move out. They must start a new hive.</p>
<p>It’s down to the oldest forager bees, which usually account for 3% to 5% of the worker bees (talk about representation), to get more than half their family – potentially upwards of 30,000 individuals – out of the hive. Once this massive swarm is out, the elder bees direct it to cluster somewhere around the queen until they find a suitable site for the new hive.</p>
<p>At this point, the 1000 or so elder bees, who’ve swapped from food foragers to house scouts, travel several kilometres in all directions. They’re looking for that perfect site.</p>
<p>Bees are choosy. The hive site must satisfy several criteria. These include the location and diameter of the entrance (it’s important no rain can get in and that there is only one entrance); whether it faces the sun (this keeps the hive warmer in winter); the height above the ground (the higher the better to deter predators); if it’s in a tree (trees are preferred); and the available space. If it’s too big, the bees will freeze in winter. Too small, and they won’t have enough food to last through the cold months.</p>
<p>Choosing the wrong hive site might mean the human equivalent of a small town dying.</p>
<p>Honeybees evolved decision-making techniques because so much is riding on the decision elder bees make on behalf of the whole. Seeley thinks we should be studying <em>and</em> learning from these techniques.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104956/original/image-20151208-4898-1x4khdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christian List and Thomas Seeley believe studying how honeybees make decisions together can help us make better decisions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">flickr/US Department of Agriculture</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When a scout bee returns to the swarm after finding a site that ticks all the boxes she lets the freak out in her waggle dance. Her dance tells other scout bees she’s on to something good. </p>
<p>However, rather than accepting the force of her presentation (charisma you might say), each scout flies off to the site that got the scout dancing with excitement to <em>independently verify</em> her claim.</p>
<p>If it really is the promised land, each scout returns to replicate the dance of the first. If not, the scouts will see who else is dancing, independently verify their claim, and potentially follow their dance.</p>
<p>Once around 70% of the scouts are broadcasting the same site, the other scouts stop advertising alternatives and join the majority.</p>
<p>So the decision’s made. It’s time to rouse the 30,000 into the air and for the scouts to direct the swarm to the agreed site.</p>
<p>The independent verification bees use to make high-quality decisions speaks directly to the problems we face in democratic assemblies. The ability of charismatic speech to sway others without proving the evidence in the speaker’s argument, the entrenchment of factions around shared values and not evidence, the capitulation of younger or less knowledgeable individuals confronted by older experts, and so on, all point to our difficulties in using evidence-based decision-making.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JnnjY823e-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tom Seeley explains how swarming honeybees choose a new home.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Obviously we’re not bees. We’re value-laden and sometimes irrational primates with our own host of problems specific to our species.</p>
<p>Even if we perfectly executed the bees’ independent verification technique, a person could very well say: “No, regardless of the evidence I’ve just verified which is contrary to my original position, I will maintain that wind mills sour cow’s milk, or that my kids don’t need vaccinating, or that climate change isn’t a threat.”</p>
<p>In fact, majority decision-making is, out of all the available democratic decision-making systems, the least preferable for many of us. People like reaching consensus and they like proportionality because it’s fair. And a lot of the decisions assemblies make aren’t questions of life or death, so we don’t really feel like there’s that much at stake. </p>
<p>That said, seeking to learn from bees, and to reflect on what they do so well and what we don’t do that well, generates space for tinkering with the “how”. It creates an opportunity to alter our democratic procedures for the better. We could do this, for example, by establishing a standard practice of independent verification – one that works for <em>us</em> – before an assembly makes a decision.</p>
<p>“Enrolling in nature’s masterclasses”, provided free to us by evolution, doesn’t put our human democracies to question. Rather, it gives us the chance to strengthen them, refine them, make them better.</p>
<h2>Analogies</h2>
<p>Lastly, by drawing comparisons between non-human and human life we can make analogies about democracy’s issues. </p>
<p>Look, for instance, to the parasites found in nature. There are <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3833289/">blood-suckers of blood-suckers</a> (a midge that drinks the blood from a mosquito that just drank it from you), <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/pictures/110802-zombie-ladybugs-parisitic-wasps-insects/">wasps</a> that inject their eggs into other insects, <a href="http://news.psu.edu/story/323688/2014/08/22/research/zombie-ant-fungi-know-brains-their-hosts">body-snatching fungi</a>, <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fatal-attraction/?page=1">mind-altering protozoans</a> and <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2006/08/23/us-and-them-among-the-slime-molds/#.VZWsiUZUxZg">murderously dishonest amoebas</a>. They might remind democrats of the perils of individuals who manipulate and use democracy for their own ends.</p>
<p>The strangleweed, <a href="http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-new-form-plant-communication-02103.html"><em>Cuscuta pentagona</em></a>, is a parasitic plant. From the moment its seed has sprouted, the seedling “feels” around for a different plant. It’s going to live off this plant.</p>
<p>Once in range, the strangleweed takes a gentle hold of its victim and pierces the host’s stem with a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/science/haustorium">haustorium</a> (effectively a pointy green syringe). It does this not only to drink the host’s sugars but also to swap genetic information (RNA) with it.</p>
<p>Researchers think that <em>C. pentagona</em> reads the host’s genetic information to gain an understanding of its victim’s condition. But the strangleweed also sends its own genetic information to the host, like a Trojan horse designed to keep the victim from realising it’s being used.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104959/original/image-20151208-32382-myoq8o.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">Remind you of anyone? The parasitic <em>Cuscuta pentagona</em>, or strangleweed (light green), in action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phys.org</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since at least the times of usurious monarchs or the entrenchment of transnational capital, democrats have made the point about parasitic elites.</p>
<p>The transnational capitalist class roam this world looking for the best hosts to do their business with. They find their way past barriers to take information from sovereign states, send reassurances to them, and then begin the process of extracting wealth from them to maintain their status as this world’s first global oligarchs.</p>
<p>I think here in particular of the dealings between mining companies and small cash-poor states. Like the strangleweed’s initial wandering tentacle, the company sends its agents to find where it can get a grip on the host.</p>
<p>The company uses charm offensives, lobbyists and sometimes bribes to transfuse information between it and the host. The two become a hybridised one. The company releases public relations information to keep the host satiated if not to massage it into accepting that the company is here to stay – that is, until the sugars run out.</p>
<p>The relationship between a multinational company and a sovereign state can be, like the relationship between the strangleweed and its victim, asymmetrical. On both sides of the analogy the parasite lives at the expense of the host, which is left almost powerless to defend itself.</p>
<p>Now, we should recognise that this baldly polemical interpretation of multinational companies and their governors doesn’t mean they’re no different from a parasitic plant, nor do they function for the same reason as the strangleweed, whose aim is reproduction.</p>
<p>What we get from this analogy is, instead, a reflection from reality’s broken mirror. Looking at the strangleweed and then to the transnational capitalist class creates a snapshot perception, an imperfect but still handy image, for the democrat to use.</p>
<h2>Extinction, the death of possibilities</h2>
<p>As writer Elizabeth Kolbert <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thesixthextinction-1/elizabethkolbert">says in her own way</a>: with each extinction of a non-human species we see ourselves further ruined.</p>
<p>Earth is home to at least one million species, and likely more. Many species make collective decisions, solve problems together and survive as a group. Losing a living species to extinction also means, from a selfishly human perspective, losing a potential opportunity to improve today’s democracies by the inspirations, lessons and analogies that only the evolution of other life forms can impart to us.</p>
<p>Non-humans evolved their own techniques and behaviours – which we can make sense of using <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-we-could-talk-to-the-animals-what-might-they-tell-us-about-politics-33549">words from the vocabulary</a> of democracy – because they work for them. It’s 100% pragmatic. Nature’s tool chest, you might say.</p>
<p>Admittedly, these tools may not be fit for our purposes. After all, we aren’t bonobos, bees or parasitic plants. But it’s also fair to say that we’d be rash not to try to find help in them, especially if enriching our democratic practices in this way could help solve some of the problems confronting us.</p>
<p>Here we can say that our destruction of non-humans is destroying a part of ourselves, of our democracies’ hope of reaching their fuller potential. Perhaps, out of respect for their existence and our own, it’s time to include non-humans in that all-too-human affair we call democracy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105540/original/image-20151212-30694-1ri2c1w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Non-human Democracy’ by Sandra Eterovic (2015), used with permission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read parts one and two of the essay <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51405/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>We can draw inspiration from the successes of non-humans, learn from their group decision-making and gain insights from analogies. And with every extinction of a species we lose such possibilities.Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514042015-12-22T21:39:15Z2015-12-22T21:39:15ZNon-human Democracy: in the Anthropocene, it cannot be all about us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106382/original/image-20151216-30095-12wrwn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We know about the human democracy that was. We know the failings of the democracy that is. But the democracy to come is both uncertain and full of possibilities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Nolte (2015), used with permission</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is part two of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">three-part essay</a>. <a href="http://theconversation.com/non-human-democracy-our-political-vocabulary-has-no-room-for-animals-51401">Part one</a> asks why democratic research has all but ignored non-human species, and considers how much we might gain from them in thinking about the problems of human democracy.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Welcome to the Anthropocene.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With these words, we can greet the birth of our children today. Unlike their parents, today’s newborns will not know the previous geologic epoch, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene">Holocene</a>, defined by interglacial climes that were vital to the development of human societies. They will instead grow into and come to know a world disturbed by our own, our parents’ and our grandparents’ habitat destruction.</p>
<p>The point carries over to democracy: it too is tied to specific <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(geology),%20or%20what%20political%20theorist%20%5BJohn%20Dryzek%5D(http://www.humansandnature.org/democracy---john-dryzek-response-55.php">geologic epochs</a> called <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=9446496&jid=JPS&volumeId=-1&issueId=-1&aid=9446492">earth systems</a>.</p>
<p>While the formal status of the new epoch is <a href="http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/">still to be decided</a>, democracy in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene">Anthropocene</a> is forced into a new iteration of itself by the threats we pose to the environment and, through that, to ourselves as a species. But it’s also because people today consider the democracy of the late Holocene, tied as it is to territories and elected representatives, to be impotent in the face of these global challenges.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104946/original/image-20151208-32378-z51smd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can democracy keep us from a future of nightmares or will it simply take place in them?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef_safi/6688871659/">flickr/Jef Safi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is required of the democracy to come?</h2>
<p>With our existence and that of other species in the supranational balance, democracy in the Anthropocene – the democracy to come – has two requirements:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>that it works on the macro-scale, which means for all humans, not just for those in some states; and</p></li>
<li><p>that it is premised on: the mass, direct, digital, effective, legitimate and everyday participation of capable democrats living across multiple layers of government and governance, inside and outside of states.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Both requirements exist and are justifiable because climate change is forcing our hand.</p>
<p>We need to make high-quality, swift, enforceable and democratically legitimate decisions for the survival of our own species, let alone others. These planet-wide decisions will only mean something if most humans use them, enforce them, make them better.</p>
<p>This democracy to come builds on the more hands-off democracies of the late Holocene – those representative regimes of the last few centuries that oversaw the rise of densely populated industrial states.</p>
<p>Under the <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745681964,subjectCd-PO17.html">setting sun of representative democracy</a>, its sometimes frustratingly simple ballots and abundance of sleepy if not ignorant or ill-prepared democrats, we realise non-humans are in a state of suffering. They are at risk of irreversible change or total effacement – all because of the way most of us live, and lived, our lives.</p>
<p>Democracies in the late Holocene are dangerous, destructive polluters. That realisation leads people to reconsider how supposedly clever we are, as a species of wishful democrats. </p>
<p>The self-celebration of being <em>Homo sapiens</em> (“wise person”), where we congratulate ourselves for being human, stems from the Enlightenment. To look in an admittedly Eurocentric mirror during the 18th century was to see a creature unbowed by the gods. To look in that same mirror today provokes thought of why the gods allowed our anthropocentric avarice, our single-species arrogance, to push risk this far.</p>
<p>Humanity’s footfalls (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint">carbon</a> and <a href="http://waterfootprint.org/en/">water</a> footprints), that shame of our industrial success at the expense of other life, is a defining problem for the democrats now straddling the Holocene-Anthropocene divide.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106260/original/image-20151216-25603-1a3fr7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We have adapted non-human species’ behaviour in many other ways, so why not draw on whatever elements of democratic organisation they display?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamerie/16503615145/in/photolist-r9nkNH-dcFEj-d2DJty-rYwrBN-qJYHb2-97qecK-qkUJzU-3BpAsR-fzS92a-csnt8-a13j9m-w5Jvhe-joz5Yi-3JPJ7T-7xP6yB-qjxh2i-wBRbZU-dTfuYq-8HdQKZ-9CEf5u-y2nmMd-iiQpv7-2qAu2D-9fKcaB-qm56mV-vJYVFW-zS6vKP-8MaRq3-7nceXm-2r6DDg-oLSST8-6957jN-9P1u5J-4v8Pwy-nDAfvZ-nNeSKa-7sT31e-dfbziA-f1PR1F-zWFmf4-bsS1a9-mVMHt-qwSoUa-quAizC-AiLvfP-b2h4Mv-5zVmmL-hn8VYZ-jh28hY-vDGQHk">flickr/Lamerle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A story that’s blind to all but the human</h2>
<p>There’s a subtler point to late Holocene democracy’s anthropocentrism. Grasping it helps unfurl the logic behind drawing inspirations, lessons and analogies for our democracies from non-humans.</p>
<p>Late Holocene democracy’s story, widely taught in the few centuries past, is always human – <em>too</em> human. It was supposedly created in the womb of ancient Greek culture (usually Athens), lost somewhere for 1000 or so years, and (normally starting with the Magna Carta) revived from the dead by rebellious western Europeans. </p>
<p>Democracy, many still believe, came to maturity in the US with the end of the Cold War – or perhaps 50 years earlier, when the Allies defeated the Axis.</p>
<p>To borrow lingo from various moments when some nations felt they were better than others, democracy, as just defined, is the family heirloom of the <em>more</em> human – the civilised, the chosen, the righteous, the holy, the entitled, the powerful.</p>
<p>This is what I mean by saying democracy is always too human. The claim to ownership excludes others. It defines or implies who has or who is fit for democracy and, consequently, who doesn’t have it and is less fit for it, less human.</p>
<p>For a number of thinkers, especially those who do not believe in stories shorn of time and space, or in the importance of who invented what first, this ownership of democracy by certain nations, at moments in time and through individual actions, is a lie.</p>
<p>This story is, at best, an incomplete retelling of only certain types of democracy – its direct, representative and Western variants.</p>
<p>It’s due mostly to colonialism that the democracies of the late Holocene are commonly <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=QrI5AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&dq=democratic+theorists+in+conversation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wH6dVaGJI-SxmAXryILoDQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA">taken to mean</a> “democracy itself”. It’s an unintentional hoodwinking made possible by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault">power-deciding knowledge</a> or, differently put, through the repetition of some knowledge by influential experts over time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104947/original/image-20151208-4898-18ba9sz.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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Quaternary Period: an age of glacial cycles and the rise of Homo sapiens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracey Magno (2015), used with permission</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s in a name, or 546 names?</h2>
<p>What, I wonder, about democracy’s many names? How, or where, do all of its <a href="http://theconversation.com/non-human-democracy-our-political-vocabulary-has-no-room-for-animals-51401">546 or more</a> different names find themselves in the Holocene? </p>
<p>We must ask these questions to create the language we need to discuss democracy in terms of species (ours), space (Earth’s) and time – broadly, across the grand time of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary">Quaternary</a> in which we evolved for roughly the last 2.5 million years.</p>
<p>To think in this way ties the beginning of democracy with the beginning of humanity. And it leads us to suppose that democracy mightn’t solely belong to humans.</p>
<p>Because where do humans begin? Where do we end?</p>
<p>What makes our species distinct from the other species sharing this planet? Doesn’t life on earth, as geneticists show, have a common origin?</p>
<p>Is the behaviour we evolved over millions of years linked to the finite number of political regimes we have today or that we can see back in time?</p>
<p>Or could iterations of democracy have existed before our species came to be? Might there be types of democracy in other species that co-exist with our own?</p>
<p>And a chilling question: would democracy continue should our species fall into oblivion?</p>
<h2>From fresh uncertainty come new possibilities</h2>
<p>The point of all of these questions is not to argue which species owns democracy or where democracy comes from. Rather, it’s to cast doubt on the hitherto overly certain claim that democracy is a human affair.</p>
<p>This is not just for the sake of my argument; uncertainty has intrinsic value. It puts democracy into a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possibilianism">possibilian</a> state. As neuroscientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eagleman">David Eagleman</a>, founder of possibilian thinking, might argue: we know too much about some of democracy’s names and too little about the rest of them to commit to any one belief about it. </p>
<p>The only rational position is to find ways forward among, and in recognition of, democracy’s complexity.</p>
<p>Drawing, for instance, on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle">uncertainty principle</a> that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg">Werner Heisenberg</a> established in the 1920s, physicist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman">Richard Feynman</a> famously said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And there’s good in that. If you’d prefer an example from the humanities, Voltaire declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And my favourite comes from Canadian poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood">Margaret Atwood</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When nothing is sure, everything is possible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maybe a little more of the possible is what democracy needs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104949/original/image-20151208-32378-8p9byj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don’t worry, there’s value in uncertainty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.johanwahlstrom.com/johanwahlstrom/Its_Boring_To_Die_series.html#36">'Tense Uncertainty', Johan Wahlstrom (2011), used with permission</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By tying democracy to time, space and species, then realising we don’t have crisp answers for when our species begins or when and where democracy’s origins can be found, we find our only recourse is to look elsewhere. To other species.</p>
<p>We then look to those that came before and alongside <em>Homo sapiens</em>: think other <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini">hominini</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis"><em>Australopithecus</em></a>, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v499/n7459/full/nature12228.html">ancestral <em>Pan</em></a>, the order of primates, the mammalian class, the animal and plant kingdoms, all the way back to the soup, brine, or slime from where the common origin of all life is supposed to have sprung. </p>
<h2>We rely on decisive, non-human collective action</h2>
<p>So, we can look to those that have their own democracy, if you take that word to mean the techniques that individuals use to make collective decisions, solve problems together and survive as a group. It’s when you start justifying how we are meant to achieve these things that you generate democracy’s many names.</p>
<p>You, for instance, are home to trillions of individuals from <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/your-body-is-a-planet">more than 500 species</a> who do just that: they make collective decisions, solve problems together and survive in groups – all without your consent or control.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota">microbiota</a> in your mouth, deep in your guts, or just there <a href="http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150508-these-mites-live-on-your-face">on your skin</a>. They are life forms invisible to the naked eye. Some fend off harmful microbes. These living individual units of life also include the cells in your body — like the neurons in your brain.</p>
<p>Think of your immune system. It must be receptive to information to detect an intruder and deal with it. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of cells orchestrate this operation. Using intercellular communication, they organise collective responses that keep you alive.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104950/original/image-20151208-32368-k4jwxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cells and microbiota found in animals and plants ‘talk’ to each other to make decisions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeissmicro/14255918978/in/photolist-nHKj3w-9Ezh1a-6avKjH-6corFR-6JFDhe-dCytCx-pcjWDB-75YVSB-4AE4Gy-pRvGXU-fVG4hV-6j69Ud-oqZUqb-apL9WG-vnBHB7-i5DB1a-qRj4RZ-iH98pX-6Ay7Gg-oBEkud-o1S6AN-bmAXCT-6XWYmJ-6gV3R2-8SV49u-4oUNin-oKMLdD-5Yn7ic-4Ao1j7-yC7Mhe-cb2C6f-66Nfb8-2xcCA-nLrtXB-6qioRZ-bfreL6-h3t4SE-nr6B6x-5UYHZp-pupUSc-b6MeWg-nwzHNH-bLHzW2-6gUZmM-8kJq43-4AiJD2-qS7Mff-4AiJL6-7EQuzB-b3ENfc">flickr/ZEISS Microscopy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our very lives – and all animal and plant life – depend on the communication between cells or microbes in and on our bodies.</p>
<p>Every time I think a thought the neurons in my brain decide which synapses to use to carry out my will. It’s fast majority decision-making; what some biologists call <a href="http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.168101">synaptic</a>, <a href="http://search.proquest.com/openview/19c62afa6597ce733c17ddd27a2b1206/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44274">dendritic</a> or <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01350117#page-1">neuronal democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Another example, this time about tooth decay, concerns <em>Streptococcus mutans</em>. These bacteria live in your mouth. They’re partly responsible for the film that forms on your teeth if you haven’t brushed in a while.</p>
<p>Given that most of us are in the habit of brushing, it’s essential for <em>S. mutans’</em> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_(biology)">genetic fitness</a> to know when the conditions in our mouths are just right for a population boom. The bacteria constantly talk to each other through chemical signalling (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotaxis#Signal_transduction">chemotaxis</a>). Then, perhaps when the 11pm toothbrush fails to arrive during your night out, they make a majority decision to reproduce. Scientists call this <a href="http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/8/1070.full">bacterial</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing">quorum formation</a>.</p>
<p>It’s fascinating that microbiota and cells do this without a brain or a nervous system instructing them. Their actions are decentralised, driven by the coding in their DNA. As happens in the brainless but not unintelligent jellyfish, <a href="http://www.crickcentre.org/blog/a-lesson-in-democracy-from-slime-moulds/">slime moulds</a> and plants, the microbiota and cells in our bodies co-exist, work alongside each other, repel invaders, to build and maintain the organism we share.</p>
<p>Seeing things this way means that you are, in your flesh and blood, home to many democracies. You are, in one sense, a product of them.</p>
<h2>An evolutionary flowering of democracies</h2>
<p>If this is true for humans, it is true for other complex life forms found across animal and plant kingdoms. This is because we all depend on cells and often microbiota to exist. The types of communication they use lead to types of decision-making that keep us and them alive by solving particular problems.</p>
<p>They are the democracies that make us. And so the logic unfurls that if democracies make us, how can we ever have made democracy?</p>
<p>We certainly didn’t create ourselves. We evolved. Through evolution our species created its own democracies over time and space. But so did many other forms of life.</p>
<p>The implication of this statement resonates with the foundation arguments made in the fields of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology">sociobiology</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology">evolutionary psychology</a>. It suggests that collective decision-making, solving problems together and surviving as a group – or democracy in this essay – is common to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life">life itself</a> simply because these techniques are effective at passing genes along.</p>
<p>It’s with this perspective of democracy as one of the makers of <em>Homo sapiens</em> life that we return to the question:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is democracy human?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>But then again,</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is because the answer to this question depends on how you explain democracy.</p>
<p>Is there a fleet of questions central to talking about democracy, species, space and time thrown together? Yes.</p>
<p>Are these questions interesting and worth further intellectual pursuit? For me, yes, without doubt. </p>
<p>Do our democracies now, in these days that straddle the Holocene and Anthropocene, have problems? Yes. </p>
<p>And might we learn something about solving some of these problems by looking to the non-humans that exist out there in this wild world? Yes, I think so.</p>
<p>Even if I’m wrong about non-human democracy, we need only consider how much is at stake. The survival of our species could very well depend on us upping our democracy game. </p>
<p>The projects around <a href="http://democracyrenewal.edu.au/">democracy renewal</a>, <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=9990">saving democracy</a>, <a href="http://www.ned.org/events/in-mistrust-we-trust-can-transparency-revive-democracy">reviving democracy</a> or otherwise creating the “democracy to come” need help. So, too, the non-humans facing extinction because of the ways our dangerous polluter democracies operate.</p>
<p>For these reasons we should give non-human democracy a try.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read parts one and three of the essay <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51404/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>Democracy must evolve in response to the threats we pose to the environment and to ourselves. We can learn from how other species make collective decisions, solve problems and survive.Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514012015-12-21T20:04:16Z2015-12-21T20:04:16ZNon-human Democracy: our political vocabulary has no room for animals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104937/original/image-20151208-32368-o3j6kh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Non-human Democracy (2015) by Sandra Eterovic</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Used with permission.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is part one of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">three-part essay</a> that proposes a way of thinking about democracy that’s seldom, if ever, used. Despite the popularity in other disciplines of inter-species thinking, it’s ignored in democracy research. Why is that? Why can we not conceive of democracy as anything other than uniquely human? “Non-human Democracy” seeks to answer these questions.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Democracy changes with each of time’s footsteps forward.</p>
<p>Take the following as but one example. It’s 1997. Political scientists <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Collier_(political_scientist)">David Collier</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitsky">Steven Levitsky</a> publish a paper they call <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/levitsky/files/SL_democracy-adjectives.pdf">Democracy with Adjectives</a>. They state that there are hundreds of different ways to describe democracy.</p>
<p>Since then, other prominent thinkers like democracy scholars <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Held">David Held</a> and <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Merkel">Wolfgang Merkel</a> have echoed this point, because it’s an important point to make. It shows democracy is complex – that it’s complicated, has a lot of parts to it, comes from a wide range of histories and is found in surprising places.</p>
<p>But when my colleagues <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-chou-51928">Mark Chou</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/selen-a-ercan-130254">Selen Ercan</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/giovanni-navarria-92346">Giovanni Navarria</a> and I went looking for Collier and Levitsky’s list of hundreds, we couldn’t find it. So we took on the task and discovered that democracy has no fewer than <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/the-many-names-of-democracy/">546 different names</a>.</p>
<p>We didn’t expect so many. And there are likely more out there.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104939/original/image-20151208-32382-1a2udhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some of the many names associated with democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wordclouds</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Finding a start in democracy’s complexity</h2>
<p>Aside from the work to describe, catalogue and otherwise make sense of this big data, our <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/the-many-names-of-democracy/">list</a> offers plenty for critical investigation. If you were to use this dataset you could, for instance, compare and contrast thousands of different combinations of democracy.</p>
<p>Interrogating these many names broadens our understanding of what democracy is, or might be, or should be. There are visions of democracy’s futures in here <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-needs-heroes-to-champion-the-cause-42752">whose stories go untold</a>.</p>
<p>Evidence from <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=direct+democracy%2Crepresentative+democracy%2Cparticipatory+democracy%2Cdeliberative+democracy%2Cradical+democracy%2Celite+democracy%2Cadvanced+democracy%2Cbourgeois+democracy%2Ccapitalist+democracy%2Cdeep+democracy%2Celectoral+democracy&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdirect%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crepresentative%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cparticipatory%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdeliberative%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cradical%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Celite%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cadvanced%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbourgeois%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccapitalist%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdeep%20democracy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Celectoral%20democracy%3B%2Cc0">Google’s Ngram</a> on the frequency of word use supports the view that having so many names for democracy is a recent phenomenon. We’ve been using adjectives to precisely define, qualify, describe, adjust and justify what we mean by “democracy” for at least the last century. More names appear in the last 50 years than in the first 50. </p>
<p>It doesn’t look like we’ll stop naming democracy any time soon. That’s good, as we come to ask more of this style of government, this mode of governance, this way of life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104940/original/image-20151208-32384-9694vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hockey sticks, peaks and troughs for eight of democracy’s 546 names (1780-2008).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Google Ngram</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s because of the Ngram evidence, which suggests democracy got most of its names after 1920, that I think democracy changes as time moves forward. Philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida">Jacques Derrida</a> explains: to name something is to give it meaning. It affixes a particular understanding, an idea of practice, or one or more values to it. Naming things changes them. And change happens over time.</p>
<p>Except sometimes it doesn’t when you’d expect it to. Despite more than 2,000 years of drawing metaphors and analogies between the political behaviours of humans and non-humans – think of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli">Machiavelli</a> comparing political leadership to <a href="http://philosiblog.com/2012/04/07/one-must-emulate-both-the-fox-and-the-lion-because-a-lion-cannot-defy-a-snare-while-a-fox-cannot-defy-a-pack-of-wolves/">foxes and lions</a>, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle">Aristotle</a> comparing us to <a href="https://hesperusisbosphorus.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/biological-remarks-on-man-as-a-political-animal-in-aristotle/">bees</a> – no-one has yet given democracy its non-human name. </p>
<p>There is only very seldom talk of the democracies found in other species. This means democracy hasn’t yet been changed in this way. </p>
<h2>Instructive, inspiring, transformative</h2>
<p>What talk there is comes almost exclusively from the sciences where scholars like honeybee specialist <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9267.html">Thomas Seeley</a> are trying to build bridges to the humanities. Seeley recommends that we should pick up tips to use in our own democratic practices from the ways of doing things, honed by evolution, observable in other species. </p>
<p>Perhaps this is why French sociologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour">Bruno Latour</a> argues that democrats need to <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674013476">bring science into democracy</a>. Or why Oxford fellow in politics <a href="http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/papers/2010/Whitehead.pdf">Laurence Whitehead</a> says we need to “enliven the concept of democracy” with metaphors and analogies found only in biology.</p>
<p>It’s common, obvious even, to find researchers in fields like engineering, chemistry and medicine who think about human problems. Less obvious, but still common, is that these researchers look for answers in the lifecycles and lifestyles of non-humans. As Christian List and Adrian Vermeule <a href="http://personal.lse.ac.uk/list/PDF-files/ListVermeuleJune2013.pdf">point out</a>, scholars in these and more than a few other fields seek inspirations, lessons and analogies from non-humans.</p>
<p>Inspiration is normative. It’s the stuff of wonder. Of arguing how we “should” do things. We see magnificent spectacles in nature, often bordering on the mysterious, that enliven our imagination. These spectacles give us the will to innovate in helpful directions.</p>
<p>Lessons are the opposite. They’re grounded in the concrete, the measurable, the palpable. They’re all about the “how”. Tantamount to masterclasses, lessons are what we learn from closely studying the special techniques that non-humans evolved. They’re instructive.</p>
<p>Analogies, lastly, are a form of translation between the human and non-human. By comparing us and them, we transform ideas by adding or subtracting nuances in this way. Analogies, drawn between species, can help us see matters differently.</p>
<h2>Technology draws on non-human inspirations</h2>
<p>Consider the work to make flying robotic drones autonomous. The problem with unmanned drones is that most still require a human piloting them. They’re also limited in how they fly – which is essentially in straight lines and at considerable speed. Both issues limit the functionality of drones.</p>
<p>Bring in the neuroscientists, computational biologists, informatics and robotics engineers, and an answer to this problem takes shape. <a href="http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/">The Green Brain Project</a>, housed by Sheffield University in the UK, mapped the neurons associated with sight and navigation in a honeybee’s brain. They then programed this information into a flying robot.</p>
<p>Not only can this drone fly without live human control and autonomously avoid obstacles in flight, it also flies like the bee whose brain was modelled for this project. The implications from this study are abundant, the applications of the “adopted” technology to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-spain-ranger-drone-idUSKBN0MJ19F20150323">real problems</a> almost limitless.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104942/original/image-20151208-32378-1p3soh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This drone was inspired by the honeybee’s flying skills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Green Brain Project, Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The point here is that the Green Brain Project wouldn’t have produced such wondrous visions for drones if it weren’t for the inspirations, lessons and analogies the team behind the project drew from the honeybee itself.</p>
<p>Look at spider’s silk for a further example. It’s famous for having greater tensile strength than steel and efforts are being made to <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/06/bolt-threads-spider-silk/">manufacture it synthetically</a>. One potential use is bullet-proof clothing.</p>
<p><a href="http://tedxinnovations.ted.com/2015/05/20/spotlight-tedx-talk-air-conditioning-inspired-by-termites/">Studies of termite mounds</a> in some of the world’s hottest climates look to them for clues about how to make indoor climate control sustainable. Few species can rival the termites’ ability to efficiently maintain a constant, yet presumably comfortable, temperature inside their homes.</p>
<p>Then there’s the glue the humble barnacle produces to stick to things like the hulls of boats and the shells of sea turtles. Scientists are <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/barnacle-adhesion-glue/33021/">trying to replicate</a> this glue because it not only hardens underwater but becomes stronger over time. It could be used, for instance, on surgical implants.</p>
<h2>So why the democratic blindspot?</h2>
<p>This all goes to show how helpful it can be to look outside our own species for answers to the problems we face. It’s precisely because of the pragmatism (practicality, functionality, usefulness) in this method that I’m surprised we’re not in the habit of using it for democracy’s sake.</p>
<p>Democracy has problems. Some of them, like how we or our representatives can make <a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-crisis-of-liberal-democracy-creates-climate-change-paralysis-39851">faster decisions of better quality</a>, are intractable. They need innovative solutions. </p>
<p>So why not add to our <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745670416">ongoing efforts</a> to solve these problems by studying the ways non-humans collectively overcome problems of their own?</p>
<p>We can develop inspirations for democracy, lessons that are relevant for it and analogies to help us differently understand its issues by using this commonplace way of thinking.</p>
<p>There’s a bounty of exciting, imaginative and practical work to be done in this area.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104943/original/image-20151208-32382-9bvq9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What might we learn about democracy from the wonders of nature?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/82814923@N08/16467799336/">Adapted from Tomas Öhberg/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Objection: how can other animals be democratic?</h2>
<p>A significant question now props itself on an elbow: democracy is only a relatively recent human invention, so why bother with this?</p>
<p>According to this way of thinking, there’s nothing that we can, or should be looking to, learn about democracy from non-humans because they don’t have it. It’s a product of the reflective political decisions and bitterly difficult but also gloriously simple victories that some humans have managed over the last 3,500 or so years. Democracy cannot manifest through genetic evolution.</p>
<p>Everything here hinges on what we mean by democracy and, consequently, how we justify our species’ exclusive ownership of it. If democracy is undoubtedly human, then my argument is finished. But if there is doubt on this, then a potential giant world, a conceptual Jupiter, becomes relevant.</p>
<p>This essay offers a recontextualisation of democracy; to pull back a curtain to reveal not a wizard nor a naked emperor but rather to show democracy’s immense and hitherto neglected – or simply unknown – complexity and to ask some questions that jump from it.</p>
<p>In this complexity is where ideas of time, space and species <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/evolutionary-basic-democracy-jeanpaul-gagnon/?K=9781137338655">become relevant to democracy</a>. This arises from thinking of democracy not in the span of hundreds or thousands of years, as is normally done, but over millions if not billions of years, as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Political-Order-Revolution/dp/0374533229">Francis Fukuyama</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WDNrWyAEYd0C&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=christopher+boehm+edinburgh+companion&source=bl&ots=r4IbuF7ygL&sig=SmnSVoyS9oeQIcjNIDnvRvM64oo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KZeZVajlC6HGmQXOwZq4Dg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Christopher Boehm</a> have of late been doing. </p>
<p>And it’s by thinking of democracy over the entire space of this planet, not simply the occidental spaces (<a href="http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Democracy_as_a_Universal_Value.pdf">Amartya Sen</a> has long made this point), that our understanding of democracy changes once more.</p>
<p>We can think about democracy in terms of its many names, numerous typologies, various shapes, hierarchies of competing qualities, and of the utility in its techniques, like majority voting, used by different forms of life throughout this world. It’s an original take that opens new perspectives, helpful ones, but also a windfall of questions.</p>
<p>I’d like to ask a few of them next.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read parts two and three of the essay <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/non-human-democracy">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51401/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>Despite the popularity in other disciplines of inter-species thinking, it’s ignored in democracy research. Why is that? Why can we not conceive of democracy as anything other than uniquely human?Jean-Paul Gagnon, Assistant Professor in Politics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.