tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/democracy-futures-political-leadership-15097/articlesDemocracy Futures: Political Leadership – La Conversation2017-09-21T02:14:25Ztag: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>
<hr>
<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/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/806052017-07-12T01:03:32Z2017-07-12T01:03:32ZModi’s polarising populism makes a fiction of a secular, democratic India<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177458/original/file-20170710-5553-17mjsa8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Narendra Modi has described his electoral victory in India as divine.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/narendramodiofficial/22744307507/">Narendra Modi/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>After Donald Trump was sworn in as US president, The Times of India published a piece titled “<a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/why-both-modi-and-trump-are-textbook-populists/articleshow/56711860.cms">Why both Modi and Trump are textbook populists</a>”. </p>
<p>Citing Jan-Werner Müller’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Populism-Jan-Werner-M%C3%BCller/dp/0812248988">What is Populism?</a>, the journalist, Amit Varma, was struck by “how closely our own prime minister, Narendra Modi, matched Müller’s definition”. After enumerating Müller’s seven “characteristics” and the three “things” populists did when in power, Varma found these all applicable to India.</p>
<p>But can such schematic “characteristics” of populism describe the ghastly daytime <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/man-stabbed-to-death-2-injured-on-mathura-train-after-fight-with-passengers-for-allegedly-carrying-beef/story-BiJyILYlUloErWASvKQ51M.html">murder</a> of 15-year-old Hafiz Junaid on a moving, packed train? And what about the complicit silence maintained during and afterwards by populists, non-populists and anti-populists alike? </p>
<p>Located barely 20 kilometres from the scene of the crime, neither social-media-savvy Modi nor his ministers posted any tweets, let alone visited the victim’s family.</p>
<p>It was the “crowd” that knifed Junaid. Two of his brothers were severely beaten and injured because they were Muslim. They wore beards and skullcaps for which they were humiliated. </p>
<p>They were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-kv51HOj4">called</a> “Mulleys [Muslims]”, “beefeaters”, “terrorists”, “traitors” and “Pakistanis”. As Junaid’s bloodied body lay in the lap of his brother, who begged for help, the crowd simply and silently watched on.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xz-kv51HOj4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The family of murdered Hafiz Junaid describes how a crowd attacked the 15-year-old and his brothers because they were Muslims.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Junaid’s murder was not the first since Modi came to power in 2014. Similar instances of brutality have occurred <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/we-the-cows-4723469/">throughout India</a>: from Jhajjar, Jharkhand and Dadri to Latehar, Una and Alwar. </p>
<p>And since the government backs the lynchings through silence and inaction, and since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva">Hindutva</a> has created a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20566093.2017.1292168">war-like mindset</a> among many Hindus, they will likely continue.</p>
<p>“Populism”, as Müller defines it, fails to articulate the experience and vocabulary of those at the receiving end of such persistent violence.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wwKCtPyBjuo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">For decades, India’s Hindu and Muslim populations have been at odds, and it comes down to more than just religion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Religion and the real targets of populism</h2>
<p>Preoccupied with the statements of populist leaders nearly the world over, Müller seldom draws on the views of those who are objectified and victimised by populism. His treatment of religion as constitutive of populism is thin at best.</p>
<p>Müller implies that populism is inimical to democracy. But if populists claim to represent “<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-people-the-charms-and-contradictions-of-populism-63769">we the people</a>” and therefore democracy, who do they view as their enemy? It can’t just be “the elite” – populists too are elite. The real targets of populists, then, are those non-elites who supposedly threaten the culture of the “real” people.</p>
<p>And who threatens the “Judo-Christian culture”, “homelands” or “ways of life” that populists uphold? In Western countries, the threat is <a href="https://theconversation.com/by-framing-secular-society-as-a-christian-creation-hansons-revival-goes-beyond-simple-racism-67707?sa=google&sq=pauline+hanson&sr=7">attributed</a> to Muslims, who are depicted as only religious – indeed the most religious of all peoples. Muslims alone are seen as a problem to “integration” and “cohesion”, as if Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus and people of other faiths lived on a different planet.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y9znHbadKJs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pauline Hanson sees Muslims as ‘the problem’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Müller reads the populist demand for Barack Obama’s birth certificate as a signification of the former US president’s status as the “bicoastal elite and the African-American other”. He leaves religion out of it. So why did one-third of Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09/14/a-startling-number-of-americans-still-believe-president-obama-is-a-muslim/?utm_term=.6b1685cbe76a">believe</a> Obama was a Muslim well into his second term, after many proclamations of his own Christianity?</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/terror-on-trial-should-anders-breiviks-views-be-heard-6512">Anders Breivik</a>, the terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway, also stands expelled from Müller’s text. Breivik surely was opposed to elites; but elites themselves were not his target. </p>
<p>The real targets were Muslims whose culture, Breivik held, elites had spread by allowing immigration, which in turn threatened Christian Europe. The title of Breivik’s <a href="https://publicintelligence.net/anders-behring-breiviks-complete-manifesto-2083-a-european-declaration-of-independence/">manifesto</a> is revealingly religious.</p>
<p>And while Müller wrote only one sentence on India in his book, Breivik promised <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/norwegian-mass-killers-manifesto-hails-hindutva/article2293829.ece">military support</a> “to the [Hindu] nationalists in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India”. He also viewed John Howard and Cardinal George Pell as heroes defending “<a href="https://theconversation.com/anders-breivik-australian-anti-multiculturalists-and-the-threat-to-social-cohesion-2542">Christian civilisation</a>”. </p>
<p>So what connects populists in the US, Australia, Europe, India and elsewhere? And what prompted the <a href="http://idu.org/idu-welcomes-bjp-of-india-as-new-member/">International Democratic Union</a> in 2016 to grant membership “unanimously” to Modi’s party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), despite its <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-a-ballot-rigging-conspiracy-theory-says-about-indias-toxic-political-climate-74906?sa=google&sq=BJP+muslim+politics&sr=5">reputation</a> for ethnic and violent politics?</p>
<h2>Populism and anti-pluralism in India</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177638/original/file-20170710-11989-1qbb40g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Narendra Modi pays tribute to V.D. Savarkar in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/92359345@N07/16475908879">Narendra Modi/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accounts of populism like Varma’s mechanically assume a “secular” conception of India separate from the religious one to which populism is assigned. This separation is central to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Religion-Critique-Critical-Marketplace-Civilization/dp/1469635097">Indian liberal story</a> parroted by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and Ramchandra Guha. </p>
<p>Mukulika Banerjee <a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/GingrichNeo-Nationalism%22%22">traces</a> neo-nationalism (which anthropologists use in association with populism) to religious nationalism in the early 20th century and V.D. Savarkar’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-origins-of-todays-hindu-nationalism-55092?sa=google&sq=Nehru&sr=11">Hindutva</a>. </p>
<p>Hindutva defined Indianness exclusively in religious terms: an Indian is someone who considers India as their holy land. Because India was not sacred geography for Christians and Muslims, they were non/anti-Indian. Indeed they were non-people.</p>
<p>In contrast, Banerjee presents Mohandas Gandhi’s and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nehru_jawaharlal.shtml">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>’s vision as secular and pluralist:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was the great achievement of Gandhi and Nehru that it took four post-independence decades for such enmity [against Muslims] to flourish.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, anthropologist N.K. Bose, who served as Gandhi’s secretary, had this to <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=nWUKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22tacitly+formed+an+alliance+with+those+who+believed+in+a+restoration+of+Hindu+domination%22&dq=%22tacitly+formed+an+alliance+with+those+who+believed+in+a+restoration+of+Hindu+domination%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">say</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Gandhi tacitly formed an alliance with those who believed in a restoration of Hindu domination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gandhi’s <a href="https://kafila.online/2014/08/02/gandhi-palestine-and-israel-irfan-ahmad/">tactical</a> commitment to non-violence is evidenced by statements in his <a href="https://archive.org/details/Swaraj-Gandhi-1948-01-02">speeches</a> that authorise violence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If later they [Muslims] betray you, you can shoot them. You may shoot one or two or a certain number… We must be brave and trust the Muslims. If later they violate the trust you can cut off their heads.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It follows that Savarkar’s ethnic, anti-pluralist vision was not radically at odds with Gandhi’s.</p>
<p>Moreover, as independent India’s first prime minister, if secularism was the hallmark of Nehru’s ideology, why didn’t he write it into the Indian Constitution? Why was it inserted only in the mid-1970s? Nehru <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-divided-nation-Muslims-independence/dp/0195641760/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498674719&sr=1-1&keywords=Legacy+of+a+Divided+Nation%3A+India%27s+Muslims+Since+Independence">admitted</a> that Hindus, including in his own party, were prejudiced and biased against Muslims. Bureaucracy was no different, <a href="http://nehruportal.nic.in/selected-works-jawahar-lal-nehru-second-series-50#page/4/mode/2up">he wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nearly all our District Officers and Hindus are … biased in a certain direction. It is unfortunate that so few Muslims are represented in our services now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the main political parties and the bureaucracy were prejudiced, where did Nehru’s secularism, then, live? Not in <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/declassify-report-on-the-1948-hyderabad-massacre/">Hyderabad</a>, nor in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20566093.2016.1222734?scroll=top&needAccess=true">Jammu</a>, where, with the government playing an active role, 200,000 Muslims were massacred in 1947.</p>
<h2>Creating inhumanity in the guise of humanity</h2>
<p>Though anti-pluralism (which Müller sees as the core of populism) in India began much earlier than Trump and the Tea Party in America, populism has undeniably taken on a new flavour in contemporary times.</p>
<p>The September 11 attacks marked a new phase in the definition of “the people” around the axes of “terrorism” and “humanity”. In a televised debate soon after 9/11, Modi hailed the Indian media for speaking “the truth” in using the phrase “Islamic terrorism”. </p>
<p>Modi opined that terrorism was innate to Islam (and less emphatically also to Christianity), for it did not consider other religions to be true. In his view, the “whole world” had witnessed terrorism “for 1,400 years” (since Muhammad’s time). Modi <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17539153.2016.1219532">saw</a> the post-9/11 era as a battle between “humanity” and “terrorism”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fas-jaaZWWM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Speaking after the September 11 attacks, Narendra Modi hails India media for telling the truth about ‘Islamic terrorism’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “humanity” Modi spoke of did not exist as a prior idea. Instead, it was manufactured through the disingenuous discourse on terrorism that his party enacted on the international stage. In the same debate, Modi said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because of India’s initiative in the UN meeting twice, we have made terrorism an issue. Due to this, we have succeeded in dividing the country into two camps: those who are against terrorism and those who are in support of terrorism. </p>
<p>I think that the recent incident in America [9/11] will intensify it [the division]. The world is about to be divided into two parts: those who are in favour of humanity and those who are against humanity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Müller does discuss polarisation as constitutive of populism, he fails to connect its articulations across countries as Modi did. Modi’s polarisation was between humanity and its enemy, which is simultaneously anti-human, non-human, sub-human and less than human.</p>
<p>In the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom, which Modi presided over as chief minister of Gujarat, over <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25664017?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">3,000 Muslims</a> were killed with state complicity. He maintained a long silence over the killings; when he eventually spoke, he <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/narendra-modi-puppy-reuters-interview-idINDEE96B08S20130712">compared</a> the killings to running over puppies with a car. In doing so, he transferred Muslims from human to sub-human.</p>
<p>The act of transference partly explains why hundreds of people at the railway station <a href="https://scroll.in/article/841901/why-200-people-did-not-see-a-dead-muslim-teenager-on-a-railway-platform-in-north-india">did not even see</a> Junaid’s dead body. Surely populism itself is too wandering and too light a term to grasp the ferocity with which the crowd killed Junaid, and the subsequent weight of the public’s apathy. </p>
<p>When Junaid’s mother, Saira, was told of his murder after she had broken her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2avTLvBcBg">Ramadan fast</a>, she responded with words that did not include populism. Can democracy, then, understand the tears and moaning through which Saira spoke?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Zn6LfLFg-8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Junaid’s mother after learning of her son’s death.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s worth remembering that in addition to Modi’s <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20566093.2015.1047688?src=recsys">claim</a> that he is chosen by God, his followers <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/india/pm-modi-is-god-greater-than-gandhi-says-new-iccr-chairman-lokesh-chanda-1786777.html">regard</a> him as God. At Madison Square Garden in 2014, Modi described his electoral victory as divine. He <a href="https://www.academia.edu/28968191/The_Rise_of_Hindu_Populism_in_Indias_Public_Sphere">pronounced</a>: “<em>janata jan janārdan</em>”, or “the will of the people prevails over the world”, where the people themselves are God because <em>janārdan</em> denotes the Hindu god Lord Krishna. </p>
<p>Thus, unlike “secularism”, which Modi <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Introspection/don-t-let-india-lose-to-pseudo-secularist-and-fake-nationalist/">denounces</a> as “pseudo-secularism”, the idea that there can likewise be “pseudo-democracy” remains unthinkable for Modi and his followers.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Müller’s observation that “one implication of the analysis presented in this book is that National Socialism and Italian Fascism need to be understood as populist movements…” The question, then, is: are populism and fascism substitutes? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177474/original/file-20170710-29718-m98h19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By conflating Islam with terrorism (and vice versa), Modi evokes an Indian humanity that does not include Muslims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">M. M./flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irfan Ahmad 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>For decades, India’s Hindu and Muslim populations have been at odds, and it comes down to more than just religion.Irfan Ahmad, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic DiversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775632017-05-30T05:01:01Z2017-05-30T05:01:01ZTrump demands a post-post-truth response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170078/original/file-20170519-12237-1fvde5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We cannot stand outside the fray, but instead must engage in the ‘post-truth’ debates about politics and knowledge.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricricciardi/33093276772/">Richard Ricardi/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 an <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">ongoing series</a> from the <a href="https://posttruthinitiative.org/">Post-Truth Initiative</a>, a Strategic Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Sydney. The series examines today’s post-truth problem in public discourse: the thriving economy of lies, bullshit and propaganda that threatens rational discourse and policy.</em> </p>
<p><em>The project brings together scholars of media and communications, government and international relations, physics, philosophy, linguistics, and medicine, and is affiliated with the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (<a href="http://chcinetwork.org/sydney-social-sciences-and-humanities-advanced-research-centre-sssharc">SSSHARC</a>), the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/">Sydney Environment Institute</a> and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Is Donald Trump post-truth, post-modern or simply preposterous? What started as an academic contretemps erupted into a media spasm, and escalated into political warfare, has now reached impeachable levels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trump-could-be-removed-from-office-under-the-us-constitution-77983">high crimes and misdemeanours</a>.</p>
<p>How did we get here? The question of truth first became weaponised in the culture wars of the 2016 US presidential campaign. The Oxford Dictionaries fired the shot heard around the infosphere when it announced its <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016">Word of the Year</a> was “post-truth”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Oxford Dictionaries took pains to distinguish the word from a particular event or assertion (like post-war or truthiness) to better identify the character of an age (like post-national or post-racial). Among all the “posts” mentioned in the lengthy press release, “post-modern” never gets a nod. </p>
<p>Perhaps the editors were sensitive to the <a href="http://sk.sagepub.com/books/consumer-culture-and-postmodernism-2e/n1.xml">definition of post-modern</a> provided by its lesser-known rival, the <a href="https://thepointmag.com/2010/examined-life/the-updated-dictionary-of-received-ideas">(Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This word has no meaning; use it as often as possible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No matter. Where semioticians fear to tread, pundits and academics rushed in, linking post-truth to post-modernists, post-positivists, post-structuralists or any other “postie” who bore the cursed sign of relativism.</p>
<h2>Playing the philosophical blame game</h2>
<p>I witnessed more than a few scholars making these links at the 2017 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Baltimore. The meeting came just weeks after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-muslim-executive-order-trump.html">Trump’s executive order</a> limiting entry from seven Muslim-majority countries into the US. </p>
<p>Trump’s post-truth directive ignored the alternative facts that the terrorists in the recent rash of attacks had come from countries not on the list; that extensive vetting was already in place; and that an American was a thousand times more likely to be killed by a criminal than a terrorist. </p>
<p>It was no small irony that the protests and debates swirling around Trump helped make this ISA meeting one of the best. Among many noteworthy moments, the distinguished scholar roundtable for <a href="http://politicalscience.jhu.edu/directory/william-connolly/">William E. Connolly</a> did a good demo job on the post-truth/modern mash-up. </p>
<p>Political scientists who live by the causal code were faulted for being overly casual about the means of transmission by which post-modern ideas suddenly came to infect Trump, his fellow travellers and the political habitus. Since Trump does not seem to read continental philosophy – or books in general – Steve Bannon, his éminence grise (who looks greyer as his eminence diminishes), took most of the blame. </p>
<p>But the best evidence dug up by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html?_r=0">paper of record</a> was a 2014 speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in which he lauds Italian proto-fascist Julius Evola. </p>
<p>Since Evola shares with Nietzsche a critique of modernity, this clearly makes Bannon a fellow post-modernist/truthist. No matter that Bannon cites pre-modernist sources like Sun Tzu and the Bible as his texts of choice for the civilisational battle (with fellow holy crusader Vlad Putin) to save “the Judeo-Christian West”. </p>
<p>Connolly et al summarily dismissed the charge of relativism as “untimely” – and silly. </p>
<p>Relativism, Nietzsche’s “<a href="http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html">breath of empty space</a>”, is not some malignant creation of post-truth philosophers or politicians; it presents as a historical condition of diverse origins, beginning with the death of God and other adjudicators and executors of a universal or transcendental truth. This might constitute a repudiation of philosophical realism (based on a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/">correspondence theory of the truth</a>), but Nietzsche did not reject physical realism (based on empirical facts) or political realism (based on contestable judgments). </p>
<p>Indeed, Nietzsche scorned the “<a href="http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/TWILIGHT_OF_THE_IDOLS_.aspx?S=11">coward before reality</a> … [who] flees into the ideal”. He openly expressed his preference for realists such as Thucydides and Machiavelli over the likes of Plato and Hegel. </p>
<p>Continental philosophers influenced by Nietzsche (Heidegger and Schmitt notwithstanding) were less concerned with the dangers of relativism than with metaphysical truths deemed above and beyond human critique. </p>
<p>One would think, if thinking clearly, that the epistemic as well as political certitudes preceding and engendering two world wars, the Cold War, the global “war on terror” and the war on Islam were more pernicious than the cosmopolitanism, subjectivism and relativism that putatively taint all things post-truth/modern.</p>
<h2>Beware easy post-truth finger-pointing</h2>
<p>The takeaway from the roundtable was that the identification of a historical or social condition should not be confused with endorsement of an epistemological or political doctrine.</p>
<p>Tarring the post-truthist/modernist with the claim “all is permitted” or “there is no truth” makes for a nice sound bite but does violence to a sophisticated argument for subjecting all truth-claims to more rigorous forms of verification. Invoking a transcendental, universal or objective authority to resolve contradicting stories or disputable facts is not sufficient. </p>
<p>Such certainty is ahistorical: the “<a href="http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/">self-evident truths</a>” of America’s founding fathers, based on first principles of natural law and sanctified by heavenly commandments, can, fortunately for humanity, prove to be untrue; otherwise slaves would still be slaves, women would not have the vote, etc. </p>
<p>What is notably missing from the narcissism of Trump and solipsism of his fellow Truthers is any sense of ethical responsibility towards ways of seeing or being in the world that differ from their own. An ethics that begins in response to relativism necessarily entails a mutual recognition – rather than the eradication or assimilation – of difference and otherness. </p>
<p>This kind of ethics cannot be delivered by command from above or by invocation of universal principles; it emerges as a condition of co-existence among those who differ on such matters as the truth. </p>
<p>Other post-truth/modern encounters on ISA panels, at hotel bars and even a few street-side produced new questions. Why were so many scholars, who put a premium on material or structural explanations for global events, now eager to infer such power upon ideas, especially when they emanated from a marginal school of thought like post-modernism?</p>
<p>Why were so many of these same scholars willing to accept “slam-dunk” facts about war crimes and WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq War? To form unholy alliances in support of invasions that spawned many second- and third-order global crises, including the rise of ISIS and the nationalist fevers that fanned Trump’s victory? </p>
<p>If, as the exculpatory refrain goes, they only knew then what they know now. But a purblind adherence to rationalism and positive evidence that excludes affective or cognitive preferences keeps us from knowing the truth, both then and now. </p>
<p>How much history is needed, from Vietnam to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Iraq War, to show that “fake news”, “alternative facts” and “post-truths” weren’t born of continental philosophy? That disproving a lie is no substitute for creating a counter-narrative? That more than sweet reason is needed to unmask false consciousness? </p>
<p>By the end of the ISA meeting, a kind of déjà vu had set in: had we not witnessed this conflation before, of diagnosis and disease? Where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation">Baudrillard’s precession of simulation</a> was deemed responsible for the Gulf War; <a href="https://revisesociology.com/2016/09/21/foucault-surveillance-crime-control/">Foucault’s critical regard of surveillance</a> for the rise of Big Brother; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time%E2%80%93space_compression">Virilio’s elevation of pace over space</a> for the erosion of the sovereign state; and <a href="http://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.html">Derrida’s insistence that nothing exists outside the text</a> for everything else – except Nazism, which was Nietzsche’s fault.</p>
<h2>A duty to re-enter the fray</h2>
<p>Et voilà, it came to me on the long flight back to Australia. Post-truthists/modernists must re-enter the political fray, not only because they are best equipped to counter the simulations, surveillance, speed and signs of Trump and his followers. </p>
<p>We need to embrace rather than run from the “post-truth” debate because ideas, discourses and methods might not define the truth but they do matter in politics. </p>
<p>We need to challenge the political science “quants” whose polls got it so wrong, giving Bernie Sanders supporters and other independents the excuse to maintain political purity by not voting.</p>
<p>We need to challenge the neoliberals whose promotion of the idea of globalisation helped produce the economic inequalities and cultural resentments that “primed the pump”, as Trump would say, for his victory. </p>
<p>Most importantly, we must repudiate the petty narcissism of attacking those closest on the political as well as epistemic spectrum, and form a real popular front against the faux populism of Trump and the neofundamentalism of Mike Pence that is likely to follow Trump’s fall from power.</p>
<p>We must, in other words, become post-post-truth. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article draws on the author’s opening comments from the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/ciss/global_forum/index.shtml">Global Forum on Peace and Security under Uncertainty</a>, which is sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A short video about the global forum is available on the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/ciss/">Centre for International Security Studies (CISS) website</a> and below. Full panel recordings will be available on the <a href="https://projectqsydney.com/">Project Q website</a>.</em></p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/219448613" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The CISS Global Forum: Peace and Security Under Uncertainty.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the post-truth series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/post-truth-initiative-38606">here</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series is 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><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Der Derian 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>Pundits have been keen to link post-truth to post-modernists, post-positivists or any other ‘postie’. They should turn their energy to forming a real popular front against Trump’s faux populism.James Der Derian, Michael Hintze Chair of International Security, University of SydneyLicensed 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>
</figcaption>
</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>
</figcaption>
</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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Princeton University Press (2016)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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/685632016-11-10T08:20:42Z2016-11-10T08:20:42ZDear Mr President-elect Trump, thanks! We now live in the best of all possible worlds<p><em>To the Honourable Mr President-Elect, Donald J. Trump</em></p>
<p><em>This morning I received the attached letter, it is for you. The sender is Mr Pietro Pangloss, a very enthusiastic Italian student of mine. Mr Pangloss wishes to covey his congratulations to you on your victory, but as he didn’t know how to reach you (he is hopeless with technology), I agreed to forward you the letter. It seems very much sincere, and I am sure you will appreciate it. You seem to have had quite an impact on this young man’s life.</em> </p>
<p><em>Regards,</em> </p>
<p><em>Dr Giovanni Navarria</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Dear Mr President-elect, Donald J. Trump,</p>
<p>Congratulations.</p>
<p>Since I watched you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tjPZvxwgEk">descending that escalator</a> at your magnificent Trump Tower over a year ago I was yours. It has a been a truly thrilling presidential campaign. Though at times I was confused, I always remained captivated. I never switched channel. I couldn’t let go of you. It has been the best reality show I have ever watched. </p>
<p>I promise you, I will not miss a single episode of your new show starting next January. I don’t want to jinx it, but I feel it in my guts, and therefore I know it is true: you will finally get that Emmy Award that has eluded you before. Those losers at the Television Academy never really understood you. You are indeed the greatest star on Earth.</p>
<p>More importantly, I will always be in your debt. You see, before you came onto the scene, I was a rather confused man, but you have inspired me and many like me to be great men. And this is only the beginning, I know. You will do great things. So please allow me to present you with ten, rather personal notes I wrote to thank you for what you have done for me.</p>
<h2>Thanks for showing me what true leadership is</h2>
<p>I still remember fondly how magnificent you looked when you first announced your presidential bid. Your words still ring like melody in my ears. Instinctively, I knew already that day I was witnessing a miracle, history in the making. I felt special. </p>
<p>Not many of us have had that luck lately. Politics has become either the sphere of boredom or the harbour of crooks and liars; but you changed everything. It has been 80 years or more since the world (at least in Europe) has seen true great leaders like you, with your magnetic features and inspired vision. I know I am not American, but I feel like one today. If that former president of yours (whose name now escapes me) could say, Ich Bin Ein Berliner, then can’t I say loud and proud, today, I am an American?</p>
<h2>Thanks for teaching us about women</h2>
<p>Thanks to you, finally I know what to really think of women, how to grab them, how to talk to them and how to charm them. </p>
<p>Can you believe, my dear President-elect, these women today? They are confused, they no longer know their rightful place. What’s wrong with them? </p>
<p>The media and all those university big wigs have put in their heads the most hideous nonsense: they deserve respect, they say. Some even want the same pay as us! Others demand birth control (and we must pay for it?). </p>
<p>They want to wear pants, they want to argue with their men as often as they like, they refuse to cook us dinner any more … it has been a disaster for years. As if they are equal to us, men. </p>
<p>Some of them are so crazy, they even dare to imagine themselves as Commander in Chief. (Can you imagine a more ridiculous dream? A woman with the nuclear codes, that would be the day!) But now that you are the new boss, they will get the memo; if they don’t like it, we will fire them.</p>
<h2>Experience is overrated!</h2>
<p>Thanks for teaching me that being unqualified for the job is not a weakness, but a strength. I used to be afraid of my lack of working experience, but now I know it is a strength we should all be proud of. </p>
<p>The world is wrong, you showed us. Next time my job application is rejected with the lame excuse that I lack experience, strengthened by your glorious example, I will scream back at them: you are wrong, wrong, wrong. </p>
<p>My inexperience makes me better than anyone you have here flipping burgers. I am untainted. See Mr Trump, he didn’t need any experience and now he sits in the Oval Office. So hire me, or I sue you, losers. Losers. LOSERS.</p>
<h2>Multiculturalism is evil</h2>
<p>Thanks for showing me that all this talk about multiculturalism, diversity, respect for others, is just utter nonsense. Political correctness is for cowards. Why should we be ashamed of what we think of them, all of them, even that <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-s-worst-offense-mocking-disabled-reporter-poll-finds-n627736">journalist that you mocked</a> so brilliantly? </p>
<p>They are not like us, especially those Muslim people. Have you seen how they treat their women? Unbelievable! You know what some of those crazy Muslim countries have done in the past? They have <a href="http://egyptianstreets.com/2015/06/09/meet-the-nine-muslim-women-who-have-ruled-nations/">elected women as their leaders</a>. They must have gone nuts. </p>
<p>This talk of help, love thy neighbour, is just weak. Thanks to you, now I shall not be ashamed, ever again, to say it aloud, proudly and bigly: go away, go back to your country, we don’t want you here.</p>
<h2>It is easy to be a politician</h2>
<p>I never understood much about politics, but now I feel like I could become a politician if I wanted. You have truly, deeply, bigly inspired me. I learned so much from you. </p>
<p>Thanks for showing me that all a politician needs to succeed is a good story, not a complicated one. People love simplicity. Better if it is a one-line story that can fit in a tweet, repeated many times. Our America is rotten, let’s make it great again.</p>
<h2>If you feel it, it must be true</h2>
<p>Thanks for teaching me never to feel ashamed about what I don’t know. This idea that you must know something well before you speak your mind is a conspiracy of the establishment to control us. </p>
<p>We must rebel, there is nothing wrong in saying what one feels, even if it contradicts some of the stuff others call facts. What are these facts, anyway? The internet is all we need. Did you see yesterday? ‘Make America Great Again’ was the most trending term on Twitter. </p>
<p>I felt so proud. They heard our voices, finally, loud and clear, didn’t they?</p>
<h2>A small sample of words can give you wings</h2>
<p>As a foreigner, I am always weakened by my limited English vocabulary, but now with you, I don’t fear it any more. You showed me that even with knowing only about 500 words in total, the sky is the limit. I could still become president of the United States (if only I was born there!). I learned a lot from you. I don’t want to sound braggadocious, but I am tremendously proud of you, Mr President-Elect.</p>
<h2>Conspiracy theories deserve respect</h2>
<p>Thanks for showing the world that conspiracy theories are real, and those who talk about them are enlightened citizens. I used to be so ashamed of what I thought, but now I no longer feel that way. Like you, I also believe that Barack Obama was never born in the United States. He should have never been president (and yesterday’s vote proves it!). </p>
<p>And, you know what, this world is just a computer simulation. I read it on the internet. Because of you they want to reboot it. We must stop them. It is true, I will send you the link. I hope you tweet about it, it will help our cause.</p>
<h2>You vindicated Italians</h2>
<p>Your victory has vindicated us, Italians, and undone the injustice we have suffered for years. <a href="https://theconversation.com/looking-back-at-italy-1992-the-rise-and-fall-of-king-midas-66740">When we elected Silvio Berlusconi</a>, a man of great vision and temperament, very much like you, everyone thought we were crazy. American politicians scorned us, even that woman you defeated so bigly yesterday, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/clinton-apparently-did-a-berlusconi-impression-while-discuss?utm_term=.kqE2Op268R#.ooZeaYeDZz">she used to belittle him</a>. </p>
<p>But Berlusconi achieved great things, almost like the great <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mussolini_benito.shtml">Benito</a> before him. You remind me a bit of both. Don’t believe those revolting experts <a href="https://theconversation.com/looking-back-at-italy-1992-the-rise-and-fall-of-king-midas-66740">saying Silvio ruined Italy’s</a> economy; that he used his power to avoid jail and become wealthier; that he divided the country and all those other lies. They even say he exploited women. Since when is liking an underage girl illegal? They never really <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/silvio-berlusconi-underage-sex-conviction-overturned-1405682830">proved he had sex with her anyway</a>. </p>
<p>The truth is he treated all his women well, not unlike you. He always invited them to dine with him in his Rome residence. He ranked them, as you do. He sang for them. <a href="http://www.thelocal.it/20150630/berlusconi-bunged-women-millions-for-bunga-silence">He was so generous</a> that he even brought some of them into parliament, as elected members of his coalition. He was always very caring with them, and if it was too late after dinner, he even let them stay at his place, no matter how many they were. </p>
<p>And like you, Berlusconi is a great friend of President Putin. It must be true what they say, great minds think alike.</p>
<h2>America is the greatest country in the world</h2>
<p>Finally, from the deep bottom of my heart, thanks for showing me what a wonderful and tremendous place America is. When I look back at the last 15 months, I can’t still quite fathom it. How did you manage to get us this far? </p>
<p>It must be true what I heard yesterday from you and your jolly Republican friends: on November 8 the United States of America has become officially the greatest country in the world, the best democracy, the perfect society we should all strive to imitate. Your victory is and always will be remembered as the best possible example of the true and incomparable wisdom of the people. Since Tuesday, I feel truly blessed. I finally live in the best of all possible worlds.</p>
<p>Forever grateful, </p>
<p><em>Mr Pietro Pangloss, an admirer</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Your victory, Mr Trump, is and always will be remembered as the best possible example of the true and incomparable wisdom of the people.Giovanni Navarria, Lecturer and Research Fellow, Sydney Democracy Network, School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS), University of SydneyLicensed 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/650852016-09-09T00:14:33Z2016-09-09T00:14:33ZHe may have insulted Obama, but Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US<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>Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken his <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/duterte-to-'apologise-to-pope-for-son-of-a-whore-remark'/7408796">“bad manners”</a> – having <a href="http://time.com/4480188/obama-whore-rodrigo-duterte-remarks/">gained global notoriety</a> with his election campaign insults earlier this year – to a new level. </p>
<p>At a <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/145337-transcript-duterte-obama-human-rights">press conference at Davao International Airport on Monday</a>, on his way to meet US President Barack Obama and other leaders attending the ASEAN summit, Duterte muttered a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-08/rodrigo-duterte-was-directing-comment-at-reporters-not-obama/7828078">few short words in tagalog</a> at the end of a lengthy and irritated reply to a local journalist. With those words, he again <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/philippines-duterte-curses-barack-obama-talks-160905183808578.html">made international headlines</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-MdjHvasfvo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">What did Rodrigo Duterte call Barack Obama?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If that were all there was to it, we could rightly roll our eyes and move on. After all, Duterte’s language is vulgar; his slander of people and groups is liable to incite violence; and his <a href="https://theconversation.com/philippines-cannot-build-a-nation-over-the-bodies-of-100-000-dead-in-dutertes-war-on-drugs-64053">determination to kill drug pushers</a> (to fight “crime with crime”) an abuse of power. He should not be defended for any of this.</p>
<p>But as someone who has spent a long time studying <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-11/webb-is-the-'trump-of-the-philippines'-a-force-for-good-or-evil/7403592">US-Philippine relations</a>, I think there’s something more for us to see here. And if we want to judge the Philippine president (and, by default, the nation for electing him) from high moral ground, I think we have a responsibility to pay attention to it. </p>
<h2>Restoring an invisible history</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Who is he to question me about human rights and extrajudicial killings?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/145296-duterte-obama-human-rights-asean-summit">asked Duterte</a> on Monday. It’s actually a very good question, and one long overdue from a Philippine president. The extent to which the violence of US relations with the Philippines has been made invisible by a history written predominantly by Americans themselves cannot be overstated. </p>
<p>It began with a <a href="http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/15233/803.%20Knowing%20America's%20Colony%20.pdf?sequence=1">three-year war</a> (1899-1902) that most Americans have never heard of. The war overthrew a newly independent Philippine republic and cost between 250,000 and a million Filipino lives – only to be called “<a href="http://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/8307/1/HJsoc0330101030.pdf">a great misunderstanding</a>” by American colonial writers. </p>
<p>After all, the US had chosen the Philippines to be its great Asian “showcase of democracy”. The invasion was a benevolent act. Hence the complete erasure of acts of American violence from the Philippine national story.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137018/original/image-20160908-25257-1h6qjg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&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 20th Kansas Volunteers march through Caloocan after the battle of February 10, 1899, early in the war that toppled the first Philippine republic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">G.W. Peters/Internet Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to smell something rotten. Since the 1950s Philippine writers, academics, journalists and so on have been trying to reframe the historical narrative to point out this fact: to be invaded by a military power, told you don’t possess the character or capability for self-government, and then controlled by another nation for four decades, to the occupier’s lucrative commercial benefit, was not to be the recipient of a benevolent act.</p>
<p>Even at the time the war was taking place, one of America’s best-loved authors was writing just as much. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain">Mark Twain</a> was <a href="https://archive.org/details/anti-imperialist_twain_1210_librivox">prolific in writing</a> about the paradox of the “democratising mission” to the Philippines. </p>
<p>Penned in 1901, but still stunningly poignant, is this extract from his essay, <a href="https://ia801609.us.archive.org/2/items/jstor-25105120/25105120.pdf">To the Person Sitting in Darkness</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Person Sitting in Darkness is almost sure to say: ‘There is something curious about this – curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.‘</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In America, these remain Twain’s least-known works. </p>
<p>Before his (<a href="http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/asia-pacific/145359-duterte-regrets-comments-obama-meeting-reset">now regretted</a>) distasteful remark, Duterte had much to say in response to the question about being <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/30/politics/obama-duterte-laos-meeting/">confronted over human rights in an upcoming meeting</a> with Obama. He was responding to murmurs from critics that, if he wouldn’t listen to anyone else about the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, just wait until he meets the US president. </p>
<p>No-one seems to have listened to or cared much about the other six minutes of <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/145337-transcript-duterte-obama-human-rights">Duterte’s reply</a>. So let me tell you something about it. It was a reclaiming of the historical narrative of Philippine-US relations, a holding up to the US of the <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Salutation.html">hidden “looking glass”</a> Mark Twain had written about 100 years earlier. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137017/original/image-20160908-25237-d9sbrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Macabebe Scouts were a native Filipino force of the US Army during the Spanish–American War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Ardvaark/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An assertion of independence</h2>
<p>Calling out the hidden insinuations, as Duterte did, that the US continues to have authority over the politics of the Philippines, is bold and brazen, but reasonable. Consider his statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am a president of a sovereign state. And we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master but the Filipino people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words are less evidence of his demagoguery or an intention to personally disparage Obama than a reference to history, and are more accurately read as such. </p>
<p>After the second world war, colonies of any sort, even the so-called “democratic” US one in the Philippines, were on the nose. But this didn’t stop Washington officialdom from continuing to claim the right of access to the Philippines’ political and economic realms. </p>
<p>When the US finally granted the Philippines its (second) independence in 1946, it required the new republic to amend its constitution so <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Trade_Act#Philippine_Parity_Rights_plebiscite.2C_1947">a bill</a> could be passed that, as well as legislating preferential trade conditions for the US, would grant American citizens equal rights with Filipinos to Philippine natural resources. It was the beginning of a new phase: neocolonialism. </p>
<p>It was not just a matter of political interference and the power to make or break Philippine presidents with endorsement and strategic financial support. In a visceral sense, the nation was always being <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6010313">watched and judged by its democratic “teacher”</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137021/original/image-20160908-25257-farum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">School Begins: Uncle Sam lectures his class in Civilisation (the pupils are labelled Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Cuba).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Puck Magazine 1899</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Asked about being confronted with human rights concerns by Obama, Duterte said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You must be kidding. Who is he to confront me? America has one too many to answer for the misdeeds in this country … As a matter of fact, we inherited this problem from the United States. Why? Because they invaded this country and made us their subjugated people … Can I explain the extrajudicial killing? Can they explain the 600,000 <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/moro-insurgents-1906/">Moro massacred in this island</a> [Mindanao]? Do you want to see the pictures? Maybe you ask him. And make it public.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m reminded of a comment by Alicia Garza, a founder of the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement ignited by police killings of black Americans. Speaking in Sydney last weekend at the <a href="http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/home/why-black-lives-matter/">Festival of Dangerous Ideas</a>, she related how, when civil rights protests get uncomfortably heated, she is often asked: “Why are they so angry?” She paused. Then softly giggled, giving the audience time for the ludicrousness of the question to sink in.</p>
<p>Why is the Philippines president so angry about the prospect of the US president confronting him about human rights abuses? History. As Duterte said himself on Monday, violent acts of the past don’t stay in the past. They get passed on from generation to generation, especially when the injustice goes unacknowledged and unaddressed. </p>
<p>It is difficult to stomach Duterte’s style. It certainly is difficult to look past the serious issues raised by his administration’s “war on drugs”. We should condemn his misuse of power. </p>
<p>But if we condemn the president for his recent remarks because we claim to be concerned about the rights of Filipinos while showing no interest in acknowledging the past crimes and injustices against the Philippines, we fall into our own sort of hypocrisy. </p>
<p>Let’s be honest, if Duterte didn’t curse and swear and offend our sensibilities, would we be paying so much attention to the Philippines? For once, I heard a Philippine president holding the US to account for all its doublespeak and hypocrisy in US-Philippine relations. And I couldn’t help but appreciate that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65085/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>The people of the Philippines and their president know all too well the hypocrisy of being lectured by the United States about violence, human rights and democracy.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/618062016-06-30T04:44:57Z2016-06-30T04:44:57ZBritain’s ‘Bregret’ offers timely lessons for Australian voters this weekend<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128608/original/image-20160629-15251-ckbjv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">UKIP leader Nigel Farage was an architect of Britain's seismic decision to leave the European Union. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chathamhouse/13842646613">Chatham House/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-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.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Last week’s Brexit decision sent more than financial markets into a spin. Britain’s historic referendum result prompted Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation, as millions of Britons began expressing their <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/brexit-aftermath-spurs-bregret-political-infighting-20160626-gpsa3h.html">“Bregret”</a> at voting to leave the European Union.</p>
<p>Echoing the International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/brexit-democratic-failure-for-uk-by-kenneth-rogoff-2016-06">Ken Rogoff</a>, who said the referendum was little more than a game of “Russian roulette for republics”, more than 3 million Brits quickly signed a petition calling for a second EU referendum.</p>
<h2>Uninformed and ill-prepared</h2>
<p>Speaking to ITV News the day afterwards, British student Mandy Suthi, a Leave voter, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-anger-bregret-leave-voters-protest-vote-thought-uk-stay-in-eu-remain-win-a7102516.html">summed up</a> the anxieties many felt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would go back to the polling station and vote to stay, simply because this morning the reality is actually hitting in and the regrets are filling in. I’m daunted that we have actually left the EU.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_MewzYp8UJA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Brexit regrets for Leave voter who changed her mind.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While many have attributed their Bregret to the lies fed to them by politicians <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3658563/Meet-Bregretters-Public-backed-Leave-vote-say-want-STAY-EU-one-admits-didn-t-think-vote-count.html">such as UKIP’s Nigel Farage</a>, Google Trends data offer a slightly different take on why so many Brits are pushing for a do-over.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=what+is+the+eu,+what+is+brexit&geo=GB&date=now+1-d&cmpt=q&tz=Europe/Belfast&tz=Europe/Belfast&tz=Europe/Belfast">Google Trends</a>, searches for “what is the EU?” and “what is Brexit?” began to surge across the UK only <em>after</em> polling stations had closed. On June 24, Google Trends tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"746303118820937728"}"></div></p>
<p>This rather disconcerting revelation confirms something that many in Britain are now coming to grips with: too many citizens went to the polls <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24/the-british-are-frantically-googling-what-the-eu-is-hours-after-voting-to-leave-it/">not fully knowing what they were voting for</a>.</p>
<p>Political leaders <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/ids-goes-off-message-brexit-labour-tears-itself-apart?CMP=fb_gu">have been equally ill-prepared</a> for the momentous referendum, and especially for what comes next.</p>
<p>Sky News political editor Faisal Islam has reported that a leading pro-Brexit Conservative MP, who wanted to remain anonymous, conceded to him that the Leave campaign “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/faisal-islam-brexit-no-plan_uk_576fe22ee4b0d2571149cffd">didn’t have a plan</a>” for Brexit, thinking that “Number 10 [Downing Street] should have had one”.</p>
<p>According to Islam, when asked the question, “Can we see the Brexit plan now?”, the MP’s response was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no plan. The Leave campaign don’t have a post-Brexit plan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boris Johnson, potentially the successor to Cameron, has since revealed his <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/boris-johnson-breaks-silence-to-set-out-leadership-platform">vision for what comes next</a>. But Brussels insiders have reiterated what critics within Britain have been saying – that the Brexit side had “no clue” and “no plan” for what lies ahead.</p>
<p>What has made the whole Brexit affair such a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-uk-could-be-doomed-to-years-without-proper-access-to-world-trade-61782">political and economic debacle</a>, according to former British prime minister <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/tony-blair-brexits-stunning-coup.html?ref=opinion&_r=2">Tony Blair</a>, is that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The campaign made the word ‘expert’ virtually a term of abuse, and when experts warned of the economic harm that would follow Brexit, they were castigated as ‘scaremongers’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Echoing Blair’s point, Guardian editor-at-large <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/eu-vote-uk-diminished-politics-poisoned-racism">Gary Younge observed</a> that the campaign was largely “tone-deaf to an insurrectionary mood that suffered fools more gladly than experts”.</p>
<p>Taken hostage by populist movements of the far left and right, Britons’ anxieties over Europe’s immigration and financial problems were exploited by political forces peddling “simple, demagogic answers to complex problems”, as Blair writes.</p>
<h2>So what now?</h2>
<p>For Blair, the answer is clear:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The centre must regain its political traction, rediscover its capacity to analyse the problems we all face and find solutions that rise above the populist anger.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He noted that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the people — usually a repository of common sense and practicality — do something that appears neither sensible nor practical, then it forces a period of long and hard reflection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blair is onto something important. Instead of rushing headlong into negotiations with Europe to expedite Britain’s decision to leave the EU (as Cameron has signalled), the UK parliament needs to take stock of what has just happened. However unpopular political leaders may be at the moment, these inquiries and deliberations cannot occur without substantial input from the people’s elected representatives, or qualified experts.</p>
<p>Yes, the people’s views are important and, yes, they should be part of the conversation about what has happened and what should happen next. But as the past week has shown, there are times when governments also have to realise that there is no substitute for expertise and experience. </p>
<p>As the world becomes more interconnected and national politics more complex, informed decision-making – in the corridors of Westminster and elsewhere — has never been more necessary. Citizens require political leaders who can lead: individuals who understand the importance of thinking ahead, accountability, consultation, deliberation and making decisions that are right even when they are not popular.</p>
<p>That, according to Beijing-based political intellectual Daniel Bell, is the defining characteristic of political meritocracy, an ideal largely lacking in most electoral democracies. </p>
<p>In his recent book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10418.html">The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy</a>, Bell contends that Western nations might be better served if more top leaders were selected and promoted on the basis of intellectual “merit” rather than popularity. </p>
<p>There are some things that should be kept from the dictates of “one person, one vote”. This may sound anti-democratic, but as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/27/brexit-is-a-reminder-some-things-just-shouldnt-be-decided-by-the-people/?tid=sm_tw">scholars have already noted</a>, referendums like the one held last week aren’t perfectly democratic either.</p>
<p>Though the idea of <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-democracy-can-learn-from-chinas-meritocracy-51471">political meritocracy</a> is controversial and open to <a href="http://asiasociety.org/video/can-china-model-succeed">criticism</a>, it might just become more appealing in the wake of events like Brexit. </p>
<p>Had more British politicians refused to sacralise the “will of the people” and been more willing to do what was right rather than what was popular, they might have prevented the destructive populist passions and uninformed decision-making of the past week, and the long-term instability that will likely result.</p>
<h2>What can Australians learn from this?</h2>
<p>Australians heading to the polls this Saturday can draw important lessons from the UK referendum. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128781/original/image-20160630-15263-s2xlsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anger-driven populist campaigning has given some Australians something to regret in the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/131302474@N08/16486119232/in/photolist-r7PET3-qb7j6P-atpHYj-qaU3zd-o4rcHW-atpHUq-8E715f-qQrXhT-9NsCbe-qaU3xE-9NGokq-qQrWAn-r7KGe6-jXtiMZ-pewkNL-atn51g-9NDy6B-9cjBP1-o3dzgB-ojqtYe-7BgMQC-o3dzJE-ojqnoF-ohFe8j-ojGXgn-omt3Pv-o3eESn-omt8rg-ojH2rr-cH9ZWw-ojFeNm-8ahuKF-iNJk3C-bopD2X-7Nf2pu-o3eA5X-7BgMNG-cHa18Q-7AcTfS-o3dvr3-o3dLoX-cHa13w-o3dwHa-ojvGoh-omtavB-o3dCoC-ojH3Qi-ojvGNW-7BcYut-nUCTdB">Real Big Tony/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first is that it’s important to think seriously about <a href="https://votecompass.abc.net.au/">one’s own political position</a> in relation to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/policy-primers-what-you-need-to-know-before-election-day-61680">policies</a> of the respective parties, what they stand for and what their proven track record says about them before entering polling booths. </p>
<p>Too many Britons failed to do this. While an election is not a referendum, Australians want to make sure they don’t repeat Britain’s Bregret.</p>
<p>The second lesson is that strong, forward-looking leadership matters. In times of uncertainty, citizens need leaders with proven track records. This isn’t an endorsement of any particular politician, nor is it intended to be a retreat to the status quo.</p>
<p>Yes, Malcolm Turnbull’s support has <a href="https://theconversation.com/malcolm-turnbull-invokes-brexit-to-reinforce-his-campaign-as-newspoll-has-coalition-moving-ahead-61650">risen since the Brexit decision</a>, in part because many Australians have bought into his message about the need for stable government and economic foresight. </p>
<p>But tough times require leaders who can manufacture more than slogans. They call on leaders who can do what’s right, even if that means sometimes defying the popular will of the moment. That’s the kind of representative Australia needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61806/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>The populist appeal of simplistic answers to complex solutions is a challenge for political leaders.There are times when expertise and experience must prevail over the popular mood of the moment.Mark Chou, Associate Professor of Politics, Australian Catholic UniversityMichael Ondaatje, Associate Professor of History & Head of the National School of Arts, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/599782016-06-29T00:09:06Z2016-06-29T00:09:06ZIf democratic citizenship is a universal right, how can we so neglect citizenship education?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123910/original/image-20160525-25226-1bxxl89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Democracy can only work if students realise the importance of active citizenship, but citizenship education has lost its way under David Cameron's government. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/16483056962/">Number 10/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-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.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>If the notion of democratic citizenship is universal, then <a href="http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_b/interact/mod07task03/appendix.htm">citizenship education</a>, as a prerequisite of both political equality and democratic sustainability, should be a universal right.</p>
<p>In the “mother” of all democracies, the ancient Athenian realm of Solon, direct democracy gave all citizens (admittedly men over 20) the right to be heard as equals in the <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora">agora</a></em>. As an ambitious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis">polis</a>, Athens saw its democracy best served by an educated citizenry, so it trained children from the age of seven to amplify their national endowment.</p>
<p>Today, while direct democracy may be the nostalgic dream of academics, some of the basic premises behind civic education remain. Even in our modern representative democracy, citizens need a basic understanding of how political processes function and affect them. They need this knowledge to critique democracy and correct its malfunctions, and to face outwards into society with a truly participatory mindset.</p>
<p>Modern democracy faces threats on all sides. It is being pulled to its knees by growing distrust, underhand corruption and trenchant cynicism, not to mention the general non-involvement, individualism and hedonism of society stemming from democracy’s inability to control the forces of capitalism.</p>
<p>In 2002, the then-Labour government <a href="http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/about-citizenship">introduced citizenship as a statutory subject</a> in the UK. It had the right intentions but scattered success. The political narrative of the last six years has led to the original impetus being lost and the wheels of progress reversed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QENHJaxvdmc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">David Blunkett, the minister who helped usher in citizenship education, discusses its importance for democracy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now, converging social and political forces threaten to tear democracy apart. There has never been a better time to take stock of what has gone wrong and re-evaluate citizenship education, mindful of those values that animated our political ancestors in the Greek agora.</p>
<h2>The political state of play</h2>
<p>The UK was the last state in Europe, the US and the old Commonwealth to introduce citizenship as a statutory subject in compulsory education. There was a naive belief that it wasn’t needed. The established political class (particularly Thatcher’s Conservative government) was also nervous about the hierarchical implications for UK governance of a new citizen culture.</p>
<p>Only with the vision of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/dec/19/past">Sir Bernard Crick</a> and his colleagues at the Politics Association was citizenship finally given the attention it deserved. In their 1998 keynote report, <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/4385/1/crickreport1998.pdf">Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools</a>, Crick’s advisory committee was unanimous in their purpose:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally; for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This would later be known as the “noble paragraph” and a noble message it certainly conveyed.</p>
<p>Citizenship entered the curriculum with great force, but sceptics remained and cynics grew in number. So, unfortunately, the subject stumbled into its second decade as a victim of Coalition and Conservative education policy. </p>
<h2>What are the main problems?</h2>
<p>In my opinion, four key diagnoses demand a response.</p>
<p>1) <strong>The problem of definition and delivery</strong></p>
<p>As <a href="http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/3/488.extract">Crick acknowledged in 2002</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No other national curriculum subject was stated so briefly, left so much to individual teachers in different schools in different circumstances.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority took a light-touch approach. It assumed that, without any training, teachers would be able to figure out an effective method of putting principles into practice alongside their already onerous workloads.</p>
<p>Although citizenship is a statutory foundation subject and a <a href="http://www.aqa.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/policy/gcse-and-a-level-changes/progress-8">Progress 8 indicator</a> (by which schools can be measured), it remains marginalised. School leadership teams are sceptical about giving it proportional attention alongside the core examinable subjects that traditionally carry weight in league tables.</p>
<p>2) <strong>A subject without specialists</strong></p>
<p>Citizenship is a <a href="http://www.academia.edu/867749/Crick_and_Teacher_Education">rare teaching specialisation</a>. Only 190 newly qualified teachers practised the subject in 2006. In 2010, only 220 citizenship teacher-training places were available. </p>
<p>Even if the initial rate of training was maintained, it would take another two decades for the 3,360 maintained secondary schools to have one trained citizenship teacher each. </p>
<p>Non-specialists, with no formal training and a plethora of competing obligations, must deliver citizenship education.</p>
<p>3) <strong>A confused purpose</strong></p>
<p>Where citizenship has been given proper discrete attention, pupils have been encouraged to enter the local community in the spirit of active citizenship. </p>
<p>In his study of 18- to 26-year-olds in 2011, <a href="http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/13/pa.gss083">Paul Whiteley found that</a>, controlling for other variables, participants who had received “consistent” exposure to citizenship education had a greater sense of political efficacy, increased political participation and more political knowledge than those who had received little or no exposure.</p>
<p>The positive potential of citizenship education is <a href="http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/13/pa.gss083">well documented</a> globally. But, in the UK, the test-oriented school system engenders a short-term focus on the “next qualification” and the safety of traditionalism, where good citizenship is based on lawful obedience. </p>
<p>This is far away from progressivism and the notion of active citizenship, where pupils feel empowered to make change happen where it is needed and resist change where it is not.</p>
<p>4) <strong>Post-16 reforms</strong></p>
<p>There is no longer an explicit national endorsement of the value of citizenship in the post-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Certificate_of_Secondary_Education">GCSE</a> sector. Spending cuts have affected the extra-curricular efforts of colleges and sixth forms. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/dec/26/schools-funding-cuts-hits-literacy">75% cut to entitlement funding</a> and the end of the <a href="http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/about-citizenship/citizenship-curriculum/post-16-citizenship">Post-16 Citizenship Support Program</a> have gradually demolished the capacity of many schools and colleges to sustain active citizenship education for their post-16 cohorts. </p>
<p>Recent announcements to make the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/get-involved/take-part/national-citizen-service">National Citizen Service</a> a statutory body miss the point. Citizenship cannot be effectively tagged onto mainstream education.</p>
<h2>Democratic future depends on reform</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexis-de-Tocqueville">Alexis de Tocqueville</a> believed that the social conditions have to be right for change. Even then the right change might not come about without the deliberate actions of individuals. </p>
<p>Today the UK is experiencing a crisis of citizenship. Threats of radicalisation, community paranoia, protests, rioting and dissected communities all undermine our democracy as much as our apathy towards formal channels of participation.</p>
<p>So the social conditions are certainly ripe for change, and UK Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and her associates must recognise the right course before they embark too far along the wrong one.</p>
<p>The Department for Education announced in November 2014 that spiritual, moral, social and cultural learning (SMSC) <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380595/SMSC_Guidance_Maintained_Schools.pdf">would become the primary vehicle</a> through which teachers should consistently promote civic British values in their daily lessons. </p>
<p>So what exactly did the government mean by British values? The department defines these nebulous flags of nationalised integrity as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… democracy; the rule of law; individual liberty; mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Does this sound like the basis of citizenship education? Possibly, but with a big caveat. The government’s message is one of teachers “promoting these fundamental British values” and of young people “accepting”, “respecting” and “tolerating”. </p>
<p>The implication is that everybody already agrees the content and character of those values; acknowledges that they are individual to Britain; and will have no problem unquestionably adhering to them. </p>
<p>This is not, in my view, the purpose of education; it should never be the purpose of education for democracy and political equality. </p>
<p>If Morgan et al are going to contribute to the future viability of democracy and the ideal of political equality, then they must return to the concept of citizenship education and get it right. The principles of learning for democracy and free citizenship for all need to be implanted in our children’s education.</p>
<p>That is why the <a href="http://www.crickcentre.org">Crick Centre</a>, an academic research unit set up in memory of Bernard Crick, will be training teachers in strategies for doing citizenship properly.</p>
<p>Democracy can only work when the public are provided with the necessary conditions to understand political systems, appreciate the inter-relationship between responsibility and liberty, engage in mutual discussion and debate, and realise the importance of both good and active citizenship. The key, as ever and always, lies in education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Weinberg 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>UK schools introduced citizenship education in 2002, but early gains have been reversed. The state of democracy and the Brexit vote suggest the need for informed citizens has never been greater.James Weinberg, Research Associate in Political Psychology and Citizenship, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/468782015-09-17T02:07:22Z2015-09-17T02:07:22ZIran: how a troubling actor could transform into a stabilising force<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94347/original/image-20150910-4741-1d7mwxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iran's nuclear deal promises an era of economic and, by extension, political collaboration with the West.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Umit Bektas</span></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/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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>During a historic visit to Tehran in 1977-78, US President Jimmy Carter <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=7080">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was just one year before the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/iran-1979-revolution-shook-world-2014121134227652609.html">1979 revolution</a>, which transformed Iran from a key US ally into the region’s most troubling actor. But today it is not unreasonable to claim that Iran’s ruling clergy has fulfilled Carter’s wishful thinking after almost 37 years. </p>
<p>The so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a>, which was expected to shake the foundations of all authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, gave way to a somewhat bleak autumn. With the exception of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/11480587/Tunisia-since-the-Arab-Spring-timeline.html">Tunisia</a>, the initial optimistic visions proved unlikely to be born in reality in the remainder of the countries destabilised by the uprisings. National disintegration, the return of merciless jihadists and sectarian conflict have embroiled many nations in full-blown political and military crisis.</p>
<p>A similar uprising occurred in Iran after the contested <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/iran/2009/11/200911411259869709.html">2009 presidential elections</a>, posing an existential threat to the clerical establishment. Despite this, the evidence suggests that in both domestic and international politics Iran’s ruling clergy currently enjoys a much more secure position compared to that which they occupied before 9/11, the nuclear crisis and the 2009 post-election uprising. </p>
<p>In domestic politics, the ruling clergy’s theocratic faction has managed not only to put behind the turbulent years of the reformist era (1997 to 2005), but has also successfully dissipated the coalition between in-house opposition and regime-change advocates, which crystallised during the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akbar-ganji/iran-green-movement-five-years_b_5470078.html?ir=Australia">Green Movement</a> (2009 onwards).</p>
<p>Varied reasons may explain the ruling clergy’s somewhat fortunate trajectory during the tumultuous years of regional and international crises. The US undoubtedly played a decisive role in this process (albeit unwittingly), in particular by removing two leading enemies of Tehran – the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In the process, this altered the regional balance of power to the benefit of Iran’s ruling clergy. </p>
<p>Another, often underestimated, factor is the pragmatic trait of Iran’s ruling clergy, which distinguishes them from other radical Islamists. Dressed in seemingly ideological garb, this pragmatism is embedded in Iran’s theological foundations.</p>
<h2>Theological pragmatism</h2>
<p>The Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, is repeatedly quoted referring to the government as <a href="http://cssaame.dukejournals.org/content/29/3/468.abstract">religiously indispensable</a>, meaning that regime survival is of the highest necessity. </p>
<p>Confronted with the realities of governance as the ruler of a state in the modern age, Ayatollah Khomeini revised his politico-religious doctrine, which was initially articulated to implement Shari’a law. He explicitly authorised violation or disregarding of Shari’a when it came to interests of the state. He <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/religious-secularity-9780199391172?cc=au&lang=en&">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is one of the primary Islamic precepts and takes priority over all subsidiary precepts, even over praying, fasting and pilgrimage … if necessary, a governor can close or destroy mosques … And it can abandon every precept - both worshipping and non-worshipping precepts – which is against the expedience of Islam.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ayatollah Khomeini’s theological articulation justifies <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0021-8294.00051/abstract">hundreds of examples</a> in which the ruling clergy has disregarded Shari'a principles. One stark example has been the establishment of the Council for the Determination of the Expedient of the State, which is authorised to bypass Islamic principles in the state’s interests. </p>
<p>Although not explicitly pronounced in foreign policy, the ruling clergy has constantly put utilitarian politics ahead of its proclaimed ideological mission. This is evident not only in Iran’s close relations with the world’s most prominent self-declared atheist nation-states – China and North Korea – but also in its discrepancy in supporting Muslims across the globe. </p>
<p>The Ayatollah’s uncompromising position on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the clergy’s proclaimed support for oppressed Muslims everywhere, does not match the bold silence regarding Russia’s and China’s brutal suppression of Muslims in Chechnya and Uyghur.</p>
<h2>Changed realities on the ground</h2>
<p>Decades of what David Crist refers to as the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/books/the-twilight-war-by-david-crist.html?_r=0">twilight war</a> between Iran and the US might be understood as a political rationale, not an ideological confrontation. </p>
<p>From the time of its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has played the role of a disturbing member of the regional and international order. For this reason, regime change has been the leading objective of US policy towards Iran over the last few decades.</p>
<p>As a result, Iran-US relations have become locked in a cycle of threats and defiance, constantly destabilising the Middle East and beyond. Reflecting the ruling clergy’s domestic politics, this establishes regime survival as the guiding philosophy of their policies in the international community. </p>
<p>For more than a decade the ruling clergy resisted diplomatic and economic pressure to change the reality of their nuclear capacity. Concomitant with new realities, West has had to abandon zero-enrichment policy, allowing Iran to keep almost all of its nuclear sites intact – under constant surveillance and tight constraints.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-iran-nuclear-deal-means-and-what-it-doesnt-44685">nuclear deal</a> reached with P5+1 not only allows Iran to continue its peaceful nuclear program, but also promises an era of economic and, by extension, political collaboration with the West. This era, more than anything else, could push the policy of regime change in Tehran off the table, at least for the foreseeable future.</p>
<h2>Shifting balance of power</h2>
<p>With few exceptions – in particular Israel – the international community has made peace with the new reality of Iran’s nuclear capacities and agreed upon a middle ground to avoid pushing further Iran’s leaders’ radicalisation of their nuclear ambitions. </p>
<p>President Barack Obama clearly signalled a shift in US policy by acknowledging that preventing Iran from having any enrichment capacity was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/thomas-friedman-obama-makes-his-case-on-iran-nuclear-deal.html">simply impossible</a>. For their part, Iran’s rulers realised that the very existence of their clerical establishment was at stake. This realisation prompted them to make compromises on their side as well.</p>
<p>It may be that this nuclear deal will prove a point of departure for establishing a collaboration on regional politics between Iran and the West in general and the US in particular. Iran’s ruling clergy has partly managed, and partly been fortunate enough, to claim strongholds in today’s regional political mosaic, assuming a decisive role in the turbulent situation prevailing there. </p>
<p>Acknowledgement of this reality, and integrating Iran into regional politics, could urge Iran’s ruling clergy to undertake a constructive and stabilising role in regional politics.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Naser Ghobadzadeh’s new book, Religious Secularity, will be <a href="http://www.gleebooks.com.au/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=234271">launched</a> in Sydney on Friday, September 18.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naser Ghobadzadeh 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>In both domestic and international politics, Iran’s ruling clergy is enjoying a much more secure position than previously.Naser Ghobadzadeh, Research Fellow, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/463932015-08-28T04:24:32Z2015-08-28T04:24:32ZA billion acts of courage on 3.6 planets: a conversation with Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92498/original/image-20150820-32493-19f4unv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Outgoing Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo sees the struggles against political repression, poverty and climate change as intrinsically interconnected.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/15237218@N00/5398660622">flickr/World Economic Forum </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> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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>Born in South Africa, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/">Greenpeace International’s</a> executive director Kumi Naidoo became involved in his country’s liberation struggle at the age of 15. He has a deep and broad experience of democratic struggles for justice and sustainability across the world. Naidoo is a former Rhodes Scholar and holds a doctorate in political sociology. Edited extracts from his recent interview with the author follow. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EeR0QqETNps?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kumi Naidoo in conversation with Amanda Tattersall.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Growing up in apartheid South Africa, environmentalism was what rich white people did. It was something you participated in only if you had food in your stomach and a roof over your head. </p>
<p>However, after being the chair of a global campaign against poverty for several years, I learnt that, actually, poverty is exacerbated by environmental destruction. In fact, the struggle to end poverty and the struggle to avert catastrophic climate change can, must and should be seen as two sides of the same coin. </p>
<p>Decades ago, the feminist movement gave us a powerful concept – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10572435/Intersectional-feminism.-What-the-hell-is-it-And-why-you-should-care.html">intersectionality</a>. If you want to advance gender equality, you need to know how gender intersects with race, class, ability, religion and sexuality. And so with Greenpeace. We are an environmental organisation and we won’t deviate from that. </p>
<p>But to be a good environmental organisation, we need to understand how our environmentalism intersects with other issues of inequality, gender, geopolitics, peace and the economy. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93005/original/image-20150826-1626-7mlusq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climate change is affecting water supplies in South Africa and much of Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/newbeatphoto/3726821378/">flickr/Colin Crowley</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2002 the CIA and the Pentagon presented a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver">paper</a> to George W. Bush, reporting that in the coming decades the biggest threat to peace and security will derive from the impacts of climate change. Though my continent of Africa has been the least responsible for harmful emissions, we are paying the first and most brutal price for climate impacts. </p>
<p>The genocide in Darfur was the first major resource war brought about by climate change. <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/un-chief-ban-ki-moon-tells-climate-change-deniers-to-face-up-to-reality/story-e6frg6nf-1226133111349">According</a> to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Lake Chad, one of the largest inland seas in the world, has shrunk to the size of a pond. At the same time, the Sahara desert, which already covers much of North Africa, is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/12/senegal-great-green-wall">marching southward</a> at a rate of a mile a year. </p>
<p>This combination of water and land scarcity results in food scarcity, which is often the trigger that allows opportunistic politicians to lead us down the path to chaos and tragedy. </p>
<h2>The good news</h2>
<p>The good news is that we have won the argument. For eight years, Bush denied that humans caused climate change. But today, even Tony Abbott cannot claim that climate change is not real. However, our political and business leaders still suffer from an acute case of cognitive dissonance and inaction. </p>
<p>To avoid catastrophic climate change we have to ensure that our planet does not exceed two degrees of warming from the beginning of the industrial period (when we started to burn oil, coal and gas) into the future. Already, we are almost halfway. From zero to two degrees, we <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/11/23/climate-report-finds-temperature-rise-locked-in-risks-rising">sit at 0.8</a>. In the last decade we have had more than a 100% increase in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/27/extreme-weather-already-on-increase-due-to-climate-change-study-finds">extreme weather events</a>. </p>
<p>Abbott, along with all other political leaders from developed and developing countries, needs to realise that they are not going to get away with baby steps or incremental thinking in the right direction. We need significant and fundamental transformation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92499/original/image-20150820-32462-1wdhcsz.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">More than 30,000 people marched in Melbourne as part of a global climate protest for action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Takver/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The balance of power</h2>
<p>Our political leaders need to understand that democracy is meant to balance a wallet with a ballot. The power of rich people is supposed to be equalised with the voices of the ordinary. But the bottom line is that too many of our political leaders act in the interests of a handful of powerful corporations to which they have mortgaged their souls. This is why they are not exercising the basic notion of democracy; this is why we are not making the right changes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92532/original/image-20150820-7235-rgioau.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A flyer for the 2014 #FloodWallStreet protest in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ashoka Jegroo/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those that are making truckloads of money every single day are resisting and holding us back. In too many countries we have the form of democracy without the substance. Many countries that claim to be democratic are not genuinely so – they are simply liberal oligarchies. </p>
<p>When the stakes are high, the need for courage is critically important. In this battle, we will need a billion acts of courage to win. </p>
<p>Greenpeace believes that the first act of courage is believing that another more just and equitable world is possible, even if it will be tremendously difficult to build. </p>
<p>We have to move from an economy that is driven by dirty brown fossil fuel to one that is based on clean, green, renewable energy. We also have to question the issue of consumption. If everybody in the world enjoyed the same levels of consumption as Australians currently do, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) predicts that we would require <a href="http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/human_footprint/footprint_calculator/">3.6 planets</a>. </p>
<p>We have been completely led astray by big capital and an aggressive marketing industry that has convinced us that happiness comes from big houses and big cars – when in reality our facile acceptance of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/19/global-wealth-oxfam-inequality-davos-economic-summit-switzerland">gulf between the rich and the poor</a> is a fundamental statement of our absolute spiritual poverty.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93007/original/image-20150826-1631-ifdao6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&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 1986, the first and only McDonald’s in Cuba came to the US base at Guantanamo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_McDonalds_at_Guantanamo.jpg">US Navy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Countries such as America and Australia that claim to promote democracy are failing us terribly, because their repressive practices offer a blank cheque to countries with weaker traditions of democracy. It allows them to say, “Well, if America has torture, Guantanamo Bay, racial and religious profiling and mass surveillance, we can have the same.”</p>
<p>We will not win the struggle against climate change unless we constantly try to recover our democracy and apply international law in an equitable way such that rich country governments are subject to the same accountabilities and vulnerabilities as poor country governments. If this were the case, Abbott’s decision to <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-an-offence-if-australians-pay-people-smugglers-to-turn-back-43054">pay people smugglers</a> to take refugees back away from Australia would have been trialed before the International Criminal Court. </p>
<h2>Climate injustice and civil disobedience</h2>
<p>How can we support the most vulnerable people on our planet who, ironically, are paying the gravest price for climate impacts despite being the lowest emitters of carbon?</p>
<p>We need to engage in peaceful, purposeful and creative civil disobedience because all of our political and business leaders, with few exceptions, seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance. We do not have a moral or ethical choice – we must fight as hard as we can so that we, along with the very imperatives of democracy and equality, can no longer be ignored.</p>
<p>If we don’t win in the global South and the developing nations, we have lost. If we don’t win in China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, where we are talking about substantial population sizes, we will surely lose.</p>
<p>All the contradictions of power differentials between rich and poor nations manifest themselves in global civil society, but it is important to recognise how we might, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, be the change we want to see in the world. To actually be different we have to equalise power between developed and developing nations.</p>
<h2>A renewable future for all</h2>
<p>If we did this right we could have a win not only for the environment, but also for the economy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/rather-than-make-energy-more-expensive-its-time-to-invest-in-the-technologies-of-tomorrow-45803">Multiple studies</a> show that the best chance we have for refreshing our economies and getting people into jobs is by engaging in a massive renewable energy revolution. We are already seeing growth in this industry worldwide, but the scale of our commitment needs to be greater still. </p>
<p>The solutions are there. Only the political will is missing. </p>
<p>Fortunately, political will is the most renewable of all resources. It is up to us to make sure that it acts in the interest of both current and future generations, to the point that not making the requisite changes will be condemned as undemocratic, criminal and unacceptable by the working class, the middle class and even those at the top of the economic ladder. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92530/original/image-20150820-7239-1nu9a6h.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">In 2014, Christian leaders delivered solar panels to Tony Abbott as a Christmas gift, which the Solar Council supplied and offered to install for free at Kirribilli House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Ausburn/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Greenpeace believes that it is within human creativity, ingenuity and innovation to turn the crisis of climate change into an opportunity. For far too long we have lived in a world of divisions – between North and South, East and West, rich and poor, developed and developing. </p>
<p>If we wish to secure the future for our children, we have to come together – and those who are capable must take the lead. Though it is unfair that the developing nations that contribute the least to climate change will be the first to go, the richer and the rest will soon follow.</p>
<p>The climate change struggle is not about saving the planet. If we continue to warm Earth the way that we are, we will perish while Earth remains. It will be bruised, battered and scarred by humanity’s crimes, but once we are gone the forests will recover and the oceans will replenish. </p>
<p>Don’t worry about the planet. This struggle is about us, and whether humanity can fashion a way to democratically co-exist with each other and nature for centuries to come. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This interview, <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/podcast-peace-people-and-power-social-change-from-anti-apartheid-to-the-climate-movement-kuminaidoo/">Peace, People and Power: social change from anti-apartheid to the climate movement</a>, was co-presented by <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/">Sydney Ideas</a>, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/events/peace-people-and-power-social-change-from-anti-apartheid-to-the-climate-movement/">Sydney Environment Institute</a>
in association with <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/">Greenpeace</a> at the University of Sydney on August 5.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Tattersall is affiliated with Sydney Alliance & GetUp.org.au.</span></em></p>The international executive director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, explains why he believes the big global challenges cannot be tackled in isolation.Amanda Tattersall, Honorary Associate, Department of Geography, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/455762015-08-11T20:34:04Z2015-08-11T20:34:04ZHas Britain’s ‘pissed off’ constituency found a leader in Jeremy Corbyn?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90722/original/image-20150804-15152-1m4427l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The prospect of left-wing frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour Party leader is shaking up Britain's political establishment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/15024926027/in/photolist-oTGF3K-oBHKNz-om7CxS-om7TNa-oEnm5X-oc7qCR-nLHcoA">flickr/Garry Knight</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/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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>It looks <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn-set-for-landslide-firstround-victory-with-53-according-to-yougov-poll-10449236.html">increasingly likely</a> that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_2015">in a month’s time</a> a slightly dishevelled figure from the British Labour Party’s long-forgotten “hard left” past, MP <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-jeremy-corbyn-stealing-the-show-because-hes-the-only-labour-candidate-saying-anything-at-all-45120">Jeremy Corbyn</a>, will be elected its next leader. Vague amusement at the prospect has given way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/voters-have-shifted-to-the-left-but-that-doesnt-make-it-the-right-move-for-labour-45193">alarm</a> across the political spectrum.</p>
<p>Commentators sympathetic to Labour have come out almost unanimously to warn party members that such an outcome would equate to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/10/anyone-but-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-alastair-campbell">political suicide</a>. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/30/jeremy-corbyn-is-the-world-ready-for-his-socks-and-sandals">The Guardian</a>, normally quite sympathetic to the kind of anti-austerity plain-speaking for which Corbyn is renowned, is full of appeals to its readership (many of them natural Labour sympathisers) to return to their senses.</p>
<p>On the political right, amusement at the direction in which the main rival to the Conservatives is heading is mixed with <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6540181/Could-Jeremy-Corbyn-be-Labours-next-leader.html">stern warnings</a> about what might happen if, heaven forbid, Corbyn was actually elected prime minister. The chattering classes are rattled.</p>
<p>So far the stakes in this curious episode have aligned along a familiar axis. The problem, it seems, is that Corbyn is an old-fashioned left-winger. He stands for the renationalisation of the rail system, reversing cuts to benefits and welfare, the abolition of university tuition fees and a re-alignment of the UK’s foreign and defence policy.</p>
<p>So far, so predictable. As the commentary insists, such an approach resulted in defeat after defeat for Labour – that is until Tony Blair brought the party to its senses.</p>
<p>Blair’s recipe was simple enough: to win, the party must fall in line with the same neoliberal approach as its Conservative rival – and virtually every mainstream political party across Europe and the advanced democracies. Corbyn rejects this inheritance, but he also rejects its political logic: that to win elections you have to show that you have understood the underpinning axiom of our times: “you cannot buck the market”. Well, he thinks you can.</p>
<h2>Rejecting what politics has become</h2>
<p>There is a constituency out there looking for more than a rather meek acceptance of the “neoliberalism-lite” that social democratic parties have been peddling for three decades. That constituency includes the fabled “hard left”. It also includes many traditionalists within the major trade unions and within the Labour Party itself, particularly in its former heartlands in Wales, Scotland and the post-industrial cities of the north. </p>
<p>Can the rise of Corbyn really be ascribed to this demographic? Perhaps, but there’s more to the story than this. Much more – especially for the young who are flocking, improbably, to Corbyn’s side.</p>
<p>What is becoming clearer is that there is a constituency willing to challenge what politics has become: shallow, pithy, televisual, tedious and disingenuous. This is a politics embodied in toothy, neatly suited, identikit middle-class men and women speaking in a kind of a corporate patois lampooned so successfully in the television show The Office. </p>
<p>It’s a world where unconvincing aspiration (“moving forwards”) and low attainment (“pushing the envelope”) kill initiative and hope for a better future.</p>
<p>A candidate like Corbyn stands apart from his colleagues – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/31/corbyn-supporters-risk-return-to-labour-splits-of-1980s-says-burnham">Andy Burnham</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/01/liz-kendall-admits-jeremy--corbyn-in-the-lead">Liz Kendall</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/30/scotlands-sole-labour-mp-backs-yvette-cooper-for-party-leadership">Yvette Cooper</a>. But he also stands apart in what he represents: a longing to address the myriad inequalities and injustices of the present in words that everyone can understand.</p>
<p>It is this authenticity that is so troubling at one level and so liberating at another. Corbyn is not just mouthing the words; he means it. So why all the fuss? Why not just accept Corbyn-mania for what it is: the emergence of a somewhat anachronistic figure who seems to be catching the breeze of a certain kind of resentment about the state we are in.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jeremy Corbyn backs the UK People’s Assembly Against Austerity, which formed in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Damian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A candidate for pissed-off Britain</h2>
<p>Context, as usual, explains a great deal. Corbyn is not alone in his desire to combat austerity. Nor is he alone in rejecting the logic of contemporary politics and the deep complicity of political elites in ever-widening inequality, destroying the inheritance of the welfare state and fetishising the market.</p>
<p>But hitherto those seeking to combat the destructive excesses of the present have been found outside the political mainstream: Greece’s <a href="http://theconversation.com/this-is-the-end-of-the-line-for-syriza-44729">Syriza</a> is a rough-and-ready coalition of relatively recent vintage; Podemos emerged out of the street occupations of <a href="http://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">Spain’s 15M</a>; the rise of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/spains-indignados-ada-colau-elections-mayor-barcelona">Ada Colau</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/madrid-manuela-carmena-deal-socialists-mayor">Manuela Carmena</a>, the Italian <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/55d3242a-2bb2-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html#axzz3hdUMCUt6">Beppe Grillo</a> and the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/pirate-party-surges-in-polls-to-become-biggest-political-party-in-iceland-10222018.html">Icelandic Pirate Party</a> are all instances of outsiders finding ways of getting “inside”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">According to Mirror columnist Kevin Maguire, Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest enemy comes from within Tony Blair’s New Labour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyns-greatest-enemy-comes-6183685">The Mirror</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here the “outside” is rapidly becoming the inside – the inside of the Labour Party, as all manner of constituencies join the stampede. All this is highly disruptive to what Labour means, or rather, what it has come to mean under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour">New Labour</a>: an election fighting machine designed to “spin” itself to victory on the basis of the fantasy we have been living with since Thatcher’s victory in 1979 – that the embrace of financialised capitalism will eventually improve the lot of the least well-off.</p>
<p>The fantasy is beginning to wear thin, but Burnham, Cooper and Kendall are happy to maintain the “business as usual” line; Corbyn isn’t. They seek to build on the inheritance of New Labour; Corbyn doesn’t.</p>
<p>Corbyn is not merely the return of the repressed (“the hard left”). Something more is happening here. That something is not just about what policies should be adopted to combat austerity; it is more about what kind of politics people want.</p>
<p>Just as <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-the-snps-top-policies-41147">Scottish National Party</a> (SNP) became a proxy for “something has to change” in the last election, so has “Corbyn”. Corbyn’s constituency is not just “the left” – it is also that broader, less-easy-to-read group that seeks a change in the who, how, where and what of politics. Spain has its <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/spains-indignados-ada-colau-elections-mayor-barcelona">Indignados</a>, the Italians have the <a href="http://www.neurope.eu/article/beppe-grillo-politics-%E2%80%9Cvaffanculo%E2%80%9D/">“vaffanculo”</a> bunch and now the UK has “the pissed off”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comedian and sometime political activist Russell Brand at a People’s Assembly Against Austerity rally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/david0287/16274558456/in/photolist-qN8nes-7oLqCo-hiEKpy-8CVvxg-8KUF6Q-67nNta-pFqc2V-8Kjxzx-qqaXT4-hdq4nC-pFKcWo-bcTAX2-pTqeNs-7VJzzq-cNQTmu-39JxUo-GxcUH-8KRBDv-8KRCyp-8KRC3R-qq15rv-9yQPpJ-9yV352-677nyY-cNQTcN-6iqp9w-6imgZR-7VFjMV-7VFjNp-4oqoYc-9yV34M-9yV34D-9yQPpd-677nM3-aa7ooC-677nHd-jdJWQ4-4TG35g-8x4mx6-rchhg7-2BdUY9-4gtTSJ-rtN2Hg-ji7XKd-6739He-pJ9ty8-677obA-gVnwTj-4TG3L4-gVnwLW">flickr/D.B. Young</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Corbyn” resonates as an antidote to “Westminster”, to a distant elite-driven politics. It seems to speak to that otherwise homeless group who seek affinities and affiliations off the back of concerns aired by the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/apr/29/ed-miliband-russell-brand-video-highlights">Russell Brand</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/09/shell-oil-greed-undeterred-by-science-climate-change-bill-mckibben-naomi-klein-annie-leonard">Naomi Klein</a>, to name two obvious figures who argue that our politics is broken and needs to be fixed, “rebooted” and re-imagined along more generous, inclusive, participatory and, yes, more democratic lines.</p>
<p>Hitherto they have had little to hang on to in the UK context beyond sporadic bouts of direct action, climate camps or Facebook “likes”. The Scots had their chance at the last election to join the “post-political” or “anti-political” throng by transforming the SNP from a nationalist party into an approximation of a tartan Podemos. Now everyone else has their chance by joining “the Corbyn insurrection”.</p>
<h2>Where does this leave Labour and politics?</h2>
<p>The discomfort of many elements of the Labour Party is plain to see. It ranges from Blair’s trenchant advice for those thinking of voting with their heart to get <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11755234/Tony-Blair-if-your-heart-is-with-Corbyn-get-a-transplant.html">“a transplant”</a> to the sniffy dismissal of Corbyn’s politics by the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/labour-leadership-contest-jeremy-corbyn">Polly Toynbee</a> and the Guardian grandees. They are clearly perturbed at the spectacle of their sensible “modernising” party becoming a shambolic institutional approximation of Glastonbury: all noise, mud and hangovers. Is this the death of the Labour Party?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"624089085083168769"}"></div></p>
<p>It might be – but then was not Labour already in its death throes? A once-proud party enjoying the active support of several million members has been reduced to a rump of ageing activists going through the motions “for old time’s sake”. Would it really be the worst thing to re-brand Labour as a party of a different kind: an “outsiders” (anti)party that homes the currently homeless? </p>
<p>15M produced no solace for PSOE (Spain’s social democratic party), but rather a raft of rivals who threaten to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Spanish_general_election,_2015">eclipse it</a> in the general election. Perhaps it is better to bring the “outside” in, instead of hoping that it will go away.</p>
<p>The purpose of political parties is (usually) to win elections, and winning has been the justification for “modernising”. But does this modernisation diminish Labour’s chance to oppose and overturn the Conservatives?</p>
<p>The evidence is far from clear. The SNP <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-snp-has-blown-british-politics-apart-and-the-uk-must-now-change-if-it-is-to-survive-41507">did well</a> on a “something has to change” ticket, with the details left usefully vague beyond some nod in the direction of increased power for local assemblies and the defence of the welfare state. Spain’s mainstream parties of both left and right have had to confront new political parties with a similar message. Italy endured a political earthquake in 2013 with Grillo’s 5SM party polling the most votes.</p>
<p>The game is changing. Change in the basic co-ordinates of political life is underway. “Corbyn” may or may not be the answer – but it is certainly posing the question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45576/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>The emergence of ageing left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as the unlikely frontrunner in the Labour Party leadership contest signals that many British voters reject what politics has become.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/447662015-07-23T01:16:08Z2015-07-23T01:16:08ZWage policy ‘coup’ marks debasing of politics by hyper-democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88646/original/image-20150716-5099-130a0zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a hyper-democracy the headlines are always hot. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenritzer/8558259610/">Steven Ritzer/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/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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>One of the most significant challenges for democracy has always been the question of expectations. Promises are made at election time but realities clash and expectations of popular change are dashed as policies lie undelivered.</p>
<p>In many ways this is the nature of the system. In his book <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/10/17/the-confidence-trap/">The Confidence Trap</a>, David Runciman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8oCSBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA204&dq=limits+of+growth+and+dampen+expectations?&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMItZfZhsPtxgIVyiaUCh1uGwYM#v=onepage&q=limits%20of%20growth%20and%20dampen%20expectations%3F&f=false">argues</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Could any democratic politician be expected to point out the limits of growth and dampen expectations of continued expansion in living standards? Democracies need to believe in a better future in order to function; politicians need to champion a better future in order to get elected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sometimes, however, politicians appear to intentionally agitate public euphoria in order to destroy their political opponents, with little concern for the damage they might be doing to democracy. The trick is to mislead the media about an intended policy announcement and send the opposition down a rabbit hole preparing stock responses to tailored policy announcements – only to do something completely different. </p>
<p>Regardless of whether the policy might be workable in practice, the result invariably stirs the public; the skilful politician wins the headlines and leaps up in the polls. Democracy seems renewed, sensationally so.</p>
<h2>Out of the blue, a living wage policy</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89251/original/image-20150722-20188-uycc0k.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">Chancellor George Osborne won headlines by announcing that Britons aged over 25 will enjoy a mandatory living wage from next year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/altogetherfool/3543137666/in/photolist-6p6vos-79M7PF-7ay5en-edu6sX-CCRWd-7QHnGi-mTYY8B-dXe6Wo-pJnZP6-5BkMTc-8SgQa5-CCQPm-79APv9-6p6wPC-bCTJAT-6p2qB8-8v1H4M-aAU5wB-6p2qNi-79QXUq-79APuY-6p6z25-7aBTrs-7QLFcA-77gpz1-79QXmE-nXYQbh-8KHuzh-di9QWE-w1f8VN-79APvU-79APvE-79APuL-6poyn7-6p2nkr-6p6xWm-di9QVG-hirce8-dm4xwY-8RRo4A-8SjXbE-nX6yK9-nY33ax-dhNkTS-nY4JiW-8RRo4s-ofgoUi-ofv7tA-odwba7-ofv785">flickr/altogetherfool</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the UK, one such announcement has just been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/08/budget-2015-uk-gdp-other-rich-nations-george-osborne">made</a>. In his first post-election speech, newly re-elected Chancellor George Osborne pulled a proverbial rabbit out of the fiscal hat by declaring, seemingly out of the blue, the introduction of a National Living Wage. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/budget-2015-living-wage-offers-rabbit-out-the-hat-but-magic-will-be-needed-later-44372">“living wage”</a> is a progressive concept championed by a coalition of trade unions, community groups and relatively marginal Labour and Green politicians over the past decade. The aim is to raise the wage employers pay directly to workers to a level that allows them to enjoy a basic quality of life.</p>
<p>In 2014, the Living Wage Foundation – a UK-based pressure group lobbying for private firms to voluntarily pay living wages – <a href="http://www.livingwage.org.uk/calculation">calculated</a> it to be £7.85 per hour (or £9.15 in ultra-expensive London).</p>
<p>Given how the living wage has become a hallmark of innovative left-wing thinking on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/reinvigorate-centre-left-predistribution">“predistribution”</a> since the turn of the decade, its apparent introduction by a chancellor previously branded as an elitist, staunch advocate of austerity politics was nothing short of a media and public <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jul/09/what-the-national-newspapers-think-of-osbornes-summer-budget">sensation</a>.</p>
<p>But what if this is read as a manoeuvre of cynical statecraft politics? The budget announcement will most likely further strengthen the Conservative government’s position in power and blunt any real opposition. By introducing such a hallmark progressive policy without warning (least of all in the Conservative manifesto), Osborne succeeded in tripping up his political opponents while simultaneously gaining widespread media appraisal.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88638/original/image-20150716-5080-1dwwur3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front page of The Sun hails the UK budget announcement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sun</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More importantly, the policy itself is counter-balanced by a string of cuts to social security payments including tax credits (subsidies that top up low wages), student maintenance grants and housing benefits. So though poorer people are hit harder by cuts to vital benefits, this is shrouded by an increase in basic wages.</p>
<p>How will this political strategy affect British democracy? The announcement has been almost universally and instantly popular. Even <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/08/george-osborne-budget-stole-labours-election-promises-living-wage">The Guardian</a> acknowledged the chancellor’s guile.</p>
<p>So on the one hand, especially if we employ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter#Democratic_theory">Joseph Schumpeter’s</a> basic definition of democracy as elite rule by popular politicians, it seems very democratic. Closer inspection of the policy, however, reveals that it is not nearly as radical as Osborne has made it out to be.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/08/fist-pumping-iain-duncan-smith-george-osborne-living-wage-budget">actual level</a> of pay will start at £7.20 in 2016 and rise to £9 per hour by 2020, falling short of the Living Wage Foundation’s calculation. When this deficit is coupled with the forthcoming welfare cuts, it becomes clear that the policy barely scratches the surface of the UK’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/living-wage-will-leave-tax-credit-claimants-1000-worse-off-says-ifs">standards-of-living crisis</a>.</p>
<h2>Dashing hopes fuels public distrust</h2>
<p>What will happen when people come to realise that Osborne’s policy does not warrant the media’s euphoric reaction? Expectations of a genuinely “high wage” economy and improved standards of living are already building.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, such hopes will soon be dashed by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/osbornes-living-wage-wont-spare-low-income-families-from-cuts-44438">swingeing cuts</a> to tax credits and the disembowelment of public services over the next five years. At the very least, any improvements will likely fall far short of what the Living Wage Foundation has campaigned for over the past decade.</p>
<p>And the result? Probably an even greater entrenchment of the cynicism and distrust in politicians that pervades liberal democracies throughout the Western world. More than ever we need to recognise how risky these “policy surprises” and moments of false euphoria are for the long-term health of our democratic ideals.</p>
<p>The hidden risk behind this political approach is that it encourages what might be called <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07393148.2015.1056431#.Vadjv864l-U">hyper-democracy</a>. The concept of hyper-democracy captures the intensification of a corporate-political game, with fake popularity and even faker policies. </p>
<p>Such a situation does not mean that there is too much democracy. Rather, democracy takes on the characteristics of a malicious simulation in which media and political elites artificially create winners and losers in the daily news cycle. When popularity tricks are applauded and admired (much like Osborne’s announcement), when spin matters more than substance and when the public is ultimately left in the dark about the true intentions of political actors, democracy becomes a parody.</p>
<p>Like a drama or a comedy, or the latest box set of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veep_(TV_series)">Veep</a> (itself a brilliant satire of precisely this kind of politics), this parody denigrates the very ideal of democracy. It creates an image of democratic politics that is bound to disappoint and diminish our hopes of what politics can be.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88637/original/image-20150716-5089-y6x3zu.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">The comedy and drama behind HBO’s Veep is part of our political reality today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, <a href="http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/4/543.short">research shows</a> that the most effective policies tend to be those that have been introduced gradually and constantly maintained and developed in collaboration with the citizens they affect. It’s the “slow boring of hard boards”, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_as_a_Vocation#Summary">Max Weber</a> would have it. This isn’t to say that the democratic politics of hard boards can’t be enthralling, as long-strived-for ideals such as universal health care or racial and gender equality are achieved through slow and incremental, yet meaningful reform.</p>
<p>But, at its worst, hyper-democracy centres on personality cults and media-driven ploys. As Tony Blair and Barack Obama have shown, this can be as much the case for progressive politicians as for Conservatives.</p>
<p>Hyper-democracy is pervasive and, sadly, it may well be that Osborne’s “living wage” episode in the UK turns out to be yet another example of its pull – the debasement of democratic ideals through acts that in themselves appear very democratic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Wood 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 out-of-the-blue move to a living wage in the UK exemplifies the ditching of methodical public policy processes for manipulative hype and spin, the ‘hyper-democracy’ that brings politics into disrepute.Matthew Wood, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437792015-06-26T07:44:56Z2015-06-26T07:44:56ZPostcard from Spain: where now for the ‘quiet revolution’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86205/original/image-20150624-786-1nklq2o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hands up in the 15M movement in Madrid. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/anarey/5741745166/in/photostream/">Ana Rey/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/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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>It’s the second day at work for Castellón’s <a href="http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=ca&u=https://castelloenmoviment.org/&prev=search">four new “15M” councillors</a>. Not much is working in the corner of an unremarkable office in Castellón’s Town Hall. An IT technician comes and goes, promising Wi-Fi will arrive soon – “manana”. The mood is upbeat, however, with much smiling and shrugging in that “no-one really cares” gesture the Spanish excel at. </p>
<p>Context explains everything. These councillors aren’t too bothered whether they can work or not. They have chosen to be in opposition and, when quizzed, they confirm that they see their roles as temporary. </p>
<p>They see themselves not as representatives, even less “politicians”, with clear responsibilities that have to be taken seriously. Rather, they are flag bearers or <a href="https://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745681955">“post-representatives”</a> for the quiet revolution they hope will overwhelm <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31852713">“la Casta”</a>. These are the corrupt elites who have presided over the bankrupting of Spain, mass unemployment and the erosion of living standards for young and old.</p>
<p>The general feeling that “something has to be done” drove more than six million Spaniards to occupy squares in virtually every town and city across the country on May 15, 2011 – a date imprinted in the collective imaginary as “15M”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86206/original/image-20150624-801-cudiel.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">The Puerta del Sol square in Madrid became a focal point and symbol of the 15M protests in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.http://fotograccion.org/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Castellón and the others</h2>
<p>Where does Spain’s quiet revolution go from here? One path suggested itself last year via the creation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-podemos-the-party-revolutionising-spanish-politics-33802">Podemos</a>, a “pop-up” party created by academics in Madrid and designed to give an electoral voice to the disenfranchised. </p>
<p>Led by savvy <a href="http://newleftreview.org/II/93/pablo-iglesias-spain-on-edge">Laclau-istas</a> Pablo Iglesias and Íñigo Errejón, Podemos succeeded in providing an immediate focus for political energies, and still appears to many as the most likely source of a breakthrough for those who identify with the 15M movement. </p>
<p>However, Podemos decided, curiously, not to contest the recent municipal elections. That necessitated the creation of a raft of ad hoc political parties, collectives and initiatives among those wishing to maintain momentum. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86208/original/image-20150624-786-nbs2xo.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">Pablo Iglesias and Inigo Errejon of Podemos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">La Veu del País Valencià/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Castellón, a small city north of Valencia, local activists took the matter into their own hands, calling for an assembly and the creation of a new group, <a href="http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=ca&u=https://castelloenmoviment.org/&prev=search">Castelló en Moviment</a> (CEM), to fight the elections. The local Podemos group dissolved itself and joined in. With no resources of its own to call upon, CEM used crowd-funding to raise a few thousand euros, which it spent on advertising its existence on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CastelloEnMoviment">Facebook</a> and other platforms. </p>
<p>Regularly attracting up to 100 locals, the assembly became the focus for political activism locally and fought the election using an imaginative digital strategy as well as assemblies to engage the town – successfully it seems. CEM won four seats, and the solicitation of the local socialist party to form a governing alliance.</p>
<p>CEM refused the overture, claiming they were too inexperienced to wield power. They prefer to remain aloof from the grubby business of governing the municipality, drawing attention instead to the myriad injustices that animate its constituency: high local unemployment, clientelism, croneyism, corruption, mayoral excess. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86220/original/image-20150624-780-s61vuk.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">Ada Colau with PAH supporters in Barcelona.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrea Ciambra/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similar efforts elsewhere paid even greater dividends, most noticeably in Madrid and Barcelona where ad hoc collectives led to the victory of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/madrid-manuela-carmena-deal-socialists-mayor">Manuela Carmena</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/barcelona-mayor-ada-colau-feminised-democracy">Ada Colau</a>, the popular spokesperson for the campaign against mortgage evictions, or simply “PAH”. Podemos had never quite established “hegemony” in Catalonia, so the creation of Guanyem Barcelona (later renamed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_en_Com%C3%BA">Barcelona en Comú</a>) around the figure of Colau seemed logical. </p>
<p>But in Madrid, where Podemos was founded in 2014, the creation of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahora_Madrid">“Ahora Madrid”</a> initiative resonates significantly as far as the internal politics of 15M is concerned. </p>
<p>Any sense that Carmena would be a spokesperson for Podemos was quickly dispelled. So too, however, was the sense that she would be directly accountable to the street assemblies, barios and collectives who campaigned for her. She will be her own mayor with her own team, with her own programme. Such is the logic of post-15M “non-vertical” leadership. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86229/original/image-20150624-31507-ejav4t.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahora Madrid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Tormey</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Representing the unrepresentable</h2>
<p>Waiting in the wings is Podemos itself. It has certainly managed to protect its own “brand” by remaining beyond the recent electoral process, but at what cost? Today, they seem like spectators rather than actors in the unfolding drama of 15M’s encroachment on municipal power. </p>
<p>One effect of the municipal elections has after all been a return of many of the most savvy activists back to the streets, the assemblies and the more horizontal initiatives like Castelló en Moviment. With Podemos’ own activists getting involved in these more recent initiatives, its popularity and status as the leading element of the 15M platform may be on the wane. Support for Podemos across the country has declined, from 24% to around 15% in recent opinion polls. </p>
<p>Does Podemos have a strategy to counter this decline? The signs are hardly encouraging. </p>
<p>As even its own activists are ready to admit, Podemos is a “vertical” initiative representing the unrepresentable 15M “project”. Herein lies the paradox of contemporary Spanish politics. The more activists use electoral means to leverage the sentiments unleashed in 15M, the more they become enmeshed in the messy bureaucratic business of “politics” as this is enacted in liberal democracies.</p>
<p>One can hardly blame the Podemos’ leadership for trying to think tactically about where to take their party; but the very demand to build structure, instil some order and discipline and develop “the brand” rails against the anarchistic and horizontal energies that lie beneath. </p>
<p>Nor can one blame the activists of initiatives such as Barcelona en Comú and Castelló en Moviment for trying to remain true to that energy – but can they do so without disappointing the base who faithfully turn up for assemblies and direct deliberation? Carmena has read the runes and decided to distance herself from the base in the hope of demonstrating to the ordinary voter that 15M-istas are capable of responsible and mature governance in Madrid. </p>
<p>By contrast CEM – like many other regional initiatives – are determined to be accountable to their assemblies. They argue that that this is the true or proper form of interaction with the unrepresentable – 15M activists themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86221/original/image-20150624-801-yvath0.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">Activist candidates from the Castelló en Moviment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">La Veu del País Valencià/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Spain’s ‘democracy to come’</h2>
<p>At stake in this fascinating collage or “shape-shifting” is not only the political legacy of 15M but the nature and form of Spain’s “democracy to come”. It is not at all clear at the time of writing whether Podemos has the wherewithal to channel the extraordinary energies unleashed by 15M for its own electoral purposes. </p>
<p>Some speculate that they will all come together in time to pose a real alternative not only to the mainstream parties, [PP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People’s_Party_(Spain) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Socialist_Workers'_Party">PSOE</a>, but also the rightist 15M doppelganger, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/13/ciudadanos-podemos-of-right-political-force-spain-albert-rivera">Ciudadanos</a>, a new party led by Albert Rivera. </p>
<p>The evidence, however, suggests another possibility. Having developed a taste for assembly-driven political initiatives, activists will prise Podemos itself apart to create a kind of hybrid “Ahora Podemos en Comú”-type platform, which might include endorsement by Iglesias and Errejón, but also Carmena, Colau and the very many horizontals who rediscovered their political mojo and sense of purpose in the May elections. </p>
<p>Beyond the elections lies the question of what kind of governance 15M offers. It’s early days in the town halls, but the possible outlines are not far from hand: a stress on “ethical governance” underpinned by a commitment to reducing the distance between representatives and represented through abolishing the very many privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Spanish political class. </p>
<p>Greater transparency in financial and legislative terms. Greater commitment to engaging ordinary citizens via a variety of means: assemblies, referendums, virtual and digitally enabled deliberation. Greater focus on environmental sustainability, on ensuring that women play leading roles, and on providing citizens with access to housing and basic foodstuffs. </p>
<p>It seems that these are the core concerns of the 15M-istas who have taken many of Spain’s town halls in this quiet revolution. But before getting down to business they need to find a computer that works.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgment: with sincere thanks to Ramón Feenstra and to the very many activists of the various initiatives and parties mentioned above in Castellon, Madrid and Seville who agreed to be interviewed. Muchas Gracias.</em></p>
<p><em>Read Simon Tormey’s previous article in this series about European movements and the end of “representative” politics <a href="https://theconversation.com/european-movements-could-mark-the-end-of-representative-politics-42369">here</a>.
His new book, The End of Representative Politics, is available from <a href="https://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745681955">Polity</a> and <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745681964,subjectCd-PO17.html">Wiley</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43779/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>Candidates from Spain’s ‘15M’ movement – born of mass protests in 2011 – have responded in various ways to the dilemma that being elected creates for those wishing to overturn the ‘old politics’.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/409022015-05-04T05:17:52Z2015-05-04T05:17:52ZThe Ed Miliband I worked with in Downing Street<p>Having worked on election campaigns in the UK and Australia, I can attest that the final days are to be endured. Politicians, staff and journalists are all equally fractious and tired.</p>
<p>And if the common metaphor used to be of two bruised prize fighters nearing the final round, throwing punches, exhausted and bloodied, it is now of six scrappers flailing around in a pub brawl. The actual votes could still reveal a different outcome, but this election campaign has surely definitively marked the end of two-party politics in the UK. </p>
<p>And yet, irrespective of this, the true fight between who will be the next leader of the country in two weeks is still between just two men: David Cameron and Ed Miliband. The psephologists will predict this arrangement versus that, but whatever the seats, negotiations and deals which lead to it, only one of these party leaders will be photographed in Downing Street with a beaming grin.</p>
<h2>The young Ed</h2>
<p>Both Miliband and Cameron worked with senior ministers before entering parliament and each has spent the vast bulk of their professional careers in the Whitehall village. For two years I was fortunate to be resident in that fascinating, alluring, historic, frustrating but always invigorating place. Between 2004 and 2006 I had a desk in the office above the black door of 10 Downing Street, from where I advised Tony Blair on sustainability and climate change.</p>
<p>The last time I saw Ed Miliband was in December 2009, late at night when he was secretary of state for energy and climate change. I was standing to the side of the negotiating floor at the vast Bella Centre, on the outskirts of Copenhagen.</p>
<p>This was long after Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and the other heads of state had left the UN meeting on climate change. Surrounded by the representatives of other key states, Miliband was working through the <a href="http://unfccc.int/meetings/copenhagen_dec_2009/items/5262.php">Copenhagen Accord</a> – the words that would rescue the international climate negotiations from collapse. It was, I thought, typical: Miliband was focused, working hard with others to resolve a problem that would only avert failure rather than register as a triumph, and for which he would get no thanks or plaudits.</p>
<p>The first time I met him was in his office in the treasury a few days after I had started working at Downing Street in April 2004. He had just returned from a sabbatical at Harvard and in what became typical fashion he reached out to me: wanting to understand the work I was doing and how we might collaborate on an issue of deep concern to both the chancellor and the prime minister.</p>
<p>Despite being a British citizen, spending the previous ten years living and working in Australia made me the exotic outsider. Being a special adviser with an identified responsibility and the job of advising the British prime minister, and yet no personal political ambition, was both a weakness and a strength.</p>
<p>A weakness because I could never be fully part of either the close-knit group which had coalesced around Blair and Brown to make Labour electable again, or the cadre of younger politicians and advisers who were schooled in the ways of New Labour.</p>
<p>A strength because there was no incentive for me to take up time trying to position myself for any role beyond the job I had. Working on the climate change and sustainability agenda for the government was challenging as it was – a far enough position up Disraeli’s greasy pole for me.</p>
<h2>The brothers Miliband</h2>
<p>When relaxed or waiting for some important piece of advice to be either given the tick, the cross or “see me”, conversation among my colleagues sometimes turned to the purely political question of who might be the next leader of the Labour Party after Gordon Brown.</p>
<p>That Brown would succeed Tony Blair was clear, but he wasn’t, and could not be, the future of the party. That mantle would fall to a member of the younger generation. Rather like a political game of Top Trumps the relative merits of Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Douglas Alexander, Ruth Kelly and James Purnell were canvassed and discussed.</p>
<p>But the chat always seemed to end with David Miliband being most likely candidate. Here was a politician with a towering intellect and, even prior to his appointment as foreign secretary, the person with the most relevant experience, both in the education portfolio and in helping coordinate policy from the centre of government. His brother wasn’t even discussed. Prior to 2005, Ed Miliband wasn’t even an MP. He was “one of us” in the backroom.</p>
<p>I was never much of an advocate for David. He was clearly a brilliant mind but I always felt it sat on uncertain foundations. In meetings he often came across as imperious and too eager to demonstrate his personal grasp of the issue at hand rather than drawing others in to help resolve it. Too often sentences began in the first person singular followed by reference to the latest report from the <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/">Brookings Institute</a> or some conversation with a leading European or American academic or politician.</p>
<p>David seemed more smart than wise. And he would gravitate only to those who he felt were his intellectual equals. The rest were left to feel like the audience. I wasn’t the only one who left those meetings impressed, but unsure quite what was to be done.</p>
<p>My dealings with Ed Miliband were quite different. He seemed a far more intuitive politician. He was always thinking of what people might make of what was being proposed. Is it fair? Is it something the government should be doing? Have all the options been canvassed and is the evidence as compelling as it can be?</p>
<p>Ed was a universally positive, refreshing and useful presence. He took people as he saw them and wouldn’t let the animosities between Blair and Brown – our respective masters – get in the way of good policy. Unlike some of his colleagues he was no tribal acolyte of the chancellor. He was always a consummate mediator and often the vital link between Number 10 and the Treasury.</p>
<h2>The key to leadership</h2>
<p>The public rarely gets to see a politician exercise one of the key attributes of political leadership: the ability to ask the right questions. Not necessarily the most interesting or challenging ones, but the vital questions that need to be addressed to set a course, account for decisions and build the alliances required to achieve progress.</p>
<p>Ed Miliband’s approach was much like the prime minister’s. Blair was forensic when it came to asking questions. He read every word of every brief and would either annotate the text or call you in to go through each of his queries in turn. This is how he became more secure and built confidence in those around him.</p>
<p>To be effective in parliament or indeed in front of Jeremy Paxman, a leader needs confidence and ego. But to get there they need an even temperament and the ability to understand the questions likely to be asked. All the audience sees is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is more than two thirds of the mass. Here lies the hours of research, staff work, engaging with the outside world and – if in government – senior public service experts.</p>
<p>After I returned to Australia in 2006, Miliband’s rise was rapid. Continuing to work on the climate problem, I would speak with colleagues in the British public service and outside government. They were almost universally struck by just how effective a minister he was.</p>
<p>I had no experience of working with Ed Miliband as an MP, let alone as the leader of the Labour Party, but my sense from working with him at the centre of the British government for two years is that he has a formidable ability to create loyalties, lead and cut through to the most important aspects of any issue. And that is a far more important skill than eating bacon sandwiches. More than helping in any post election negotiations, it might just serve him as prime minister as well.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read The Conversation’s comprehensive coverage of the UK general election <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/election-2015">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Rowley 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>Nick Rowley worked at Number 10, Ed at Number 11. It was here he showed his true potential for leadership.Nick Rowley, Professor, Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/379652015-02-25T00:06:40Z2015-02-25T00:06:40ZTalking a bird down from a tree: a conversation with Chee Soon Juan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72832/original/image-20150223-32244-1ptz9vn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chee Soon Juan, pictured campaigning for Singapore's 2011 general elections, hopes to build on that success in the next election, which is widely expected to be held early, possibly even this year. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SDP_Walkabout_Yuhua.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Dexterleezh</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Singapore is facing political uncertainty with the dominating figure of Lee Kuan Yew <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-21/singapore-first-prime-minister-hospitalised-with-pneumonia/6180478">in hospital</a> on life support and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/singapore-prime-minister-lee-hsien-loong-prostate-cancer/6111878">undergoing surgery</a> for cancer last week. Their People’s Action Party (PAP) has ruled the island state since 1959, but had its worst result ever in the 2011 elections. Chee Soon Juan has emerged as a key figure in the fight for change and John Keane interviews the opposition leader about his political convictions and hopes for a democratic Singapore.</em> </p>
<p><em>The interview is part of a series on <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-political-leadership">political leadership</a> for the <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a></strong> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-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><strong>John Keane:</strong> Dr Chee Soon Juan, you find yourself in the thick of Singapore politics, but it wasn’t always so. What made you a political animal?</p>
<p><strong>Chee Soon Juan:</strong> It happened in the most unexpected way. When I was in my early 20s, the government introduced what they called the “Graduate Mother’s Scheme”. It specified that “intelligent” women with university degrees could have as many children as they wished. Women lacking a university degree would be penalised if they had more than two children. I found the policy most repulsive. Even though at the time I had no tertiary education, it stirred something inside me. But then I left as a student for the United States, where I spent the better part of the 1980s. When I came back, things hadn’t really changed. There was still a one-party state that specialised in social engineering. So instead of just complaining about our situation and developing ulcers, I decided I wanted to do something. I became political.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Indignation is often the catalyst of political involvement, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to the feeling that politics is a vocation. Has it become your calling?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I don’t know if it’s my calling, but after realising that the policies of this government weren’t good for the country, I became persuaded that I’d done the right thing by entering politics. As soon as I did, the government began targeting me. The more they pursued me, the more resolute I became. Their heavy-handed tactics galvanised rather than weakened me. I was not prepared to turn tail and run.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Your political commitments brought you suffering, including time in prison, yet you’ve shown great determination. What’s the basis of your inner resilience?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I take heart from the truism that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Each time the government came for me I felt ever more determined. I grew convinced I was doing the right thing. I’ve also had the very good fortune of having my family behind me. My wife has been very supportive. She has given me strength. Without her, it would have been tremendously difficult to go on.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Are you in politics because of your children?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> My political involvement started well before I had children but, when I did, I realised how children make you look ahead towards the future they are going to inherit. I know how clichéd it is when people say we should think of our children and our children’s children. But it’s true, especially in a non-democratic state. At some point, future generations will look back and ask: what did you do when you had the chance to make changes, and why didn’t you? I’ve become very conscious of this point, and am trying to show my children, too, that things worth doing are never easy. Perseverance counts. Running away is no solution.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Do you think a sense of spirituality is an ingredient of political stamina?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I think it is. The first time I went to jail I was put in solitary, behind a big metal door, watched through a slit by guards I couldn’t see. The solitude grated on my mind. Access to books was a constant battle. In prison, they became my best friends, but the authorities limited me to three, including my Bible. They forced me to register them and put a time limit on their use. Every time they took my books away, I suffered withdrawal. I learnt I had to lean on more than myself. I was forced to dig deep, in search of hope. I found myself needing to think there was a higher being who would take me through this difficult moment. As a Christian, I had faith that if I did the right thing, and persevered, things would turn out right. It helped.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Faith in things unseen is often linked to courage. How important is courage in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Prison was a tough test of my capacity for courage. We all have different degrees of what psychologists call basal arousal, but in my own case solitary confinement was especially difficult because it challenged my strong need for communication with other people. Fear made me hesitate to do certain things. It froze me into inaction – and made me deeply aware that I had to act, in spite of my fear. I’d say there are times when we need our heads to overrule our hearts. We must do the analysis: calculate there’s something worth doing because it is right. At those moments, we have to out-vote our emotions. We must tell ourselves that we must “just go for it”. In that way, we grow stronger.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Churchill famously said that “politicians shouldn’t be sofas”, by which he meant they need to stand up for their own principles and visions, and not be pushed around, or simply sat upon and shaped by others. How important are principles in political life?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Principles are vital in politics. When I first challenged the government over its strict political controls and the lack of fundamental freedoms in Singapore, it wasn’t a popular issue. People in Singapore had been so conditioned into thinking that political freedom would bring chaos, frighten investors and cause economic ruin.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You were an isolated dissident?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Yes, and it was most disconcerting. People called me a political exhibitionist and even some of my liberal-minded friends questioned my actions. It was again one of those moments in politics when you must do the calculations about doing the right thing. Everybody wants to be popular among their peers. We feel the need to be talked about with respect. But there are times when we have to think ahead and to tell ourselves that doing the right thing will be judged kindly by history. At that moment, as Churchill said, you have to transcend the instinct for popularity and instead work for the longer term.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You’ve spoken of our desire for popularity, to communicate with others and to be liked by them. How does this work in electoral politics? In media-saturated settings, aren’t politicians in the business of public self-projection? Isn’t politics nowadays a form of dramatic performance?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> When entering politics, there’s a strong temptation to set aside politics and instead become an actor. I’m uncomfortable with the trend simply because if substance is lacking – if you really don’t know what you want to say or where the rest of society should be heading – then politics becomes empty. It’s reduced to reading and performing a script before an audience. Self-belief and being true to your self are sacrificed. When that happens, politicians get a bad name. People see through it. They can tell whether or not politicians are authentic. I try not to appear that way. I’ve been accused of being too academic, but it doesn’t bother me. What’s important is for politicians to have substance.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But surely there are situations where Chee Soon Juan plays Chee Soon Juan? Substance never comes in “pure” form. Doesn’t it always involve a performance: communicating something with others in particular situations using a defined style?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Yes, politics is the art of communicating with others, not by means of decimals and bullet points but by talking to people in such a way that they want to listen. I’m still in the process of learning how to do it. It’s been said politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. We must find a right balance. For me, politics involves finding a way of speaking to people about substance. Otherwise, politicians come across sounding vacuous.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks of the importance in politics of “persuasive power”, the ability of public representatives to put people at ease by convincing them in word and deed they’re trustworthy and decent. How important for you is this capacity of putting people at ease?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> If you have to strive consciously to put people at ease then you’re automatically in trouble. Politicians need a measure of authenticity. Good leadership means being genuine with others and being true to oneself. In order for others to want to follow, or even to listen to the things they say, genuine leaders must be able to demonstrate that they’re not in it for themselves. Otherwise, people lose trust. On top of that, good leaders must be dedicated, committed to leading by example, rather than expecting people to do things they would not do themselves. True leaders must really care about what they’re doing, for the sake of the wider political community. People see through fakes.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But isn’t going into politics synonymous with media slander and misrepresentation? The government of Singapore dishes out its fair share in your direction. It claims you spread “falsehoods” and peddle “libel”. They say you’re both deeply “dishonourable” and a “political failure” now posing as “the Aung San Suu Kyi of Singapore politics”.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> If I was given a dollar for every time someone told me that I am not the monster government media makes me out to be then I’d be as rich as the millionaire ministers of the Singapore government. I may not be an angel, but I’m not the devil the government has painted me to be. Just by talking to me, people realise how much they’ve been misled.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.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">Chee Soon Juan, speaking recently in Sydney, argues that courage, decency and truth telling are the basis of authentic political leadership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giovanni Navarria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Doesn’t your commitment to authenticity, decency and honesty put you at odds with a basic maxim of Western politics that every politician has to sell snake oil? Is it really possible to be in politics without perfecting the art of persuading others of something in which you don’t believe, or have reservations about?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Citizens can be won over for a time using snake oil, but present moments pass quickly. Then what? My struggle has been more long-term: even when misunderstood, I have wanted people to say, at some point in the future, “Yes, what he said was right, it’s true.” Consciously telling yourself to resist the political temptation to sell snake oil is an investment for the future.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Many citizens today say politicians are chronic liars. In a roundabout way, they accept Machiavelli’s maxim that lying is unavoidable in politics. You value living truth, but do you think there are moments when truth is a political hindrance?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> The ongoing issue in politics is how economical one wants to be with the truth. It’s complex. Think of Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to deal with his less progressive opponents. To hold the Union together, he initially chose not to abolish slavery. Every politician has to deal with this dilemma of sometimes having to choose between lesser evils. Unfortunately, when making their choice, many politicians succumb to the temptation to peddle lies. This gives politics a bad name, despite the fact that there are plenty of politicians who try their very best to advance the interests of whole communities in circumstances that are not to their advantage. I’m hopeful more decent people will come forward into politics, which is only ever as good as the good people it attracts.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> In a one-party system where official lying is chronic, isn’t it much easier, paradoxically, to live in the truth when in opposition?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> It’s always easier to fight for principles than to live by them. Living up to principles you believe to be true is equally challenging. There’s no simple formula for how to do it, and very few people manage it. People like Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King all had their flaws. There were times when they deviated from their own principles. But they were deeply conscious of the need always to come back to basics. They tried hard to harmonise what they were saying in public with the way they lived their lives. Character is vital: doing the right thing when people aren’t looking, when the cameras aren’t clicking, is very important. You don’t always succeed. But you remain conscious of the need to aspire to living the truth.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> A famous Scottish politician (Jimmy Maxton) once said that politics is a bloody circus and if you’re in it you better learn to ride two bloody horses at once. You stand for sincerity, authenticity, decency and honesty. But politics is also about knives and conniving, combining the rough with the smooth, isn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> People say politics is about finding friends and dealing with enemies. I may live to regret saying this, but we have people in our Singapore Democratic Party who remain genuine. Perhaps it’s because there’s nothing – money, power – to be gained by joining the party. I’m aware things will change if and when we grow bigger, but we’ll deal with the issue when it arises. In the meantime, our aim within the party is to build up positive political capital, among people who are persuaded that they’re doing the right thing. Although such capital isn’t a resource that comes from hard political power, I do think it minimises political back-stabbing and conniving, hopefully in order to get us through to government.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But governing brings its own burdens, such as the need for public disinformation, doesn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I would relish the challenge to prove otherwise! Governments don’t need to tell lies to their electorates. They need instead to carry people with them, by being honest with them. Many politicians underestimate people’s ability to understand this difference. That’s why they get into such trouble, especially when they grow prepared to say and do anything, just to stay in office. Hackneyed though it may sound, honesty, the political ability to couch things frankly, is still the best policy.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> This is an old Greek democratic idea: candid speech is a powerful weapon against devious opponents.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> In politics, you have to know yourself as well. The moment you let someone else sow the seeds of doubt within you, undermine your confidence and affect what you do, you are in trouble. Loss of confidence is your Achilles heel. When my kids were quite young, I was asked by an interviewer whether I worried about what they would in future think about all the nasty names the government hurled at me. My answer was that they would measure their father against what he said, and what he stood for and what he did, and then make up their own minds. I expect others to do that of me. And I try to apply the same rule to myself. I know who I am, and because I know who I am, I will carry on doing what I’m doing, and then let people around me and history be my judge.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But how do you deal with naysayers and plotters and opponents with knives? Most people would say being true to your sense of self isn’t enough.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> There are some people you can’t convince. If you speak ill of the Singapore government and its leaders, for instance, they may consider it defamatory. They take you to court and sue you for every last penny you have. They call you everything under the sun. Confronted by such opponents, I try not to be distracted by the animosity. For instance, I’ve written open letters and in court told Lee Kuan Yew that I harbour no hatred or ill will towards him. As he fights his inner demons and strives to prove his own legacy, I continue to wish him the best. He has to live his own life and face the verdict of history, as we all do. Confronted by political opponents, it’s also important to continue down our own paths. Resilience is a powerful virtue. So is talking and persuasion, which can be much more powerful than knives. I strongly prefer conversation and debate. My training in neuropsychology comes in handy. It taught me that there are always more questions than there are answers. In politics, especially in autocratic politics, it is the other way around. So I strive to infuse questioning into our politics. However heated things become, it’s important to make sure all sides are heard, and to let the chips fall where they may. If your enemies see the truth, then that’s a good outcome, even when they’re not in agreement.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> What would you say is the worst thing about being in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Fund-raising. I accept it’s something that must be done for the sake of running campaigns, but it’s not always pleasant.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Others would say the worst thing about a political career is physical exhaustion, or the loss of privacy.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’ve still got petrol in my tank. When it comes to privacy, politicians reveal much more than they should. I don’t use Facebook for things I want to keep personal. I work on the assumption that I’m being watched by the secret police in Singapore, but I have nothing to hide from the public.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Edmund Burke once said that in politics flattery is a curse because it corrupts both the giver and the receiver. What about toadies in politics? You must have had your fair share?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’ve attended political conferences where delegates went around using the sweetest of words, as if they thought they could talk a bird down from a tree. They approached complete strangers, put their arms around them and treated them as though they were long-lost friends. The Americans call this behaviour “schmoozing”. I instinctively recoil from it. It’s the height of fakery. It’s not the way to win friends. I just don’t like it one bit.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> How do you deal with the political cynics you encounter?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I can live with cynics. Having been through the mill, I find it personally rewarding when people come around, even though at first they were utterly cynical. I came into opposition politics in Singapore not only to change votes, but also to change minds. Cynicism is to be expected in politics, but it can and must be dealt with by maintaining a measure of composure, through equanimity and the hope that the cynics will drop their cynicism.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> It has often been said that all political careers end in failure. Do you think yours will?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> There’s a good chance that in my case there won’t even be the success that comes before failure! In politics, things go wrong. How difficult situations are handled determines success or failure. Not knowing when to leave office and its complement, blindly clinging on to power beyond its expiry date, are key reasons why political careers fail.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Does the temptation of clinging to a political role apply to you? Are you worried that politics is going to your head?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’m certainly conscious that power is often intoxicating and that people unwisely cling to it. I also know that political power and all its trappings can be lost in seconds. I try to do what I believe to be right, but for the moment I haven’t any power, if by that is meant having an office, hiring and firing people, having a guaranteed budget and spending large sums of money.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> In Singapore and well beyond Southeast Asia, money has become a basic ingredient of politics. Do you think on balance it’s having poisonous effects?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Big money and buying off politicians by big moneyed interests are terrible scourges on politics in mature democracies. I may be wrong, but support can be won regardless of campaign ads oiled by big money. As I’ve said, fund-raising is important, but it’s not automatically persuasive. In Singapore, where the government filters and controls all media, politics is also being challenged through the internet, where Facebook and YouTube and other social media are providing avenues for running a campaign and reaching out to Singaporean citizens without spending an arm and a leg to beat our government opponents, who have unlimited resources at their disposal.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You now find yourself at the beginning of a long campaign by your party to win its first-ever parliamentary seats in the next general election, which is due by January 2017. The outcome is uncertain. Do you think about the powerful role played by surprise in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> In politics, you have to be a bit philosophical. You take the bitter with the sweet. You roll with the punches. When events work in your favour, you capitalise on them. When things go wrong, you try your level best to turn them into an opportunity. You mustn’t try to contrive and control everything. Good things always come mixed with bad things, so what’s needed is a strategy for dealing with each. Here’s the rule: don’t grow too elated when things turn out well, but don’t become despondent when things go badly.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> It’s been said that giving up prematurely is a key cause of failure in politics, and that when everything seems hopeless hoping against hope sometimes work wonders. How important is hope for you?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Right now, the Singapore opposition has virtually no alternative but to look to the future and to believe that things will turn out better. The government is as wilful and intransigent as ever, despite the fact that without democracy we are just going to go nowhere. I’m excited by the prospect of leading the SDP into the next elections, excited about the opportunity of presenting our alternative vision to the people of Singapore and excited that we have the opportunity of taking Singapore in a different direction, towards a dynamic, more equal and compassionate democracy. The hope that democracy will come to Singapore looms large in our calculations. So does the conviction that hope must be backed by sweat, and by deeds. At the end of the day, I have not a shred of doubt who will emerge victorious in the struggle for democratic reform in Singapore. I say this because the human spirit can only be suppressed, never crushed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37965/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>The Lee dynasty and their People’s Action Party have ruled Singapore since 1959, but their grip on power has weakened. Opposition leader Chee Soon Juan talks about about his long fight for change.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/373642015-02-12T00:04:34Z2015-02-12T00:04:34ZIndonesia’s political elites drive anti-graft agency into jeopardy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71559/original/image-20150210-24700-bq64tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Indonesian public is demanding President Joko Widodo act decisively to save the country's anti-corruption agency (KPK) from being undermined by the police. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dani Daniar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is often hailed as an example of a <a href="http://www.cmi.no/publications/publication/?3765=an-exception-to-the-rule">successful anti-corruption agency</a>. KPK’s workload is enormous as Southeast Asia’s biggest economy continues to be riddled with corruption, but its track record serves as a benchmark for anti-corruption agencies in countries grappling with the problem.</p>
<p>But while KPK wins acclaim around the world, Indonesia’s own political elite is driving the agency towards a perilous fate while destabilising President Joko Widodo’s (popularly known as Jokowi) leadership.</p>
<p>The leadership of Indonesia’s Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and their political allies, who backed Jokowi’s run for office, are undermining his government by pushing for a suspect candidate for chief of police. They are leaving Jokowi to deal with police reprisals after the KPK declared the nominated candidate a graft suspect. </p>
<p>The public is pressuring the president to act decisively to end this political farce. </p>
<h2>Behind the case against the KPK</h2>
<p>Behind the weakening of KPK is a story of politics, rivalries and brinkmanship at the cost of progress in the country’s fight against corruption. </p>
<p>Three months into office, Jokowi is facing his biggest crisis of credibility to date. He came to power using the PDI-P ticket but with very limited backing from its party machinery. PDI-P chairwoman and former president Megawati Sukarnoputri <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/indonesias-presidential-election">reluctantly gave up her presidential ambitions</a> to support the extremely popular Jokowi. </p>
<p>As someone from outside Indonesia’s political establishment and without solid financial resources, Jokowi had only his integrity and a promise of change to buoy him. The Indonesian public supported him because of this. They were naive to believe this would be enough to empower him to defeat the corrupt old guard. </p>
<p>The first reality check came in the final line-up of his <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesias-cabinet-line-up-not-all-the-presidents-men-33483">cabinet ministers</a>. Half were politicians from the coalition that backed him. After their first taste of disappointment, the public, understanding the demands of realpolitik on Jokowi, eventually let it slide.</p>
<p>When Jokowi appointed as attorney-general a politician from the National Democratic Party, one of the parties in PDI-P’s coalition, doubts set in again. The public criticised the president for not being transparent in the process. He did not involve the KPK and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) as he had done when he chose his cabinet.</p>
<p>Jokowi then repeated his “mistake” by nominating Budi Gunawan, a high-ranking police officer who failed the KPK/PPATK screening for prospective cabinet ministers, as the sole candidate for chief of police. Gunawan, a police general suspected of having “fat bank accounts” of allegedly illicit money, has close ties to Megawati, having been her presidential aide in 2004.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71561/original/image-20150210-24660-1v5fphs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri reluctantly gave up her presidential ambition to support the more popular Joko Widodo’s run for president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Mast Irham</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No-one had expected Jokowi to nominate someone who had already been struck from the initial list. The public began questioning Jokowi’s commitment to fighting corruption. The KPK immediately named Gunawan as a graft suspect. </p>
<p>Despite KPK’s charges, the parliament quickly approved the nomination, leaving the president no time to retract his nomination. Jokowi found himself unexpectedly cornered by parliament and his own party into installing a graft suspect as chief of police. </p>
<h2>The emasculation of KPK</h2>
<p>In retaliation at the naming of Gunawan as a graft suspect, the police are now targeting KPK commissioners for criminal investigations. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71562/original/image-20150210-24679-mfuy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">KPK commissioner Bambang Widjoyanto.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/STR</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On January 23, armed police <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/25/crime-unit-breached-legal-procedure-bambang-s-arrest.html">detained KPK commissioner Bambang Widjoyanto</a>. The police accused him of forcing a witness to commit perjury in a 2010 election dispute when Widjoyanto was a private lawyer. Since his questioning, the police are investigating all remaining <a href="http://www.kpk.go.id/id/tentang-kpk/profil-pimpinan/2011-2015">KPK commissioners</a>. </p>
<p>The police accuse KPK chief Abraham Samad of having had political ambitions to become Widodo’s running mate, putting his ethics in question; commissioner Adnan Pandu Praja of alleged fraud involving a timber company in 2006; and commissioner Zulkarnain of receiving bribes when he was chief prosecutor in East Java province in 2009. </p>
<p>All these cases are unrelated to the KPK and occurred prior to the commissioners being appointed in 2011. If the police were to follow through on these reports, all the commissioners would be sidelined and the KPK emasculated.</p>
<h2>Public demands to save KPK</h2>
<p>These events have galvanised civil society to show their support for the KPK and their anger at police moves against the anti-graft agency, which is not for the first time. In 2009 and 2012, police also arrested KPK commissioners on dubious charges after the latter investigated police corruption.</p>
<p>A high-ranking police officer compared KPK attempts to take on the police to a gecko fighting a crocodile. The 2009 and 2012 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Eradication_Commission#.22Gecko_vs_Crocodile.22_dispute">“Gecko versus Crocodile”</a> rifts, however, were purely cases of the police taking on the KPK. This time political parties are joining in.</p>
<p>Indonesians are demanding the government, the police and political elites abide by the rules of good governance. Concerned citizens have taken the streets to protest. Lecturers from major universities have declared their stand. Public figures, including religious leaders, are lending their weight to the KPK’s fight against corruption. </p>
<p>The public is calling for the government to apply the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf">UN Convention against Corruption</a> (UNCAC) Article 6.2, which mandates governments to support anti-graft agencies to carry out their functions effectively. The government is also being urged to follow the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/corruption/WG-Prevention/Art_6_Preventive_anti-corruption_bodies/JAKARTA_STATEMENT_en.pdf">2012 Jakarta Statement on Principles for Anti-Corruption Agencies</a>.</p>
<h2>Does Jokowi have a ‘grand plan’?</h2>
<p>To help him resolve his quandary, Jokowi set up an independent team of nine prominent figures to make recommendations on the issue. They recommended that Jokowi order the resignation of anyone in Polri and KPK who has been named as a criminal suspect. The team also recommended he not inaugurate a graft suspect as police chief. </p>
<p>Jokowi has yet to comment definitively on what he plans to do. In a twist of irony, while his own political party is undermining him, he met his rival in the presidential race, Prabowo Subianto, who declared he would support Jokowi’s decision. </p>
<p>Is Jokowi signalling to his own party that he can jump the fence to his former opponent’s camp? If so, he risks losing the support base that campaigned so strongly against Prabowo, the ex-military man with a questionable human rights record. </p>
<p>Will Prabowo’s support give Jokowi the nerve to defy his own party and end Gunawan’s candidacy as police chief? If Jokowi does not act decisively, will the police continue their attack on the KPK? Does the president have the courage to protect the institution at all costs?</p>
<p>As rumours of a police raid on the KPK office circulate, Jokowi is carrying on as if he has everything under control. So confident is he that he went on state visits to Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71563/original/image-20150210-24697-16iaao7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joko Widodo (left) visited the Philippines while Indonesia grapples with the KPK versus police saga. Does he have a ‘grand plan’ to save the KPK?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Francis R. Malasig</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps Jokowi is a sophisticated political strategist with a “grand plan” that is as opaque as a Javanese <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayang"><em>wayang</em> </a> performance. Maybe he is concealing a strategy that may rid him of the shackles of PDI-P and other political interests that are preventing him from delivering on his promises of reform and clean government. Or he might simply be a naive political leader on the brink of compromising his moral values. </p>
<p>If the latter is the case, and he sacrifices the KPK and the anti-corruption movement, Jokowi will surely end up being tossed about like a football by political interests, abandoned by the people who once supported him so passionately. </p>
<p>We will know soon enough.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalia Soebagjo is the executive board chair for Transparency International Indonesia. </span></em></p>Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is often hailed as an example of a successful anti-corruption agency. KPK’s workload is enormous as Southeast Asia’s biggest economy continues to be…Natalia Soebagjo, Executive Director at the Centre for the Study of Governance, Universitas IndonesiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/314562014-10-02T20:18:28Z2014-10-02T20:18:28ZHow to restore trust in politics after the Victorian election<p>A fundamental lack of trust is at the heart of Australian politicians’ extremely poor reputation. It is the main reason why people’s opinions about their elected representatives have mutated from healthy scepticism into corrosive cynicism. Unless we can find a way to break the vicious circle of mistrust, public disdain will infect the health of the institutions that are the foundation and framework of our democratic political system.</p>
<p>So what can be done? Our group, the <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org">Accountability Round Table</a>, believes that an important place to start is in Victoria, ahead of the upcoming state election.</p>
<p>The Accountability Round Table is <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/about/">a non-partisan, national body</a> involving former politicians from all major political parties, former judges, current and former academics, lawyers, journalists and other citizens. They all share common concerns about declining standards in public life.</p>
<p>We have sent a letter (<a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ART-Victorian-Elections-2014-attachment-and-appendices.pdf">with detailed attachments</a>) to the leaders of Victoria’s major political parties. This seeks a pre-election commitment to act on <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/art-seeks-accountability-committments-prior-to-victorian-state-elections/">three serious issues</a> after the November 29 poll. We’ve called on all parties to support:</p>
<ol>
<li>Giving greater powers to Victoria’s Independent Broad Based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC)</li>
<li>Holding an inquiry into public funding of political parties, individual members of parliament and political candidates</li>
<li>Strengthening the public’s right to know, with improved Freedom of Information rules.</li>
</ol>
<p>And for anyone who thinks such accountability measures don’t matter, they do – including having significant, practical economic consequences. </p>
<h2>Tackling corruption</h2>
<p>Victoria does not have an effective anti-corruption body. That’s why we’re calling for Victoria’s IBAC to be given the same ability as New South Wales’ highly effective Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) to tackle suspected and known misconduct and corruption. </p>
<p>While recent changes introduced into the Victorian Parliament address some of the shortcomings in the IBAC Act, they fail to give Victorians what the government promised at the last election: <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/latest-ibac-incarnation-is-still-not-roadworthy/">an anti-corruption body for Victoria</a> akin to ICAC. </p>
<p>Like ICAC, IBAC needs the powers to investigate any allegations or complaints that in its Commissioner’s opinion implies “corrupt conduct may have occurred, may be occurring or may be about to occur”.</p>
<p>The ability to do this has been central to ICAC’s capacity to peel back the layers of unethical and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/icac-craig-baumann-becomes-10th-nsw-liberal-mp-to-join-crossbench-after-accusations-of-taking-secret-donations-20140912-10fu12.html">organised scheming by politicians (and others) in NSW</a> and to turn the accountability spotlight onto political funding matters.</p>
<p>To reveal and then reverse unethical and potentially illegal practices, any independent anti-corruption body – and this includes Victoria’s IBAC – requires the powers of NSW’s ICAC. Without it, political funding and other matters cannot be effectively scrutinised.</p>
<p>The discretion granted to the anti-corruption Commissioner is a key factor here. The Victorian government needs to trust those it appoints to head accountability institutions to use their discretionary powers wisely. It is not as if there are no checks and balances in place.</p>
<p>IBAC, like ICAC, is monitored and reviewed by an all-party parliamentary committee. The Victorian Inspectorate can monitor IBAC’s compliance with its statutory obligations and investigate any complaints against the anti-corruption body and its staff.</p>
<h2>Cleaning up political funding</h2>
<p>Victoria lacks appropriate mechanisms for ensuring that funding of political parties does not lead to anti-democratic or corrupt outcomes. That is why we’re calling for an inquiry into political funding.</p>
<p>Specifically, we believe a referral should be given to the Joint Electoral Matters Committee to inquire into the accountability regime of Victoria’s current political funding rules. </p>
<p>Its terms of reference should include a requirement that the committee make recommendations for the legislation needed to provide a system of political funding that will serve and enhance our democracy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60513/original/4mtk8w4b-1412164205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the practice of raising funds by offering access to members of parliament at functions, particularly <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/tony-abbott-campbell-newman-and-john-howard-to-speak-at-cashforaccess-lnp-fundraiser/story-fnii5v70-1227073664460">senior ministers</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/05/nsw-labor-fundraising-program-offers-end-of-year-drinks-with-bill-shorten">shadow ministers</a>, is a major and growing concern. </p>
<p>Payments for access are already a significant source of funding for Australian political parties, as shown in <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joo-cheong-tham-157">Joo-Cheong Tham</a>’s book <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/money-and-politics_the-democracy-we-cant-afford/">Money And Politics: The Democracy We Can’t Afford</a>.</p>
<h2>The public’s right to know</h2>
<p>It’s also time to overhaul the philosophy underpinning current Victoria’s Freedom of Information laws. We’re asking political parties and individual politicians in Victoria to commit to adopting the model recommended by the 2008 <a href="http://www.rti.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/107632/solomon-report.pdf">Solomon Report</a>, which is now in place in Queensland and Tasmania.</p>
<p>This is based on people’s “right to know” information, also known as the Right to Information principle. </p>
<p>This stands in contrast to Victoria’s approach to Freedom of Information, where public servants respond to specific requests for information. Not all requests are granted and, when they are, full disclosure is not always forthcoming.</p>
<p>The Right to Information principle dictates that governments and public servants respect the community’s right to information about government and public servants’ actions. The only exception is when it is very clear that the public interest requires non-disclosure.</p>
<h2>The value of open government</h2>
<p>Accountability may not seem like the most important issue at this year’s Victorian election. Yet it is vitally important, not just at a state level, but nationally and internationally.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60471/original/yc7wvbhs-1412128924.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&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 countries involved in the Open Government Partnership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.opengovpartnership.org</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An open and accountable government is crucial for economic growth. International recognition of the link between the two led to the creation in 2011 of the <a href="http://www.opengovpartnership.org/">Open Government Partnership</a>.</p>
<p>Some 64 nations including <a href="http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/australia">Australia</a> have joined or applied to join this partnership. They have done so because they recognise that economic growth depends on transparent government and that this approach fosters a better life for the many, whereas secrecy only benefits the few.</p>
<p>While the three areas of reform that our group has nominated could be addressed separately, they will be more effective if they are seen as part of an accountability package.</p>
<p>While it may be self-evident to many that corruption thrives on secrecy, Victoria’s accountability regime still does not reflect this well-known truth. It should.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Lewis has received funding from the Australian Research Council in relation to projects on the education and training of Parliamentarians and protecting the reputation and standing of the institution of Parliament. She is a member of the Accountability Round Table.</span></em></p>A fundamental lack of trust is at the heart of Australian politicians’ extremely poor reputation. It is the main reason why people’s opinions about their elected representatives have mutated from healthy…Colleen Lewis, Adjunct Professor, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222102014-01-23T00:01:26Z2014-01-23T00:01:26ZEd Miliband’s leadership rests on personality politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39585/original/74scd7pf-1390324824.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">He talks, they listen.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefan Rousseau/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Labour Party has started bringing forward policies for 2015, and not a moment too soon. The time for <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/new-ideas-on-the-private-rented-sector,2013-05-28">policy reviews</a>, which really were more like a synopsis of contemporary social theory than reviews of current policy, is all but over. Now we are talking real bread-and-butter stuff, the “cost of living crisis”: a price freeze on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24213366">energy bills</a>, a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24560098">levy on the payday loans industry</a> to pay for local credit unions, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/12/labour-benefits-tories-labour-rachel-reeves-welfare">Rachel Reeves</a> being tough on benefits, tough on the causes of benefits, and most recently a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/01/ed-milibands-banking-reform-speech-full-details">fairer deal for banks’ retail customers</a>, announced in another no-notes speech at the University of London last Friday. </p>
<p>And so, Labour has begun filling its market stall of policies before the general election. The party leadership has certainly ruffled a few feathers in the process; Miliband has been compared to various dictators, from <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/01/boris-johnson-robert-muga_n_4021280.html">Mugabe</a> to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10332413/Milibands-Stalinist-plan-to-seize-land-for-homes-and-build-on-fields.html">Stalin</a> (which won’t do him any harm). It isn’t worth repeating the <a href="http://www.fingletonassociates.com/article-why-freezing-energy-prices-is-a-bad-idea.html">arguments against</a> the energy freeze, but it’s safe to say the policy is probably unworkable; even Miliband admits he can’t control fluctuating global oil and gas prices. But to criticise policy for this reason alone is fundamentally misguided.</p>
<p>Thinking of policy as just a tool for problem-solving is a reductive way to understand politics in general. Polls show that the energy freeze is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poll-voters-warm-to-labour-after-pledge-by-ed-miliband-to-freezeenergy-bills-8909582.html">popular</a>, and that most people think it probably won’t work. How can both of these be true? </p>
<p>The answer is that when Miliband sent out the message about freezing energy prices, there were in fact two messages: one about prices and one about his leadership. What a lot of observers are missing, supporters and “Milibashers” alike, is that the measures Miliband has announced are forming a narrative of leadership in the Labour Party, based on a series of policy announcements of different political colours; some are red, some pink, one or two blue. Miliband has spent the past three years having his credibility as a future prime minister questioned, and he’s only just now mounting a concerted challenge to this hostile narrative.</p>
<h2>Leading from the left</h2>
<p>Historically, Labour and the British left have had difficulty with the concept of leadership. This is partly because the left’s egalitarian thrust militates against putting people on pedestals. And yet, modern politics is inconceivable without leaders: on the left, as on the right, leaders now not only represent but symbolically “embody” their political movements. The Labour Party and Miliband alike will be judged not just by the colour of his policies, but by the content of his character.</p>
<p>To lead, Miliband has had to look back as well as forwards. The measures he has announced signal the revival of two slogans from the 2011 party conference season, largely forgotten outside Westminster, when Miliband spoke confidently of “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/06/ed-miliband-george-osborne-martin-wiener">producers versus predators</a>” in a system of “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/11/17/ed-miliband-responsible-capitalism-speech_n_1098834.html">responsible capitalism</a>”. The revamped image he is now trying to project is of a strong leader who isn’t afraid to overrule predatory markets in pursuit of fair outcomes for the struggling and marginalised. </p>
<p>Labour’s policy narrative is now a direct appeal to voters’ emotions and morals, and this makes it almost populist. We should not be so cautious about this word; populism wins elections, especially if the opposition can set the agenda on the everyday, human impact of the coalition’s economic policies.</p>
<p>We can see then that the measures now being announced by Miliband are designed to help form an idea of his character in the public imagination. The announcements of the last few months have seen him craft policy not just from dry calculations of cost and benefit, but also with an eye to how it will reflect his projected moral values. Miliband is positioned as a friend to those who can’t make ends meet, a son defending <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21587269-daily-mail-has-done-ed-miliband-favour-red-eds-dead-dad">his father’s memory</a>, a bulwark against vested interests, the ethical leader prepared to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/16/rupert-murdoch-ed-miliband-phone-hacking">stand up to the likes of Murdoch</a> – and all this in the name of ordinary people. </p>
<p>Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List, <a href="http://labourlist.org/2013/10/milibands-plan-taxing-the-predators-to-fund-the-producers/">recently wrote</a> that we should now expect at least “one assault on the cost of living per month until the election”, and I think this is the model Miliband will follow in 2014 and into 2015. Some of the policies may even be good; many will have an emotional and moral dimension, and tying this ethical discourse to the quintessentially sensible idea of auditing Labour’s manifesto before the general election is a masterstroke. But we should bear in mind not just the policies Miliband and his team are now beginning to deploy, but the Miliband they’re trying to portray. </p>
<p>A few months ago, <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/08/what-does-modern-labour-party-expect-its-leader">I suggested</a> that Labour needed a theory of leadership. We are arguably beginning to see one forming, as Miliband starts to position himself as the no-notes-needed principal author of the party’s policy platform. If the Labour Party can combine its recent pronouncements on the banking system, energy bills, and loan sharks with a sense that they are embarked on a programme of national renewal via big and bold 1945-style decision-making, Miliband could be headed for No. 10 as a leader with a moral purpose, a personal vision, an emotional appeal – and a convincing plan.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gaffney receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>The Labour Party has started bringing forward policies for 2015, and not a moment too soon. The time for policy reviews, which really were more like a synopsis of contemporary social theory than reviews…John Gaffney, Professor of Politics & Co-Director, Aston Centre for Europe and Visiting Professor, Sciences Po RennesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177832013-09-07T19:48:56Z2013-09-07T19:48:56ZThe Tony Abbott I know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30931/original/s8tsg62n-1378616350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Everyone has views on the new prime minister, but who is the man behind the headlines?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a public personality, our new prime minister is an involuntary paradox. On the one hand, Tony Abbott is one of the most discussed people in Australia. On the other, much of the discussion is so ill-informed that it conceals, rather than illuminates.</p>
<p>For this, we largely have to thank Labor and its more enthusiastic media boosters. For years, they have peddled a cardboard caricature of Abbott so simplistic and so pervasive that you could hide either a saint or a psychopath beneath its shade. In one sense, the very unfairness of this treatment probably has helped Abbott enormously.</p>
<p>A plausible thesis is that large sections of the population actually have been convinced that he is scary, but having decided to vote for him anyway, have tuned out of the election. Labor’s problem being that once you have sold someone as a monster, but he still seems preferable to you, where do you go? </p>
<p>Yet the reality is that Abbott almost certainly is one of the most complex individuals ever to hold supreme political office in Australia. Even considered solely as a bundle of conundrums, he is the proverbial politician with enough material to ground an entire conference. </p>
<p>Consider. Here we have a Rhodes Scholar - and no, Kevin Rudd never got one of those - who genuinely likes to call people “mate” and hit bushfires with blankets. A deeply religious man, who is massively pragmatic, both philosophically and temperamentally. A social conservative whose rightism does not necessarily extend very far into economics, and who is personally deeply tolerant. All this, plus being the opponent of same-sex marriage with a gay sister whom he deeply loves, and the constitutionally conservative monarchist who probably will put indigenous recognition into the Constitution. </p>
<p>This is not material to be reduced to yet another yawningly predictable Tandberg cartoon, although it might conceivably serve for a quirky collaboration between Shakespeare and Woody Allen. Bizarrely, this kaleidoscopic political personality has been obscured behind a simplistic and desperate attempt to convince us that Abbott is “unelectable”, a cause that ultimately has proved as pointless as its assumptions were myopic. </p>
<p>Now we are left to discover the persona of our prime minister after his election. It is worth pausing to consider just how vile some of these tactics were, if only because they are far from over. The best example is Abbott’s much vaunted Catholicism, an apparently fatal character flaw he shares with this writer. </p>
<p>Most of us - rightly - were appalled when Julia Gillard was vilified on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/gillard-and-gender-has-she-been-vindicated-15159">grounds of her gender</a>, less often than was claimed by her supporters, but more frequently than is conceded by her detractors. We were particularly upset when she was characterised as a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/pinocchio-gillard-strong-antigillard-emissions-at-canberra-carbon-tax-protest-20110323-1c5w7.html">“witch”</a>, with all the negative female stereotyping this carried. </p>
<p>Yet many commentators routinely parody Abbott as “Father Tony”, “Captain Catholic” or most commonly <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/6701086/Australias-new-opposition-leader-Mad-Monk-Abbott.html">“The Mad Monk”</a>. Exactly why is religious vilification more acceptable than misogyny, and which part of the character of the appalling Grigori Rasputin is to be ascribed to Anthony Abbott? I suppose the imputation of giant genitalia might at least be considered flattering. </p>
<p>The reality is that Abbott will be influenced by his Catholicism in the same way as Gillard was influenced by her womanhood and Bob Hawke was influenced by his agnosticism: it will contextualise, but not define him. So Abbott will not move to outlaw abortion or criminalise contraception. He will not grant favours to his Catholic mates. Cardinal George Pell will not become Minister for Foreign Affairs. </p>
<p>But if we want to ponder things actually worth thinking about, it is a fair bet that Abbott’s sympathy with indigenous people has something to do with his exposure to Catholic social justice theory. It also is highly likely that someone <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/old-boy-abbott-slammed-by-students-over-refugee-policy/4901354">formed by the Jesuits</a> is going to place at least a passing value on education. And anyone trying to predict Abbott’s industrial stance would be well advised to at least factor in some fairly interesting Catholic intellectualism on the legitimate place of trade unions, as well as Hayek. </p>
<p>This type of analysis is important because we not only have a particularly interesting Liberal prime minister, but a particularly interesting Coalition government. This is not the old caricature of a club of capitalists leavened with a syndicate of squatters. This will be a government seeking to marshal some very different trains of thought. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30903/original/79p63tpk-1378551585.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">Abbott, Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne were all educated at Jesuit schools. Will this affect their policy approach in government?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At one end, you genuinely do have a bundle of significant players who have indeed been culturally and intellectually influenced by - among many other things - their Catholic origins. These include Abbott himself, Joe Hockey, Andrew Robb, Barnaby Joyce and Christopher Pyne. To describe these as comprising the “DLP” wing of the Coalition is crude, even assuming the average journalist knew what the DLP was or stood for. </p>
<p>But to say that all share certain critical assumptions as to the intrinsic value of individual human beings and their right to express that individual humanity is merely to express an obvious truth. Considering where this might lead an Abbott government is the sort of character analysis that actually is interesting, as opposed to self-confirmatory condescension. </p>
<p>It also is worth asking how such tendencies will mesh with more libertarian elements of the party, whose view of individual “freedom” tends to type people as integers permitted to roam merely within the boundaries of vast economic equations.</p>
<p>The potential difference of assumptions and outcomes in such fields as education, health and social policy here are vast. One should not necessarily assume that Tony Abbott is more “conservative” here than a Malcolm Turnbull or a Greg Hunt, or even what conservative means in such a context. </p>
<p>An intriguing question is how Abbott the personality will fare in office. It is a reasonable bet that for at least three reasons, he will have a better time as prime minister than as opposition leader. First, there is such mild respectability as doth hedge about a prime minister. Second, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot possibly live up to Labor’s horror story. Inevitably, Labor’s own self-serving script will reveal Abbott if not as a hero, then at least as an improbable improver. </p>
<p>Finally, there is an eccentricity about Abbott which, if handled judiciously, could become endearing. In the same way as Jeff Kennett became - at least for a period - “Our Jeff”, even to Victorians who would not willingly have let him into their house, there is a real possibility that Australians will come to own, if not universally love, Tony Abbott. </p>
<p>The giveaway was the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/abbott-drops-a-blonde-bombshell-20130813-2ruka.html">“Dad” moment</a>. In a campaign where every shot of a leader was backed by a bevy of nodders who would benignly approve even the announcement that we were invading China, the eye-rolling (but loving) disdain of one of the Abbott daughters for her idiot father was genuinely bracing. </p>
<p>Who knows? Labor may catch on, with the parties vying for which group of supporters may most graphically express their sincerity with sighs, groans and even the odd rotten tomato directed towards their own candidate. </p>
<p>Welcome to the real complexity of the court of King Tony, definitely the First.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Craven was Crown Counsel to the Kennett government from 1992 to 1995.</span></em></p>As a public personality, our new prime minister is an involuntary paradox. On the one hand, Tony Abbott is one of the most discussed people in Australia. On the other, much of the discussion is so ill-informed…Greg Craven, Vice-Chancellor, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.