Transcript Document 7123744

Democracy
Democracy as a Natural Order
“Democracy is any form of government
in which the rules of society are decided
by the people who will be bound by them.”*
But that was the original system of making decisions for
society – all members took part…
When the state arises 5,000 years ago, it takes the
decision-making power away from society
Democracy is a way of trying to restore the original norm –
to put the state under society’s control
*Catherine Kellogg, Democratic Theory, Ch.4 of Brodie/Rein
The experience of Athens, 5th century BCE*:
Assembly democracy: citizens participated directly in initiating,
deliberating, and passing of, the legislation. The Assembly,
no less than 6,000 strong (out of 22,000 citizens), convened
about every 10 days. Supreme power to decide on every
issue of state policy
Citizen juries: justice is responsibility of citizens (juries
composed of 501-1001 citizens)
Appointment of citizens to political office by lot
Citizen-soldiers: every citizen had a duty to serve in the army
Ostracism: a bad politician could be kicked out of office by the
people
*See Patrick Watson and Benjamin Barber, The Struggle for Democracy.
Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1988, p.12
The Classical Theory of Democracy
The triple meaning:
Democracy as source of state authority – power of the people
Democracy as the purpose of government – the common
good
Democracy as a method of choosing political leaders – by the
people
Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the
people, and for the people” (1863)
Also from Lincoln (1861): “This country, with its
institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.
Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
government, they can exercise their constitutional right
of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember
or overthrow it”.
But what happens in real life?
As a principle, it sounds attractive, but…
If society is large, complex, divided, can it get organized to
control the state – especially a large and powerful state?
Perhaps, only to a limited degree…
Joseph Schumpeter, 1942:
The classical theory is too broad and vague. It is much more
practical to narrow the meaning of democracy to the
method:
“The democratic method is
that institutional arrangement for arriving at political
decisions
in which individuals acquire the power to decide
by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote”.*
*Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper, 1947, p.269
2 major dimensions of the democratic method:*
contestation – free and fair competition between candidates
participation – all adult citizens have the right to vote
The use of this method requires the freedoms of:
expression, to speak publicly and publish one’s views
assembly, to gather for political purposes
association, to form political organizations
*Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1971; Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave.
Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma
Press, 1991
Democracy’s Century: A Survey of Global Political Change in the 20th Century.
NY: Freedom House, 2001 http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html
Democracy’s Century: A Survey of Global Political Change in the 20th Century.
NY: Freedom House, 2001 http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html
Since 1900, the number of independent states has
grown
from 55 to 193.
Electoral democracies
– countries where governments are formed by
democratic method –
number 120 of the 193 existing countries and
constitute 62.5% of the world’s population.
Key events which led to this expansion:
The defeat of fascism in World War 2
The fall of Western colonial empires
The fall of Russian communism and the Soviet
Union
Liberal democracy around the world, 2004*
(Data based on Freedom House methodology)
“FREE”
“PARTLY
FREE”
“NOT
FREE”
Number of 88
countries
55
49
% of world 44
population
21
35
*http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2004/charts2004.pdf
Today’s Democratic Paradox
Democracy is accepted as the normal – and even normative form of government more widely in the world than ever before
And yet, the real scope of democratic practices is very limited.
The sea of democracy has never been wider.
But it is very shallow.
Inadequacies and failures of states organized by the democratic
method:
Declining ability to manage economies
Growth of inequality
The environmental crisis
The rise of ethnic and religious conflicts
Growing practice of mass violence (wars, terrorism, arms
races)
Democratic deficit: global public opinion, 2005:
http://markinor.co.za/news/who-runs-your-world
Liberal Democracy: Main Principles*
1. Individualism: Society is composed of individuals. The individual is
sovereign. Individuals come first - groups second
2. Equality: All individuals have equal rights (see below)
3. Reason: People are capable of making rational decisions about anything,
and can improve the conditions of their existence
4. Rights: Society must recognize certain individual claims as givens (the
list of rights has been expanding: compare US Declaration of
Independence, 1776, with UN documents: Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, 1948, other UN rights declarations)
5. Society: Its interests are nothing but a sum of individual interests.
6. Protection of property and rights: The state exists to protect individual
rights and private property
7. Freedom: individuals’ ability to act without interference by the state or
other citizens
*See Kellogg, Democratic Theory, pp.30-31
LD reflects the ambivalence about the role of the state (see the
previous lecture):
The state as the provider of public goods
vs.
The state as a source of dangers to private interests
LD seeks to make the state strong and capable by making it
legitimate through the democratic method (democracy
makes state power rightful and just, enables the state to
rule)
And – it seeks to limit state authority over society through
separation of powers, rule of law, constitutionalism
Key principle of LD: distinction between
--the private sphere (personal life of individuals, the
family, civil society autonomous from the state,
religion, the market economy) and
--the public sphere (political society, the state,
government policies)
Activities of the state should be confined to the
public sphere
The public sphere should not be too large
The private sphere should be autonomous from the
state and protected from the state’s encroachments
Democracy, understood in the broad, classical
sense, may easily lead to the violation of society’s
autonomy.
Majority rule always contains the danger of
suppression of minorities – in the name of
democracy. “Tyranny of the majority” – Alexis de
Tocqueville
Democracy may undermine and even destroy
liberty
Liberty is enhanced by democracy – but it must be
protected from democracy
This ambivalence is a source of LD’s strength and durability
The concern for individual rights
The emphasis on the autonomy of society from the state
The emphasis on pluralism
are very important political values
But the compromise at the core of LD also makes it vulnerable
to challenges:
Both from the Right and from the Left
From the Right: LD fragments society and the state, it
makes for disorder, it weakens the state. It is too much
democracy
From the Left: LD secures privileges of the elites – both
private elites and state elites. This democracy is too limited
In the history of liberal democracy, liberalism precedes
democracy
When liberal principles become accepted in the practice of
more and more Western states (18th-19th centuries), the
exercise of political rights and freedoms is limited
Classical, laissez-faire liberalism is concerned primarily about
limiting state power and protecting the private sphere – the
market economy in the first place
In the 20th century, the extension of political rights to all adults
is accompanied with the expansion of the activities of the
state
The balance between the private and public spheres shifts in
favour of the public sphere, as the liberal-democratic state,
under the pressure of majorities, widens the scope of its
activities, recognizes a wider range of rights, including
labour’s right of collective bargaining
Welfare-state liberalism emphasizes the role of the state as
provider of public goods
Countertrend: In the last quarter of the 20th century,
conservative, or neoliberal, forces gain political dominance
in the West (led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in UK,
President Ronald Reagan in the US)
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The Trilateral Commission and the idea of “The
Crisis of Democracy” (1975):
There is too much democracy in the West
Democracy is becoming “ungovernable”
“Recent years in the Trilateral countries have seen the
expansion of the demands on government from individuals
and groups. The expansion takes the form of:
( I ) the involvement of an increasing proportion of the
population in political activity;
(2) the development of new groups and of new consciousness
on the part of old groups, including youth, regional groups,
and ethnic minorities;
(3) the diversification of the political means and tactics which
groups use to secure their ends;
(4) an increasing expectation on the part of groups that
government has the responsibility to meet their needs; and
(5) an escalation in what they conceive those needs to be.”
(Continued on next page)
“The result is an "overload" on government and the
expansion of the role of government in the
economy and society. During the 1960s
governmental expenditures, as a proportion of
GNP, increased significantly in all the principal
Trilateral countries, except for Japan. This
expansion of governmental activity was attributed
not so much to the strength of government as to its
weakness and the inability and unwillingness of
central political leaders to reject the demands made
upon them by numerically and functionally
important groups in their society.
(Continued on the next page)
The impetus to respond to the demands which
groups made on government is deeply rooted in
both the attitudinal and structural features of a
democratic society. The democratic idea that
government should be responsive to the people
creates the expectation that government should
meet the needs and correct the evils affecting
particular groups in society. Confronted with the
structural imperative of competitive elections every
few years, political leaders can hardly do anything
else.”*
*Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, Joji Watanuki. The Crisis of
Democracy. Report on the Governability of Democracies to the
Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press, 1975,
pp.163-164
The “conservative revolution”, launched by Thatcher and
Reagan, began to dismantle the welfare state in the name
of individual freedom and market autonomy.
As electoral democracy marched forward, expanding
territorially around the globe,
the ability and willingness of the democratic states to satisfy
social demands declined.
Democracy and Capitalism
Capitalism:
A social system based on private ownership of the means of
production, in which the main goal of economic activity is
the maximization of profit
The main mechanism of social coordination is the market
Guided by the “unseen hand” of the market, individuals buy
and sell labour, land, goods, services, stocks, information
The capitalist system began to form about 500 years ago
when the following developments converged:
--Formation of the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie literally, the word means “the city dwellers”): first, merchants and
bankers, later, industrialists – people whose main source of
power is money derived from the workings of the market
economy
--Creation of nation-states
--Expansion of international trade and conquest of
colonies
--New technologies made human labour more
productive
--The rise of new ideas
2 basic methods of social coordination in any society:
1. Directed coordination, or authority (somebody plans for
the group, gives commands, others obey)
2. Mutual adjustment, or exchange (everyone does his/her
thing, nobody plans, nobody commands, coordination
takes place through the web of interactions between gainseeking individuals or groups)
Capitalism expands the realm of mutual adjustment – the
rise of the market system, the power of self-interest
But directed coordination – exercise of authority, the power
of command –
does not disappear. Quite the opposite: it becomes more
effective
No society can rely only on market-type interactions
Many important social tasks can only be performed through
the use of authority
And – does the market really make you free?
“In market systems, people do not go their own way, they are
tied together and turned this way or that through market
interactions. If they were in fact left to go their own way they
would not achieve the prodigious feats of production that
characterize market systems. That market participants see
themselves as making free and voluntary choices does not
deny that they are controlled by purchases and sales.”*
*Charles Lindblom. The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What To
Make of It. Yale University Press, 2001, p.8
And – does the market really make you free?
“In market systems, people do not go their own way, they are
tied together and turned this way or that through market
interactions. If they were in fact left to go their own way they
would not achieve the prodigious feats of production that
characterize market systems. That market participants see
themselves as making free and voluntary choices does not
deny that they are controlled by purchases and sales.”*
*Charles Lindblom. The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What To
Make of It. Yale University Press, 2001, p.8
Combining Authority and Exchange
Authority structures under capitalism:
The family
The workplace (obey the boss, be disciplined, work hard)
The state (whether democratic or authoritarian)
Liberal democracy is a way of combining the power of
command with the power of self-interest, putting a strong
emphasis on self-interest. The state derives its authority to
command from a market-type deal between the citizen and
the politician :
I’ll give you my vote and my taxes, if you work to deliver the
public goods I need (for example, “peace, order, good
government”)
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The Equality of the Unequal
Is liberal democracy the perfect political form for capitalism?
Yes, but at the same time, democracy and capitalism
are in conflict
In the market economy, people are formally equal free agents,
each after his/her own interests
But in reality, they have vastly different amounts of social
power
The market system, in and by itself, does not reduce those
differences. On the contrary, it increases existing
inequalities – both within societies and between societies.
Democracy, on the other hand, is rooted in the idea of
equality. Vigorous practice of democracy in society does
lead to lessening of social inequalities.
Another contradiction: in a democracy, citizens work together
to achieve common goals
In a market economy, people compete, trying to gain
advantage over each other – “survival of the fittest” (Herbert
Spencer)
Can the contradictions between:
socioeconomic inequality and political equality, and
between cooperation and competition –
be kept under control?
Household Net Worth by Wealth Class, USA, 1998
Top 1%
$10,204,000
Next 4%
$1,441,000
Next 5%
$623,500
Next 10%
$344,900
Fourth 20%
$161,300
Middle 20%
$61,000
Bottom 40%
$1,900
Source: Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership, 1983-1998," April 2000. Table 3 and
note to Table 5.( http://www.inequality.org/factsfr.html)
Distribution of wealth in the USA
http://www.inequality.org/factsfr.html
Who owns capital in America
http://www.inequality.org/factsfr.html
Growth of inequality in USA
http://www.inequality.org/factsfr.html
Average Pay of US CEOs and Workers*
1980-2000 (in 2000 US dollars)
Average pay
1980
2000
CEO
$1,306,120
$13,100,000
Production and $28,950
non-supervisory
worker
$28,579
Ratio,
CEO/worker
pay
458
45
Source: Holly Sklar, Laryssa Mykyta and Susan Wefald, Raise the Floor, 2001
(Ms. Foundation for Women). http://www.inequality.org/ceopayeditfr.html
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Haves vs. have-nots in America:
public opinion study by Pew
Research:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/593/h
aves-have-nots
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And in Canada:
http://www.growinggap.ca/node/67
Percentage share of national income
Country
Poorest Poorest
10%
20%
Richest
20%
Richest
10%
Brazil
1.0
2.6
63.0
46.7
Russia
1.7
4.4
53.7
38.7
US
1.8
5.2
46.4
30.5
Canada
2.8
7.5
39.3
23.8
Germany
3.3
8.2
38.5
23.7
Human Development Report 2001, UN Development
Program
Inequality on a global scale
The gap in living standards between the richest and poorest
nations:
1820: 3 to 1
1913: 11 to 1
1950: 35 to 1
2002: 70 to 1
See Jeremy Seabrook, The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste and
Hierarchies. Toronto: New Internationalist Publications, 2002, p.77
The world’s population: 3 classes
Upper class: 11% (real income higher than the average
income in Italy)
Middle class: 11% (real income between the average income
in Italy and the poverty line, adjusted for purchasing power)
The poor:
78% (real income below the poverty line)
See Branko Milanovic, True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First
Calculations Based on Household Surveys Alone. Economic Journal , Jan.2002
2.8 bln. people live on less than $2 a day
The richest 1% of the world’s people receive as much income
as the poorest 57% (UN Human Development Report 2002,
Overview, p.2)
World’s 3 richest people have assets greater than 48 poorest
countries combined
UN Human Development Report 2002 (see link on my website):
“Economically, politically and technologically, the world has never seemed
more free – or more unjust” (p.1)
“Advancing human development requires governance that is democratic
both in form and in substance”
Why democracy is key to development:
1/ Participating in decision-making is a fundamental human right
2/ Democracy protects people from political and economic catastrophes –
famines, wars (governments are more circumspect, attentive to public
needs)
-Since 1995, 10% of population of North Korea died of famine
-In 1958-61, 30 mln. died of famine in China
-In India, there has not been a single famine since 1947, despite crop
failures
3/”Democratic governance can trigger a virtuous cycle of development –
as political freedom empowers people to press for policies that expand
social and economic opportunities, and as open debates help
communities shape their priorities”
BUT:
“The links between democracy and human
development are not automatic: when a small elite
dominates economic and political decisions, the
link between democracy and equity can be broken”
(p.4)
At issue:
WHO CONTROLS THE STATE?
WHOSE INTERESTS DOES THE STATE SERVE?
Can an egalitarian political system coexist long
with massive and growing socioeconomic inequality?
Can concentration of economic power in the hands of a few be
reconciled with political pluralism?
How can these contradictions be resolved:
1.
-
-
-
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At democracy’s expense:
--limit democracy by manipulating its workings
--limit democracy by strengthening coercive powers of the
state
--mobilize the nation to unite, despite the inequalities – to
defend itself against an external enemy, or to conquer
other nations
--foster racial and ethnic divisions, mobilize majorities
against minorities
--opt for full-fledged fascism
In favour of democracy:
--Widen the channels through which citizens can effectively
participate in politics
--Use new information technologies, network-type forms of
political organizing
--Extend democracy into the workplace (employee
ownership)
--Reduce the influence of big money on political systems
--Increase the state’s ability to control economic elites
--Create new forms of regulation of market economies both at
the national and the global scale
--Develop effective social policies