How much Democratic are Modern Liberal Democracies
Anurag Gangal
December 16, 2008
Democracy by definition is an ´Ideal Illogical´ for it is there though it is not there! Single liners about ´democracy´ look nice to hear and read when Abraham Lincoln´s phrase comes to mind, "Democracy is government of the people, for the people, by the people". Indeed, democracy is not so simple and straight forward. Can an entire cluster of ´people´ really run a government? Even directly and indirectly elected representatives of the ´people´ also cannot really – all of them together – run a government and State at one go. People themselves do not form an individual identity. If it really so happens, there will be chaos and disorder everywhere. Everyone as ´people´ and people´s representative will have to form a smaller network or group to act like a "Vanguard" of the people interacting one with another as committed members of the so-called democratic government and State.
Introduction
Democracy inherently is self-defeating in effect. Democracy just cannot be there in its full and complete form – where no one exploits one´s co-citizen; fulsome equal opportunities are there for each and every human being; dignity, self-respect and freedom for each individual at all levels of a social and political system are readily available; and where Prime Minister of United Kingdom and President of United States can freely roam amongst their citizens and electorates. Democracy is not just freedom of expression and partial right to life. It also involves justice to each and every individual. These imperatives of a liberal democracy in particular do not appear to exist in any of the modern liberal democracies in the world.
Liberal democracies are becoming dominance of one person, group or system over another. Electoral politics is further helping divide people through racism, ethnicity, culture and language and sex etc. These forces function like an Italian Mafioso or ´God Fathers´ working through their ´clout´ way up upon the political ladder ahead.
Media and information technology are further adding fuel to fire especially via the ´Advertisement´ regimes all over the world. Here, media persons are connected to C. P Snow´s ´corridors of power´ in a very effective and subtle fashion quite like power brokers in politics. This is how an inner mafia networking is taking place in every democracy in the world. Media, political leaders and Industrialist are the top actors for evolving an Ariadnae´s Thread all around the people to bring them into their fold or web of so-called ´democracy´. As such, democracy is becoming a way to lure people through ´glittering media´, ´political promises´ and ´money power´ – away from vicissitudes of people´s routine difficulties and stresses of daily life. This is not democracy.
Quite a few select people use and abuse power at the cost of billions and billions of people. Democracies, dictatorships and fundamentalists alike are churning out terrorists today. What else is all this other than an attempt to bring about disorders after disorders in the larger social and political ethos? Security of common citizens is also not assured.
People cannot rule by themselves. Their leaders – all the Prime Minister´s men – rule the roost. It is the people who suffer the most.
State Force
In view of terrorism emerging as a global threat to apparently more peaceful democratic part of the world, State as an institution and protector of democratic regimes is emerging as ever more forceful and intensely violent variable and actor. The question of security of State is being given the top most priority specially to plunge in the ´war on terrorism´ on a fuller and more massive scale.
This increasing aggressiveness of the State is resulting in a great and continuous threat to established traditions of democracy – even in such States like United States and United Kingdom. These aspects of violence and ´State Terrorism´ are all spoiling various democratic norms functioning in diverse political systems the world over. Indeed, modern liberal democracies do not appear to be having a very bright future for people in general.
A Few Modern Liberal Democracies
In developed countries like United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, major needs of the people are not so much the material needs of daily life. Their concerns are mainly further enrichment of hassle free family life, better economic and pay packages in jobs, lesser daily strain, stress and tension, finding more sincere and committed companions in life and more stability in routine life alongwith more social and economic security to divorced and widowed females and increasing number of unemployed population etc.
Until they are provided for all these concerns of theirs´, democratic governments in these countries cannot be regarded as truly successful. Only basic freedoms of expression etc. do not fulfil requirements of a real democracy today.
Democracies in Asia and Africa
It is primarily militarism, fundamentalism and one party or one man dominant democracies (?) are functioning in Asia and Africa. Even if an example is put fourth from a country like India – relatively more stable politically and economically, what Amartya Sen calls freedom and democracy – that is not prevailing there at all. There are still about 700,000 million people who are not able to have even a single drop of drinking water a day for them (Gangal, 2007).
Then Pakistan is also there with almost a hopeless social, political and economic condition – always dwindling between a peculiar democracy, militarism and ages old kinship tribal type of feudalism. Tremendous unemployment, illiteracy combined with lawlessness with ever burgeoning centres of terrorism are a few factors that always keep on contributing to Pakistan´s political and economic bankruptcy.
African democracies have near complete chaos in majority of countries with dominance of militarism, gross and inhuman poverty and utterly insecure conditions socially, morally, economically and politically – signifying highest level of multi-fold instability.
If this is what democracy is giving to them, then they must be called very patient and tolerant people.
China
What type of Democracy is there in People´s Republic of China? A fairly good idea can be drawn from a real and interesting happening as narrated by Daniel Bell (2006, pp. 1-2):
"Those expressing "enthusiasm for liberal values," Dworkin noted, did voice their views: "all the scholars and almost all the students who spoke about the issue on various occasions insisted that there was no important difference between Western values or conceptions of human rights and their own." One member of the audience "said of course the fundamental situation of human beings is the same everywhere, that there should be no more talk of distinctive Chinese values, that China must begin what he called a ´renaissance´ of liberal individualistic values. When he finished, the large audience clapped loudly." Nevertheless, Dworkin found it peculiar that members of the audience did not seem to share his desire to discuss specific cases of human rights violations, leading him to conclude that Chinese academic discourse remains "eerily abstract in a country whose government treats itself as above the law."1 What Dworkin seems to have learned from his trip, in short, is that Chinese academics cannot mount a successful defence of an Asian philosophy even when given the opportunity to do so. The only question that remains is how to implement liberal individualism in China, which apparently requires greater moral courage and concrete thinking on the part of Chinese academics."
"Not surprisingly, Dworkin´s visit generated less-than-friendly responses. Professor Liufang Fang, who teaches law at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, opens his critique with a sarcastic account of the college students who attended Dworkin´s lectures because they "did not want to miss the festival-like event." They could hardly hear anything, but "being squeezed in the crowd itself was a joy to many of the students." Professor Dworkin, meanwhile, "unilaterally believed that his China tour was a valuable opportunity for China to be privy to his ideas of liberty." Ironically, he was taken for a ride by the Chinese government. His visit had been organized to showcase China´s new freedoms, and the government knew full well that Chinese academics would not argue publicly about the details of particularly sensitive cases. Dworkin seemed unaware of the risks that China-based academics would incur by publicly endorsing his condemnation of the Chinese government´s handling of such cases. As Professor Fang puts it, "the truth is that the degree of freedom of speech is negatively correlated with the risks borne by the speaker." Moreover, Dworkin seemed unaware of the extent to which "general discussions" of legal issues by China-based academics have led to substantial improvements of legal practice. Had Dworkin been better informed, he would not have made facile comments regarding the "eerily abstract" Chinese discourse. Professor Fang concludes his essay by suggesting that Chinese professors should spend more time reading, thinking, and writing instead of wasting time on "hot events."
This practice of ´hot events´ is also leading the liberal democracies deep down a gorge of no return – into varied scandals of Watergate and Clinton´s type and style.
Whither Liberal Democracies
Liberal democracies are passing through turbulent period almost everywhere from within and from without. Developed countries´ liberal democracies are suffering from captive mind of a materialistic and somewhat mechanical and highly professional political system. As such, there problems of over-consumption are showing its impact in addition to widening network of social security and social insecurity as well. This leads to a threatening nexus between social aspects and economic, econological and ecological dangers.
If Amartya Sen is read, it is easy to see that full potential of liberal democratic perspective is yet to be exhausted by both the North and the South of the global hemisphere (Sen, 2001). "Liberal values can be twisted to justify limiting civil rights, warns Will Kymlicka in an interview…"The same forces that support ethnic politics within liberal democracy also operate over time to channel it in peaceful and democratic ways" (2007).
The Worst Danger
It is the political links with drug mafia that is the most dangerous aspect of modern liberal democracies. This linkage is so open in developing and under-developed countries that in the Parliament of these nations, on a rough estimate, about 60% members are from the drug mafia community. That is why rampant corruption, political murders and every other type of anti-social and criminal activity primarily remains at the root of most of the decision making process. This is an aspect of common knowledge in such countries. Law makers and law executers cannot do much in this context!
Elitism, Multiculturalism and Communitarianism
The political elite from amongst leaders of political parties, bureaucracy and industrialists form the upper most elites in democracies. In developing nations and other poorer countries, drug mafia is further within this category of elites. All these are more equal than other common citizens of a liberal democracy.
Then, multiculturalism and illiberalism of political leaders form yet another inherent kind of discrimination that creates imbalances and disorders in social set up and disturbs political order. It is so because cultural diversity is often merged with ethnic differences and conflicts (Kymlicka, 2005).
One more interesting part of recent trends in liberal democracy is the context of communitarianism. Protagonists of this communitarianism ask for equal priorities to be given to duties of citizens´ vis-à-vis their rights.
In the present-day context, questions of ethnicity, identity and an individual´s rights vis-à-vis the institution of democratic State are the core issues of Communitarianism and Racial Communitarianism both.
This is a post-post-modernist development in the sense that it engulfs not only traditions of libertarianism, modernity of civil society and peculiar amalgamation of both these to bring forth something anew as good governance but also its quest for a balanced form of State and social ethos.
Racial Communitarianism thus reflects a search and global movement for equal respect and opportunities to people of all races in the pursuance of their duties as human beings and citizens of a global civil society. Rights will then be natural corollary of duties so performed professionally.
On the pejorative side, racial communitarianism depicts and highlights racial exploitation, alienation and impropriety of balance between rights and duties of citizens.
Communitarianism is also an attempt to work towards fighting various apparently fascist tendencies of libertarianism such as overarching power channels and structures like the Security Council of the United Nations and the all powerful stature of the President of United States despite inherent checks and balances in the political system.
Communitarianism is, indeed, an emerging movement to go beyond the shackles of a sovereign nation-state. It is moving ahead into the realms of a global civil society tackling a number of its issues and problems on its own without always looking up to the State for all its solution.
Standing on one´s own feet, preserving one´s self-respect, economic and multicultural empowerment alongwith individual based and logically viable social and strategic security network are major issues and challenges of communitarianism.
There are also anti-communitarians. For them communitarian movement is for further curtailing individual´s rights vis-à-vis community rights. This is not the reality of communitarianism because the main issue of communitarianism is to secure a balanced approach to rights, duties and justice (Raapana and Friedrich, 2008, see website).
Communitarians take issue with the idea that the individual stands and should stand in direct unmediated relationship with the state and with society. This is an idea that flows through a great deal of contemporary legal and political thought in northern countries. Communitarians argue for the continuing significance of status and local networks, and the potential of other intermediate institutions (Frazer, 1999, 21-22).
Conclusion
Despite such efforts towards positive communitarianism, liberal democracies are sitting on a socio-political and economic blitzkrieg. Frequency of its blasts and their consistency are being maintained by terrorists, political leaders, global mafia and so many other permutations and combination of political chemistry which are far outside the imagination of a common citizen.
Despite all these apparent non-democratic follies and inherence in liberal democracy, it is still much better than an authoritarian and totalitarian system. At least freedom to express through reading, writing and speaking is there! This freedom is of utmost importance for human development.
References
Bell, DA, 2006, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 379.
Frazer, E, 1999, The Problem of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict,: Oxford University Press, Oxford
Gangal, A, 2007, "India at 60", http://zapzap.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/10/india-at-60.htm
Kymlicka, W, 2008, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-07-25-kymlicka-en.html, 25.07.2008, an interview.
Kymlicka, W and He, B, 2005, Multiculturalism in Asia, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pages 364, pp. 80-110.
Raapana, 2008, http://nikiraapana.blogspot.com/2008/04/abstract-anti-communitarian-manifesto.html
Sen, A, 2001, Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 366 pages.
Introduction
Democracy inherently is self-defeating in effect. Democracy just cannot be there in its full and complete form – where no one exploits one´s co-citizen; fulsome equal opportunities are there for each and every human being; dignity, self-respect and freedom for each individual at all levels of a social and political system are readily available; and where Prime Minister of United Kingdom and President of United States can freely roam amongst their citizens and electorates. Democracy is not just freedom of expression and partial right to life. It also involves justice to each and every individual. These imperatives of a liberal democracy in particular do not appear to exist in any of the modern liberal democracies in the world.
Liberal democracies are becoming dominance of one person, group or system over another. Electoral politics is further helping divide people through racism, ethnicity, culture and language and sex etc. These forces function like an Italian Mafioso or ´God Fathers´ working through their ´clout´ way up upon the political ladder ahead.
Media and information technology are further adding fuel to fire especially via the ´Advertisement´ regimes all over the world. Here, media persons are connected to C. P Snow´s ´corridors of power´ in a very effective and subtle fashion quite like power brokers in politics. This is how an inner mafia networking is taking place in every democracy in the world. Media, political leaders and Industrialist are the top actors for evolving an Ariadnae´s Thread all around the people to bring them into their fold or web of so-called ´democracy´. As such, democracy is becoming a way to lure people through ´glittering media´, ´political promises´ and ´money power´ – away from vicissitudes of people´s routine difficulties and stresses of daily life. This is not democracy.
Quite a few select people use and abuse power at the cost of billions and billions of people. Democracies, dictatorships and fundamentalists alike are churning out terrorists today. What else is all this other than an attempt to bring about disorders after disorders in the larger social and political ethos? Security of common citizens is also not assured.
People cannot rule by themselves. Their leaders – all the Prime Minister´s men – rule the roost. It is the people who suffer the most.
State Force
In view of terrorism emerging as a global threat to apparently more peaceful democratic part of the world, State as an institution and protector of democratic regimes is emerging as ever more forceful and intensely violent variable and actor. The question of security of State is being given the top most priority specially to plunge in the ´war on terrorism´ on a fuller and more massive scale.
This increasing aggressiveness of the State is resulting in a great and continuous threat to established traditions of democracy – even in such States like United States and United Kingdom. These aspects of violence and ´State Terrorism´ are all spoiling various democratic norms functioning in diverse political systems the world over. Indeed, modern liberal democracies do not appear to be having a very bright future for people in general.
A Few Modern Liberal Democracies
In developed countries like United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, major needs of the people are not so much the material needs of daily life. Their concerns are mainly further enrichment of hassle free family life, better economic and pay packages in jobs, lesser daily strain, stress and tension, finding more sincere and committed companions in life and more stability in routine life alongwith more social and economic security to divorced and widowed females and increasing number of unemployed population etc.
Until they are provided for all these concerns of theirs´, democratic governments in these countries cannot be regarded as truly successful. Only basic freedoms of expression etc. do not fulfil requirements of a real democracy today.
Democracies in Asia and Africa
It is primarily militarism, fundamentalism and one party or one man dominant democracies (?) are functioning in Asia and Africa. Even if an example is put fourth from a country like India – relatively more stable politically and economically, what Amartya Sen calls freedom and democracy – that is not prevailing there at all. There are still about 700,000 million people who are not able to have even a single drop of drinking water a day for them (Gangal, 2007).
Then Pakistan is also there with almost a hopeless social, political and economic condition – always dwindling between a peculiar democracy, militarism and ages old kinship tribal type of feudalism. Tremendous unemployment, illiteracy combined with lawlessness with ever burgeoning centres of terrorism are a few factors that always keep on contributing to Pakistan´s political and economic bankruptcy.
African democracies have near complete chaos in majority of countries with dominance of militarism, gross and inhuman poverty and utterly insecure conditions socially, morally, economically and politically – signifying highest level of multi-fold instability.
If this is what democracy is giving to them, then they must be called very patient and tolerant people.
China
What type of Democracy is there in People´s Republic of China? A fairly good idea can be drawn from a real and interesting happening as narrated by Daniel Bell (2006, pp. 1-2):
"Those expressing "enthusiasm for liberal values," Dworkin noted, did voice their views: "all the scholars and almost all the students who spoke about the issue on various occasions insisted that there was no important difference between Western values or conceptions of human rights and their own." One member of the audience "said of course the fundamental situation of human beings is the same everywhere, that there should be no more talk of distinctive Chinese values, that China must begin what he called a ´renaissance´ of liberal individualistic values. When he finished, the large audience clapped loudly." Nevertheless, Dworkin found it peculiar that members of the audience did not seem to share his desire to discuss specific cases of human rights violations, leading him to conclude that Chinese academic discourse remains "eerily abstract in a country whose government treats itself as above the law."1 What Dworkin seems to have learned from his trip, in short, is that Chinese academics cannot mount a successful defence of an Asian philosophy even when given the opportunity to do so. The only question that remains is how to implement liberal individualism in China, which apparently requires greater moral courage and concrete thinking on the part of Chinese academics."
"Not surprisingly, Dworkin´s visit generated less-than-friendly responses. Professor Liufang Fang, who teaches law at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, opens his critique with a sarcastic account of the college students who attended Dworkin´s lectures because they "did not want to miss the festival-like event." They could hardly hear anything, but "being squeezed in the crowd itself was a joy to many of the students." Professor Dworkin, meanwhile, "unilaterally believed that his China tour was a valuable opportunity for China to be privy to his ideas of liberty." Ironically, he was taken for a ride by the Chinese government. His visit had been organized to showcase China´s new freedoms, and the government knew full well that Chinese academics would not argue publicly about the details of particularly sensitive cases. Dworkin seemed unaware of the risks that China-based academics would incur by publicly endorsing his condemnation of the Chinese government´s handling of such cases. As Professor Fang puts it, "the truth is that the degree of freedom of speech is negatively correlated with the risks borne by the speaker." Moreover, Dworkin seemed unaware of the extent to which "general discussions" of legal issues by China-based academics have led to substantial improvements of legal practice. Had Dworkin been better informed, he would not have made facile comments regarding the "eerily abstract" Chinese discourse. Professor Fang concludes his essay by suggesting that Chinese professors should spend more time reading, thinking, and writing instead of wasting time on "hot events."
This practice of ´hot events´ is also leading the liberal democracies deep down a gorge of no return – into varied scandals of Watergate and Clinton´s type and style.
Whither Liberal Democracies
Liberal democracies are passing through turbulent period almost everywhere from within and from without. Developed countries´ liberal democracies are suffering from captive mind of a materialistic and somewhat mechanical and highly professional political system. As such, there problems of over-consumption are showing its impact in addition to widening network of social security and social insecurity as well. This leads to a threatening nexus between social aspects and economic, econological and ecological dangers.
If Amartya Sen is read, it is easy to see that full potential of liberal democratic perspective is yet to be exhausted by both the North and the South of the global hemisphere (Sen, 2001). "Liberal values can be twisted to justify limiting civil rights, warns Will Kymlicka in an interview…"The same forces that support ethnic politics within liberal democracy also operate over time to channel it in peaceful and democratic ways" (2007).
The Worst Danger
It is the political links with drug mafia that is the most dangerous aspect of modern liberal democracies. This linkage is so open in developing and under-developed countries that in the Parliament of these nations, on a rough estimate, about 60% members are from the drug mafia community. That is why rampant corruption, political murders and every other type of anti-social and criminal activity primarily remains at the root of most of the decision making process. This is an aspect of common knowledge in such countries. Law makers and law executers cannot do much in this context!
Elitism, Multiculturalism and Communitarianism
The political elite from amongst leaders of political parties, bureaucracy and industrialists form the upper most elites in democracies. In developing nations and other poorer countries, drug mafia is further within this category of elites. All these are more equal than other common citizens of a liberal democracy.
Then, multiculturalism and illiberalism of political leaders form yet another inherent kind of discrimination that creates imbalances and disorders in social set up and disturbs political order. It is so because cultural diversity is often merged with ethnic differences and conflicts (Kymlicka, 2005).
One more interesting part of recent trends in liberal democracy is the context of communitarianism. Protagonists of this communitarianism ask for equal priorities to be given to duties of citizens´ vis-à-vis their rights.
In the present-day context, questions of ethnicity, identity and an individual´s rights vis-à-vis the institution of democratic State are the core issues of Communitarianism and Racial Communitarianism both.
This is a post-post-modernist development in the sense that it engulfs not only traditions of libertarianism, modernity of civil society and peculiar amalgamation of both these to bring forth something anew as good governance but also its quest for a balanced form of State and social ethos.
Racial Communitarianism thus reflects a search and global movement for equal respect and opportunities to people of all races in the pursuance of their duties as human beings and citizens of a global civil society. Rights will then be natural corollary of duties so performed professionally.
On the pejorative side, racial communitarianism depicts and highlights racial exploitation, alienation and impropriety of balance between rights and duties of citizens.
Communitarianism is also an attempt to work towards fighting various apparently fascist tendencies of libertarianism such as overarching power channels and structures like the Security Council of the United Nations and the all powerful stature of the President of United States despite inherent checks and balances in the political system.
Communitarianism is, indeed, an emerging movement to go beyond the shackles of a sovereign nation-state. It is moving ahead into the realms of a global civil society tackling a number of its issues and problems on its own without always looking up to the State for all its solution.
Standing on one´s own feet, preserving one´s self-respect, economic and multicultural empowerment alongwith individual based and logically viable social and strategic security network are major issues and challenges of communitarianism.
There are also anti-communitarians. For them communitarian movement is for further curtailing individual´s rights vis-à-vis community rights. This is not the reality of communitarianism because the main issue of communitarianism is to secure a balanced approach to rights, duties and justice (Raapana and Friedrich, 2008, see website).
Communitarians take issue with the idea that the individual stands and should stand in direct unmediated relationship with the state and with society. This is an idea that flows through a great deal of contemporary legal and political thought in northern countries. Communitarians argue for the continuing significance of status and local networks, and the potential of other intermediate institutions (Frazer, 1999, 21-22).
Conclusion
Despite such efforts towards positive communitarianism, liberal democracies are sitting on a socio-political and economic blitzkrieg. Frequency of its blasts and their consistency are being maintained by terrorists, political leaders, global mafia and so many other permutations and combination of political chemistry which are far outside the imagination of a common citizen.
Despite all these apparent non-democratic follies and inherence in liberal democracy, it is still much better than an authoritarian and totalitarian system. At least freedom to express through reading, writing and speaking is there! This freedom is of utmost importance for human development.
References
Bell, DA, 2006, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 379.
Frazer, E, 1999, The Problem of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict,: Oxford University Press, Oxford
Gangal, A, 2007, "India at 60", http://zapzap.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/10/india-at-60.htm
Kymlicka, W, 2008, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-07-25-kymlicka-en.html, 25.07.2008, an interview.
Kymlicka, W and He, B, 2005, Multiculturalism in Asia, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pages 364, pp. 80-110.
Raapana, 2008, http://nikiraapana.blogspot.com/2008/04/abstract-anti-communitarian-manifesto.html
Sen, A, 2001, Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 366 pages.
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