Democratisation is a term that is most often used to describe the process of increased political participation. In the past, political participation was described as voting, joining a political party, or in the case of some experimental social engineering projects of the 20th century, such as Yugoslavia's socialist self-management, as creating consultative bodies at all levels of social, economic and political activity, regardless of their success. In its less democratic forms, political participation has historically been facilitiated through rallies, rioting, lobbying, formation of nationalist movements, paramilitary or other pressure groups, in other words, by any means serving the human need to exercise political will.
Political needs of a system (or a time), have often determined what democratic political participation actually means. It is not often remembered that the so-called communist political systems based their idea of democratic participation on the need to re-distribute the means of production and ensure equal access to them for all citizens, before making ideological adherence to the (one)party line into a dominant discourse and the definition of ‘the rule of the people'. What is interesting about this, as about the fact that Hitler was a democratically elected leader, or that the birth of the contemporary notion of democracy involved the Guillotine (just like the doctrine of spreading democratic principles today involves the use of military force or various levels of economic and political pressure on the non-willing participants); is that democracy remains an arbitrary notion - and not a very participative arbitrary notion at that.
Put simply, if democracy is measured by participation only, and participation is based on the ability and willingness of people to participate in democratic elections, then, in reality, it is more of a ritual than a real consulting process between governments and their citizens. To play the Devil's Advocate, there is not much difference in the process that allows people to vote for two (in realpolitik terms) not-so-different political options (as is often the case with the Labor-Liberal political divide at home), and some less democratic forms of governing, if that process doesn't involve a level of real engagement, consultation and participation with the constituents. Because real engagement requires two-way communication beyond the polling place.
Politicians have often claimed that the real barrier to the two-way consulting process is erected by our lack of culture of engagement in an informed political debate (and the lack of mechanisms to facilitate such debates), rather than by the lack of willingness to enable such a process. Technology, or more specifically, the Internet, has been identified as one of the answers to the problem, and Open Forum is one such experiment.
It is one of our intentions to provide the right information and the context to put that information in, and encourage you to ask questions that you would have otherwise not have a mechanism to ask or simply would not have talked about in a public forum. However, in order to understand how to best do that and utilise Open Forum as a mechanism of consultation, we need your thoughts on what this forum should be. Please take a moment to share some thoughts with the Open Forum community or email me at tamara@openforum.com.au.
RECOMMENDED READING
Former Labor federal minister Barry Jones discusses the political process and the need for more active and informed political participation.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/it-is-not-too-late-to-save-the-political-process/2007/02/28/1172338709542.html
John Keane, profesor of politics at the University of Westminster, looks at the growing disaffection with the concept of parliamentary democracy.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/democracy-some-dont-want-it-many-dont-care/2007/10/10/1191695986236.html
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Comments
entertainocracy
I'm increasingly of the opinion that people don't want democracy as such. They want to be kept warm and fed and entertained and once that's all sorted - to feel that they are in some way better than those around them.
I'd even argue that the emotion attachment western democracies have with the term is largely associated with feeling superior to most-of-the-rest-of-the-world.
Getting people more actively involved in the running of their own lives means replacing Australian Idol with programs which would force them to think a little - and I don't think that's in the interests of those who own, or advertise through, the media.
I agree that our current political system is a subtle variation on bread and circuses, with some "my chariot is bigger than yours... " thrown in for good measure - but do most of what were the great unwashed, now the cheap purfumed, really care?
At the risk of dissappearing in a cloud of cartesian logic - I think not...
JV Douglas -
technology writer by trade, luddite by conviction
Culture of Adolescence and Democracy
JV,
Interesting comments that are not necessarily related to each other. On the one hand, there is the issue of what you called 'entertainocracy', which has recently been getting a lot of press (and thought) from all sides of the social spectrum.
In itself, entertainocracy is just another word for the debate that the Frankfurt School started early last century, but is really as old as 'bread and circuses', and even Voltaire had a lot to say about.
The problem is perhaps that our maturity as political beings is evolving at a lot slower pace (in evolutionary terms), than we are as technologically and otherwise enabled societies.
Recently, an interesting discussion was published in a book called The Culture Code, which suggested that the English-speaking cultures, led by America, have developed their own cultural code -- the culture of adolescence, that creates a number of problems in addressing issues such as democratic participation, inter-gender relations, business, etc.
The arrogance of the Western societies in assuming that their model of governance (liberal democracy) is universally applicable and transferable, has found new converts -- Francis Fukuyama being one of the most surprising ones. At least we can claim that some progress has been made in terms of understanding that different cultures DO have the RIGHT to develop systems that are closer to their own cultural, social and political genotypes (and, hence, and unfortunately, have a long way to go in creating successful democracies in a sense in which democracy has been been successful in the West).
We can also acknowledge that what works best (even when it doesn't work best) for our societies comes out of our own development, our own historical experiences, and our own cultural code. This is a good starting point for the 21st century.
Tamara
Democracy is worth believing in
'Yugoslavia's socialist self-management' - that'd be communist dictatorship imposed and maintained by force of arms and political suppression would it? History shows that communist dictatorships last exactly as long as the communists have the ability and will to potentially, or actually, murder large numbers of the citizens of that country. If Yugoslavia was so successful how come every non serb in that little empire was willing to fight to the death to be free of it as soon as they could?
To equate modern liberal democracies with 'less democractic forms of governing' is absurd. Which other systems do you have in mind? Chinese Communism? North Korea? Burma? Ask the monks just brutalised in large numbers there if there's no real difference between democracy and tyranny. Do you think the twenty million murdered by Stalin considered democracy an 'arbitary notion' hardly worth bothering with? Were the millions marching to free themselves of communism in 1989 marching for an 'arbitary notion'? If democracy isn't worth fighting for then why bother fighting men such as Hitler at all? Wisdom lies in the ability to discriminate sharply betweeen very different things as much as any ability to draw fatuous parallels between concepts which are utterly opposed.
Furthermore, it wasn't the Iraqi people who were unwilling to embrace democracy, it was Saddam and his thugs and the Islamist terrorists who delight in murder and mayhem who prey on them now. Are the wishes of the millions who voted in free elections to be dismissed because a few vicious terrorists are willing to blow up women and children in mosques and markets? This is the moral highground?
To call hotly contested general elections in free societies a mere 'ritual' perhaps says more about your distaste for the choices people make when free to do so. When have communists been voted into power in a free election anywhere in the world? The 'ritual' of pseudo democratic voting is reserved for Syria, Saddam's Iraq and the late, unlamented, Soviet system. As for a lack of participation in modern societies, well there's no reason why people should be forced to participate in democracy, they should be free to vote or not as they choose. Parties gain support by appealing to the centre ground, which is why democracies appeal to moderation rather than extremism. Do you think this is a bad thing?
There is scope for more consulation by governments in policy making, but in the end they are elected to make decisions and then held accountable for those decisions at the ballot box. Democracy isn't perfect, but it's still better than all the alternatives, which perhaps explains why we're having this discussion in English, rather than German, Russian, Japanese or Arabic right now.
Democracy does not have only one definition or form
Nick,
Understanding the concept of socio-political genotype is not the same as having a distaste for democracy. It is about understanding why certain societies do not seem to be able to embrace it and practice democracy in the same manner in which it is practiced in the societies in which it originated.
Playing the Devil's Advocate for the sake of improving our own democratic practice is also hardly qualifiable as a 'distaste for democracy' -- it is rather a way of thinking about it in ways that will inspire us to improve our own democratic practice. Hence the question to the participants of this forum on their thoughts of improving it, making it work, taking it to the next level ...
The mention of Yugoslavia's self-management was clearly qualified as a mention of an experimental process (rather than as a value judgment), whose success or lack thereof was not discussed. For the record, socialist self-management was an economic concept based on a political belief, in practice, it meant that workers councils had a direct say in the management of economic assets (ie factories, companies, etc). Ultimately, given its passing, it can only be mentioned as a historical background to the question of what a successful model of a consultative democratic model should/could be (and I'm not saying it was a successful experiment, just stating the fact it was an experiment).
On a separate note, your qualifications of Eastern European socialist experiments are sometimes based partly on idealism and partly on ideological triumphalism, in my own humble view. As a person who grew up in the socialist Yugoslavia (and as a sociologist), I, rightly or wrongly, believe I have the ability (and the right) to interpret my own experience of the system I lived in.
And I agree with you that the system was far from perfect. I strongly disagree with you that it had no support in the society and was maintained purely by force. This, again, is not a value judgment of the system in question, but a sociological observation that is being lost in the positivist approach to history writing.
The complexity of the socio-political genotype/s of Eastern European states (collectivist-authoritarian), is one of the key factors that allowed for its socialist experiments to exist -- regardless of the military complexes that supported it.
On the 25th anniversary of the death of Josip Broz Tito, estimated 60,000 people (from all former Yugoslav states) physically visited Tito's grave to pay their respects. The main street in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is still called "Titova ulica". Neither is a forced or an organised expression of respect by an aparatus of a dictatorship no longer in existence. At least those 60,000 former Yugoslavs who visited Tito's grave and the majority of the 300,000 Sarajevans, who walk Titova Street every day, would hence disagree with some of your statements. Once again, this is not a value judgment -- just a statement of some interesting facts that allow for a better understanding of these societies.
Of course, it would be easy to interpret the above as an expression of the old 'oh, tempora, oh, mores' principle. And I am sure there is an element of that in the said examples. However, it would also mean denying a living sentiment of the living people (social agents, in this instance) about their own history.
To go back to the question of democracy as an arbitrary notion -- like any other system on the planet (and even as the bests of them all), it remains arbitrary in its various interpretations. The arrival of democracy in the former Yugoslavia, in most parts, has equated to the rise of ethnic nationalism as the key 'democratic' principle (do I need to stress the totalitarian overtones of its practice?), and in that sense, has not been very successful.
Hence, from your own point of view, the arrival of democracy is an achievement in itself. From the point of view of those who experienced the arrival of democracy in the form I described above, democracy is a painful process that paradoxically, on the one hand, clashes with their authoritarian collective genotype, and on the other, reinforces it in the form of ethnic nationalism.
When understanding Eastern European experiences, it is also very important to distinguish between socio-cultural and political, and economic aspects of their existence. No one can seriously argue that Russia is a democratic society at the moment, if anything, it still follows a strongly authoritarian model, despite the nominal declaration of democratic orientation.
Understanding all of the above is critical to understanding how democracy can succeed. Being realistic about its current expression is hardly a distaste for democracy.
These observations should be shared and understood. They are not ideological arguments for or against democracy, but lessons about its birth and development put in a cultural and historical context.
However, picking on these observations takes us away from the point of this blog -- which is to encourage discussion about a more participative and consultative democratic model.
A mandate from "the Australian people"?
Without detracting from the new Government's victory, the media really does a poor job in reporting facts. With a 5% to 6% swing from the Coalition to Labor, it means that 94% to 95% of voters voted exactly the same as they did in 2004. Out of about 13.5 million voters, that means around 800,000 people changed their vote. But of those, some were in electorates where a swing of that magnitude didn't change the result becuase the incumbent had a greater margin, and in others most of the swing was 'absorbed' by the margin, so that the no. of votes that actually determined the outcome of the election were probably less than 100,000 across the country, and perhaps even as few as 20,000. Ultimately you have to wait for the results to be formally declared and then see by how many votes the ALP candidate won in the aggregate across the seats that changed hands to change the majority in the House of Reps.
In an average electorate of 80,000 voters a 5% swing is 4,000 votes. Very few seats were wrested with a margin of that magnitude, so at the end of the day, what are we to make of it all? In Bennelong, for example, it has been suggested that there is a large enough Chinese community that if they all found appealing the idea of having a Prime Minister who could speak mandarin, and they voted for Labor as a consequence, that was enough to unseat the PM. We may never know, but language like landslide and overwhelming mandate and suggestions that the Howard government was despised don't seem apt to me given the facts.
This, by the way, is not all that unusual - Australian elections are characterised by a relatively small band of swinging voters who may be quite fickle in their choices and may not decide their vote until a few days before the election, and perhaps even not until they peruse the ballot paper looking for inspiration.
Just thought I'd try to inject a bit of reality into the discussion, and of course invite some comment as well.
Philip Argy
Mediator, Arbitrator, Negotiator, Strategist
http://www.philipargy.com