[E-rundbrief] Info 1329 - Jan Oberg: Democracy in crisis

Matthias Reichl info at begegnungszentrum.at
Sa Jun 14 12:00:08 CEST 2014


E-Rundbrief - Info 1329 - Jan Oberg (TFF, S): Democracy in crisis.

Bad Ischl, 14.6.2014

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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  Democracy in crisis

  By Jan Oberg

  Lund, Sweden, June 6, 2014

  Democracy is a core feature of Western society, normally understood 
as representative parliament - i.e. in free elections citizens vote 
for people to represent their interests in a parliament consisting of 
parties of which some form the government and some the opposition.

  It’s not always included in the definitions that democracy requires 
a reasonable level of knowledge and information, freely available. For 
instance, one often hears that India is the world’s largest democracy 
but 26% of the people are still illiterate (287 million people).

So the ”world’s largest democracy” also has the world’s largest 
population who can’t read and write. In comparison, China's illiterate 
citizens make up about 3% and it is regularly called a dictatorship.

The state of democracy - 10 points for dialogue

When we talk about global crisis, people think much more of the 
economy, environment, identity issues or warfare than of democracy 
being in crisis. I think it is in fundamental crisis for the the 
following reasons.

1. The state is being challenged from below and from above.
Democracy is tied to the nation-state. But citizens' activity from 
below plus regional and global organisations, summits, forums and 
groups make the state weaker.

2. Economic perspectives dominate.
Most of what is discussed in democracies are related to the economy, 
and that is further dominated by the politics of the wallet.

3. Materialism over life values.
Compared with economics and what is called ”realistic”, democratic 
debate seldom touch values, ethics or concepts such as justice and peace.

4. A time horizon far too short.
Who can achieve anything meaningful in the larger world with a 4-year 
perspective?

5. National parliaments less and less important.
Larger, more distant and elite-based structures such as Wall Street, 
NATO, EU, the IMF,  SCO, ASEAN, banks, and stock market manipulations 
etc. set up the parameters within which the state - national 
governments - may operate.

6. Economic and military elites think of the world as one system.

But the political sphere remains national, even sometimes 
nationalistic. We don’t have even the embryo of a global democratic 
decision-making that can match these two powerful actors.

7. Politicians must choose between getting elected and speaking the truth.

A politician whose campaign would emphasise what we must give up and 
how we must show solidarity to save the world won’t get elected. Those 
who get elected promise more and more money in your pocket, brilliant 
futures built on extrapolations of the present and they make promises 
everybody somehow knows won’t be kept after election day.

8. Public relation replaces knowledge.
Politics has become pragmatic navigation and positioning, and less a 
matter of values and principles. Deals are being made and ”sold” 
afterwards to the public.

Decades ago, political leaders would seek knowledge about certain 
options from independent expertise; these still exist of course but 
the army of spin doctors, marketing people, lobbying etc. has replaced 
most of it.

Thanks to modern communication and media demands the time for 
knowledge-based decision-making has been reduced enormously during the 
last 20-30 years. This mostly probably impacts negatively on the 
quality of most decisions.

9. Politics as a calling versus a career option.

10. Finally, democracy should be about creating choice, not just voting.
Most people seem to believe that democracy is about voting for some 
policy or law or voting 'yes' or 'no' to some alternatives set up by 
the political elites (also called referendum).

But fundamentally, democracy’s very idea is not to vote on an issue 
set up in advance; democracy is to contribute to establishing the 
agenda in the first place. Example: Yes or no for a country to join 
the EU. But that is not democracy. Democracy is to develop a broader 
spectrum of which, say, the EU is only one option/alternative among a 
series.

Genuine democracy is about setting agendas. It’s not about voting yes 
or no to somebody else’s more or less cunning agenda. It's about 
dialogue and not just debates.

You could, perhaps, summarise these ten points by saying that 
democracy is no longer lived, it is being performed. It's become a 
ritual with little ethos.

Consequently, throughout Western democracies citizens feel that it is 
almost impossible to "get through" to top leaders.

In one of his last interviews, French existentialist philosopher 
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) said that every time you vote, you give 
away your power.

That statement points to the essential, classical distinction between 
representative democracy and direct democracy.

In the first you delegate to someone else who has convinced/seduced 
you, to take care of your interests. We know this generally leads to 
false promise-making and considerable disappointment with the whole 
idea of politics.

In the second, citizens take issues in their own hands - which of 
course has other disadvantages and encompasses a whole series of other 
problems. But without a vibrant citizenship, no democracy is possible.

Least bad but far from good enough

In summary, while democracy perhaps remains the least bad system, we 
should be very careful not to equate that statement with democracy 
being good enough.

It is no test of its quality that Western democracy is - ceteris 
paribus - better than authoritarian regimes or dictatorship.

Complacency in this matters could easily lead us towards whatever we 
associate with the opposite of democracy in years to come. Was the EU 
Parliamentary elections an indicator of just that at a deeper level?*

Since the above discussion is critical, the next article will invite 
the reader to a dialogue about some possible things that could be done 
to regain the basics of democracy and make it better for the future.

[862 words]

A longer version with elaborated arguments is available at TFF's blog

* An earlier PressInfo dealt with the recent EU elections in 
perspective of democracy's crisis



Jan Oberg


TFF director, dr. hc.

June 6, 2014

http://blog.transnational.org/2014/06/tff-pressinfo-democracys-crisis-10-points/

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