From ensubscribers-owner@monde-diplomatique.fr Tue Nov 11 08:45:07
2003
From: Le Monde diplomatique <english@Monde-diplomatique.fr>
To: Le Monde diplomatique <english@Monde-diplomatique.fr>
Subject: Government without the people
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 13:21:06 +0100 (CET)
Democracy that dismisses the electorate: Government without the people
By Anne-Cécile Robert, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2003
Rather than blaming ‘populism’ for the lazy and ignorant
election of unacceptable rulers, we need to revivify real and active
democracy nationally and internationally.
LIONEL JOSPIN'S wife blamed the electorate when her husband lost
the first round of the French presidential elections in April 2002
(1). The electorate, democracy, the people—it is all their
fault, they can’t tell good from bad any more. Contempt for the
electorate, conscious or otherwise, is now the common currency of
insecure politicians on both the left and right.
This contempt takes several forms. There is the lofty approach:
“The electors don’t understand our policy” - meaning
they are idiots not to see the benefits of privatisation, monetarism
and the dismantling of the social security system. Or the falsely
modest excuse—“We have failed to get the message
across”, which translates as “we made the right choices
but did not explain them properly”. (The electors don’t
think the policy has improved their standard of living, but that is
only semantics.)
There is the messianic utterance, “History will vindicate
us,” which is the line taken by the pluralist left since April
2002, or by Tony Blair on the war in Iraq (2). Of course you
can’t argue with history, but since 14 July 1789, history has
been made by the people, or so the people thought. There is the
scholarly cop-out: “The world has become so
complex”—so let's leave the decisions to the people
who understand, to the markets, or the experts who know what is in
everyone's best interests.
Or there is the superior approach: “The electors are so fickle,
you simply can’t trust them”—so presumably the next
step would be to return to suffrage based on ability, as practised in
the southern United States until 1964. Citizens had to pass a test
before they were allowed to vote. Unsurprisingly, the tests were
designed so that most blacks didn’t qualify.
The politicians can always be philosophical: “There is no such
thing as the people.” They can’t be found, according to
Pierre Rosanvallon (3): no people, so no universal suffrage. So
public decisions may be justified on other grounds, such as expert
reports or opinion polls.
All these voices, obediently relayed by the media, sing the same song,
discrediting universal suffrage, disqualifying the claims of the
underclass, and supporting the political choices of a self-proclaimed
elite. Elections are reduced to a formality, a democratic endorsement
of choices that have already been made. The little world of
politicians and the media is upset by any threat to this prearranged
scenario. In the US Ralph Nader's supporters were accused of
preventing the “real” candidate, Al Gore, from winning the
presidential election in November 2002. In France there was surprise
when Jacques Chirac beat the media darling, Edouard Balladur, in 1995,
and stupefaction when Jean-Marie Le Pen replaced the new media pet,
Jospin, in the battle with a discredited Chirac in 2002.
More seriously, there is no hesitation in calling for a second
referendum on Europe if the first ballot fails to produce the desired
result: consider the Danish vote on the Maastricht Treaty 1993, and
the Irish on the Nice Treaty in 2001. These pressures indicate a
growing gap between citizens and their representatives. The
intermediary bodies (parties and trade unions) and the decision-making
institutions have lost touch with their social base. In the Corsican
referendum in July, the people voted against the proposal to change
the island's status, whereas the national assembly would almost
certainly have approved it by a huge majority. Rising abstention
rates, up to 40%, are the result of widespread rejection of the
policies on offer, while the increase in blank ballot papers and split
votes (4) shows that people are seeking a fairer representation of the
social realities and also that they are, in fact, attached to
universal suffrage.
According to the media, courage in politics does not mean standing up
to the dominant forces, but giving way to them and turning on your own
constituents. Many commentators were in ecstasies over Blair's
“courage” in committing the United Kingdom to fight
alongside the US in the war in Iraq in March, despite the opposition
of millions of protesters. He was, of course, entitled to take that
decision. But, in such a serious political crisis, would it not have
been better to exercise his responsibility to the people?
To reverse the equation and declare that the people are always right
will not close the gap between the electors and their
representatives. It does not make any more sense to worship the people
than to worship an elite. But a return to the founding democratic
ideal, a political community of equal members, might be a
start. Contempt for the electorate undermines that principle by
suggesting that the ballot box is only one of a number of ways to
choose representatives and to legitimise public decisions. Com
petence, expertise, recognition in economic circles and peer-group
backing are all now seen as possible alternatives.
In 1995 Jacques Chirac conducted his election campaign around the
theme of social divisions and then appointed Alain Juppé as prime
minister, a technocrat whose first act was to attack the social
security system. Bernard Kouchner, constantly beaten at the polls but
often on television panels, is regularly given ministerial
posts. Pascal Lamy, rejected in the 1995 general election, is now a
European commissioner and represents Europe in the World Trade
Organisation.
Competence is essential but it is not a substitute for the ability to
represent constituents. Western democracies are in crisis because the
political elite is divorced from the electoral body. Those who are
members of the elite think “the people” are always other
people; they think their own competence entitles them to dissuade the
people from making impossible demands.
This is particularly true of the ruling economists and the principal
parties, who assure us that “this is the only way” and too
bad if the only way means that social inequalities flourish. Other,
equally competent, economists may express completely different views
on pension reform or social security funding. The scientific community
is also detached, as you can see in the non-debate over genetically
modified organisms. Many scientists rightly claim that they must be
free to do research, but do not stop to think about the social
consequences of their work (5). The role of the expert has been
reduced to justifying ideological choices, or skewing political
options, to suit the private interests of the nuclear lobby, big
industries and agribusiness.
Public decisions are not truly legitimate unless they are the outcome
of an open comparison of opposing views. The leader rules on the basis
of his own political opinions, on which he was elected and given
power. According to Condorcet, this requires free and reasoned public
debate, a comparison of all the views at work in <\f>society,
in which no social class will be assumed to be in the right. This
meeting of minds may produce a kind of social truth. Unfortunately
this takes time, and meanwhile the public arena is filled with an
emergency that has been declared by—nobody knows who.
The concept of the people, always a key element in the constitutional
definition of democracy (”government of the people, by the
people, for the people”) embodied that idea of a public arena of
equal citizens organising their common destiny. It is this desire to
live together, despite differences of opinion, that gives leaders
their authority. It is the essential democratic cement that
institutions and procedures cannot supply. The concept of the general
interest has fallen victim to the closed ranks and closed minds of the
ruling class. But it has also been subverted by ostensibly progressive
ideas. The idea of parity—originally with the legitimate aim of
ending discrimination against women—has legitimised a legal
split in the body politic. The idea of a world common to all is being
shattered.
The European Union is apparently unable to provide an alternative
international political community, which means there is increasing
doubt about the legitimacy of its institutions' decisions in
important areas. A referendum on the draft constitutional treaty is
essential, if the founding fathers' dream is not to be tainted
with illegality. The crisis in representative democracy is likely to
worsen with the increasing circumvention of universal suffrage,
sometimes under the pretence of bringing government closer to the
citizen. The process of consulting civil society is flawed,
particularly as practised in the EU. It is seemingly democratic, but
open to manipulation because there is no official definition of the
term civil society. So alternative world and human rights groups,
anti-abortion associations and economic lobbies are consulted, without
any distinctions.
This EU system is based on a balance of power in which employers have
more resources than trade unions or associations. The decision- making
bodies have wide discretionary powers to act on what they have been
told, in the light of their own political options, or to follow the
line of least resistance. The European charter of fundamental rights
and the draft constitutional treaty, adopted after consultation with a
civil society forum, reinforce the precedence of monetarist options
over social considerations.
Civil society—that is, people banding together—fulfils a
democratic function when it draws attention to a claim or a social
problem that elected representatives have overlooked. In Max
Weber's phrase, it is “the typical ideal of social
concern”. In the 1970s the 343 manifesto promoted the law on
voluntary termination of pregnancy, and Attac brought the debate on
taxation of financial transactions into the public arena. Both moves
have yet to receive a democratic sanction.
As with many European rules and regulations, those who seek to impose
them without any regard to the reactions they may provoke, now or in
the future, do democracy a grave disservice. They are in danger of
being just as totalitarian as the extreme right. But the danger may
equally well come from below. An impasse in representative democracy
was foreseen in the 1793 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, drafted by Condorcet and Robespierre, which included the
right of insurrection when the people's rights are violated. We
urgently need to restore democracy, the central role of direct
universal suffrage and free and reasoned public debate. A gulf is
opening between representative bodies and society throughout the
Western world, producing further threats to freedoms that are already
suffering from the impact of the markets.
(1) “The electors are to blame. They did not care. They voted
blindfold.” Sylvianne Agacinski (Mme Jospin), Journal
interrompu, Seuil, Paris, 2002.
(2) “I am confident history will forgive”, speech to the
US Congress, 17 July 2003. Elisabeth Guigou took the same position at
the socialist party congress in April 2003.
(3) Pierre Rosanvallon, Le Peuple introuvable, Gallimard, Paris 1999.
(4) André Bellon & Anne-Cécile Robert, Le peuple inattendu,
Syllepse, Paris, 2003.
(5) See François Ewald and Dominique Lecourt, “Les OGM et les
nouveaux vandales”, Le Monde, 4 September 2001.
Notes