Session 7a: What is Democracy? II

1st Global Conference

Friday 30th April – Sunday 2nd May 2010
Prague, Czech Republic

Universal Suffrage or Democracy?
Mary-Ann Crumplin
Heythrop College, University of London, United Kingdom

The idea of democracy refers us to ancient Athens where democracy presented a contrast with tyranny. Remaining true to this ancient ideal, contemporary democracy continues to be understood as the antithesis of dictatorship. In this paper, I shall consider the implications of adopting this dialectic between democracy and tyranny in terms of its implicit engagement with the concept of individual political freedom. I shall suggest that by conceiving of democracy in terms of a polarity we are not only committed to an ancient conception of freedom but are also unable to acknowledge the role of plurality in modern democratic dialogue. A democracy requires a definition of ‘the people’ and so excludes the idea of difference. I shall contend that according to this semantic structure, democracy is essentially unable to function in the context of a truly universal suffrage.

My argument has two elements. Firstly I shall refer to the work of Hans Jonas and Martin Heidegger in order to establish how, despite representing a cultural and epistemological dialogue with the logos of Socratic Greece, modern being contrasts with Athenian being insofar as it inverts the dynamic between the one and the many, that is to say, we now exist as a plurality of discrete beings rather than as a discrete unity, the polis. I shall then discuss two contrasting approaches to the understanding of ‘freedom’: freedom from error and freedom to choose and shall suggest that contemporary difficulties with establishing the essence of democracy are related to a misapplication of the pertinent model of freedom to contemporary political dialogue. Having opened up the problem of democracy in this way, I shall conclude by indicating where we might look for possible solutions to the dilemma of a multicultural democracy.

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What Counts as Democracy? Is Democracy Really What Counts?
Giuliana di Biase
University of Pescara, Italy

The question of investigating the assumptions which lie behind democracy has become nowadays very pressing: there’s a spread persuasion among intellectuals that we are living in an age of “post-democracy”, as Colin Crouch defined it, and that democracy as an ideal has entered in collision with reality. As a system of government, democracy was born as a mean to limit the absolute power of kings and aristocrats, but nowadays it seems it has become a tool in the hands of new, powerful oligarchies that have the control of global economy and media, so are able to exert a great influence on public life without being themselves under any control. In this sense Robert Dahl has spoken of actual existing democracies as poliarchies, given the plurality of powers which lie behind the surface of democratically legitimated systems of government.

Public life manifests clear symptoms of a crisis: as Dahrendorf said, parliaments seem nowadays no more capable of actively representing the interests of citizens, and the absence of truly independent media makes quite impossible the formation of a really committed, pluralistic public opinion. Democracy seems capable of guaranteeing us from the hard power of tyranny, but it is not able to protect us from the soft power of an information distorted by the power mechanisms.

As Rawls said, all existing liberal democracies are very far from being perfect: in the Usa, for instance, some political reforms seem really necessary, especially in the field of elections financing and in that of sanitary assistance. But maybe all actual existing democracies show the same necessity of reforms inspired by what really counts as democracy. In my paper I will investigate what are the most urgent reforms needed in order to avoid the perspective of democracies without democracy.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Democracy, Ideology and Equality
Mark Devenney
University of Brighton, United Kingdom

The maintenance of a democratic common sense is ideological in the strict sense of that term: it misleads. This occurs in three essential respects.

First, democracy is equated with freedom. This is the freedom to criticise, the freedom to say what one wants, the freedom to sell one’s labour. This emphasis on freedom comes at the expense of the primary requirement of any democratic society, equality.

Second, the term democracy is used as a form of blackmail. The critic is very quickly accused of being a Stalinist, or a fascist, or a terrorist. In other instances those who reject the dominant definition of democracy open themselves to the possibility of violent interventions in the name of democracy. This intrinsic link between democracy and violence belies the freedom which democracies claim to defend.

Third, democracy is equated with the preservation of private as opposed to public goods. This notion of a private good is nonsensical and yet underpins the common sense the global signifier democracy emphasises.

Democracy, and the democratic tradition, have then been neutered in this three pronged ideological net: freedom, violence and the good as private, and a matter of preference. The force of this three pronged attack mutes criticism. Criticism can be aired but as Tony Blair reminds us other societies do not allow the freedom to criticise, the freedom to vote, the freedom to change the established order. I argue in this paper that this three pronged ideological common sense must be opposed on every count.

First, democracy demands severe limits on freedom. Second, violence is intrinsic to contemporary democracy, and it can only be opposed through being prepared to exercise violence against it, if need be. Third democracy is public, not private. The critique begins with an account of how the ideological net functions. Here I draw on the work of Slavoj Zizek on Ideology, and Jacques Ranciere on inequality.

Second it proceed to defend a conceptualisation of democracy which refuses the pluralisation and individualisation of the good; insists upon severe restrictions upon freedom in the name of democratic equality, and last outlines a conception of democracy underpinned by a demand for an equality which extends beyond rights to freedom to a redistributive framework without which democracy will always be a betrayal. Here I draw critically on Badiou, and Habermas.