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PETER CAVE: A world expert in democracy says that Australia, along with Italy, is leading the way towards a new kind of democracy, which pays lip service to the will of the people, while at the same time degrading the principle of fair minded power sharing between citizens and government.
John Keane is professor of Politics at the University of Westminster. He will be speaking in Sydney tonight at a forum on democracy at Sydney University.
In a recent newspaper article the expat Australian academic wrote that the dog days of democracy are over, and that a colder, more mean spirited time was on the way, as the people themselves became disillusioned with the concept.
When he came to The World Today’s studios this morning I asked him first to explain exactly what he meant by that.
JOHN KEANE: It’s not only that obviously politicians, parties and politics are anathema to large numbers of people in every actually existing democracy, and generally disrespect for parties, politicians and politics I think is rising. But I meant something more than that, something more troubling.
What we see on the horizon is the emergence, once again, for the first time for a generation, of a whole series of criticisms of democracy itself, and organised opposition to democracy.
PETER CAVE: Where is it coming from, what’s caused the disaffection for a start of, particularly amongst young people I guess, and the other more worrying things that you’ve just mentioned?
JOHN KEANE: What I think is useful is to see, first of all, that when parties begin to strip themselves of membership and when they go policy light in their policies, and when they try to monopolise politics, millions of people see through that.
And it’s, as you say rightly, the 18-25 year olds who are really unimpressed. But, to understand the new opposition to democracy, I think you have to understand the big democratic transformation that occurred after 1945. Three things happened for the first time in the history of democracy.
The language and institutions of democracy went global, beginning in India. This was, secondly, the first time that an empire became global, the United States, and that spoke the language of democracy. Everything it does, it does, even military intervention, is done in the name of democracy. And the third and the least obvious new thing about this great democratic transformation since 1945 is the trend towards what I call post-Westminster or monitory democracy, the growth of perhaps up to 100 new kinds of institutions outside the party election parliamentary system, that have the job of monitoring power.
Human rights organizations, integrity commissions, think tanks, independent media, the development of participatory budgeting, summits, forums, and all of these institutions are part, I’d say, of the new landscape of democracy. What the enemies of democracy don’t like about this big historical shift is they don’t like American domination, and many of them do not like this post-Westminster trend in democracy.
PETER CAVE: You’ve written that Australia, along with Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, have led a trend towards a new kind of post-democracy, degrading the principles of fair minded power sharing between citizens and government. What did you mean by that?
JOHN KEANE: If we go back to this great democratic transformation that has been going on and is not yet finished, in the last 60 years or so, one of the trends is toward a post-Westminster model of democracy. And, what is interesting about our times is the emergence of organised opposition to it, in the name of the people and democracy, and I see that Australia, together with Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, are examples of this trend.
There are a few basic rules. Win as many elections as you can, insist that Parliament is the maker of laws, and that everybody should remain silent after those laws are made, criticise, round upon, all these monitoring institutions outside of Parliament; professional associations, experts, universities, trade unions; appeal to the people, to the battlers, to ordinary decent people, and be rather mean-spirited towards your critics, and create something like an atmosphere in which democracy is reduced to the winning of elections.
I see this trend as, and it’s a serious threat, to the best things about the post-Westminster model. I see this threat as, in affect, to turn back the clock, to try to go back in time to an imagined Westminster model, in which there is parliamentary sovereignty if you have a majority in that parliament, and you can do anything you like. This is not democracy, this is a bowdlerisation and degradation of democracy, but it’s a very serious development of our times.
PETER CAVE: Professor John Keane from the University of Westminster, who’s speaking at a public meeting on democracy in Sydney tonight.
