Why there’s no instant answer to democracy’s growing crisis

The Sctotsman: 03 December 2009 By CHRISTOPHER MACKIE

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Why there’s no instant answer to Democracy’s growing crisis

An academic’s fears for western-style politics reveals new threats on the margins, finds Christopher Mackie

ON SATURDAY , one brave politics academic will stand before a crowd at a Scottish university and ask the provocative question: “What is so good about democracy?” In times gone by, such concerns expressed about the fundaments of the way that western countries are governed might have been dismissed as the rantings of someone from the extreme fringes of political debate. But, as the UK reaches the end of a year in which a brutal recession has shredded its confidence and an expenses scandal has eroded trust in the politicians who lead us, the question to be posed by Professor John Keane this weekend looks increasingly mainstream. His lecture at Dundee University will draw on themes raised in his latest book, The Life and Death of Democracy, that strike doubt to the very heart of the way we run our country. “There is developing a deep malaise in all existing democracies,” he tells The Scotsman ahead of his appearance. “There is a widespread sense that parliaments don’t function properly and members are too heavily ‘whipped’. There is a widespread sense that government executives have a deep control over parliaments. This is depressingly familiar and goes alongside the bellyaching against politicians.”

One of the UK’s leading political thinkers, Keane is a noted author and professor of politics at the University of Westminster and at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin. His contention is that the global postwar period led to a celebration of the “victory” of western democracy that led western cultures to become complacent about the righteousness of their governance system. This, he says, has encouraged us to “sleepwalk” into the situation that democracy now finds itself in. He points to rapidly declining engagement with politics, something demonstrated in the vast drop-off in political party membership and a dwindling turn-out in local and national elections. “There are very few precedents for these trends,” he says. “They are worrying and anybody who has a concern for democracy and its future needs to look at the symptoms and come up with new solutions for repairing these institutions.” Keane adds: “This is not just a British problem; it is a general trend through pretty much every existing democracy, whether that be South African or North American.” One of the issues he detects, and one that has been typified and exacerbated by the Westminster expenses’ saga, is a growing move towards a political elite that is disconnected from the electorate. “I agree there is mounting evidence that electorates perceive politics as a closed shop – the sense that there is a political elite that has formed and the game is not theirs,” he says. “Citizens find it very difficult to get into that game, and this is a symptom of this malaise. “We are seeing a withdrawal from politics and interest in public affairs and a rising number of people who haven’t made up their mind on the eve of elections. There is also a rise of populist parties.”

Prof Keane cites the Le Pen phenomenon in France, as well as the growing popularity of Ukip and the BNP in Britain, as examples of a drum-beating populism that claims to move the democratic process closer to the desires of the people. “These are symptoms of a widespread feeling that politics has become an elite business,” he says.”When you add to this, the way the elite has handled some major crises in recent years, such as the Iraq occupation and the near collapse of the banking system, there is a sense that politics is not for the ordinary man and woman, and this is not good for a democracy.” To add to the problem, Prof Keane is critical of what he calls the “overuse” of democracy by the West in its foreign policy. “There is a smell of hypocrisy around democracy,” he says. “Would we say, with our hands on our hearts, that democracy is coming to Iraq or Afghanistan? The clear answer is no.” The other trend he detects is the rise of alternatives to the model of democracy, pointing to a clutch of regimes, such as that found in Burma, Venezuela and Iran, in which, he contends, a new type of dictatorship is emerging that may turn out to be viable.

“The most important case is that of China,” he says. “What happens in China will co-determine the future of democracy. In China, we have an almighty struggle between two different futures. In one, China is an empire and a big global player, where wealth creation and an expanding middle class point to a modern, 21st-century country. But there is no democracy in the sense of a power-sharing, multiparty system that has universal rights and freedoms. “On the other hand, there is a vision for a China that is democratic with Chinese characteristics. It is just possible the vision of China ruled by a single party, with an expanding wealth base will succeed.” But is the apparent viability of the regime made possible by the country’s increasing wealth? “This is an old point,” he begins, “that you can’t have democracy unless there is a minimum standard of living. But we are seeing examples where you can develop a middle class and wealth that is distributed widely enough to have a tranquillising effect on democratic instincts.”

Despite its growing influence, the regime in China remains under attack, notably helped by the pervasive influence of the internet on its citizens. The role of the web in forming the democracies – or otherwise – of the future is, Prof Keane maintains, absolutely key. “We are living in an age of communicative abundance,” he says. “This growth of an internet galaxy is without precedent. It is the first time in the history of the human species when time and space have collapsed – you can communicate with others in real time across vast distances. The tyranny of distance has been broken.” For Prof Keane, the opportunities opened up for democracies by the internet are both positive and negative. First of all, he cites some observers’ belief that the internet is an “underwriter of democracy”, opening up an egalitarian democratisation of information as a route towards a more positive future. “There is a big transfer in the nature and meaning of democracy, towards a kind of post-representative democracy – a monitory democracy,” he says. “A kind of democracy with permanent public scrutiny of those who wield power.” But he warns that alongside such positives lie “decadent” internet trends that could stifle improving democratisation. Included in these is growth of “gated communities” in the form of subscription-only websites, something he says has “an exclusionary effect”. He calls on policymakers to consider ways space on the net can be opened to encourage greater engagement along the lines of the Reithian principle under which the BBC was brought into being with radio broadcasting. And he cautions against the move towards the use of the web to perform instant referendums. “That is the populist option – the belief that the only way to govern and overcome elite grip is to get ‘the people’ involved through direct referenda,” he says. “History shows that is always bad for democracy. “Every recorded case where people are called upon involves manipulation. Demagogues, populists who, unless they are wise, typically abuse the basic principle of democracy – that the people should govern themselves.”