What is democracy?
Esko Seppänen´s contribution to the general discussion of the so called
future (constitutional) convention, 26.8.2002
The EU’s Constitutional Convention talks of values, but not one of its
working groups is charged with defining values or elaborating what they amount
to.
Thus it is necessary to take a close look at the problems that arise when
defining concepts.
What, for example, is democracy? I propose to set out and answer this
question in the following.
Democracy
Democracy is political liberalism for the people. Economic liberalism, on the
other hand, is not democracy.
Democracy cannot be created out of thin air; it is rooted in history. It is
freedom from rule by one doctrine, and it is not ordained from on high or by the
almighty. There is no absolute (single, correct) democracy, nor is there any
standard format. It is interaction and roleplay by people: there are subjects
and objects of power. It is a struggle for power and it is self-sustaining
decision-making. It is contracts and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Lasting democracy cannot be produced from the top down, nor does imported
democracy work: imported democracy violates historically rooted institutions and
may erode the sovereignty of its recipients. If order is based on compulsion and
violence, world democracy is non-democracy. Force-fed democracy must not be used
to break up tried and trusted patterns of existence and social bonds.
Humility and equality are among democracy’s virtues.
Democracy is not a system, and is certainly not a system of capitalist
control. Political or economic democracy are not the trademarks of capitalism.
To its actors, democracy is often a question of expediency: political liberalism
is demanded for those countries that do not have economic liberalism, but not
for those that are part of the global capitalist system. Thus democracy, or
political liberalism, is demanded for China or Belarus, but not for the oil and
gas-producing countries of the Middle East or central Asia, which are
dictatorships. Democracy should be demanded everywhere.
Democracy is national sovereignty. It is freedom from external control and it
is autonomy. It is the right to restrict the wielding of power by others in one’s
own affairs.
Democracy is the language and terminology of the time when nation states were
born. The nation state has nurtured democracy, which was born of the rebellion
of the oppressed and developed into participation orchestrated from above.
Nation states can also subjugate and be undemocratic, and in such cases there
should be the freedom to act against domination by the state.
If Spain does not grant independence to the Basques, nor Great Britain to
Northern Ireland, nor France to Corsica, it is inconsistent for these countries
to condemn Russia for not allowing Chechnya to cede from the federal state. Nor
is any clause allowing countries to leave the Union to be entered into the EU’s
constitution.
The nation state gave rights to citizens, curbing the privileges of the
feudal elites. That was democracy. In Russia, the dictatorship first of the
tsars and then of the communists delayed the granting of civil liberties and
rights to individuals, which is why Russia is lagging behind on democracy or
political liberalism. Russia skipped the period of bourgeois power and political
liberalism, going straight to the rule of oligarchs and the president.These are
not democracy.
In the USA the state came about without a history, being created almost from
nothing: the indigenous peoples were killed and a constitution in one language
was adopted for all. The US method does not lend itself to the EU. Europe’s
indigenous people cannot be treated in the same way today.
There is no supranational state democracy. The greatest obstacle to this is
the lack of a common language and culture. There are other obstacles too. If the
EU becomes a federal state, it will be a state without a people. The UN and its
sub-organisations are not democratic either. The UN, however, does not threaten
the sovereignty of the nation state as long as the state does not breach
international law or international treaties such that the Security Council could
impose sanctions.
An essential feature of national independence is an identity, the
distinguishing features of which have been biological blood ties, tenancy of a
regional area, linguistic community and a shared history and culture. A separate
currency is another aspect of sovereignty, as are military forces under
independent control, unlike NATO troops or a Euroarmy. National legal systems
also embody important collective historical experience.
The individual’s self-knowledge is often formed via the above identity of
the nation state and is fixed to a geographical region. In terms of democracy,
however, a nation is only one of the levels of communality. The most favourable
conditions for democracy are in countries with the most homogeneous populations.
Security and the need to belong to the same group may endanger the liberal
granting of democratic rights to new immigrants. Membership of a nation does not,
however, require common ethnicity. It can also be based on a common desire by
individuals for freedom, fraternity and equal opportunities for all.
If the power of nation states is run down, it will be supplanted by a new
international order and a world without frontiers for capital: globalisation.
This is unipolar rule. The USA will control – if necessary by violence and
illegally – all realms: the earth, the sea, space and information.
Autonomy
Democracy is voluntary participation by the people in power. It is
self-government by the members of a community, but mere autonomy is not
democracy. Democracy means autonomy with its own set of rules and
conflict-resolution procedures.
Full autonomy is not possible in a federal state that imposes shackles on
national democracy by transferring legislative and/or executive power to the
centre. Since the EU – or Europe – is not a nation, it cannot be governed
internationally. The EU, therefore, is not democratic, and power ought not to be
handed over to this supranational federation in the hope that once it has power
it will become democratic. A superpower is being created whose power is based on
taking diversity and forcing it into a standardised mould. This will require
powerful rule from the centre, and will mean a departure from self-government by
nations and citizens. The EU’s central power is the ethos of a new political
elite: federalist hegemony.
Democracy is not a revolution or a coup, even though the middle classes came
to power in Europe through revolutions. Since the law is the political will of
the ruling class, it depends on the class wielding power at any given time
whether democracy is middle-class or whether it is more communal: socialist. The
beginning of democracy is rule by the people, the end is not.
By its nature, socialism democracy: political liberalism for all and markets
that are free of the power of monopolies. Socialism is also communality: the
obligation to care for one’s fellow human beings. If the EU gains a
constitution, it is the duty of every socialist to demand that it also contains
a social charter.
Democracy is not unrestricted freedom. Limits can be imposed on it. The power
of peoples is also limited by other peoples; there is no clear border defining
where one people ends and another begins. Restrictions on democracy are not
undemocratic as long as they do not infringe the rights of minorities.
Democratic decisions need to have general acceptance or legitimacy, and
representative bodies must represent everybody or at least as many of the people
as possible. In the EU, the constitution is being prepared by a Convention which
is undemocratic. Its 105 members do not comprehensively represent over 500
people, men and women. It is not democratic, even though it comprises two
members from each Member State’s parliament. The fewer representatives there
are, the narrower the representation. Owing to the small number of members of
the Convention, the federalists are over-represented at the expense of the
defendants of national autonomy.
Thus the Constitutional Convention is likely to yield up the lop-sided
proposal whereby the Community method is favoured in the EU’s division of
power at the expense of the intergovernmental method. As national democracy the
Community method is inferior to the intergovernmental method; governments must
enjoy the confidence of national parliaments.
The rule of minorities is not democracy, but nor is it democracy for
decisions to be made by a majority without matters being prepared jointly or
transparency in decision-making. Afterwards democratic decisions need to be felt
to have been made correctly.
When people themselves consent to their rights being restricted, that is
democracy. If persons are not willing to go along with the will of the majority,
they must act freely to produce a new majority. Tolerance of those left in the
minority is democracy.
If a nation is all-powerful, its citizens must not be devoid of rights in
respect of it. It is bad democracy if citizens are devolved to a new status of
subserviency simply by virtue of a decision by the majority. The same is true if
people are forced to accept values and goals as given. A people should have –
and if it hasn’t, it should acquire it – the right of opposition to
dictatorship by the majority and democratic oligarchs.
Only legally delimited and regulated majority rule is democracy. Democracy
and the rule of law, therefore are like Siamese twins: you can’t have one
without the other. Everybody must be bound by the same laws. In a democracy
those in positions of responsibility must ensure that legal decisions are
observed generally. Democracy also means having tough resources to defend it.
Police, intelligence and the armed forces must be subject to democratic control.
Human rights
Democracy is primarily a feature of a community and is not associated with
human relationships between individuals. Other concepts exist which describe
these better. The community and the individual are, however, in constant
interaction and shape each other.
Persons are individuals in politics by virtue of their right and eligibility
to vote, via their right in civil society of assembly, freedom of speech,
association and industrial action, and by dint of private property and access to
the market in the economy. When defining the individual’s rights and freedoms,
what is not forbidden ought to be permitted.
A good democracy is one where there are individual rights and freedoms, which
are not synonyms, and equal opportunities. Individuals need to receive support
and protection from society, and there have to be legal guarantees to prevent
oppression. It is not democracy if the subjects of power have the rights and the
objects have the responsibilities. Democracy, however, is not simply on/off
democracy; it is different at different levels.
Democracy has to encompass absolute norms which must not be breached.
Refusing to go to war, defending human rights and opposing totalitarianism must
be a right. Peace must be defended and action must be taken nationally and
through international law against illegal violence. Humanitarian interventions
in other countries are not democracy if they are not legitimate under
international law. The right to so-called preventive illegal acts cannot be
justified as defending democracy. Democratically elected persons can decide, for
example, to kill Kurds in Turkey or the US can attack Iraq, but that is not
democracy. Illegal war is not democracy.
Everybody must commit themselves to human rights which have been agreed by
international treaty. These represent absolute democratic bounds which must not
be compromised.
In protecting the minority from the arbitrariness of the majority, absolute
principles must be defined which the majority must not transgress. Human rights
limit the sovereignty of states in legal questions. These are defined in the UN’s
Declaration on Human Rights and the European Human Rights Convention, and
elsewhere. In a democracy, human rights are limitations which must be entered
into constitutions and treaties to ensure that they are not hastily overturned.
Communities hold together best when there are clauses on the protection of
minorities and qualified majority provisions.
Individuals have rights, which are offset by responsibilities towards others.
Questions of the rights of the community – or nation – in relation to the
individual and the duties of the individual towards the nation – or federal
state – are problematic. They have to be resolved democratically.
Media democracy
Democracy is the right to information and education for all, and the means of
acquiring information have to be available to all. Concealing information from
free citizens is an undemocratic exercise of power. It is the way in which many
EU governments rule.
Democracy is an endeavour to foster enlightened power in society, and the
information society has to be an education society. One must fight for science
but beware of its totalitarian achievements. Science is not inherently
democratic, nor is its task to expand democracy.
Freedom of speech is something which is binding on states and the subjects of
public authority. Democracy is unconstrained media. The media must be open to
the subjects of democracy, whoever they are. Media democracy means representing
the interests and benefits of all, exposing systems of repression and
exploitation and supporting democratic forms of activity. Since democratic
freedom is the freedom to hold dissenting opinions, there must be public space
for this. Commercial media seem to alienating citizens of their right to
participate in decision-making and monitor the subjects of power. Neocapitalism
destroys by commercialising the institutions of society which democratise
information.
Economic non-democracy
Since the overthrow of feudalism, democracy has been the power of the middle
class over the state, but not the economy. The economy – unlike the state –
is sovereign, and international capitalists are independent of states. Their
sovereignty rests on invisible supports: capital takes flight if it is inhibited
by democratic decisions.
Nonetheless capitalists require the means of repression of states to enforce
protection of private ownership and legal forms of discipline and subjugation.
Government lends legality to the enactment of the logic of capitalism.
In the labour markets, incomes policy can be the power of the whole over its
parts, in which case it is not autonomy or contractual freedom. If corporate
power structures dictate the actions of the state, employers and trade unions,
they are inhibiting democracy. Power cartels are not democracy.
The economy is a realm of freedom, with no restrictions on the wielding or
flaunting of power. The most undemocratic feature of the markets is that rights
are owned in the markets which close them off to others. There is a need for
anti-trust legislation to ensure that new entrepreneurs can enter the market.
This is inhibited by supranational corporations obtaining monopoly positions,
backed up by all sorts of patents. A monopoly is not democracy. Therefore small
companies require market protection against large corporations.
The privatisation of state-owned companies is economic liberalism, which is
not democracy, whereas state ownership may be democracy.
Elections
Democracy is limited as to size, and the technical preconditions for it (joint
preparation, linguistic equality or protection of minorities) are not present if
communities are too large. As a community grows in size, democracy deteriorates
qualitatively. It is diluted as the size of the unit grows.
Representative democracy works best through general elections where there is
equal suffrage for all. The right to one’s own language when preparing matters
is a feature of good democracy. The European Parliament – or the
Constitutional Convention – does not have full linguistic democracy.
Democracy can also be direct, non-representative democracy, for example
referenda. If there is a referendum on the EU’s convention, the result must be
counted by country, because the EU does not consist of a nation but rather of
nations. If a supranational convention does not win the approval of a particular
nation, it will not gain legitimacy either.
Democracy is the joint and public preparation of political matters and
decisions, electoral secrecy and regular electoral intervals. Alternatives and
criticism must be aired in public discussion. If, in elections, electoral
propaganda and the presentation of candidates or proposals are skewed in favour
of a particular participant, the elections or referenda will not be democratic.
Democracy was weakened in Ireland when public funds were used to halt the
balanced presentation of alternatives after the public delivered the “wrong”
vote on the Treaty of Nice. Democracy means publicising electoral financing and
advance presentation of all alternatives, as well as balanced financing of these
ahead of elections.
European parliamentarianism as constructed round European parties is
democracy without all of its facets, for example broad national representation.
A pan-European election based on a list as called for by the European Parliament
is non-democracy.
Parliamentarianism is part of middle-class democracy. It means that laws are
made in parliament on a proposal from the government and that those exercising
executive power must enjoy the confidence of parliament. Democracy means public
scrutiny of decision-makers and civil servants. If those in power in a community
abuse the entitlements of their power, they must be stripped of them.
Use of the vote lends legitimacy to those to whom power is delegated in
elections and ballots. The right to participate is not an obligation to
participate, and a low turn-out means a crisis for democracy: political power is
not generally accepted.
The electoral system in use in most EU countries is not democratic and can
impinge on the ability of minorities to get their voice heard. The use of voting
thresholds may prevent new ideas from surfacing. The French electoral system
destroys representative diversity and is not democratic. An electoral list
system is often party dictatorship and as democracy is not as direct as personal
elections. With his cabinet, the prime minister of Great Britain harnesses the
interests of elected representatives to his own interests.
If common constitutional values are laid down for the EU, the content of
these must be left open. One should not demand democracy if we are not told what
is being demanded when democracy is called for.
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