Talks from the World Law Congress -Democracy and Rule of Law: Two Sides of the Same Coin (original) (raw)
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Democracy: From One Crisis to Another
Democracy is in crisis. This crisis is the paradoxical outcome of its triumph over its erstwhile rivals. Having prevailed over the totalitarian projects of the first half of the 20 th century it has developed in such a way that it is now undermining its original goals of individual and collective autonomy. Modern liberal democracy – the outcome of an inversion of the values of tradition, hierarchy and political incorporation – is a mixed regime. It involves three different dimensions of social existence, political, legal, historical/economic, and organises power around these. A balance was achieved after the upheaval of World War II in the form of liberal democracy, on the basis of reforms which injected democratic political power into liberalism and controlled the new economic dynamics it had unleashed. This balance has now been lost. Political autonomy, which accompanied modern historicity and its orientation towards the future, has been overshadowed by economic activity and its pursuit of innovation. As a result, the very meaning of democracy has become impoverished. The term used to refer to the goal of self-government, it is now taken to be fully synonymous with personal freedom and the cause of human rights. The legal dimension having come to prevail over the political one, democratic societies see themselves as 'political market societies', societies that can only conceive of their existence with reference to a functional language borrowed from economics. This depoliticisation of democracy has facilitated the rise to dominance of a new form of oligarchy.
ON THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY - with changes.docx
Journalism and Mass Communication, Jan.-Feb. 2019, Vol. 9, No. 1, 33-52. , 2019
In the last three decades of the 20th century, important political changes occurred in all regions of the world, making the institutions of many existing political systems closer to the ideals of democracy. But as happened in other moments of history, those processes of democratization, even when successful, always occurred through advances and retreats. Thus, contemporary political practices, procedures, and institutions embody democratic ideals only partially. In many nations, in the present, the rule of law, civil, and political rights, and institutional mechanisms for citizens’ control of governments remain ineffective or underdeveloped. Thus, a double concern prevails among analysts: on the one hand, the regression to authoritarianism in some countries after the processes of political changes—Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Turkey being the paradigmatic examples; the emergence of semi-democracies, i.e., hybrid or illiberal regimes, which have provoked a new interest in the study of patterns of institutional design, the critical role of civil society, different political-cultural developments, authoritarian legacies in the context of the new democracies, competitive authoritarianism and new dictatorships. On the other hand, the acknowledgement of intrinsic limits of the historical development of the democratic regime even in the case of old democracies, i.e., the fact that political equality, active citizen participation, and effective control of abuse of power have never been fully realized in practice. This is the general context in which many analysts and part of the public opinion sustain that there is a crisis of democracy. The general diagnosis refers to the decreasing trust in political elites, political parties, parliaments, governments, and to the dissatisfaction with the regime among democrats; it refers also to the weaker and sometimes erratic performance of democratic institutions and particularly to the failure of the representative system. The picture is completed with the growing rates of partisan misalignment, electoral volatility, and declining civic participation. All this seems to indicate that democracy is inconceivable without crisis. This chapter discusses this scenario. The crisis of democracies is examined from a critical perspective, and the main objective is to understand the different dimensions of its nature and its consequences. Keywords: democratization, crisis, quality of democracy, semi-democracy, illiberal regime, authoritarianism, populism
Democracy: History of a Crisis Without End
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2016
Over the last years it has been increasingly discussed about the crisis of democracy, a process that does not only concern the new realities, but also and perhaps more surprisingly the Western world. This crisis of the Western world seems to be at the root of the weakness of the democratic principle and the principles related to it. In particular, the following three seem to be the events of the new millennium that led to the crisis of democracy, intimately connected to the loss of the cultural supremacy of the West, the cradle of democracy: the globalization; the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the economic crisis that began in 2008, which further weakened the West to the point of pushing the non-Western countries, all aiming at pursuing a health unprecedented material, to favor new political solutions than the classical liberal democracy. Accepting democracy as a concept semantically always open and, therefore, always in crisis, is the challenge awaiting the community of political scientists.
Journalism and Mass Communication
In the last three decades of the 20th century, important political changes occurred in all regions of the world, making the institutions of many existing political systems closer to the ideals of democracy. But as happened in other moments of history, those processes of democratization, even when successful, always occurred through advances and retreats. Thus, contemporary political practices, procedures, and institutions embody democratic ideals only partially. In many nations, in the present, the rule of law, civil, and political rights, and institutional mechanisms for citizens' control of governments remain ineffective or underdeveloped. Thus, a double concern prevails among analysts: on the one hand, the regression to authoritarianism in some countries after the processes of political changes-Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Turkey being the paradigmatic examples; the emergence of semi-democracies, i.e., hybrid or illiberal regimes, which have provoked a new interest in the study of patterns of institutional design, the critical role of civil society, different political-cultural developments, authoritarian legacies in the context of the new democracies, competitive authoritarianism and new dictatorships. On the other hand, the acknowledgement of intrinsic limits of the historical development of the democratic regime even in the case of old democracies, i.e., the fact that political equality, active citizen participation, and effective control of abuse of power have never been fully realized in practice. This is the general context in which many analysts and part of the public opinion sustain that there is a crisis of democracy. The general diagnosis refers to the decreasing trust in political elites, political parties, parliaments, governments, and to the dissatisfaction with the regime among democrats; it refers also to the weaker and sometimes erratic performance of democratic institutions and particularly to the failure of the representative system. The picture is completed with the growing rates of partisan misalignment, electoral volatility, and declining civic participation. All this seems to indicate that democracy is inconceivable without crisis. This chapter discusses this scenario. The crisis of democracies is examined from a critical perspective, and the main objective is to understand the different dimensions of its nature and its consequences.
Democracy: From One Crisis to Another by Marcel Gauchet in Social Imaginaries 1.1 (2015) 163-187
Democracy is in crisis. Th is crisis is the paradoxical outcome of its triumph over its erstwhile rivals. Having prevailed over the totalitarian projects of the first half of the 20th century it has developed in such a way that it is now undermining its original goals of individual and collective autonomy. Modern liberal democracy – the outcome of an inversion of the values of tradition, hierarchy and political incorporation – is a mixed regime. It involves three different dimensions of social existence, political, legal, historical/ economic, and organizes power around these. A balance was achieved after the upheaval of World War II in the form of liberal democracy, on the basis of reforms which injected democratic political power into liberalism and controlled the new economic dynamics it had unleashed. This balance has now been lost. Political autonomy, which accompanied modern historicity and its orientation towards the future, has been overshadowed by economic activity and its pursuit of innovation. As a result, the very meaning of democracy has become impoverished. The term used to refer to the goal of self-government, it is now taken to be fully synonymous with personal freedom and the cause of human rights. The legal dimension having come to prevail over the political one, democratic societies see themselves as ‘political market societies’, societies that can only conceive of their existence with reference to a functional language borrowed from economics. This depoliticisation of democracy has facilitated the rise to dominance of a new form of oligarchy.
The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Support for Democracy
Historical Social Research, 2018
This contribution provides a brief introduction into the second part of this HSR Special Issue. It informs about an ongoing project on the development of democracy in seven countries, five 'new' and two 'established' democracies. The five new democracies are Chile, South Korea, Poland, South Africa and Turkey. They are compared to Sweden and Germany. The five new democracies are located in different world regions and have different cultural and historical backgrounds. The contribution provides basic economic and political information on these countries. It also describes the common data base used by the six contributions: two surveys of members of parliament conducted in 2007 and 2013 as well as waves 5 and 6 of the World Values Survey conducted at about the same time. The common focus of all six contributions is the analysis of change in political legitimacy between 2007 and 2013.
Is There a Crisis of Democracy?
Democratic Theory, 2014
Democracy seems to be inextricably linked to crisis. This is true since the ancient writings of Plato and Aristotle. More recently, the debate over the crisis of democracy goes on under the heading of "postdemocracy." This article addresses the question of whether the crisis of democracy is an invention of theoretically complex but empirically ignorant theorists who adhere to an excessively normative ideal of democracy, on three levels: fi rst, on the level of quality of democracy indices developed by experts; second, on the basis of the survey reports on the opinion of the demos; third, on a deeper analyses of crucial spheres of democracy. The results hint in different directions. According to expert indices and polls, the message is: there is no crisis of democracy. However, the partial analyses on participation, representation, and effective power to govern reveal unresolved democratic challenges, such as an increasing level of exclusion of the lower third of the demos from participation, an inferior representation of their interests, and a loss of democratic sovereignty in policy making.
The effect of the economic crisis on democracy
Does the economic recession lead to a democratic recession? In this exploratory paper I examine the relationship between the current economic crisis and the quality of democracy in 18 Western European countries. In the first, theoretical, part of the paper I introduce ways in which the quality of democracy can be challenged the wake of an economic crisis. I focus especially on two clusters of challenges, namely elite imposed changes (Weimar and progressive mechanism) and changes driven by interaction with public opinion (e.g. in reaction to mass protests or pervasive public dissatisfaction. These are the mechanisms of crowd-pleasing, fixing and key jangling). While the first cluster of challenges is likely to result in significant changes to the quality of democracy, the second is far less likely to do so. The empirical part of the paper shows that governments so far have mainly taken recourse to key jangling and crowd-pleasing rather than fundamentally changing the quality of democracy. For now, the 18 democracies seem fairly resilient.
DEMOCRACIES UNDER PRESSURE A GLOBAL SURVEY (VOLUME I) EDITED BY DOMINIQUE REYNIÉ VOLUME I THE ISSUES
DEMOCRACIES UNDER PRESSURE A GLOBAL SURVEY (VOLUME I), 2019
The idea of democracy has revolutionized the world. It is based on a political order whose main feature is makingtheexercise ofpower subjectto theconsent ofthe governed. SinceitsancientandgloriousAthenian roots, the idea has spread across land and sea. The EnglishBill of Rights in 1689, the United States Constitution in 1787, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 marked the arrival of political freedom in the world with distinction. It spread across Europe in the 19th century, powering nations with the emancipating force of the peoples’ right to self-determination. During the 20th century it triumphed over modern tyrannies, repelling fascist regimes, the Nazis and their allies, then defeating communism after a Cold War that ended with the collapse of the USSR, defeated economically, technologically, politically and morally. During this same period, the world also embarked on a new phase of democratization. In 1970s Europe, the Greeks, Portuguese and Spaniards overthrew their military dictatorships. In Latin America in the 1980s, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil went through the same experience. Then, on the Old Continent during the 1990s, it was Central and Eastern Europe’s turn. In 1992, a symbolic milestone was reached: more than half of the world’s States were democracies. The world was becoming democratic. The wave lasted until the beginning of the 21st century, with the number of democratic states doubling between the late 1970s and the early 2000s. However, as we enter the 21st century, the horizon looks darker. In the 2019 edition of its annual report Freedom in the World, the NGO Freedom House expressed concern over “global declines in political rights and civil liberties for an alarming 13 consecutive years, from 2005 to 2018. The global average score has declined each year, and countries with net score declines have consistently outnumbered those with net improvements”. Today it is no longer simply a question of strengthening the democratic process where it is still fragile, in Liberia, Uganda or Tunisia, but also of helping regain democratic momentum where countries have slid back, in South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia and encouraging progress where it can be seen, in Ethiopia, Angola, Armenia, Malaysia or Ecuador. It is now a question of protecting, or even defending, established democracies. This is the case for the countries that emerged from the post-Soviet democratic transition that seem to be tempted down a backwards path, an authoritarian transition feared throughout Europe, advocating for a paradoxical model at once democratic and “illiberal”. The wave of populist elections is weakening the European Union. Here we do not see the traditional political, economic and social factors that have always threatened the solidity of the democratic world, such as growth, employment and the educational system. These are challenges that must be faced time and time again. Rather, under the emerging concerns, the media has been disrupted by social media, where the best and the worst of humanity exist side by side. How can we keep the democratic discussion alive if the truth is to lose its mediating power, if opinions and debates are constantly oversimplified and radicalized, if the legitimacy of journalism is no longer recognized? From now on, not just election campaigns but also electoral processes themselves are likely to be seriously disrupted by new forms of public debate. The heart of democracy is under threat. This moment of doubt is also the product of the forces unleashed by globalization. A paradoxical triumph of the West, globalization destabilizes democracies while offering unprecedented opportunities for development and expansion to new powers. Among these is China, which is no longer hiding its ambition to dominate the 21st century. It is increasingly powerful both economically and technologically. In the strategic field of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, it is fighting for the leading position. But China achieves these stunning successes without renouncing its authoritarian system, or even the hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party, by building a state model that could be described as “high-tech totalitarianism,” ready to export its concepts, methods, and tools. For the first time since its creation, democracy is no longer certain of inspiring the world. It is in this new and troubled context that we wanted to bring together our two institutions: on the one hand, the Fondation pour l’innovation politique, a French think tank committed to defending the values of freedom and progress and the ideals of the European Union; on the other, the International Republican Institute, an American organization that promotes democracy worldwide. Our two organizations were pleased to welcome the Brazilian think tank República do Amanhã into this partnership in order to carry out this international study, conducted in forty-two democracies, presented here under the title Democracies Under Pressure. The document is comprised of two volumes: the first is devoted to themes and issues, such as trust in institutions, support for the model of representative democracy, support for abortion or the death penalty, the decline of democratic values among younger generations, etc.; the second volume is dedicated to the forty-two countries of the survey, offering a fact sheet for each that summarizes the state of national public opinion. We also present the reader with an “Index of Democratic Culture”.