[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This HR Reader is about how the mechanics and the machinery of Western democracy are skewed against human rights, i.e., about ‘democracy as if we actually live in one’. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
On being elected
1. From the Athenian democrats to Montesquieu, from Aristotle to Rousseau, no one imagined that elections would become the democratic instrument par excellence. Democracy is not equivalent to a ‘representative’ government! (Bernard Manin) As James Harrington (English political theorist, 1611-1677) already said in the 16hundreds, “too many elections select pre-existing elites”. Flash forward and, these days, candidates’ (in)abilities receive the invaluable support of million-dollar propaganda and marketing campaigns. Our recent history shows a long list of notorious incompetents who have led the destinies of Western democracies in recent decades. Meanwhile, abstention, i.e., turning our backs on elections that enshrine an oligarchic form of government, is becoming the form of expression of the majority.*
*: Abstention has been the winner in many of the last elections; it is becoming increasingly important. It seems that voters are realizing that, whichever party wins, they will have to continue paying more and things will not change.
2. Defining the electorate, deciding what each vote is worth, influencing the nomination of candidates, allowing a minority to prevail over a majority**, acting as referee while being both judge and jury, in addition to other minor ‘pecadillos’ –that even included the use of poison and the art of knife-fighting– are things that, unsurprisingly, have existed since the 4th century, that is, since the Council of Nicaea.
**: Council of Nicaea (Council of Bishops, anno 325), determined that some dissenting voices cannot invalidate the decision of the majority (sententia plurimorum).
3. The techniques were perfected over centuries to ensure that the results of ‘free elections’ always corresponded to the interests of those who organized them. One technique used almost universally was to limit the electorate to citizens who possessed a certain amount of property: the so-called census suffrage that granted the right to vote only to the wealthy, who were a small minority (or, for some: ‘a bunch of freeloaders’). Of course, women did not have the right to vote either. If the right to vote only very gradually spread, it was mainly because those in power realized that the poor are easily influenced, as well as gullible and naïf. It should come as no surprise, then, that Karl Marx decreed that bourgeois democracy is nothing more than a form of dictatorship. (Politika)
4. In other words, democracy was born sweating exclusion from every pore, a practice that continues to this day despite what the experts, converts, and plutocrats of old may say. The rule was almost always not to hide discrimination, which was always kept ‘legal’, that is, enshrined in ‘venerable’ Constitutions and laws. (Louis Casado)
5. Here is what needs to be made clear: Universal suffrage is still not scientific; it is entirely empirical; it is impossible to know what the outcome of the vote will be… Candidates who deserve to be elected are reduced to resorting to the same dishonest maneuvers as candidates who have no good reason to be there. In a word, the-majestic-principle-of-the-sovereignty-of-the-people disappears. A group of guys who use universal suffrage to carve up the country, as if using a knife to cut up a chicken, are the ones who invariably win… The murkier the water, the more abundant the fishing… I hate the dwarfs that universal suffrage imposes on us! (Emile Zola, 1840–1902)
After being elected: the worrisome scenario
–Democracies survive not by finding perfect leaders but by constraining imperfect ones (…the dwarfs as per above)
What turns a democratically elected leader into an authoritarian?
6. The process is rarely abrupt. It unfolds gradually and is often justified as a necessary reform. It is framed as ‘what the people want’. This makes it difficult for citizens to recognize what is happening until it is too late when a ‘visionary (?) leader’ has already become increasingly myopic once in office. These authoritarians’ early successes bolster theirbelief in their transformative capabilities –a fact that gradually diminishes their capacity for self-criticism. When established institutions prove inadequate for addressing public grievances, it allows these leaders (with exceptional self-confidence) to emerge and rise. These often outsiders to the existing political system succeed, precisely because they possess the psychological conviction that they can challenge entrenched systems and can mobilise mass support through bold, unconventional approaches. But as their limited visionary capacity increases, so too does myopia. As these leaders become increasingly convinced of their transformative vision, their ability to perceive alternatives diminishes. Once they systematically eliminate feedback mechanisms, they lose all capacity for self-correction. As their ability to process contradictory information deteriorates, they may increasingly associate personal power with national interest and move to control the institutions that usually determine what information is legitimate. They frame dissent as treason; they weaponise national agencies to follow recognizable authoritarian scripts. (Trang Chu and Tim Morris) [Disclaimer: Any resemblance of what we are seeing today is mere coincidence…].
None of this should shock you: a reflection for you to ponder (Sharon Kyle)
—Much of the world is ruled by elites, not the people: Not news for you, but…
7. Democracy is one of those words that gets thrown around as though it were self-evident. Politicians and media pundits invoke it like a mantra as though we actually live in one. The phrase, ‘threats to our democracy’ is heard over and over on the airwaves and in social media. But the phrase itself rests on a shaky foundation. You cannot threaten what does not truly exist. If democracy means government of the people, by the people and for the people, where we all have equal voice, equal access, and equal influence, then your country is almost for sure not a democracy –not now not in its past.
8. Leaders shift the frame away from whether the people actually have power and use demagogy to protect oligarchy from scrutiny. What you have instead is a system draped in democratic language, but hollow at its core. Not news for you, but…
9. You, as a citizen vote. Yes. But voters are pushed to choose between ‘the lesser of two evils’ rather than between genuine alternatives. Casting a ballot does not equal you exercising power. Voting has been reduced to ritual –‘a performance of democracy’, not the reality of it. The notion that you (an ordinary citizen) wield equal influence is fantasy. Not news for you, but…
10. Has not your country, for long, functioned as an oligarchy disguised as a democracy –with a government in which elites, not the people, hold the reins? And sadly, it has always been this way. The political system anywhere is not a neutral playing field. By design, it is tilted towards minority rule and elite capture. But aside from the structural obstacle, and even if the electoral structures were fair, the system would still fail the democracy test, because of how thoroughly money dominates politics (think campaign financing, lobbying and influence peddling, media control…). Not news for you, but…
11. What you have is, therefore, not democracy; it is a rigged game that locks power away from you as a member of the majority and that consolidates it in the hands of a few (this, by the way, is the definition of oligarchy). We are asked to vote for individuals who will ‘fix’ the problems. Not news for you, but by exclusively relying on individuals, we miss the point. The challenge is structural. Democracy cannot thrive inside institutions that were built to concentrate power at the top.
12. This all means one thing: We need to redesigning governance from the ground up to resist capture by elites, to distribute power horizontally, to resist authoritarianism, to build alternative structures grounded in solidarity, in participation, in human rights, and in a de-facto democratic governance. A truly democratic structure must additionally enshrine mechanisms that guarantee marginalized groups equal footing in decision-making –preventing majority rule from slipping into majority tyranny. Note: The future of democracy will not be found in defending broken institutions. It will be found in building new institutions. (S. Kyle)
Yes, democracy is messy, no question about it.
13. Forget about coups and martial law. The latest method of destroying democracy is through slow-motion authoritarianism.*** But the more common method of destroying a democracy these days is through ‘death-by-a-thousand-cuts’. Elected leaders only gradually undermine democratic institutions and accumulate more executive power. One day, voila, the democracy is fatally compromised and no one can point to a single act that transformed the elected leader into an autocrat. [Any resemblance of what we are seeing today is mere coincidence…].
***: Autocracies today have outnumbered democracies for the first time in two decades: Three-quarters of people around the world live in autocratic states. (John Feffer, FPIF)
Bottom line
—Over the last 150 years or so, liberal democracy has worked for a small group of countries. Elsewhere, liberal democracy managed to establish itself politically as a democratic island in an archipelago of despotisms.
14. For too long, majorities have been considered ignorant, i.e., incapable of governing wisely. Pushed into that corner, they have accepted the rules of the democratic game: particularly superficial reformism and ‘free elections’. With this apathy, democracy has no longer claimed to regulate the excesses of Capitalism and has become regulated by these excesses.
We are now living in a post-democratic period.
15. We live in increasingly autocratic societies in which countries with greater economic and financial power have the media privilege of designating themselves as democratic. Moreover, all kinds of anti-democrats (fascists, populists, caudillistas, and religious fanatics) can now be democratically elected. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com