In Praise of Political Parties

Part III


In search of Democratisation

John Samuel


Subversion has become the hallmark of the postmodern politics- where everyone only has a user value. Party Politics has become less of an expression of intrinsic values or beliefs. It is has become an exercise in unethical instrumentalism to control the Sate and Market. The very ideal and idea of democracy is being subverted by the political elites, political parties and those technocrats who swear by democracy and undermine the very democratic process in a million ways!

Democracy works when citizens and the most marginalized people have the capability to ask questions, seek accountability from the state and participate in the process of governance. Democracy becomes meaningful when people can shape the state and the state, in turn, is capable of creating enabling social, political, economic and legal conditions wherein people can exercise their rights and realize the freedom from fear and want.

It is not merely elections or universal adult franchise that defines the process of democracy. While constitutional framework and human rights guarantees can form the grammar of democracy, it is always people and the ethical quality of political process that make democracy work. Democracy involves dignity, diversity, dissent, development, participation and accountability. Unless even the last person can celebrate her sense of dignity, exercise democratic dissent and inform and involve in the process of governance and development, democracy becomes an empty rhetoric. Democracy dies where discrimination begins and politics of exclusion takes root.


The most visible and dominant discourse on democracy is derived from the Athenian legacy (where women and slaves were excluded from the very process) of western- liberal democratic theory and the ideas that emerged during the enlightenment. So there is a need to reconstruct a pluralistic history of the process of democratization in other cultures as well as ethical traditions such as Buddhism and Islam. Amartya Sen in his recent book, The Argumentative Indian, discussed the various trajectories and histories of public argument and ethical governance (particularly that during the reign of Ashoka and later by the Moghal Emperor Akbar). Some of the most inspiring experiments of grassroots democratization and the claiming democracy at the national level emerged during the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. In the good governance, democratization and “rule of law” discussion there is hardly any mention about the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.

The process of Democratization is also a function of the culture and history at a given point in time. However, such histories and experience are often ignored or marginalized by the academic institutions and other proponents of the Euro- American model of liberal democracy. The very political economy of knowledge production, dissemination and marketing is still controlled by the privileged institutions and think tanks in the global north. Hence most of us are taught a privileged history and model of western-liberal democracy.




Democratization is a political as well an ethical process based on human dignity as well as empowerment of people wherein they participate, irrespective of gender, race, identity or age, in those decisions and institutions that affect their lives. Democratization involves devolution of power in all institutional arenas. This also means democratization of information, knowledge, economic resources and technology. Thus the ethics and practice of democratization is relevant from all institutional settings from family, to the state and global institutions. Democratization as political and ethical value depend on the equality of all human persons, and their rights to participate in social and political process, rights to development and rights to live with dignity.

While democratization is more of an ethical and political value, democracy is political System of government... True democratic governance requires both the process of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy as a political system, based on the Rule of Law and accountable institutions.

. The present predicament of the discourse on democracy is well captured by John Gaventa: “Around the world, the forms and meaning of democratic participation are under contestation. In Iraq, Fallujah is bombed in the name of making the country ready for democracy; in Indonesia, Ukraine and United States, voters and observers are gripped in debates and protest against electoral democracy; in Cancun and other global venues, streets are occupied by those demanding more democracy in global processes; in small villages and neighborhoods and grassroots groups are claiming their places in local democratic spaces. Democracy is at once the language of military power, neoliberal market forces, political parties, donor agencies and NGOs. What is going on?” He further elaborates: “the way to deal with crisis of democracy or democratic deficit, is to extend democracy itself- that is to go beyond traditional understanding of representative democracy, through creating and supporting more participatory spaces of citizens engagement, which in turn are built up on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship”


A substantive democratic governance demands radicalizing democracy, through the deepening and widening of the process of democratization of state and all institutions of governance. Social movements and civil society organizations, which act as counterbalances and counterweights to the dominant powers of state and non-state actors, have an important role in deepening democratic process and expand the spaces wherein poor and excluded people can participate as well as challenge the process of governance. Power relationship is inherent in the process of governance at various levels.

The process of democratization has both grassroots and global dimensions. Such a process will necessarily involves the empowerment of women, minorities and the disenfranchised people, due to historical of structural reasons. Democratization at the global level requires free flow of information, knowledge and coordinated action and a shared sense of global solidarity based on the values of Justice, equality and human rights. Such a sense of solidarity can be built in the public sphere through “communicative action”. Habermas explains the conditions for reaching a common understanding: “I speak of communicative action when the action orientations of the participating actors are not coordinated via egocentric calculations of success, but through acts of understanding. Participants are not primarily oriented towards their own success in communicative action: they pursue their individual goal under the condition that they can coordinate their action plans on the basis of shared definitions of the situation”. Such a shared sense of communicative action also implies argumentative rationatinality, where in participants in a discourse are open to be persuaded by the better argument and the relations of power and hierarchies recede in the background. The goal of such communicative action is to reach reasoned consensus. Sense of solidarity, a sense of identifying with fellow human beings with a sense of shared bond of humanness and dignity, can make the process of democratization deliberate, creative and participatory.