Global Conversations on Democracy: In search of Democratisation

John Samuel


( Draft Notes on challenges to democratisation, presented at the global conversations on Democracy in New Delhi)

 Ironies of Democracy

Subversion has become the hallmark of the postmodern politics- where everyone only has a user value.  While dominant mainstream politics at the national and international arenas often use the language of democracy to claim moral and political legitimacy, the powerful political-economic elites perpetually undermine the substantive moral and political content of democratic process. This irony of the linguistic and ‘communicative’ exercise of using the language of ‘freedom’ to undermine rights and dignity of citizens, people and communities of countries and cultures constantly undermines democratisation. Dominant institutionalisation of power in the state apparatus is largely negotiated by three Ms- Market, Military and Media- controlled by politico-bureaucratic and economic elites of a given country. The very ideal and idea of democracy is being subverted by the new nexus of corporate interests. The established and entrenched nexus of interests and power-configuration between the political, economic, bureaucratic and media elites have captured subverted the electoral process and the apparatus of the states, in the name of democracy.  The financing of elections, political parties and political leaders by the corporate monopolies ( in return to access to natural resource, tax evasion and more profits)  have undermined the political and moral content of  even the so-called ‘mature democratic systems’- across the world- in the global north as well as south.

 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 neighbourhoods 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”

 Internalised orders of power

The subversion, misuse and abuse of power have systemic and socio-historical manifestations in different contexts. This has to do with the way power is institutionalised and internalised in a given society, with a particular cultural and political history. For example, the political elites of South Asia often demonstrate the embedded feudalism and cumulative hierarchies (through cast system) internalised within the collective memory of the society. So the one common defining political aspect of South Asia is that all power-elites in most of the South Asian Countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Afghanistan) operate through family network and, cast/identity networks to acquire and maintain power. Such internalised ‘order of power’ tends to undermine the process and content of democratic process itself. Though political parties play a cardinal role in the democratic process of a country, the irony is that political parties themselves have least of internal democracy or accountability. And in many cases, political parties are reduced to institutionalised forms of ‘interest’ networks to capture and control the power of the state. In many countries in Africa, the use and abuse of power can also linked to the internalisation of power in the form of ‘tribal’ hierarchies and identities. In China or East Asia, there may be a different historical and cultural contexts of  the ‘internalised order of power’ In Europe and North America, such internalised ‘orders of power’ have links  with ‘protestant’ or ‘catholic values’ at the deep structure of the main-stream political process. And the historical memories of  colonial and post-colonial discourse, military contestations and the hegemonic knowledge formations play an important role in shaping the collective perceptions about the  ‘form and meaning’ of democracy in  Europe and North America.  So the process of democratisations- as a political and moral process – and the operationalisation of democratic systems- as a form of government and governance- are in constant negotiation with the ‘internalised order of power’ within a particular socio-historical and cultural context.

 

 Multiple  Disjunctures: There is also a disjuncture between the academic discourse on democracy/democratisation, the political party-driven political process and the grassroots process of politics- that operate through informal or semi formal networks of identities, interests and power. The disjuncture between knowledge and practice of politics and democracy at multiple levels create ‘exclusive’ arena of ‘discursive’ politics. Such disjuncture and disconnect create a problem translating and transmitting ideas and practises beyond each spheres.  The problem of ‘language’ and ‘communication’ in creating and perpetuating such ‘disjunctures of democracy’   is philosophical, political and technological.

 

Ideals of Democracy and Democratisation

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.

 

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. Substantive  democratic governance requires both the process of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy as a political system, based on constitution, the Rule of Law and accountable institutions.

Plurality of discourse and locations

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 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 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 ‘main-stream’ governance, democracy and “rule of law” discussion there is hardly any mention about the freedom struggles of peoples in Asia, Africa or Latin America or mass political movements for democracy 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. Even the so-called ‘southern’ discourse if often shaped by the academic and civil society elites who often derive their ‘academic credentials’ from the very same dominant academic paradigms and universities in the North.  So often the  ‘critique’ of the northern discourses of political theory itself  is a corollary discourse of  the dominant political economy of knowledge This partly a  problematic of  ‘language’ through which are ‘taught’ and ‘express’ and partly a problem the political economy of  funding  of  the  institutional locations through which knowledge is negotiated and generated.




Democratic Governance

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.

 

In spite of all economic growth, there is still entrenched poverty, social and economic inequality in India. When there are islands of prosperity, surrounded by sea of poverty and inequality, the real participation of everyone as equal citizens would be more challenging than it is assumed. We may have to go miles before realizing the dream of Gram Swaraj of Gandhi

“Every village has to become a self-sufficient republic. This require brave, corporate and intelligent work.....I have not pictured a poverty stricken India containing ignorant millions. I have pictured an India continually progressing along the lines best suited to her genius. I do not, however, picture it as a third class or even first class copy of the dying civilization of the west. If my dream is fulfilled everyone of the seven lakhs villages becomes a well-living republic in which there are no illiteracy, in which no one is idle for want of work, in which everyone is usefully occupied and has nourishing food and well-ventilated dwellings, and sufficient Khadi for covering the body and in which all villagers observe the laws of hygiene and sanitation”

 

Party Politics and Democracy




The quality and stability of democratic process depend on the quality and strength of the institutional frame-work and socio-political process that sustain the body politics of a country. While a good constitutional framework and electoral process are important indicators of a democratic system, elections are not in themselves a guarantee for the success of a democracy.

Political Parties are one of the most crucial factors for the sustenance of a viable democratic system. There seems to be a direct connection between the health of the political party system and the vitality and long term viability of a democracy. A vibrant system of political party serves the role of blood vessels of the body politics of a given country.

Political parties are socio-political institutions, in the public sphere, that help citizens to interface and negotiate with the state. Political parties are also primary legitimizing agents of the government and governing systems of the state. On the one hand they play the most crucial role of representing the citizens, people, and societal interests and issue that concern a large number of people at a given point in time. On the other hand, political parties also serve as the network mechanism of the institutions of the state and major forces of power, operating in a given context. So, there are very important political, social, cultural and class dimensions of political party system. The more political parties are rooted in the real issues, needs and aspirations of the people, there is more chance for the party to thrive.

In the absence of a multi-party system- with grass-roots presence, a committed cadre of leaders and wide network within the society- democratic process can be subverted and political process can be appropriated by a minority of vested interests. Though such vested interests may conveniently use one political party or even create one to serve their purpose of sustaining power, they tend to annihilate and subvert all other political party process. This is one of the single biggest challenges for the sustenance of a vibrant democratic system of governance

The social function and legitimizing role of political parties are under unprecedented strain. In most of the countries, political parties have rather less institutional history and social roots. Many of them emerged as a corollary to the state power and an instrument to sustain the state power. In most of the countries, particularly decolonized countries, the nation states as well as political parties are the consequences of decolonization rather than causes of decolonization

One of the key distinctions between mature democracies and vulnerable democracies is the state of political parties in the respective countries. In many ways, the strength, limitations and the contradictions of the political party system get reflected in the process of governance and the character of the state.

An educated and economically sustainable middle class play a very crucial role in the making and unmaking of the political parties. In many of the countries, the absence of a vibrant middle class, and the presence of a very small minority of political elites undermine the process of democracy. Political Parties, as institutions, do require funds and this requires an active economy with people or organisations with surplus money to fund the parties, either because of an interest or an issue. In most of the countries, the absence of a middle class or vibrant economy makes political parties as unviable institutions.


Political parties across the world are facing a crisis. They have been reduced to mere electoral mechanism or network to capture the power of the State. They are less and less social institutions or legitimizing agents of political process and increasingly turned in to “interest-networks” promoted by the larger economic forces and identity politics of various shades. In most of the so-called democracies, elections and politics are shaped and mediated by the big media empires and funded by big corporate power. This increasing dependence on media and corporate funds undermine the very character and autonomy of political party system. As a result, the new political-corporate elites are in the business of subverting politics and policy framework of the state to maximize profit for few dominant economic forces in a given economy.

Many of the political parties are now controlled by a “power-clique” and “fund-managers”, blessed by media and sustained by the corporate funds. The validity of the Presidential Candidate in the USA depends of how much money they raise from the corporate powers and how much rating they got from the surveys conducted by media empires. As a result, elections are reduced to media stunts with “brand” slogans, empty “policy rhetoric”, devoid of any in-depth political process or social mediation.

When media mediation replaces the social mediation, the very values of democracy get undermined and subverted. Political parties are filled with career politician with a single point agenda of getting a slice of state power and the privileges and paraphernalia that come with the package. There are less and less poets, philosophers, visionaries, scholars, social activists, or policy experts in political parties. As many social activists, writers and intellectuals choose to work within the civil society, political parties are facing an acute deficit of creative and ethical leadership.

 

Subversion of Political Parties and Democratic Values.



While most of the countries in the Western Europe and North America have a longer history and institutional basis of political parties, that is not the case in most of other countries. The case of India seems to be an exception, where there is a vibrant network of political party system. This is partly because of the fact that many of the political parties evolved over a period of hundred years, particularly in the context of the Freedom Struggle from the second half the 19th century. While South Africa and parts of Latin America have an emerging political party system, in most of the world political parties are often very fragile, ephemeral or a farce of the ruling elite.

One of the reasons for a very unstable democratic process in most of the parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America is the very character and nature of fragile political party system. The fragile political party system is a result of multiple factors that shaped the history, society and politics of these countries after the Second World War. Most of the countries that got freedom from the yoke of the Western European Powers failed to develop their own polity or the political process rooted in the respective context, history and society of the respective countries.

The very process of decolonizing also involved sowing the seeds of conflicts based on ethnicity, religion and identity in most of the countries. Unlike the case of India, there were not many mass struggles or wider political mobilization for freedom from the Colonial Powers. The struggle against colonialisation and imperialism was in many ways the beginning of the process of democratization and political process in most of countries in the world. The process of decolonizing also ensured the emergence of faulty and fragile democratic systems and process – more often initiated by an educated elite minority in conjunction with the erstwhile colonial powers.

There has been hardly any social, cultural and political process of nation-state formation in many of the earlier colonies- which the imperial powers almost treated as territories for extraction of material, agricultural or mineral resources. As a result, the notion of a modern nation-state was often superimposed on territories and areas where power primarily operated through traditional forms of structures and systems like tribalism or feudalism. In most of the cases, a liberal–democratic system was super imposed either on feudalism, tribalism and theocratic formations. In the absence of social transformation or transitions, democracy was often a veneer to sustain the feudal and tribal power-networks. This most of the political parties reflected the feudal or tribal characteristics of the dominant social forces in country.


In most of the decolonized countries, the process of governance was lead by a minority of the western educated elite class, nurtured by the erstwhile rulers or their institution and heavily depended on an aid system that gave them money and legitimacy. The leaders of many of these former colonies derived their primary legitimacy from the position they held and the support they got from the erstwhile colonial masters or their allies. This meant that least of investment in developing and nurturing a vibrant political party system as it would have become a thorn in the flush of their power. So, most of the leaders in the erstwhile colonies used political parties as a necessary evil to ensure some veneer of socio-political legitimacy in their own countries and in the world.

The very process of nation-state and nationality process in Africa, Asia and many other countries are negotiated by the colonial powers in the first half of the twentieth century. The process of decolonization also involved sowing seeds of conflicts in many of the erstwhile colonies and making them dependent on the formal imperial powers for ideas, aid, weapons and legitimacy. A fragmented polity, perpetual conflict, and dependent economic system were sure recipe for poverty, oppression and subversion. The result is everywhere to see. Even today the arbitrators of the so-called democracy in the south are very much the institutions and the leaders in the North.



Another important reason for the fragile political party system in the Global South is the very impact of the cold war. In the name of sustaining and promoting democracy, the United States and its allies in many ways killed the very democratic process. This was done by eliminating a whole generation of dynamic and committed leadership of the left leaning opposition parties and the communist parties. During the cold war period, both the Western and Eastern Block fought for the soul of many countries, by funding political parties, political leaders as well making the opposition leaders or parties impotent through a well planned process of annihilation and co-option.


This very process of intervention by the external forces undermined the institutional framework and political party system in most of the global south. In fact, the Cold war politics of aid, subversive education and ideological dependencies by the Western and Eastern Blocks of Power- based on Euro-centric ideas- made the very foundation of the political party process weak and fragile. As a result most of the countries in the South depended on the policy framework of either Soviet Union or the West for shaping the very process of governance and economy. This dependency syndrome in terms of ideas, knowledge and legitimacy had far reaching implication in terms of weakening the polity, policy process and political system of each of the countries in the global south.



This is where India is very different from most of the other decolonized countries. In the Indian context, the very long history freedom struggle and the primary role of the Indian National Congress and other political process helped a rather deep socialization of political parties. So in many ways the vibrant spectrum of political parties, based on identity, ideology and commonly shared platform for freedom struggle paved the way for decolonization and social reforms, rather than the other way around. In case of India, the Gandhian political praxis and social ethics – distinct from the imported knowledge-policy frame work from Europe- influenced almost all the political party process in India. Other bold experiments and theorization by scholar-activists like Ambedkar, Nehru and range of social reformers helped inject a sort of Indian ethos and civilization content to the political party process in India. The vibrant multiparty system, with multiple ideological and identity base helped to sustain, stabilize and strengthen a unique brand of Indian Democratic system. . In fact, apart from the Congress party, the left parties and the parties on the right too contributed to make India a viable multiparty democracy. The fact that most of the Indian politicians still wear Khadi or prefer Indian dress code (as distinct from many other countries in South-East Asia, Africa or elsewhere) is a bit of reflection of the “congress system” and Gandhian legacy.

However, in many of the other South Asian countries, the absence of a vibrant multi-party system weakened the governance as well as democracy. During the cold war period, most of the left political forces in other parts of South Asia was subverted or eradicated by the nexus of ruling elite and western political and economic forces. The eradication of left political forces from Pakistan and Bangladesh actually had long term political impact in weakening the foundations of democratic process in both countries. The deep rooted feudal values( family based politics is an indication) and identity politics based on cast, religion or ethnicity and sub-nationalities shaped the very character, hierarchy of political party systems South Asia, including India.

Hence the secular values, or cosmopolitan political ethos and democratic values are actually skin deep in almost all the political party system in India and the rest of South Asia.

( These are the personal views and do not reflect the position of any of the organisations with which the author is associated)