We all like democracy in the abstract. There is pagentry at swearing in ceremonies and we can brag about being "free" but when we get to the specifics, no, a lot of us don't like it. The current U.S. Congress has an approval rating, at 14%, way below such popular conditions as head lice, cockroaches, and colonoscopies... In other words, it is great in the abstract but sucks in the reality we live in.
Perhaps it is time we reconsider democracy and look at what really makes it valuable. If we are to keep it, or even notice when it is gone, we have to understand, and more importantly, value what is slipping away. Its real value may not be what you are currently thinking it is. Let us explore what is the real value of this form of government below the fold.
One of the images that struck me at the Obama inauguration in 2009 was the demeanor of Dick Cheney. He is well known to be a grumpy guy but as he was wheeled in in a wheelchair, I couldn't help thinking that here was a guy who did not want to let go and leave. But it did not matter whether he was willing to return to being just a citizen that day or not. He was wheeled in and wheeled out. While he was at the ceremony, the last of his stuff was packed and on its way to Wyoming. In 2001, Mayor Giuliani postponed the October mayoral primary. He took a lot of heat for it even though the election was postponed. A study by the Congressional Research Service explored whether States 'can postpone' U.S. elections. In this latter case, the primary and some other elections have been postponed for a short while due to things like hurricanes. Although denied at the time by Condolezza Rice, it was disclosed earlier that DHS and DOJ considered that it could be possible to postpone the 2004 elections in times of terrorist attacks.
Consider this. What if elections were postponed to a "later time" when things were "safe"? What if things seemed to take a really long time to be "safe" and we went along? Our history (so far) has shown that no, the elections go on and the swearing in happens on time but that could change. This brings the discussion to the real value of democracy.
One of the outward signs of "democracy" is that there is an election. We have seen elections all over the place from Iraq, Russia, China and even to North Korea but are these democracies? Most people would say no. One does not make democracies (just) with elections. Most countries, even ones that most of us would agree are not democracies, have elected parliaments. The U.S. does not have a parliament at the moment but most people would group the U.S. and parliamentary democracies together. The U.K. has a Queen as do many "constitutional monarchies" in Europe but these are democracies just like Germany which has not had a monarch since the Kaiser abdicated in 1919 or France which dumped its monarchy way earlier than that.
The true value of democracy is that political leaders leave when their time is up. Yes, they leave even if they do not want to leave. This only happens because "we the people" still apply the simple rule that the President is no longer in charge at 12:01EST, January 21. A similar rule applies in parliamentary governments. But when enough people ignor that rule, democracy is indeed dead.
All of us, especially "leaders", have an expiration date. We all die but long before our death we reach our expiration date, that time when we are no longer doing well the job that we were tasked to do. This is especially true for leaders regardless of what group or organization they lead. A significant part of being a leader is the agenda that he or she brings to their role. Agendas have an expiration date too. The expiration date is that point in time when the agenda of the leader(s) and the agendas of lead part company. This divergence is inevitable unless both sides work at a compact to evolve their agendas together.
I stated above that the strength, the value of democracy is that the leaders leave when their time is up. Winston Churchill said that, "Democracy is the worst form of government..." and this referenced quote also illustrates that Winston was also deeply committed to the rule I describe above. He showed by his example what he and all of us can value in a vibrant democracy but the quote assumed everyone knew the faults in the other forms.
Monarchy is the classical opposite example. It is easy to get a King. The problem is getting rid of him. Shakespeare would have been stuck writing sitcoms if this were not true. Much of the blood spilled in European history has occurred because changing the leadership in monarchies is messy. It would seem easy enough. The King trains his son to take over and everybody else just accepts that the son becomes King when his father dies. Note that this mechanism only applies to the king and his son. No one else has an active role. This is simple except when the King or Queen hangs on too long or the royal goals are in deepening conflict with everyone else, or the son is so inbred that he has three eyes and the intellect of a box of rocks. In other words, it works until it does not work and then everything gets messy. Wars start, the royal kids get poisoned, and numerous people lose their heads. The recent "retirement" of Pope Benedict XVI illustrated this in comic fashion as everybody in the Vatican scrambled about trying to cope with a "retired" Pope who had the affrontary to not die first. Elizabeth II, like her great-grandmother Victoria, has been hanging around so long that even her son Charles is past his expiration date. Fortunately, the U.K. solved the problem by transferring all the real political power to Parliament.
Other countries have not been so fortunate. The only real difference between an old style monarchy and a strong man dictatorship is in the titles. Both have the same result. Monarchies are fundamentally weak and unstable because they do not handle the conflict of agendas followed by the transition of power well, if at all. This may seem counter-intuitive because a strongman political leader or a "take charge" CEO get things done. This is true until they can't get things done. Syria is the current sad example of this. Assad and his agenda are well past their expiration date but no one can get rid of him. When he finally does go, there will be little if anything left of the infrastructure of a civil society for the next strongman to rule. The same applies in Russia with Putin. Every day past yesterday that Putin remains in power continues the deterioration of the very civic institutions that would keep things going after he is inevitably gone. Other Russian political leaders either fall silent and leave the scene or they become useless sycophants whose only skill is "brown nosing". Everything else atrophies.
Oligarchies or plutocracies are closely related to monarchy . There may or may not be a visible strongman at the top but there is still the inability to deal with the expiration date of their agendas and their partisans. The end result is usually bloodshed.
The strength and value of democracy is not in the style of its elections or its Robert's Rules of Order for debate or anything else but in its ability to cope with the transition of power when a transition is inevitable and needed without disintegrating into civil war. Its strength is measured by its abilty to not only function but to thrive through transitions of power.
There is a corrollary here. In any society, and the government that implements the infrastructure of that society, we can measure its stability and prosperity by examining the relationship between the populace, all those folks who have a stake in its good operation, and the leaders whose agenda runs it. This relationship is a compact between the leader(s) and the lead that they work together toward common goals and when those goals diverge, the leader(s) step aside and the lead choose new leadership.
Stepping aside, however, is hard for leaders to do. As in so many things in human nature, the strengths of a person that make them an effective leader are also their biggest weakness. "There is one more great thing I can do", they say. They become convinced that are they only one(s) who really understand the issues and are capable enough to do what needs to be done. It is hard to accept that one is no longer effective or even relevant or that they are no longer needed, or worse, no longer wanted. Although it did not prove all that effective, that is why there was a slave riding in the chariot with the Roman Emperor in a Triumph (parade) whispering, "Memento mori". Democracy's strength and monachy's weakness is measured by how deeply this truth is embedded in the compact between the leader(s) and the lead.
This all implies that there exists some feedback and decision mechanism by which this relationship is maintained. The populace participates by voting in elections and everyone accepts the results that decide these transitions. The alternative is they accept the consequences of civil war. This may seem an extreme choice, but is it? The North and the South attempted compromise for decades but the Missouri Compromise ended up being no compromise at all. Slavery was an economic system whose expiration date had come and gone everywhere but in the slave states of South. This is not the place for arguing the details or morals of the abolition/slavery. This is just a familiar example where one side did not like the result and decided to no longer follow the rule. A key decision point for the Secessionists was that remaining in the Union was no longer worth it to them. They had nothing to lose by shooting up Fort Sumner.
Sir Winston is still correct. The choice is between democracy (very often messy) or its simpler but unstable alternative. Democracy, however, has the requirement that everyone must participate. In my earlier blog post, The Voting Rights Act got it all wrong, I proposed compulsory voting along with some other reforms to move beyond the argument over voting as a right and voting as the right (really the privilege) of those who are better able to vote "better". I will address two of the objections to universal, compulsory voting.
The first position, taken by Tom Perkins is that one small group, typically the wealthy, know better so they should get more votes (say) in the government. In a slight variation on that theme many Libertarians posit that some voters are more competent or educated or ??? than the average (apathetic) voter so the apathetic voters should be left where they are and let their "betters" decide the important things at the ballot box. In fact, in that same 2008 election, it was disclosed that Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, multi-millionaire, and candidate for California Governor had not voted for years. Neither had Carley Fiorina, also a multi-millionaire CEO who was running for Senate which shows how much regard these "movers and shakers" regard the basics of democracy. In either case, this is "trickle down" politics. Some chosen few rule everyone else. See above.
The second position is by those who advocate abstaining from or boycotting voting as a protest against the system. They have a point about protesting; there is always plenty to protest against but protest is only little more than a tantrum unless there is also action within the system. The Civil Rights marches were only a part of the movement. The marchers also took great personal risk in the face of lethal force to register and get out the vote. This is abdicating one's responsibility to participate. Sure, the choices on a ballot are often the "lesser of two evils" and maybe a "none of the above" choice could address this. More importantly, protesting by staying home does not articulate an alternative. It always begs the question, "Ok, none of these are adequate. Who do you name as someone who is?" This position accepts the Tom Perkins position as the default.
Both of these positions are dangerous. The first position starts off with a small minority, the wealthy, that are insulated from the masses by all kinds of things in addition to the gated communities they cocoon in. For the sake of argument I will posit that their agenda might be acceptable or even beneficial to the country or society as a whole for a while but that will not continue unless there is a feedback loop to break through the bubble at the top. At some point, that agenda will inevitably reach its expiration date and, like the fate of the aristocracy in 1789 France, we all know how that would turn out. The second position creates the same conditions. A shrinking active electorate ends up being only an agenda motivated minority electorate which distorts the feedback loop. That agenda will inevitably diverge from the interests of the majority and expire. The danger is that both create a disenfranchised majority by degrading the feedback loop and the social contract. The disenfranchisement may start at the ballot box but it will flow into everything else; the economy, access to opportunities, and eventually basic civil rights. How can the disenfranchised be invested in a society and the government that implements it if they gain no benefit and have no say? A disenfrancised majority or even a disenfrancised large minority has nothing to lose. When that happens the results are usually bloody.
Note that I have not discussed greed, arrogance, ambition, or sociopathic behavior. These too are problems and one does not have to look far in the political landscape to find them but this discussion is more about results than motivations. These and more pathological human behavioral traits are indeed at play. If and when they can dominate, the end result will be a devolution of democracy into some inferior and unstable form of strongman/strongmen rule. One could argue that this result is the goal of the wealthy backers of the various SuperPACs that are making voting more difficult and encouraging the "protest" and apathetic voter to stay at home by their election year tactics. This may or may not be possible but an active and fully participating electorate in a democracy is a firewall to such subversion. A bad actor cannot achieve and maintain power and control so long as an active majority can still be able to effectively say "NO". But it takes an active electorate to show up, make that decision, and then enforce it. Cheney is gone because the majority in both the electorate and in the workings of everyday government wanted him gone.
The reader may have noted that I mentioned "take charge" CEOs. That was no slip of the tongue. Corporations are really oligarchies at heart and as such are weaker and more unstable than a democratic alternative. But that is the topic of a future diary. The first order of business at the moment is to show up and participate.