Democracy and the Global Order

From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance

David Held

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745667157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a highly original account of the changing meaning of democracy in the contemporary world, offering both an historical and philosophical analysis of the nature and prospects of democracy today.

Part I

Introduction

1

STORIES OF DEMOCRACY:
OLD AND NEW

Democracy seems to have scored an historic victory over alternative forms of governance. Nearly everyone today professes to be a democrat. Political regimes of all kinds throughout the world claim to be democracies. In an age in which many traditional ways of resolving value disputes are treated with the utmost caution – especially those which appeal, for instance, to other-worldly teachings, or to doctrines about the natural order of rank and hierarchy, or to claims about the proletarian interest – it seems as if political choices can only begin to be adequately recognized, articulated and negotiated in a democracy. Democracy bestows an aura of legitimacy on modern political life: laws, rules and policies appear justified when they are ‘democratic’. But it was not always so. The great majority of political thinkers from ancient Greece to the present day have been highly critical of the theory and practice of democracy. A widespread commitment to democracy is a very recent phenomenon. Moreover, democracy is a remarkably difficult form of government to create and sustain. The history of twentieth-century Europe alone makes this clear: fascism, Nazism and Stalinism came very close to obliterating democracy altogether.

Against this background, it is unsettling that some recent political commentators have proclaimed (by means of a phrase borrowed most notably from Hegel) the ‘end of history’ – the triumph of the West over all political and economic alternatives. The revolutions which swept across Central and Eastern Europe at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 stimulated an atmosphere of celebration. Liberal democracy was championed as the agent of progress, and capitalism as the only viable economic system: ideological conflict, it was said, is being steadily displaced by universal democratic reason and market-orientated thinking (see Fukuyama, 1989, 1989/90; cf. Held, 1993a, 1993b). But such a view is quite inadequate in a number of respects.

In the first instance, the ‘liberal’ component of liberal democracy cannot be treated simply as a unity. There are distinctive liberal traditions which embody quite different conceptions from each other of the individual agent, of autonomy, of the rights and duties of subjects, and of the proper nature and form of community. In addition, the ‘celebratory’ view of liberal democracy neglects to explore whether there are any tensions, or even perhaps contradictions, between the ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ components of liberal democracy; for example, between the liberal preoccupation with individual rights or ‘frontiers of freedom’ which ‘nobody should be permitted to cross’, and the democratic concern for the regulation of individual and collective action, that is, for public accountability. Those who have written at length on this question have frequently resolved it in quite different directions. Furthermore, there is not simply one institutional form of liberal democracy. Contemporary democracies have crystallized into a number of different types, which makes any appeal to a liberal position vague at best (see, for example, Lijphart, 1984; Dahl, 1989). Moreover, they have crystallized at the intersection of national and international forces which have profoundly affected their nature and efficacy. To neglect these issues is to leave unanalysed a wide spectrum of questions about democracy and its possible variants.

This introductory chapter seeks to address this lacuna, first, by examining the development of different models of democracy and their conditions of application; secondly, by exploring the meaning of democracy in the context of the progressive enmeshment today of states and societies in regional and global networks; and thirdly, by considering a number of leading approaches to the understanding of transnational and international phenomena. The result, it is hoped, is a step towards the specification of an historical and theoretical framework for the problems and issues addressed in the volume as a whole.

1.1 Models of democracy

Within the history of democratic theory lies a deeply rooted conflict about whether democracy should mean some kind of popular power (a form of politics in which citizens are engaged in self-government and self-regulation) or an aid to decision-making (a means of conferring authority on those periodically voted into office). This conflict has given rise to three basic variants or models of democracy. First, there is direct or participatory democracy, a system of decision-making about public affairs in which citizens are directly involved. This was the ‘original’ type of democracy found in ancient Athens, among other places. Secondly, there is liberal or representative democracy, a system of rule embracing elected ‘officers’ who undertake to ‘represent’ the interests or views of citizens within delimited territories while upholding the ‘rule of law’. Thirdly, there is a variant of democracy based on a one-party model (although some may doubt whether this is a form of democracy at all). Until recently, the Soviet Union, East European societies and many developing countries were committed to this conception. The following discussion deals briefly with each of these models in turn. Although it offers a guide to what will be familiar territory to some readers, it develops concepts and issues which will be drawn upon in later argument.

The active citizen and republican government

Athenian democracy has long been taken as a fundamental source of inspiration for modern Western political thought. This is not to say that the West has been right to trace many elements of its democratic heritage exclusively to Athens; for, as recent historical and archaeological research has shown, some of the key political innovations, both conceptual and institutional, of the nominally Western political tradition can be traced to older civilizations in the East. The city-state or polis society, for example, existed in Mesopotamia long before it emerged in the West (see Bernal, 1987; Springborg, 1992). Nonetheless, the political ideals of Athens – equality among citizens, liberty, respect for the law and justice – have been taken as integral to Western political thinking, and it is for this reason that Athens constitutes a useful starting point.

The Athenian city-state, ruled as it was by citizen-governors, did not differentiate between state and society. In ancient Athens, citizens were at one and the same time subjects of political authority and the creators of public rules and regulations. The people (demos) engaged in legislative and judicial functions, for the Athenian concept of citizenship entailed their taking a share in these functions, participating directly in the affairs of ‘the state’.¹ Athenian democracy required a general commitment to the principle of civic virtue: dedication to the republican city-state and the subordination of private life to public affairs and the common good. ‘The public’ and ‘the private’ were intertwined. Citizens could properly fulfil themselves and live honourably only in and through the polis. Of course, who was to count as a citizen was a tightly restricted matter; among the excluded were women and a substantial slave population.

The Athenian city-state – eclipsed ultimately by the rise of empires, stronger states and military regimes – shared features with republican Rome. Both were predominantly face-to-face societies and oral cultures; both had elements of popular participation in governmental affairs; and both had little, if any, centralized bureaucratic control. Furthermore, both sought to foster a deep sense of public duty, a tradition of civic virtue or responsibility to ‘the republic’ – to the distinctive matters of the public realm. And in both polities, the claims of the state were given a unique priority over those of the individual citizen. But if Athens was a democratic republic, contemporary scholarship generally affirms that Rome was, by comparison, an essentially oligarchical system (Finley, 1983, pp. 84ff). Nevertheless, from antiquity, it was Rome which was to prove the most durable influence on the dissemination of republican ideas.

Classical republicanism received its most robust restatement in the early Renaissance, especially in the city-states of Italy (see Rahe, 1994). The meaning of the concept of ‘active citizenship in a republic’ became a leading concern. Political thinkers of this period were critical of the Athenian formulation of this notion; shaped as their views were by Aristotle, one of the leading critics of Greek democracy, and by the centuries-long impact of republican Rome, they recast the republican tradition. While the concept of the polis remained central to the political theory of Italian cities, most notably in Florence, it was no longer regarded as a means to self-fulfilment (see Pocock, 1975, pp. 64–80). Emphasis continued to be placed on the importance of civic virtue but the latter was understood as highly fragile, subject particularly to corruption if dependent solely upon the political involvement of any one major grouping: the people, the aristocracy or the monarchy. A constitution which could reflect and balance the interests of all leading political factions became an aspiration. Niccolò Machiavelli thus argued that all singular constitutional forms (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy) were unstable, and only a governmental system combining elements of each could promote the kind of political culture on which civic virtue depends (see Machiavelli, 1983, pp. 104–11). The best example of such a government was, he proclaimed, Rome: Rome’s mixed government (with its system of consuls, Senate and tribunes of the people) was directly linked to its sustained achievements.

The core of the Renaissance republican case was that the freedom of a political community rested upon its accountability to no authority other than that of the community itself. Self-government is the basis of liberty, together with the right of citizens to participate – within a constitutional framework which creates distinct roles for leading social forces – in the government of their own common business.² As one commentator put it, ‘the community as a whole must retain the ultimate sovereign authority’, assigning its various rulers or chief magistrates ‘a status no higher than that of elected officials’ (Skinner, 1989a, p. 105). Such ‘rulers’ must ensure the effective enforcement of the laws created by the community for the promotion of its own good; for they are not rulers in a traditional sense, but agents or administrators of justice.

In Renaissance republicanism, as well as in Greek democratic thought, a citizen was someone who participated in ‘giving judgement and holding office’ (Aristotle, 1981, p. 169). Citizenship meant participation in public affairs. This definition is noteworthy because it suggests that theorists within these traditions would have found it hard to locate citizens in modern democracies, except perhaps as representatives or office holders. The limited scope in contemporary politics for the active involvement of citizens would have been regarded as most undemocratic (see Finley, 1973b). Yet the idea that human beings should be active citizens of a political order – citizens of their states – and not merely dutiful subjects of a ruler has had few advocates from the earliest human associations to the early Renaissance (see chapters 2 and 3).³

The demise in the West of the idea of the active citizen, one whose very being is affirmed in and through political action, is hard to explain fully. But it is clear enough that the antithesis of homo politicus is the homo credens of the Christian faith: the citizen whose active judgement is essential is displaced by the true believer (Pocock, 1975, p. 550). Although it would be misleading to suggest that the rise of Christianity effectively banished secular considerations from the lives of rulers and ruled, it unquestionably shifted the source of authority and wisdom from this-worldly to other-worldly representatives. During the Middle Ages, the integration of Christian Europe from the Eastern Atlantic seaboard to the Balkans came to depend above all on two theocratic authorities: the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. There was no theoretical alternative to their account of the nature of power and rule (Bull, 1977, p. 27; cf. Black, A, 1992). Not until the end of the sixteenth century, when it became apparent that religion had become a highly divisive force and that the powers of the state would have to be separated from the duty of rulers to uphold any particular faith, did the nature and limits of political authority, law, rights and obedience become a preoccupation, from Italy to England, of European political thought (Skinner, 1978, vol. 2, p. 352).

Liberal representative democracy

This preoccupation became the hallmark of modern liberal theory, which constantly sought to justify the sovereign power of the state while at the same time justifying limits on that power. The history of this attempt is the history of arguments to balance might and right, power and law, duties and rights. On the one hand, states must have a monopoly of coercive power in order to provide a secure basis on which family life, religion, trade and commerce can prosper. On the other hand, by granting the state a regulatory and coercive capability, liberal political theorists were aware that they had accepted a force that could, and frequently did, deprive citizens of political and social freedoms.

How this dilemma was addressed in early-modern political theory is explored in chapter 2, which sets out the scope of the early formulation of the concept of political sovereignty and the idea of the modern state, alongside rival accounts of these notions found in the work of Bodin and Hobbes, and Locke and Rousseau. However, important as these accounts were to the development of the discourse of the modern state, it was not until later that a new model of democracy was fully articulated – liberal representative (or simply representative) democracy – by those who subsequently became known as liberal democrats. For the latter, representative democracy constituted the key institutional innovation to overcome the problem of balancing coercive power and liberty. The liberal concern with reason, lawful government and freedom of choice could only be upheld properly by recognizing the political equality of all mature individuals. Such equality would ensure not only a secure social environment in which people would be free to pursue their private activities and interests, but also a state which, under the watchful eye of political representatives accountable to an electorate, would do what was best in the general or public interest. Thus, liberal democrats argued, the democratic constitutional state, linked to other key institutional mechanisms, particularly the free market, would resolve the problems of ensuring both liberty and authority.

Two classic statements of the new position can be found in the philosophy of James Madison and in the work of one of the key figures of nineteenth-century English liberalism: Jeremy Bentham. In Madison’s account, ‘pure democracies’ (by which he means societies ‘consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person’) have always been intolerant, unjust and unstable (Madison, 1966, no. 10, p. 20). By contrast, representative government overcomes the excesses of ‘pure democracy’ because regular elections force a clarification of public issues, and the elected few, able to withstand the political process, are likely to be competent and capable of ‘discerning the true interest of their country’.

The central concern of Madison’s argument is not the rightful place of the active citizen in the life of the political community but, instead, the legitimate pursuit by individuals of their interests, and government as a means for the enhancement of these interests. Although Madison himself sought clear ways of reconciling particular interests with what he called modern ‘extended republics’, his position signals a clear shift from the classical ideals of civic virtue and the public realm to liberal preoccupations (1966, no. 10, pp. 21–2). He conceived of the representative state as the chief mechanism to aggregate individuals’ interests and to protect their rights. In such a state, he believed, security of person and property would be sustained and politics could be made compatible with the demands of large nation-states, with their complex patterns of trade, commerce and international relations (see Krouse, 1983, pp. 58–78).

In parallel with this view, Bentham held that representative democracy ‘has for its characteristic object and effect … securing its members against oppression and depredation at the hands of those functionaries which it employs for its defence’ (1843, p. 47). Democratic government is required to protect citizens from the despotic use of political power, whether it be by a monarch, the aristocracy or other groups. The representative state thus becomes an umpire or referee while individuals pursue in civil society, according to the rules of economic competition and free exchange, their own interests. The free vote and the free market are both essential, for a key presupposition is that the collective good can be properly realized in most domains of life only if individuals interact in competitive exchanges, pursuing their utility with minimal state interference. Significantly, however, this argument has another side. Tied to the advocacy of a ‘minimal state’, whose scope and power need to be strictly limited, there is a strong commitment to certain types of state intervention: for instance, intervention to regulate the behaviour of the disobedient, and to reshape social relations and institutions if, in the event of the failure of laissez faire, the greatest happiness of the greatest number is not achieved – the only defensible criterion, Bentham held, of the public good.

From classical antiquity to the seventeenth century, democracy, when it was considered at all, was largely associated with the gathering of citizens in assemblies and public meeting places. By the early nineteenth century, in contrast, it was beginning to be thought of as the right of citizens to participate in the determination of the collective will through the medium of elected representatives (Bobbio, 1989, p. 144). The theory of representative democracy fundamentally shifted the terms of reference of democratic thought: the practical limits that a sizeable citizenry imposes on democracy, which had been the focus of so much critical (antidemocratic) attention, were practically eliminated. Representative democracy could now be celebrated as both accountable and feasible government, potentially stable over great territories and time spans (see Dahl, 1989, pp. 28–30). It could even be heralded, as James Mill put it, as ‘the grand discovery of modern times’ in which ‘the solution of all difficulties, both speculative and practical, would be found’ (quoted in Sabine, 1963, p. 695). Accordingly, the theory and practice of popular government shook off its traditional association with small states and cities, opening itself to become the legitimating creed of the emerging world of nation-states. But who exactly was to count as a legitimate participant, or a ‘citizen’ or ‘individual’, and what his or her exact role was to be in this new order, remained either unclear or unsettled. Even in the work of John Stuart Mill ambiguities remained: the idea that all citizens should have equal political weight in the polity remained outside his actual doctrine, along with that of most of his contemporaries (see Held, 1987, ch. 3).

It was left by and large to the extensive and often violently suppressed struggles of working-class and feminist activists, frequently in complex coalitions with other groups (notably, sectors of the middle class), to accomplish in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a genuinely universal suffrage in some countries (see Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992). Their achievement remained fragile in places such as Germany, Italy and Spain, and was in practice denied to some groups, for instance, many African-Americans in the US before the civil rights move...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Analysis: The Formation and Displacement of the Modern State
• Part III Reconstruction: Foundations of Democracy
• Part IV Elaboration and Advocacy: Cosmopolitan Democracy
• Acknowledgements
• References and Select Bibliography
• Index