I’ve just completed a co-edited Special Issue of Sustainability on the theme of troubled times. You can view it here.
When Susan Baker and I started on the task in 2019/2020, the troubled times we envisaged were government austerity policies (which had so refocused governance and reduced public sector capacity) and the rise of right populist governments, with their rejection of science and their distortion of liberal democoratic government itself.
Early in the course of preparing the Special Issue, COVID-19 struck. It revealed the depth of the impact of both austerity and right populism on our collective ability to address the pandemic and above all the power of misinformation and distrust. We now tragically see similar issues playing out in the horrific crisis in Ukraine. These are existential threats not just for hopes for sustainable development but for liberal democracy itself. Neither the dominant political mantra of economic growth nor the actions of right populists in power appear to give much prospect for our urgent need to live better with one another and with the earth.
I was fortunate to attend a webinar organised by the European Consoritum for Political Research earlier in the month on the need for ‘a science of democracy’. It left me considering how we have become complacent about both the meaning, and the importance of the structures, of democracy; how political science has become largely a commentary on existing competitive politics, and how these issues resonate with the ideas of civic bureaucracy.
As the US founding fathers suggsted, democracy is something that needs to be noursihed and protected. It cannot be static. The nature of demcoracy has in theory changed hugely since it was recreated in the seventeeth century as a club for powerful men under a limited franchise, yet somehow those men have hung on to power.
It is not enough to have created an (imperfect) form of universal franchise not even a constitution. For democracy to survive it needs to be truly representative and engaged in a process of mutual civic dialogue and learning. Competitive two party systems and the reflecting glass of the media seem terminally unable to offer this.
So here is some food for thought on the science of democracy debate:
- is an electoral system without proportional representation, ease of voting and any scope for multi-party government fit for modern times?
- thinking back to Montesquieu and the importance of separation of powers for the avoidance of tyranny, how should senior judiciary and public servants best be appointed?
- should the quality of democracy be measured by the behaviour of its institutions rather than the existence of a ballot box? (Most demagogues have emerged through electoral processes.)
- can any democracy dominated by a small sector of society or powerful economic interests truly be called a democracy?
- is a country which sustains or increases deep social and and economic inequalities truly democratic?