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Global Crisis of Democracy?

Eduard BATALOV Modern democracy is in crisis, possibly global crisis. It is not as profound or dramatic as, say, the major crisis that marked the 1920s and the 1930s, when fascists came to power in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in Russia. And yet crisis phenomena and processes are thick on the ground, with many regions and countries sharing them. This claim may seem odd, especially so against the background of allegations about the worldwide triumph of not only liberal but also democratic idea and not just the ideawhich came into vogue in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union and the world socialist system collapsed, and even became accepted as something that goes without saying. Politicians, propagandists, and political analysts, including quite serious ones, all talked about the unquestioned victory for democracy. During the last half of the twentieth century the world witnessed an extraordinary and unprecedented political change. All of the main alternatives to democracy either disappeared, turned into eccentric survivals, or retreated from their field to hunker down in their last strongholds,1 Robert Dahl, a prominent US social scientist and author of fundamental works on democracy, wrote in 1998. The same was the line of thought accepted by the majority of new political leaders in former socialist countries, including Russia, which was virtually obsessed with democracy in the early 1990s. After several years, however, worry replaced euphoria; speakers and writers, both in the West and in Russia, increasingly air the view that democracy is not as fine a proposition as it seemed ten or twelve years ago and possibly will grow even worse. Moreover, the signs of crisis are revealed not only in countries where democracy has just made its first steps, but also where it has roots deep in the ground. Selfsame Robert Dahl, incidentally, admitted as much: Even in countries where democracy had long been established and seemed secure, some observers held that democracy was in crisis, or at least severely strained by a decline...2 There were numerous crises in the history of democracy, the more so that its history was discrete in nature and lacking in onward thrust. After coming into being in Greek poleis in the 5th century BC and lasting (Greece and the Roman Republic) for almost ten centuries, democracy proved a political misfit in
E. Batalov, D. Sc. (Political Science). In Russian this article was published in the journal Svobodnaya mysl, No. 2, 2005.

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medieval society and disappeared as a mass-scale phenomenon for more than one thousand years. Its revival in Europe as such a phenomenon was linked to the emergence of capitalism that in the course of its development experienced an increasingly urgent need for democracy as a form and method with a capacity to organize and maintain power relations corresponding to the spirit and principles of the laissez faire liberalism. This need persisted throughout capitalisms history, even though modern democracy, like capitalism itself, developed unevenly, with breaks and fallbacks occurring in the process of its deployment in space and time. A latest fallback of this kind is before our eyes. THE NEW CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY can be traced at the conceptual level. There grows steadily the number of publications, including scientific ones, devoted to the phenomenon of democracy. In the meantime, its content and meanings are increasingly vague. Democracy is a concept that virtually defies definition,3 says its prominent student Arend Lijphart. Echoes Mattei Dogan of the National Center for Scientific Research in France: Lacking a definition, the word democracy proves deceptive.4 Other political scientists speak in the same vein. There is no unanimity in the understanding of democracy at the mass consciousness level either, in Russia included. This dissonance is largely the consequence of semantic pollution distinguishing the term democracy. The political, social and economic successes of advanced democracies (accompanied by intense eulogies and self-praise) led to a situation where democracy became wrongly identified with freedom, well-being, justice, good rule, etc., to wit, came to be seen as a synonym of good and a key to national prosperity. As a result, the concept of democracy lost its true meaning, waxing, to quote US political scientist Fariid Zakaria, analytically useless.5 The notes that follow below consider democracy (as many of its students do) as a form and method of power (power relations) organization, based on popular self-government. More specifically, democracy is such a form of organization of power relations as enables the citizenry to participate in power decision-making either directly (direct democracy) or through freely elected representatives (representative democracy), while being able to influence the latter effectively and control their activities. While not identical to freedom, equality and other values of the same kind, democracy proves effective only if there are definite conditions and prerequisites. These are equality of citizens (or subjects of democracy) before the law and their respect for the law, primarily the Constitution or its equivalent; freedom, and specifically, the existence of civil rights and freedoms in society; respect for and protection of minority rights; political, religious and cultural tolerance. It is also obvious that a full-blooded democracy is possible only after society attains a definite (it is debatable, which precisely) level of economic and social development. At the conceptual and theoretic level, the crisis of modern democracy is most clearly displayed in the crisis of the so-called transitology, a totality of concepts of transition of separate countries and groups of countries from non-democracy to democracy. The so-called transition paradigm that took shape in the West in the

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1980s and the early 1990s implied that it included a number of successive stages. These were liberalization of a non-democratic regime, its subsequent democratization, and finally a consolidation which filled the political, primarily institutional, forms with democratic content. The implication was that any country that broke with its dictatorship was certainly on its way to democracy. A special focus was on free competitive elections as a necessary prerequisite for and simultaneously a basic element of democratization. As for a countrys economic development level, its historical past, sociocultural traditions, and ethnic make-up of its population, these were regarded as transition factors of secondary importance that could be neutralized by the powerful inertia of movement towards democracy. It is totally clear today that the transition paradigm has failed to stand the test of time. As Thomas Carothers writes in his article The End of the Transition Paradigm (which generalizes this conclusion), The transition problem has been somewhat useful during a time of momentous and often surprising political upheaval in the world. But it is increasingly clear that reality is no longer conforming to the model.6 The claim that former dictatorships were firmly steering in the direction of democracy proved imprecise and disorienting: many nations which initially opted for democratic change later strayed off course. The assumption that in the process of transition countries successively passed through all stages of democratization proved wrong as well, as did the view on elections as the determining factor in the transition to democracy. On the contrary, it transpired that such things as economic development level and former political record were highly important. Finally, it became clear, concludes Carothers, that the making of democratic statehood was a much more difficult problem than it had seemed at the time of third-wave democratization.7 BUT THE CRISIS of the transition paradigm overshadows the crisis of the transition process itself. Only about twenty countries out of approximately one hundred that were regarded as being in the state of transition can boast real success in democratic institution-building. The rest are in the political gray zone. True enough, many of those countries have adopted constitutions, hold regular elections, and have opposition parties and other civil society institutions. But they weakly reflect the real interests of the citizens, while the level of political involvement of the latter outside of the electoral sphere is very low; government officials are at odds with the law; legitimacy of elections is in doubt; the level of public trust in state institutions is not high, and their functioning is inadequate. This is the end of the transition paradigm, says Carothers. A latest and possibly most graphic confirmation that the strategy of speedy world democratization is in crisis was the failure of the policy the United States and its allies pursued in regard of Afghanistan and Iraq. Some outward signs of democracy can appear there, and something is already in place, albeit in a parodic form. But there is nothing in the way of convincing evidence that the democratic values grew attractive for the mass of Afghans and Iraqis, or that those countries created the necessary conditions for the burgeoning of the democratic institutions. A no less convincing confirmation of the collapse of the transition strategy arises from processes that took place in the post-Soviet space, Russia included.

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Former Central Asian republics slammed down authoritarian regimes, in some cases even harsher ones than the late-epoch Soviet regime. Russia opted for democratic reforms, but they were so hasty, chaotic, inconsistent, and crime-ridden that, on the one hand, discredited the very idea of democracy in the eyes of many Russians, and, on the other, generated negative political tendencies that required serious adjustments. The adjustments, in turn, were and are accompanied by unjustified excesses, as it often happens in this country. One way or the other, it is clear that democracy is in crisis in Russia. It is displayed in the crisis of democratic consciousness, which means that the political leaders lack a clear, concrete and, what is of no less importance, realistic view on which democratic reforms must be implemented and how it should be done, while the majority of citizens have not just vague but totally distorted ideas about democracy8 and willingly support authoritarian leaders and policies. The crisis of democracy is in the failure to secure equal rights and equality of parties vying for power mandates. Using dirty electoral technologies has long become the talk of the town. Electoral infighting, regional infighting in particular, is often a battle between moneybags, occasionally those with criminal antecedents, not one between groups of citizens, parties (mostly unsettled and puny), or even elites. Of course, reversing the procedure that entitled citizens in the regions to choose their own governors is a step back from democracy. But isnt it simultaneously renunciation of a mechanism that has long revealed its inefficiency if not counterproductiveness? The crisis of democracy is in sceptical attitudes to the institution of elections (absenteeism) and mass-scale distrust for candidates participating in power struggles, something confirmed, among other things, by the invariably high percentage of the against everyone vote. Power mandate is often bestowed on politicians who enjoy support of slightly more than 10-15% of voters. The crisis of democracy is in the low level of public trust in the elected authorities (President is the only and therefore distressing exception). I say distressing because concentration of trust in just one person, however good, is bad for democracy, which is based on pluralism and competition. The crisis of democracy is in the absence of efficient leverage whereby citizens can control the activities of the authorities they elect, local, regional, let alone federal. The attack on the press in Russia that marked several recent years was certainly not an attack on democracy. It was an attack on freedom. But freedom, let me repeat it, is the necessary condition of democracy, and its restriction inevitably affects the state of the latter. The crisis of Russian democracy is displayed in how powers are divided between lawmaking, executive and judicial agencies, and in public attitudes thereto. The real capacity to accept fundamental power decisions is concentrated in the hands of the executive agencies, with power functions frequently arrogated by individual administrators whose duty is to organize execution of decisions accepted at the political level. There is much concern about the public stance of the judicial branch whose independence is constantly in question. Some fresh evidence of the crisis of democracy in the post-Soviet space are coup detat attempts in Georgia and Ukraine. As is common knowledge, the for-

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mer attempt was a success. The Ukrainian outcome, whatever it is, will become known soon. But it is clear already now that the legislatively provided democratic (constitutional) mechanisms and methods of power succession have failed in both countries. Another thing is obvious too. As confirmed by one-year-long truck record of the new Georgian authorities, coups detat, even anti-authoritarian, cannot impose a democratic regime. The method whereby a product is made would take care of its quality characteristics not only in economics but also in politics. Thus, all apologetic explanations to the effect that violence was perpetrated against the antidemocratic order for the sake of establishing a truly democratic regime cannot be accepted in earnest. The events in Georgia and Ukraine have demonstrated that a considerable portion of their populations is ready to support violent, anticonstitutional actions of the opposition, and this is convincing evidence of a wide diffusion of revolutionary and mutinous moods, which by their very nature are profoundly antidemocratic. One more point. Political observers cite facts of direct Western involvement in the activities of Georgian and Ukrainian putsch-makers. Earlier there was interferencearmed interferenceby the United States and its allies in the affairs of Yugoslavia. There was an armed invasion in Iraq. There were numerous actions bearing witness to a steady orientation in a portion of Western elites to nondemocratic foreign policy methods and protection of the Wests interests by any (!) methods. Old democracies, too, evince substantial and stable malfunctioning of democratic mechanisms and changes in the state of democratic consciousness. This is something admitted even by Western analysts, who note a low level of public political involvement, government-corporate collusion, worsening real (and occasionally formal) inequality among citizens, encroachments on their rights, low quality of political decision-making, imperfection of societal governance mechanisms, a decline in the level of legitimacy of power, etc. Increasingly mentioned latelyin particular, as applied to the United Statesis the archaic nature of certain democratic institutions that took shape back in the last century or earlier. According to John J. Stuhr of Vanderbilt University, once efficient historical expedients are dogmatically presented as eternal values, values that are above the requirements of onward societal change.9 The world witnessed what that meant in practice in 2000, when the electoral college voted in a politician who, as experts claim, actually won fewer votes than his rival. But what is perhaps the main (and generalizing) sign of the Western democracys crisis is the alienation of power from the people and the people from power. Says Stuhr: We came to the exclusion of people from effective decisionmaking related to their own life on political, educational, aesthetic and religious grounds.10 Reduced to voting, democracy brings to power a minority that frequently is unwilling and often unable to take into account the interests of the majority and is practically uncontrolled by the latter. More than that, there grows the power influence of institutions (primarily groups of interests) which no one elects and which are unaccountable, even formally, to anyone. On all matters

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well-organized groups of interests, regardless of how small the respective groups of voters may be, are able to make the government obey their wishes. Designed to bring to power the majority, reforms brought into being the power of a minority.11 A similar picture is observed in Europe, the only difference being that the clash of interests is more clearly partisan there. But the moneybag impact on decision-making is excessive in both America and Europe, which shows even at the level of direct democracy. Originally conceived to rescue state policies from excessive Big Business influences, direct democracy became an arena where only the wealthiest citizens and influence groups could be the players.12 It might be objected that elections in old democracies normally involve less rigging than is the case in new democracies, that their power mechanisms allow fewer failures, that their election campaigns are less corrupt, etc. The general implication is that the crisis of Western democracy cannot be compared to its manifestations outside of North America and Europe. But can Americans and Europeans feel better where others are even worse-off than they are? Hence the position of voters, who have progressively less confidence that their elected leaders, the political parties, and government officials could or would cope fairly or successfully with issues like persistent unemployment, poverty, crime, welfare programs, immigration, taxation, and corruption.13 In recent years, alarming things bearing witness to the crisis of democracy are observed in the electoral behavior of citizens of several European countries France, Germany, Austria, and some others. The displeasure that certain sectors of their populations feel with the emerging state of affairs (an influx of guestworkers, growing numbers of Third World immigrants, gradually changing cultural aspect of white democracies; material problems linked to the crisis of the social state, etc.) encourages protest voting in favor of extreme right, openly antidemocratic forces. One cannot but mention yet another sign of the crisis of democracy, namely, its inability to efficiently stand up to new threats, primarily the so-called international terrorism. Strengthening national security is a natural governmental reaction to its manifestations. But it transpires that not a single democratic state and not a single democratic government in the world know how to provide security other than by actual restriction of rights and freedoms of its citizens. (The United States took this path after September 11, as did Russia and other countries.) A sharp rise in the level of secrecy and closeness of governmental agencies, and a surge in the number of clandestine political operations at home and abroad, which are not controlled from below (and occasionally from above), actually block or restrict chances for constant and efficient civic control over many bodies of power. THE CAUSES OF THE CURRENT CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY are multiple and vary as to their concrete signs from region to region and from country to country. But also there are some general, basic causes linked to the nature of democracy, the character of the modern epoch, and specific features of democratic practices.

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One of such causes is an inadequate interpretation of the phenomenon of democracy, which shows, as mentioned above, in the semantic pollution of this term and an unjustified identification of democracy with the general good. Interpretations of this kind tend to generate exaggerated expectations: hopes are pinned on democracy, which it is simply unable to make come true, and that leads to an inevitable disillusionment with democracy and often to steps breaking with democratic institutions and principles, which is particularly characteristic of states in transit. Like any other system of power relations, democracy has limited political capabilities and proves efficient in far from all situations and under far from all circumstances. For example, researchers came to the conclusion, as early as the 1970s, about inefficiency of democratic elections in split societies with stable religious and ethnic dividing lines. Democratic mechanisms show poor performance in emergencies (wars, social explosions, disasters, etc.). It is not accidental that democratic constitutions enable imposition of the state of emergency, which essentially is designed to limit democracy. Meanwhile, the late 1990s and the early 2000s are marked by a steady rise, on the global scale, in the number of emergencies and crises, which become something habitual and matter-of-fact. A particularly alarming development in this connection is the coming of international terrorism as a permanent threat to all democratic countries and democracy as such. If the latter fails to find some methods of enhancing its capability for self-reproduction against the background of constant external (and in some cases internal) threat, it is in for difficult times. There is yet another cause of the current crisis of democracyattempts at its speedy globalization and imposition where there are no necessary prerequisites for it. Of course, the starting minimum of conditions for democratization was always a very difficult matter, but often it was not even assigned (let us recall the transition paradigm) in the naive hope that the main thing was to start the ball rolling, to get into a fight, and then the power and the inertia of the process of democratization will supposedly sweep away all obstacles in its path. The lack of experience and skills in democratic institution-building and everyday management of democratic mechanisms was also among the things that caused the crisis. Leaders of the former Soviet republics, who, as a rule, had a vague idea about democracy but viewed it as a key to all problems, had to engage in political extemporation, which occasionally led them far away from the goal they had set themselves. Many other transit nations, however, were in the same situation. Mention should be made in this connection of such a powerful drag on democratization and functional democracy as the absence of democratic political culture. Many years ago Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba warned about this: But the development of a stable and effective democratic government depends upon more than the structures of government and politics: it depends upon the orientations that people have to the political processupon the political culture. Unless the political culture is able to support a democratic system, the chances for the success of that system are slim.14 There was no democratic political culture either in Russia, or in the post-Soviet space as a whole, or in the

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majority of gray zone countries. Neither is there any today, which is not surprising, for it takes years and years of purposeful efforts to shape it. Besides, it is not enough just to create this culture: its reproduction, like reproduction of the democratic system as a whole and its adaptation to new conditions should be the matter of constant concern. Nothing of the kind was practiced in Russia, or Europe, or America... THE CURRENT CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY is not a crash or a demise, it is precisely a crisis, a morbid state accompanied by a partial dysfunction and consequential upon a historic transition from one epoch to another. Though the next few decades promise to be harsh and filled with hard struggles for power inside separate countries and for resources and geopolitical footholds in the international arena, democracy has chances to cope with its present predicament, the more so that it is much younger than ancient democracy and its potential is far from exhausted. At any rate, as long as capitalism exists, so will democracy, for these two, to quote the poet (Vladimir Mayakovsky.Tr.), are twin brothers. Modern competitive democracy which implies rivalry where election of officials and the filling of leading posts are concerned fits in well with capitalism as a competitive market system. Moreover, the necessary condition of the normal functioning of an advanced market of economic commodities, capitals and services is the parallel functioning of a market of political commodities, capitals and services in the shape of competitive democracy. 20th-century societal development was accompanied by a buildup in the social and political role of the masses as transgroup entities.15 An effective control of these is possible either via governmental suppression and manipulation from above, or via their involvement in the political-market process (or rather provision of chances for that involvement) and the opening of an access to power, including its top echelons, for their individual representatives. Representatives of the masses are given an opportunity to try and purchase a power mandate, doing this in a totally legitimate way in electoral competition with each other. This cannot but win over to democracy members of most different socioprofessional groups, who hope to get personal access to power or to secure group representation. The bureaucratization and scientization of modern capitalist society are producing the same effect. The huge growth of bureaucratic apparatus is creating hundreds of thousands of cushy jobs which can be obtained by politicians and specialists who serve them via a predominantly democratic (competitive) procedure. In a nutshell, under capitalism, which turns political relations into a variety (albeit specific) of market relations, democracy is a mechanism for their regulation; this mechanism may suffer crises but on the whole it retains its importance as long as there is a demand for political and administrative power as a commodity. Modern liberalism, too, is giving democracy a chance for survival and further development. In Europe and America (and later in a number of Asian countries such as India) the pathway to political democracy led through diffusion in society of liberal values. Though there is no reason for present-day liberalism to celebrate a worldwide victory (once predicted by Francis Fukuyama), it per-

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sistsprimarily in the form of economic liberalismin many countries and regions of the modern world and naturally clears the way for democracy. Much will certainly depend on how its supporters use chances they are given by history. Currently there are many references to Winston Churchills comment (not always quoted correctly16) to the effect that democracy, though not without faults, is the best thing mankind has invented so far. But who said that the institution of democracy could not be open to improvement or that no attempts should be made to minimize those faults (it will never be possible, thank God, to remove them completely) and make the democratic institutions more consistent with the imperatives of the epoch? Many years ago, John Dewey made this splendid observation: We must study the idea, the meaning of democracy again and again. It has to be constantly discovered and rediscovered. If democracy is failing to advance, it takes the path of regress that leads to its extinction.17 This advice alone can help deal with the current crisis of democracy and later make democracy more efficient as a form and method of popular self-government. The above holds true for Russia as well. Fair enough, many view the crisis of democracy it is facing as evidence of democracys incompatibility with Russian historical traditions and Russian mentality. To quote St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, Where mentality is concerned, the Russians need a lord, a tsar, a president... In a word, one-man rule.18 Matviyenko voiced what, in fact, is felt by many Russians, who, however, fear to say it in so many words. And they feel this way because they constantly have to run into sluggish thinking, civic passivity, sloth, lack of initiative, and paternalist or downright servile psychology. This cannot be easily changed. There are other obstacles impeding democratization, including the Wests policies in respect of Russia and the constant threat coming from international terrorism. And yet, this country will have to develop liberal democracy institutions if it wants to solve problems facing it and find itself among the leading world powers. It is only in this way that the dormant creative energy of the people, one so much needed for a national revival, can be released. It is only the democratic mechanisms that can provide for a dynamic and regular replacement of leaders and regeneration of political elites, something that protects society against stagnation and bogging (one of the things that caused the collapse of Soviet socialism). The problem is how democracy should be built in Russia and how it should look concretely. The sad experience of the 1990s demonstrated that the mechanic borrowing of Western political experience only discredited democracy and made it even more remote. The same applies to the hasty and across-the-board democratization, which went practically in parallel with the blanket privatization. This means that consideration should be given to how to adjust the situation, and neither fear nor shyness should prevent us from looking for (be it even occasionally by trial and error) some new models and tactical and strategic moves. At the same time, we must not turn the whole country into a huge field for experiments, nor worry what Mrs. Grundy will say...

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1 Robert Dahl, On Democracy, New Haven & London, 1998, p. 1. 2 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 3 Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies. A Comparative Exploration, New Haven & London, 1980, p. 4. 4 A New Handbook of Political Science, Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Oxford, 1996. 5 Fariid Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York, 2003. 6 Thomas Carothers, The End of the Transition Paradigm, Journal of Democracy, 2002, vol. 13, No. 1, p. 7. 7 Ibid., pp. 14-17. (For waves of democratization, See: Samuel Huntington, Third Wave. Democratization in the Late 20th Century, London, 1991). 8 According to a February 2004 poll conducted by Yury Levada Center, Russian citizens asked What does democracy mean?, replied freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion (44%); nationwide economic prosperity (31%); strict compliance with laws (24%); order and stability (29%); a chance to do anything you want (6%), and so on. Only 18% (!) replied that democracy was election of state leaders, and only 6% linked democracy with the defense of minority rights (See: Yu. Levada, What the Polls Tell Us, Journal of Democracy, 2004, July, vol. 15, No. 3). 9 John J. Stuhr, Revealing Democracy Anew, Polis, 2003, No. 5, pp. 14-15. 10 11 12 13 Ibidem. Fariid Zakaria, Op. cit., p. 183. Ibid., p. 213. Robert Dahl, Op. cit., p. 2. According to numerous Gallup polls, the number of citizens accepting that Washington Administration can be trusted because it always or mostly does the right thing declined from more than 70% in the early 1960s to approximately 30% in the late 20thearly 21st centuries. Gabriel Almond, Sidbey Verba, The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton, 1963, p. 498. For more detail, see: E. Batalov, Political Culture of Modern American Society, Moscow, 1990 (Ch. 3, 1) (in Russian). For more detail on this incorrectness, See E. Batalov, Democracy and War, Svobodnaya myslXXI, No.7, 2004. John Dewey, The Later Works: 1925-1953, vol. 11, Carbondale, 1981/1990, p. 182. Itoghi, October 26, 2004, p. 16.

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Translated by Aram Yavrumyan