| DEMOCRACY AND FUTURES |
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On Futures of Democracy - Democracies of the Future
| Author: | Peter Mettler |  |
| Rights sold: | English | |
| Genre: | Science | |
| Number of pages: | 208 | |
| Edition: | ||
| Editor: | Mika Mannermaa, Jim Dator, Paula Tiihone | |
| Series: | ||
| ISBN: | 951-2885-3 | |
| ISSN: | ||
| Publishing company: | Committee for the Future, Helsinki | |
| The year of publishing: | 2006 | |
| Origin Country: | Finland | |
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Today, democracy is an idea and an ideal as well as a social movement and a political system. They all emphasize the value of human beings and their wellbeing higher than profit or the wellbeing of business. THE NOTION OF THE CITIZEN — A EUROPEAN VIEW The author is fully aware that this is a Western, a European or even a Central European view and that the number of (new) enemies of this Western construct as well as real-life entity “democracy” is rising. He cherishes the premise that the world faces once more a crisis because big powers want to force the rest of the world to act the same way as they do (the very “problématique” of today, but predominantly one of that part of democracy which could be called “inter-state and global” democracy). And one of them is particularly skilled: It combines its hegemonial (nation-state) ambitions with the presently predominant economic theory (or ideology) of economic liberalism (neo-liberalism). This theory originated in the same country but proposed sometimes quite the contrary than this world player does (who could be called a left-over from the 20th century). Again and again and all over history powers do not seem to be able to accept that everything human is temporal or even ephemeral, theories and power included. Or in other words: The first basic question for today and for the future is, how long can economicpolitical systems or regimes prevail over educated citizens if they restrain basic freedoms like speech, religion or enterprise? The Russian example shows that it was possible for more than 70 years! From there, the second basic question arises: Can we define “citizen” in general, only for today or only for the political entity in which we live? And how long would such definitions last in the future (a definition of that other part of democracy; “Vicinity and inner-state-democracy”)? A true citizen never is really afraid. He feels responsible for the system and the system’s environment in which he, his family and his friends as well as his company (or the structure which supplies his sustenance) live and work, and cares about the future of all of them. Europe’s classical ideal was Émile Zola’s polemic treatise “J’accuse” . Our shortcoming here is that we are not able to come up with proposals of how to bridge the ever growing hiatus between an individual’s capacities and the global necessities. to bridge the ever growing hiatus between an individual’s capacities and the global necessities. Today’s world problématique (and other world-wide problems) The author further dares to pretend that the following list of present world problems is pretty objective (but not at all exhaustive). Isn’t that contradictory? Above he presented a pretty mono-causal “theory”, whilst the list offers many other “reasons” for the world’s crisis. The solution is, that most “problems” are much older than the time span since respective theories were born and that people behaved already much like the theory commands already long before it was formulated … : Poverty and underdevelopment co-exist with excessive and even rapidly growing wealth and lavishness, profits of so far unknown dimensions, blind market fetishism (economic neo-liberalism), criminality in general and economic criminality in particular (often exercised by real-life economic “liberals”), decay of virtues, ecological catastrophes and climate changes, terrorism, crypto-religiosity, aimlessness as well as missionlessness of the western wealth-society, lack of ideas of progress (or of “cultural” missions), nation-states with strong tendencies towards all-comprising control under the guise of techno-economic structures like RFID or genetic tests, attempts at world hegemony or at least at regional dominance … There is no use in just presenting this “contradiction”. We will have to mediate and develop means to its neutralisation, i.e. to optimally globalise freedom, justice and equality (of chances for progress, education, a decent life, honour, etc.) for “every” citizen as well as the very notion of what it means to be “a citizen” (but of what?). In order to neutralize the negative consequences of the problématique as well as of all the other problems (to “balance” them to neutralize the negative consequences of the problématique as well as of all the other problems (to “balance” them) or even to turn them into advantages, lots of individual as well as group or social virtues like civil courage, engagement and solidarity are needed. But one also has to have positive feelings when resisting or even revolting and a lot of other (private) virtues … one has to permit one self and sometimes even to force one self to be a free spirit à la Zola and to speak up in public. Both parts of the virtual (future) world democracy have to be seen as mutually dependent on each other, though, as from today, it much looks like that the “vicinity and inner-state-democracy” will ever be determined by the “inter-state and global situation”. But dependence on the big picture, the world-players, does not necessarily have to stay that way, as week indicators like the forced opening of the World Economic Forum by NGOs have shown. Is market fundamentalism or neo-liberalism comparable with a tsunami? The revolution of the market fundamentalists is a mighty offensive against “the citizen”. It agitates against his democratic participation in decision-making in spheres like politics, economy, security and culture, etc.. It wants to break the bourgeois conviction that society is geared by citizens instead of by shareholders, tycoons and other bosses. The market is praised to be “god almighty”, just, rewarding and punishing, but in the end surely to the best of all. And they have been quite successful in the last years because of their strategy and skills in public relations and (fake scientific) think tanks, “buying” lots of “neutral” scientists … the man on the street argues today already that it is “natural” to take on a second job if his first one isn’t rendering enough sustenance to keep up the standard of his family … till the defamation of unionists and work councils … How about a comparison between a tsunami and globalisation? Would the latter also disappear (or loose its strengths) after a while? Is globalisation just like a fashion or is it rather irreversible? Well, it all depends on the notion of time apalso disappear (or loose its strengths) after a while? Is globalisation just like a fashion or is it rather irreversible? Well, it all depends on the notion of time applied as well as on how tolerant one is in view of the value of paradigms: the tsunami paradigm certainly implies many deficits like: though it definitively is a possible strategy for the short run to hide in a well-built house in order to wait till the tsunami is over, what happens if you resurface and discover that the environment in hundreds of thousands of square miles around you is destroyed? – Today, after twenty years of globalisation of the new kind (not to call it imperialism), there is no un-destroyed region on the globe any more and no refuge anywhere … and outer space is not yet available, if ever … If tsunamis have been a matter of survival for (hundreds of) thousands, globalisation and its consequences -in detail as well as overall -in detail in particularin view of climate and the environment but also in view of continued degradation of living conditions and life-chances for millions of people, overall they have become a matter of survival for mankind … that’s why it is good to draw consequences out of such a comparison and to be able to state “globalisation (at least as it was implemented so far) is infinitely worse and much more far-reaching” But the antiquity of mono-causality can further be demonstrated by a whole array of other theories as well as realities. First of all multi-layered-ness would have to be mentioned, followed by (the lack of) corporate governance, (weak) civil societies, imbedded-ness, (necessity of the) world in balance, capitalocracy, structural totalitarianism, lack of (world) governance, etc. … though here is not the place to further elaborate on them. How about the old experience that someone has to start taking alternative steps? Europe’s main task for her next decades should be to develops new notions and forms of ’inner/internal’ democracy as well as ‘outer/inter-state/inter-political entity’ democracy democracy and offer them to the world for imitation (not outspoken but by living them). What that could mean for Europe (as “the” spearheading region of the world) will be elaborated after the specification of the two types of democracy mentioned. Notions of democracy have not really been discussed in the latter sense so far but need to be discussed most urgently (with many in-between facets). The difference between the two types of democracy mentioned ties in with the difference between “future of ‘today’s’ democracy” and “(new forms of) democracy of the future” (and parts of the following could also be interpreted as a first design for a vast research program): Which futures for national multilayered democracies and for global democracy? a. Democracy as an idea historically came into being as an anti-idea: against clergy, feudalism, military and party regimes or against totalitarian ideologies. The historical as well as the present nation state is “abstract” in the sense that the average citizen can’t grasp most of its logic, e.g. in economic or financial matters, in science and technology or in foreign affairs. Secondly and thirdly and closely related to the first point, the nation state needs ideologies (for its own sake as well as for the sake of its citizens). And fourthly, it is entirely based on its power monopoly (geared to the inside as well as to the outside). Today’s democracy, potential future versions or forms of today’s democracy as well as future new variations face the many challenges mentioned, above all those of the globalised economy as well as those of the globalization of almost all other spheres of life. – Democracy was regarded as the very best form of politics and yet and at the same time, it was and is heavily loaded with severe deficits. That’s why democracy is more uncertain than ever or why future structures will most likely be completely different. Or even: the chances for survival of today’s versions of democracy are decreasing since the basic facts, on which they once were built, do not exist any more. The list of important factors of change reads as follows (but is not exhaustive): “Political entities” (in particular: superpowers and/or global players) have reached sizes far beyond every classical notion of nation states (e.g. China and India; but the EU as well, with today 461 Mill. citizens, and new ones to come; superpowers have tendencies to act unilaterally). Size is one of the major factors of uncertainty: Size of populations as well as of finances, sizes of infrastructures and trans-national conglomerates (formerly “multinational corporations”), size of the world-wide-web, size and number of world problems, e.g. the environment, raw material shortages, the thread of A-, B-and C-weapons and the size of the hierarchies, e.g. amongst the roughly 200 states on our globe. A second factor is today’s dynamics,a third is complexity. Science and technology are developing so rapidly into such complex structures that change renders structures and situations obsolete at such a rate that we witness the most unbelievable kinds of a-synchronomities like coalitions between 17th century authoritarianism and long-standing democracies, or, and to the surprise to many, even in the European parliament, moderate modern social democrats side by side with ancient Stalinists. And: The situation of decision-making in science and technology badly demand new forms of steering ... a forth factor. In addition, there are ideologies involved. One is the ideology of justice. How just states might ever have been, today’s worldwide justice, e.g. in regard to the equal worldwide distribution of resources or of the equal worldwide distribution of processing knowledge 7 , is extremely questionable (most recommendable in this respect: Franz Josef Radermacher, op. cit.). A second ideology and, at the same time, one of the central features of civil sosecond ideology and, at the same time, one of the central features of civil society, is the ideology of voluntary actions. However valuable as well as indispensable it might be at local and regional levels, its worldwide influence on strategic high-level decisions is, most regrettable, almost zero. However, ideologies like these two are almost the only forces promising to be able to control the further criminalisation of all spheres of life as well as the globe-threatening ecological short-sightedness, since ever bigger entities (global scales) are rendering attempts at their control more and more difficult if not totally illusionary. Most indicative is also the example of the European Ombudsman: this institution on the fringes of classical law belongs to the most well known European institutions. Its intrinsic high degree of voluntarism can be seen in the fact that it is approached in more than half of all complaints via internet. b. Whatever the idea of “democracy of the future” might be, it should be aware of the list of conceivable risks, doomsday-possibilities and wild cards already existing today. And it should have emergency plans at hand on how to scope with them ! – But before this not at all exhaustive list is presented, two central features of today’s theory as well as reality have to be mentioned: • Should a comparison in aggressiveness between democracies and other societies be attempted, the statistical evidence would probably be most shaky because of highly complex definition problems like “What is democratic, what is “fair”, what is aggressiveness, what is a conflict, etc.”? • What happened so far and what would happen in the future to “democracies when in danger”? Did they / will they restrict their inner democracy for the time of defence and rejuvenate it after the danger was / will be banned? Which were the means of defence against “which dangers” so far, which dangers are to be expected or which ones are imaginable? Which means have been proposed so far under the rubric “democratic methods of counteraction”? - Nuclear winter … could occur after explosion of a critical number of e.g. atomic bombs; - B and C warfare; - Wars of certain “size” (amount of soldiers involved, amount and kind of weapons used, areas involved, and numbers of civilian casualties … more comprising than e.g. the Vietnam war or the two Iraq wars); - Tsunamis, hurricanes or rise of sea levels, floating plains like the Netherlands or Northern Germany, flat islands, port cities, etc.; - Terrorists attack like on 9/11 (or even more devastating); - Religious fanatism on more than one side (like e.g. in India, where Hindus sometimes are behaving comparable to Muslim fanatics); - Raw material shortages like e.g. oil, gas or uranium, etc. (Energy-NATO! 10); - Access to global commons like water, energy, food, education, information, etc - “Unbalanced” situations (Radermacher); - Situations of being unarmed, unprepared for defence or at least that one side imagines that the other is not prepared for defence and consequently ventures aggression; - US Dollar Crises (growing numbers of financial players are beginning to express their intention to sell their US $ holdings). a. and b. have been brought together in Table 1 ! “a. and b. seen together” allows the conclusion that the perspectives for democracy are dim unless the attempt is ventured, and hopefully successfully, to conceive a (large – if possible) majority of nations to start immediately to plan for such emergencies globally as well as locally under a global “regime”, based on a maximum on voluntary pledges but with possibilities for sanctions, wherever feasible and appropriate (a huge research proposal – sic!). Dynamics The potential of that scheme is up to 48 scenarios, if one would dynamize the 16 scenarios described in the vertical row “Problems …”, i.e. supplementing them by “scenarios decades later” after counter-measures were invigorated and showing positive and/or negative results. The format of the present publication restricts us here to the following three: “A” could be the present situation of middle-sized/complex/dynamic countries like Argentina, Poland or Thailand in particular under the point of view of trying desperately at least to keep the distance in S&T to the forerunners (if not to shorten that distance). “C” represents the most advanced country (or one of the most advanced), region or global player after a super push (based on whatever method, ideology or reason) e.g. in 2075 (the year of the basic scenario would be 2055, i.e. 50 years from today). Its “Size” is “big” Integrating table 2 into table 1 increases, above all, complexity. But complexity can not be evaluated independently of the tasks to be solved. In the globalsituation of 2050/2075 democracy’s complexity has most likely grown to “extremes” unknown so far and just suitable for the era’s dynamism and the thereof resulting structures. “Local” should be supplemented by “regional”; local would be too small (even if we would talk about a metropolitan agglomeration of some 10 million people) or too uneconomical to have that many parliaments and the superstructure to incorporate all of the necessary substructures. “Size of a Region” should mean between 20 to 40 million people. “World-regions” will be called as such. Finland is considerably smaller than a region but has remarkable dynamics. She is not yet really “complex”, her decision-making is still comprehensible and her S&T-system is by far not covering all sciences and/or technologies nor does it have to, because those, in which Finland has reached a world-leading role, are sufficiently profitable to be able to purchase the missing ones … “Niesch-theory”. Argentina is big area-wise (not so others in the same bracket) but neither dynamic nor complex; and she has no big S&T system. „B“ (Europe or the EU) has already some of the features of the new international structure, but „C“ will definitively have incorporated most of them. The EU is big but neither is her dynamism nor her S&T system (benchmarking/Lisbon-agenda) sufficient; and she probably is over-complex! After appropriate measures were taken (how many years later?) … she will have grown further to, say, 600 million people … her dynamism as well as her S&T-system regained world-leadership (or is amongst the best) … whilst her complexity is still too high. Her final break-through to “C” has not come yet and will not come unless she really thinks global, accepts global responsibility and is able to reconcile her local/regional problems with a majority of the global ones. But the dangers of isolationism and attempts at auto-sufficiency are real, difficult to be kept in mind and difficult to keep the alert against them alive; and many are tempted by them quite heavily. Glimpses on solutions The mentioned four factors (and two ideologies) paradigmatically raise the question of the possibility of new forms of democracy, above all that of a “(international) hierarchy of parliaments” and its power distribution. Could they have a structure like the one in table 2 (which could, at least partially, also function on Internet, virtually and/or simulated … and which tries to incorporate a multitude of models of democracy) and would some levels have the power to limit e.g. power and/or size of trans-national conglomerates or even of whole branches, size of population, influence of political-religious leaders and of the military, of pollution and of economy (the financial sector)? The principle of this proposal (which can not, of course, be elaborated here in greater / sufficient detail and which owes much to Johannes Heinrichs and Joseph Huber – see the list of literature) is to transform factual power into (limited) legal power. This proposal leads to the very most basic question on the future of the UN, the future of the entire present world system of roughly 300 “political entities” (i.e. trans-national conglomerates and mafia-like structures included) or to the quesproposal leads to the very most basic question on the future of the UN, the future of the entire present world system of roughly 300 “political entities” (i.e. trans-national conglomerates and mafia-like structures included) or to the question, if such highly structured “systems” 14 could develop new “learning” qualifications (within its own inner structures, decision-making procedures or information flow as well as intra-them)? Or: How could such a system of Sectoraland Sub-Parliaments be turned into a regime that provokes and enforces disclosure and transparency as well as knowledge and control of the “(in)finite” global space and involves civil society in decision-making? 15 And then there is, and perhaps lunatic to many readers, the futurist’s question: What will happen in general and to democracy in particular when the progress of ICT continues or even accelerates and machines get more intelligent than human beings? Will we then have to include a “Parliament of Humanoides”? Or will they turn into “entities”, dictating their creators, because these couldn’t decide on precautious measure in time because of internal rivalries … as usual … ? And finally: What does democracy today really mean in federal systems like the US or Germany? It means many things ... -Though it never is “good writing” to use too many “should” and “shall”, here is a last non-exhaustive list: • Limitations to corporate influence and/or lobbying as well as rules for corporate governance (trans-national conglomerates have been denounced as already pursuing own “foreign policies” beyond the states of their origin or where their headquarter is situated); One of the reasons why parties are part of the problem is the ever more excessive lobbyism at all levels, recently denounced anew by Thomas Leif & Rudolf Speth (Hrsg.), Die fünfte Gewalt – Lobbyismus in Deutschland, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2006 (The fifth power – Lobbyism in Germany) resembling in a way Karl Deutsch’s “nerves of government”. • Ending the constant widening of the gap between rich and poor (worldwide as well as within nations and/or hemispheres), as e.g. proposed by the Global Marshal Plan Initia(worldwide as well as within nations and/or hemispheres), as e.g. proposed by the Global Marshal Plan Initiative; or control of “tax paradises”, as proposed by OECD already quite a while ago, etc.; • Fencing in the activities of the market fundamentalists; demonstration that their ideas never really worked and that e.g. US governmental interventions are most frequent (that means by the very most powerful representative of that very theory … though probably not the most trustworthy); or a demand for the end of “capitalocracy” (in which democratic institutions are gradually and legally overturned by capitalism), i.e. that citizens have a chance to know the relationships between them and those who govern them … whilst in “global times” decisions are taken by anonyma far away and unfamiliar with local or regional circumstances; • Denouncing today’s modern “Imperialism” and “Totalitarianism”, i.e. the brutal use of military force in order to assure economic doctrine’s predominance (official language), or: the nineteenth century idea of hegemony of one single nation state (unofficial language). OUTLOOK Trying to be realistic, it wouldn’t be wise to hope or to require the whole world to turn democratic at once. Democracy was and is an Occidental, Western or European idea and is full of requirements terribly difficult to achieve (as well as to explain to those unfamiliar with democracy). If we downscale the West’s shared goal to democratise the globe to realistic attempts at democratic progress, the West/Occident might be more successful in the long run, simply because (and that is another belief), advances in modern science and technology are not independent of the underlying culture, the culture of enlightenment, of “sapere aude”, the right of every citizen to require satisfactory explanations of whatever seems to him to be unclear or unjustified. Postscript The EU as the most innovative amongst all players developing new forms of democracy? Citing the US-American author Jeremy Rifkin could eventually prevent us from being denounced as “Europe fanatics”. Rifkin’s analysis of the EU as a much more promising model for solving (world-) problems starts from the fact that the EU stands for peaceful conflict-regulation, that she tries harder than most others to reduce environmental damages and that general human wellbeing is ranking higher within her realm than the profit of the few (but that is hard to proof!). In order to be fair to the US, Europe’s foreign relations were economically acceptable so far because she had not to thumb her glass because of the US security umbrella. In fact, Europe is on the way to an ever more monstrous “democratic-entity” since many decades …though the result presently is impressive, it is truly open in the end … But it may not be forbidden to end with a list of Europe’s democratic goals and, partially already attained, achievements: • Europe’s identity is her diversity (despite the growing “one” official language English and an eventual “constitution”); • Peace for the European region and its neighbours; • Reduction of her dependency from other parts of the world (e.g. raw materials); • Prosperity for her member countries as well as for the (wider) region, and solidarity and help for less developed regions of our globe (reconciliation of people and power); • Progress in culture (e.g. the ongoing necessity to rebalance liberty and equality/social solidarity), standard of living, environmental protection, sciencetechnology-education (e.g. the Lisbon vision / strategy) as well as in insights into individual’s as well as mankind’s purposes; • Development of a (cultural) vision / an agenda for Europe or of Europe within the Occident (which includes responsibility for future European and Non-European generations); Europe as partner, never as competitor, especially not to the US or other global powers / players; • Security within Europe as well as for the world; • Development of an alternative European model of democratic Globalisation. Development of an alternative European model of democratic Globalisation. |
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