Democratic Dictatorships and Speaking Truth to Power

Western parliamentary-style democracy is only one of several options that different societies find appropriate. 'Democracy' means something different in the UK from what it means in America and the different European countries. We whose histories include rotten boroughs and beer-for-votes rallies should not be surprised at how difficult it is to stage one-person-one-vote elections in many parts of the world today. Fewer people voted in the last UK election than in the 'Big Brother' TV series. We are not in a wonderful position from which to offer the rest of the world a permanent political solution. (N.T. Wright)

"To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true." Bayard Rustin

In last week's "Doctor Who", entitled "The Beast Beneath", we were given a very sharp satire of voting. The inhabitants of Star Ship UK were given a complete understanding of what made the Star Ship run every five years, and then they could register a protest against that, or select the choice to have their memory wiped for another five years.

Voting is good, because it does allow the electorate to change government without bloodshed. But it has come to be seen as a universal panacea. And it most decidedly is not. Here are a few of the problems with voting:

In African countries, where tribal loyalties determine voting allegiance, we have seen a dominant tribal majority impose its rule upon minority tribal groups. This was seen as long ago as the 1970s by Christopher Booker, who commented that:

Despite all the lessons of the past twenty years, we still see Dr Owen cavorting about under the impression that `one man, one vote' means something other than just the fact that, sooner or later, there will only be one man left in the country whose vote carries any weight - the tyrant. When Dr Owen uses that phrase `majority rule', meaning a `black majority', he is still of course thinking of `majority' as it is defined in the liberal-democratic phase of the Platonic cycle - a preponderance of free, autonomous citizens. In practice, however, in Africa just as in many other parts of the world, it all too often comes to mean simply that tyranny of the `People', the demos, over the mass of actual people - a deadly abstraction which may be used to cloak and to sanctify every kind of atrocity and `civil wrong' practised by a part against the whole (and in many parts of Africa this has been given a new twist, as the members of one tribe have, in the name of the `whole', been able to tyrannize over the rest, through their control of the party or state apparatus). (1)

In Iraq, the grouping is along the religious divide, with the majority Sunni taking control of the country. The danger is that a group in power, voted in a democratic election, will privilege its own members to the detriment of the minority groups.

This has been observed for some time. Alexis de Tocqueville first coined the phrase "tyranny of the majority" in the 1835 "Democracy in America", and it was taken up strongly by John Stuart Mill. Mill wrote that "there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own".

But this can also occur with subtler divides. The more prosperous members of society can also act as a group, without deliberate intent, simply by voting for those politicians who largely support their own self-interest; in this way, the owning class, and the middle classes can effectively exclude the working class and poorer members of society.

A sure sign that there are problems with voting patterns within the electorate is low turnout. One of the main reasons for a low turnout is a disillusionment with those being elected. People don't turn out to vote because they don't think it will make any difference. They believe that whoever gets in will simply ignore their own wishes, and go their own way. And they usually have some grounds for that.

Some politicians -for example Deputy Anne Dupre of St Clement - came out with a manifesto in which exemptions were needed for GST, and within about a month or so of being elected had a Damascus road conversion and instantly voted against exemptions. Other politicians (such as Alan Maclean) so fudged the issue that no one knew precisely how they might vote, because they had said they would have voted for exemptions provided that other financial matters were resolved to their satisfaction. There were some, like Ian Le Marquand, who gave a clear commitment to exceptions, and voted for exemptions, but not every politician was as honest or straightforward. Now I'm not saying that voting for exemptions was good or bad, simply that politicians made a promise to the electorate, and then promptly changed their mind.

This makes something of a nonsense of the idea that voting is the whole story. Bishop Tom Wright, who is a also historian of the ancient word, makes this comment:

The greatest democracies of the ancient world, those of Greece and Rome, had well-developed procedures for assessing their rulers once their term of office was over if not before, and if necessary for putting them on trial. Simply not being reelected (the main threat to politicians in today's democracies) was nowhere near good enough. When Kofi Annan retired as general secretary of the United Nations, one of the key points he made was that we urgently need to develop ways of holding governments to account. In our idolization of modern secular democracy we have imagined that, provided our leaders attain power by a popular vote, that's all that matters, and that the only possible critique is to vote them out again next time round. The early Christians, and their Jewish contemporaries, weren't particularly concerned with how people in power came to be in power; they were extremely concerned with speaking the truth to power, with calling the principalities and powers to account and reminding them that they hold power as a trust from the God who made the world and before whom they must stand to explain themselves. (2)

Last Sunday's episode of "Foyle's War" showed something of that. An elected government had decided - secretly - to repatriate any White Russians captured (and their dependents) to Russia, following Stalin's demands. This was dramatised exceedingly well:

Many of the Russian prisoners were transported to Britain and were held in training camps originally used for British troops. Of politics, most of these men knew nothing. All their lives they had been harried hither and thither in the name of confused ideologies by commanders whose languages more often than not they could not understand... Common to all of them was an absolute dread of returning to the Soviet Union. They were certain that they would be killed or, at the very least, sentenced to the unspeakable horrors of the labor camps. (3)

But at a Cabinet Meeting, Anthony Eden was able to convince Churchill that all Russian POWs must be repatriated, forcibly if necessary. Foyle takes up the case of a missing Russian, and a Russian who had committed suicide rather than be captured again by the British Army - again something that was happening frequently. The reason for the spate of suicides was that news had reached Britain of the first soldiers to be "repatriated", and how they were massacred. Foyle cannot halt the process of events completely, but he can speak out and secure safety for the missing Russian, because he can holds the official perpetrating this particular part of the official policy to account.

It is this holding governments to account, and speaking out, that is just as important as voting. As with the case of the Russian prisoners, a government in power assumes a mandate to decide what to do, and may forge ahead regardless. Sometimes, as in the case of the Russians, or in the case locally of "in camera" secret States debates, or the Privileges and Procedures Committee meeting to discipline States members in secret sessions, there is a blindness to the need to be accountable. It is assumed that voting provides all the accountability that is needed.

But in 1954, the Quaker community in the United States published a pamphlet entitled ""Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.". The title, and much of the text is thought to be the work of Bayard Rustin.

This is not just about challenging the status quo, but it is about calling to account, when needed, how a government is behaving, and wherever there is seen to be injustice, persecution, or tyranny. Here a a few extracts from this paper

There is a politics of time, but there is also a politics of eternity that man would ignore, but cannot. He plays with the politics of time, sees it, manipulates it, imagines it is of himself alone; but both the politics of time and of eternity are of God. Only the eye of faith perceives the relationship, for it alone glimpses the dimension of eternity. Man sees but dimly, yet enough to know the overarching Power that moves in the affairs of men. Because we are first men of faith, and only secondarily political analysts, we would speak now, finally, of the politics of eternity which has undergirded the whole.

This is not "reasonable": the politics of eternity is not ruled by reason alone, but by reason ennobled by right. Indeed "faith is reason grown courageous." Reason alone may dictate destroying an enemy who would destroy liberty, but conscience balks, and conscience must be heeded, for nothing in our reading of history, or in our experience of religion, persuades us that at this point conscience is wrong.

To risk all may be to gain all. We do not fear death, but we want to live and we want our children to live and fulfill their lives. Men have ventured all and cheerfully risked death and starvation for many causes. There can hardly be a greater cause than the release of man from the terror and hate that now enslave him. Each man has the source of freedom within himself. He can say "No" whenever he sees himself compromised. We call on all men to say "No" to the war machine and to immoral claims of power wherever they exist and whatever the consequences may be. We call on all men to say "Yes" to courageous non-violence, which alone can overcome injustice, persecution, and tyranny.

Links:
(1) Christopher Booker, The Seventies
(2) N.T. Wright, God and Caesar
(3) http://www.fortfreedom.org/h16.htm
(4) http://www.quaker.org/sttp-7.html

Democracy: Some Acute Questions

We hear a lot about "democratic accountability" and "democratic representatives" and voting nowadays, especially in an election year. The main idea is that you can vote, and that can change things. But that is, I think, a very simplistic idea of a democratic state, especially one which uses representative democracy.

In "Democracy: Some Acute Questions" (the Fourth Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences 22-25 April 1998) there are some interesting comments and papers from a global perspective which look at this in more detail. Sometimes it is useful to step beyond the narrow confines of our own society, and get a bigger picture, especially before the rain of election pamphlets begins.

Professor Wilfredo Villacota from the Philippines notes that:

For too long in the Philippines we have regarded democracy as a method for elections and policy making. We sometimes forget that democracy has the ultimate objective of choosing the right kind of leader - the right kind of leader defined in terms of competence, morality, commitment to human rights, the human person, as well as social justice. It is more complex than just the choice between authoritarianism and democracy, and more complex than the democratic choices that people in a highly developed country such as the United States face. For example, in a developing country where the media determine to a great extent the popularity of candidates, you find the preponderance of show-business people, actors, sports heroes, as aspirants for public office. There, you find a situation where electoral mechanisms are controlled by the government, where money, political machinery, political influence and rampant cheating determine who the winners are.

This certainly raises some issues locally, for instance:

a) How fairly are the candidates reported, is there bias in the local media? How can we ensure that there is not?
b) Are there limits to electoral spending, and how are these enforced?

I do not think there is "rampant cheating", or at any rate I have seen no evidence of it in Jersey politics.

Another important paper by Professor Taketoshi Nojiri (Department of Economics, Kobe, Japan) looks at "values as a precondition of democracy". I've glossed the paragraphs regarding the local situation.

Granted that the democratic system contains a sort of self-control mechanism of social powers which dictatorship does not, this mechanism, however, does not always function justly and effectively. One should not forget that the Athenian democracy killed Socrates. Citing a more familiar instance, democratic society even in our own days often in reality becomes a monopolistic system dominated by a majority power, or a claim-society (Anspruchsgesellschaft) which eventually leads to fiscal bankruptcy.

One has only to look at the way in which Stuart Syvret was suspended back in the 1980s by the States over the Limited Liability Partnerships Law, had his mail checked, and latterly, silenced over his Christmas message to see this kind of failure. These are supposedly our representatives silencing a vocal critic. Whatever one thinks of Syvret, whether one agrees or not with what he says, it should be said that the States clearly did not function justly, despite being a representative democracy.

Apart from the exceptional case of a small group, democratic decision-making in a group is normally carried out by voting. And, at that time, it is usual for the procedure of one vote per person and of decision by the majority to be adopted. This is, however, merely an ideal, because in reality men are never homogeneous, i.e. because each individual has his individual qualities: a person's ability, culture, personal circumstances, etc., are all different from those of other people. This diversity places certain demands on a democracy.

The first and most important point is respect for the opinion of the minority. The reason lies for this lies in the fact that a decision agreed upon by the majority is only an expedient which has been devised in order to decide the will of a whole group. Since no one knows the absolute truth, it is thus entirely possible that the truth can in fact have been grasped by the minority.

A decision-making process by a majority that disregards this point could result in dominance by a powerful majority and thus in a kind of autocracy.

The second point, connected with this, is to care particularly for social strata that cannot effectively organize or assert themselves. Without such a concern, such strata will be thrown into underprivileged situations. Thus, even in present-day democracy, the so-called "new poverty" (neue Armut) has emerged and constitutes one of the most serious social problems which now exists. Therefore, special consideration for these strata is indispensable in the achievement of a just functioning of democracy.

Respect for the minority is always a case in point. In a society where there are people on the poverty line, or carers with handicapped children, I am not convinced Jersey has a good record. The condition of properties in bed-sit land, the inability of the States to do anything about it - as highlighted by Nicholas France, the Catholic Dean - shows that we face precisely that kind of problem over here. Terry Le Main of Housing says they can't do anything about it!

A further requirement for the just functioning of democracy lies in the participation of almost all the qualified members in the process of voting. Apart from very rare cases, however, it would be unrealistic to expect everyone to participate. The degree of awareness of participation varies among members. A by no means small number of people are indifferent to social or political matters (apathy), or pursue exclusively their own interests, and are not willing to participate in the voting process. The low polling rate that is often deplored at general elections in democratic nations demonstrates this fact. For this reason, it is always necessary in a democracy to stimulate and strengthen people's interest in public matters and thus in the common good of the whole of society. Furthermore, for the same reason, democracy requires a competent leader who guides people on a sensible course. There has never been a democracy which has operated effectively which has not had good leaders.

In larger social groups, direct democracy becomes not only technically difficult but also inappropriate. In present-day politics, democracy is almost always indirect in character and adopts the representative system with a division of decision-making and its implementation. It is natural here that a representative stands for the interests of his party or of his supporters. But, in this instance, there is always a danger that the particular interests of his party or supporters will be generalized by him as constituting the common interest of the whole of society.

This danger can be seen most clearly in the operations of the Council of Ministers, who I do not think seem to show sufficient self-criticism. To take a trivial case (except for those involved), it has aligned itself with one group against another with regard to the importation of bull semen, and is determined to pursue what it thinks is "the right agenda". The same can be seen with school milk, the lack of exemptions for GST, the Waterfront development plans - always there is the lack of connection with the rest of society. A good leader is not someone who loses the trust of the people, and acts as if his course is the "sensible course" without engaging with the common interest of the whole of society.

For the just functioning of democracy, a deliberation on the common good is required of the representative, and likewise of all the members of the society concerned. At the same time, the representatives and the leaders must be trusted by their supporters and followers. In the democracy itself, the most decisive point in the end is trust: in an indirect democracy, after discussing at various levels and exercising their voting power, people can do nothing more than trust their representatives or leaders. Whether a society is democratic or not ultimately depends on the presence of trustworthy relations. The Confucian statement "a state cannot continue to exist without trust" must apply to democracy as well.

How much trust is there left in Jersey politics? Voting is not enough, there must be that trust, or else the only people who will vote are those who have not sunk into apathy because voting, as I've been told by many of them, "will change nothing". I think the contrary, but I think getting people on the register is not enough. There is a serious need to rebuild trust.

In addition to the above, two matters should be mentioned. Firstly, certain elements such as concern for the common good, powerful leadership, and trust in political representatives are vital in a democracy. In this respect, there is not really so great a difference between democracy and autocracy. Indeed, these elements become rather more important in the former than in the latter, precisely because in essential terms democracy is a system which presupposes the autonomy of its members.

Powerful leadership means the ability to respect the minority, to listen, and to get the trust of the people, and to be able to carry the people forward on any measures for the common good, not ignore them and press on regardless. The Poll Tax in England was an example of this kind of willful blindness. Will GST be similar in Jersey?

Secondly, and for the same reason, whether a democracy operates successfully or not depends largely on the educational and cultural level of the people concerned. If it is not above a certain level, neither positive participation nor meaningful discussion will be attainable, and such processes as one vote per person will become a myth.

And that means considering the Portuguese and Polish minorities, where even a small thing like a referendum, is presented only in English. Was this by the same Jim Perchard who provided election materials in Portuguese? Doesn't he now care now he is elected? If we don't show people we care, how can we expect them to get involved and vote? Would you? Simon Crowcroft is one of the few who is actively looking into the matter of language. Aren't there any others who care?

Chesterton on Democracy

"The Council of Ministers could have been forced to resign. Frank Walker could have had his knuckles sharply wrapped. But, hey, this is Jerseyland, folks, so a lot of talk, but nothing happened. No change." - BBC Radio Jersey Presenter, Thursday morning, 7.10 am.

With the recent vote in the States, Voice for Children said: "It has been a very sad day in our political history. I will re produce below an e-mail I sent to my 3 'representatives' where I asked them how many Parishioners they had been in touch with before making this HISTORIC vote for them and how I would like them to vote. Are we really, as the establishment and local media would have us believe, living in a true democracy?"

http://voiceforchildren.blogspot.com/2008/07/representing-public.html

But what is a democracy, and how does a "representative democracy" work?

This letter was written by G.K. Chesterton nearly a hundred years ago, and he was debating with another correspondent on what representative democracy actually means and whether it existed in the government of his day. Reading it, I was struck by how much it could equally apply to Jersey!

1) I say a democracy means a State where the citizens first desire something and then get it. That is surely simple.

(2) I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of representation, it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear.

(3) The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some control over detail; but the design must come from popular desire. Have we got that down?

(4) You, I understand, hold that English M. P.s today do thus obey the public in design, varying only in detail. That is a quite clear contention.

(5) I say they don't. Tell me if I am getting too abstruse.

(6) I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield a Parliament which
wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain?

7) If you ask why the people endure and play this game, I say they play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot-paper as he takes off his hat to the King--and would take it off if there were no ballot-papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that definite?