Democratic Theorists in Conversation

Turns in Contemporary Thought

J. Gagnon

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349458554, 9781137322760
• eBook ISBN: 9781137322777
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy has changed considerably in recent years to the extent that our contemporary understanding differs greatly from long-held democratic values. In this collection, renowned democratic theorists from Noam Chomsky to Francis Fukuyama give their thoughts on 'new democratic theory' and its implications for the study and practice of democracy.

1

Introduction: New Democratic Theory?

Jean-Paul Gagnon

Introduction

Something is happening to democracy. A change has occurred. An entire discourse has been transformed as a result of recent logical and moral shifts in the methods of research and the ontologies of theory. Democracy is now a body of knowledge unlike that we have seen before. By democracy I mean the entirety of human knowledge about the subject – the way we think about it as a whole and the way we institutionalize or measure what we think are its most basic tenets. Today democracy is, for example, being described differently to the way that Dahl (1956), Mayo (1960), Sartori (1957), Schumpeter (1942), Macpherson (1977) and Dewey (1916) described it in their own works and in their own times.

The genealogy of democracy has changed; ancient Greece is a child of democracy’s much older parents. Democracy’s historiography has been broadened; secret and forgotten democratic societies are increasingly cropping up across research into the past. Research methods for democracy have become more capacious; there is an observable shift in the type and amount of data used in the econometrics of democratic polities and behaviours. The theory of democracy has become increasingly comparative – especially between disparate societies. And all of this is still happening. Once people thought everything to be said about democracy had been said – but a new world of democracy is now upon us.

A portal has been created. This new door has recently been permitting scholars of democracy to explore an oppressed, secret and forgotten area of the discourse on democracy. Novel and celebrated works on democracy are increasing, possibly as a consequence of Martin Bernal’s importantly controversial Black Athena (1987, 1991, and 2006) books. These types of books, chapters and articles are appearing across disciplinary boundaries – from history, anthropology, philosophy, biology, international relations and archaeology amongst others. And they are all arguing the same theme: democracy is not what many thought and still think it to be. Democracy is being found in unexpected places and times. We have broken the boundaries of an entire discourse.

Democracy as a discourse has been a body of knowledge colonized. Before the turn to new democratic theory, as a consequence of transdisciplinary post foundational and post universal impacts, the study of democracy and its praxis were inescapably European. Its origins were Greek, its developments and most important moments were English, French and US-American. Contributions to theory and praxis were later made by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany and other mostly Western states. Democracy was not a product of anywhere but the West. Its genealogy said so. Its historiography said so. And its practices said so. Democracy was, ironically, often reviled by the bygone oligarchs of Eurocentric places until it became popular. Oligarchs now often sing in praise of this thing called ‘democracy’ whilst still working in the shadows to bring certain ‘bastions of democracy’ like Australia, the EU or the USA, to its knees.

Democracy surely had existed over thousands of years in many complex different forms we have yet to fully understand across certain parts of mostly southern, northern and western Europe. But it is not the product of these places. The history, theory, genealogy and practice of democracy had, as a result of empire and power, become colonized by European thinking. Once the discourse formed, the doors were closed, the boundaries cemented, and the blinders installed.

It is difficult to define when this happened. Indeed, it is improbable to give the exact moment of this ‘discourse colonization’. It is something that happened gradually and unintentionally over time. It was and is the product of the success of first modernity, as Ulrich Beck might say. For more than five hundred years much of western Europe held power over substantive parts of the globe. The social value of universities as many individuals understand them today grew therein. Literate individuals formed literate societies. Religion and ideologies were strong. It was an age of certainty. It was a time where the clichés of today were then normative and guiding tropes: ‘might is right’, ‘the white man’s burden’, ‘the modesty of women’, and ‘a man’s place [unstained honour] among peerage’ are some examples.

For many European individuals in this type of meta-society, the indigenous, African, Arab, and Asian were backwards: their histories, politics, social practices and normative passions were heathenish. They were objects of mirth, curiosity and fear. Entire human systems were trinkets and glaringly patronized or considered dangerous and viciously destroyed. The dominance of imperial Europe degraded much less powerful human societies and formed, as it were, the club that everyone wanted to join. Some wanted to get in to learn the ways of power so as to use them for later subversions of imperial Europe. Others wanted to join their dominators so as to be able to sit themselves on the thrones of narcissism, idiocy, myth, violence and mistake.

The portal to the new discourse of democracy was created by the individuals across time and space that identified this colonization. It was and is the people that could name this condition, build the concerns about it, and then make the recommendations for how to proceed in response to it that we owe our thanks. For me the list of these individuals is not lengthy and is mostly composed of people still living today. Each of the individuals interviewed in the coming chapters of this book contributes to this de-colonization of the discourse. New democratic theory recontextualizes Eurocentric democracy – often confused as representing democracy itself – as an important part of the discourse, not the domineering owner of it.

But there are problems. This is a new ontology. And there are debates around it. Some think that this portal that I am identifying does not exist. Some are reserved and legitimately cautious: claims to the ‘new’ are often straw people. We have been led astray before. It is best to entertain the plausibility, to keep a sharp eye, and to see how this supposedly ‘new’ ontology plays out. Will it form a global turn and change the foundations of an entire system of thought and practice? Or will it fizzle and pop? Is there or is there not a ‘new democratic theory’?

These positions and their respective shades in between come gradually through each conversation in this book. As thinkers draw from their past and current works, experiences and future outlooks we gain insight into how certain cutting edges of democratic theory seem to be shaped. As we read through these candid moments we gain the ability to start forming a multi-dimensional object in our minds – an object that represents one of the cutting edges in the contemporary study of democracy. And as will be seen in the Conclusion to this book there are a few objects of this type present within these pages. We see the worries about where we are heading. We see the recontextualizations of the past. And we see serious debates about what the most valuable emphases of democracy should be.

There is in here too the answer we are after. Does new democratic theory exist and is this a describable phenomenon? As will come to be seen in this book I think that the answer is yes. Recent publications and arguments at international conferences are, for example, identifying irreversible changes to democracy. These are changes that come about in response to post foundational and post universal turns in human knowledge – not just in the social sciences.

‘Post foundational’ and ‘post universal’ are, to me, synonymous. They are used in this book to signify the underlying reality of the content being discussed. Arguments are made from positions affected by, but not limited to: cosmopolitanism, the global risk society or ‘age of uncertainty’, the recognition of the ‘other’, the global human roots of knowledge, and the transdisciplinary reality of discourses. Together, these items break apart previous foundations or claims to the universal. We are now in the business of picking up these shards of previous erroneous foundations and building them differently with new materials.

A critical review of the literature

We would do well to stop now and set out the details of the changes established in the paragraphs above. The claims made are significant ones. They need to be carefully described. One justification for doing this review is that new democratic theory is a recent phenomenon – hence the ‘new’ about it. The ontology built in this book is not widely known outside of democratic theory. It is not widely known within democratic theory either. Another justification for this pause to look at the literature is that it affords us a good opportunity to seriously discuss one major aspect from each forthcoming conversation in this book.

As described in the Preface, the conversations (chapters) are organized into thematic groups. The first group is history and genealogy. The second is theory. The third and last group is normative and practical outlooks. The turns in the literature around these themes are also, together, some of the main components of new democratic theory. Several conversations addressed more than one of these themes so the conversations are sorted around what I thought were their greatest thematic focus. It is these main themes that will be discussed in this literature review.

History and genealogy

The first theme of this book looks to the past. It looks to the way that democracy as a whole has evolved. In other words, it looks to the genealogy and historiography of democracy. The turn, as I and others see it, has happened on two fronts. One front is that democracy’s genealogy has been seriously challenged. The works of Keane (2009), Schemeil (2000), Isakhan (2012), Memel-Fotê (1991), Stockwell (2011, 2013), Muhlberger (2011), and Paine (2011), have, for instance, given evidence of democracy pre-dating Herodotus’ (1996 [460 BCE]) first use of the word ‘democracy’. Keane argues that evidence in support of a rhetoric of democracy, in Linear B script, is present in Mycenaean stone tablets. Isakhan argues that ancient religious epics from Babylon and Assyria show evidence of assembly and representative democracy. Paine describes how indigenous peoples in North America had their own collective governance mechanisms independent of Greek or European influence. And Stockwell gives detailed evidence of democratic behaviour from ancient Judea and Phoenicia which, for example, pre-date democratic Athens.

I too have had a role to play in this challenge to genealogy. In my book Evolutionary Basic Democracy (2013) I describe that nonhumans offer a bounty of evidence on how to govern collectively through ways we as humans consider arguably democratic. I show in my own way, but similarly to Isakhan’s and Bernal’s heuristics, that democracy’s genealogy has been erroneously and speciously tied to Greece, Great Britain, imperial France and the USA. If it was not tied to these supposed safeguards and bastions of democracy across time and space then democracy was preserved by ancient Rome and Italian city-state republics or Swiss Cantons. Yet as I showed in Evolutionary Basic Democracy these are false narratives. The Republic of Rome is, for example, not today considered to have been a ‘democratic’ place (Matyszak 2013) and the ‘barbarians’ (Gauls, Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths and Saracens among others) that sacked Rome are increasingly looking to have made their decisions through assembly and possibly representative forms of democratic governance (Isakhan and Stockwell 2013).

One particularly effective way of summarizing the turn that has happened in the genealogy of democracy comes from Schemeil (2000). His work looks at ‘democracy before democracy’. This type of work fractures and breaks apart the Greek foundations that numerous democratic theorists, like Sartori (1957, 2012), Dahl (1956: 8), and Crick (2002) had thought democracy to be built on. The vast majority, if not entirety, of democracy’s discourse had placed Greece as the founder and inventor of democracy. If not Greece then its foundations were French or US-American. This is no longer the case.

This turn in the genealogy of democracy can be taken further. Indeed, this challenge to older foundations of democracy can cut across the entire discourse. And John Dunn is the one who sets this out in this book. He argues that any aspect of democracy that we think we know – its history, genealogical narrative, practices, institutions and theories are entirely lacking in evidence. Backing his claim are classicists like Asmonti (2006) or Sissa (2012). These classicists are rehashing dated foundations and uncovering new primary data about the nature of democracy in ancient Athens or ancient Persia respectively. They are part of the corps of thinkers showing that nothing is definite regarding the democracy of the ancients. Nothing is certain. There is such a poverty of evidence to work from that we simply cannot, should not, be making the claims that many democratic theorists have made over past generations. So paltry is this evidence that Dunn argues we need to step away from this thing ‘democracy’ and to entirely reconsider it. We need to uncover the global truth about democracy’s history and genealogy. We need, I think, to actually start understanding it in a way that meets the rigour of contemporary scientific thinking.

Francis Fukuyama has similar positions. He would probably agree with Dunn that the evidence on any type of government or governance in times predating 10,000 BCE makes it difficult to uncover the contemporaneous details of politics back then. Fukuyama places democracy as mostly the product of first modernity (French and US-American developments) and he also argues that the genealogy has changed. Democracy for Fukuyama developed gradually and over long periods of time across the entire human-populated parts of the planet. It started as egalitarian governance where the individual was sublimated by the group. It was effectively a global race to a liberal, individualistic, constitutional, multiparty and human rights finish which ‘the people’ of the USA ostensibly reached first. Although the telos of his narrative is for me debatable, it is predicated on the post foundational starting point of democracy. That starting point is the entire human animal evolving its own democratic practices along with nonhumans. Thus the starting point of Fukuyama’s democratic theory matches the genealogical turn despite his reluctance to say that these were ‘democratic’ times.

History, or the historiography, of democracy is closely related to the turn in genealogy. Historiography is the work that happens in a mostly horizontal capacity. For example, if one were to look at the Visigoths in the 4th century CE, the process of working contemporaneously with evidence from or of the 4th century and pushing hard against anachronism to uncover the delicate details of these historic peoples would be a historiographic act. In other words, it is about broadening and deepening our quality of knowledge of historical peoples and places. In this book historiography is not so much about describing the historical narrative of democracy, that is genealogy, but rather about the work that is ongoing about better understanding historic periods that are claimed to have founded democracy. That is historiography – a horizontal expansion of knowledge for a particular period of time in space. It improves the quality of knowledge on historic things. It is the other front.

The turn in historiography is that each foundational period of democracy is gaining more detailed clarity. Held’s arguments in this book are integral to understanding this process. Scholars are re-examining the historical foundations of democracy because claims to the universal ownership of democracy from those periods are appearing increasingly specious. Held uses cosmopolitan theory as a means to broaden any particular history through the recognition of ‘the other’. He looks to build more capacious starting points for his preferred model of democracy by breaking out of the imperial ownerships of democracy. To offer one example, thinkers like Dryzek (2006), Keane (2003), and Chomsky (2006) look at the USA’s flaunted style of democratic governance. They examine its underlying concepts, working institutions and teleological outlooks. In it they see that the USA’s model is not the winner of a race to democracy. It is but rather another polity in serious trouble – another polity facing the decline of its democratic form. Its claims to being the democracy for the globe are untenable. US democracy is built on the history and thinking of other times and places. It is limited by old historiography. James Madison for example drew heavily from evidence of democratic Hellas. So did most, if not all, thinkers on democracy during the ‘representative era’ (circa sixteenth to twentieth centuries CE). Maybe US democracy will be rejuvenated by this broadening and deepening of the democratic places from times past.

Albert Weale is helpful here. The conversation in this book helps to illuminate how the history of democracy has been changing. He argues that there is what Isakhan called a ‘standard narrative of democracy’. It is a very limited story of democracy’s places in history and an explanation for how it came through, survived some say, into our present times. But as argued here in this Introduction, and as Weale argues in this book, this narrative is erroneous. Troubling is the fact that it is the most commonly taught narrative. This story of democracy’s history is perfidious. It is ethically wrong. It has colonized an entire discourse. But it is falling to pieces due in part to the turns in the two fronts discussed above.

Theory

The turn towards the ‘new’ in theory is predicated on a constellation of social and political theories and methods. Despite the arguments between the thinkers involved in that constellation their methods and ontologies are interrelated. Second Modernity (Beck and Grande, 2010), cosmopolitan theory (Held, 1995), the world risk society (Beck, 1999), the age of uncertainty (Bauman, 2007), pluriversality (Keane, 2009), post foundationalism and post universalism are, together, quite helpful. They help us pick apart the façade of old theory. And a number of thinkers have been actively picking. This old theory of democracy lies in pieces. It is being rebuilt via the rules of these new methods and ontologies.

Some of the methods and ontologies cited in the paragraph above may be unfamiliar. A few of the terms used deserve descriptive attention. Second Modernity is a term with many siblings: liquid modernity, next modernity and new modernity are some of them. And it is a term belonging not only to Ulrich Beck. Wheeler (1999) for example uses it. So do others. As Beck shares in his interview, he follows others and others follow him. The goal of Second Modernity is similar, if not the same, as the goal of new democratic theory. It is to clearly demonstrate that a rupture, or separation, has occurred between one older period of modernity and one newer period of modernity – or one older period of democratic theory and one newer period. Thus Second Modernity argues that the world as a result of cosmopolitanism, globalization and the age of uncertainty or risk society is different to the world that existed before these phenomena took centre stage.

Cosm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Short Biographies of Interviewees
• 1 Introduction: New Democratic Theory?
• 2 The Impossibility of ‘Knowing’ Democracy
• 3 The Changing History of Democracy
• 4 Democracy Before and After the State
• 5 The Cultural Turn in New Democratic Theory
• 6 Questions about the New Democratic Theory
• 7 The Reflexive Modernization of Democracy
• 8 Twists of Democratic Governance
• 9 Certain Turns of Modernity in Democratic Theory
• 10 Enlivening the Democratic Imagination
• 11 Nonhuman Democratic Practice: Democracy among the Bees
• 12 Global Leviathan Rising
• 13 Conclusion: Shapes of the Frontier
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index