Modernity's Myths: Democracy and False Representation (I)





I. Introduction


The fact that democracy has turned into one of “modernity's myths” does not escape anyone. Even its most passionate champions (champions, that is, of their idea of what democracy means) can observe to what extent the word democracy has reached the proportions of a myth, when every day it is employed as synonym for “good” or “just”. This is a phenomenon that goes beyond political slogans. It is a semantic mix-up that confuses two unrelated categories: it means giving absolute value to a form that in itself does not contain any judgment of evaluation. Democracy is to politics, for example, what a hypothetical syllogism is to logic; that is, a kind or a sub-category. In other words, something that acts as a means or instrument that may or may not serve towards something good, is considered an end in itself, self-sufficiently good. Since language to a great degree gives structure to our thought, a linguistic aberration such as this can easily manipulate political conduct. Even the bravest cannot but shudder: we are before a myth of the size of Leviathan.


What then, is democracy? We are certainly not short of definitions, but it is unimportant to make a repertory at this point. Some definitions might include a reference to separation of powers. Since no true separation of powers exists in any country (certainly not in the European environment, and I'm afraid it is also the case beyond), let us put it aside for now, and let us make the assumption that democracies do indeed exist. If I don't put the word democracy in quotation marks it is precisely because of the elusiveness of a definition. Therefore, I won't be referring to any particular one, but rather to democracy in its “mythological” aspect, much in the way it teems in every politician's speeches and in our everyday life. What is its most basic defining element, without which nobody would dare to say there is a democracy? Representation. Who holds representation? A parliament. How is it constituted? Through elections.


Well, democracy, thus understood, is incompatible with true representation. And therein lies its mythical nature: man, harboring an innate and legitimate wish to live in a representative polity, has reached the obstinate conclusion that parliamentary democracy is a way, the only way, to do so. One could, intelligently and imaginatively, prove that this is false, that better ways can be conceived. But it is not necessary: history proves it. An authentically representative system is not an utopia, something to be invented. It has existed in some societies (the late Middle Ages especially stand out) or at least these societies have tended towards its perfection. Having range of political systems to choose from as wide as our minds are able to conceive, it is unacceptable to settle for the “least bad” (a phrase as pretentious as can be, repeated time and time again by the hosts of the status quo).


Why is parliamentary democracy not representative? Because a parliament fails to be representative in both levels of its existence: 1. it fails when considered relative to the State, as a representative organ that is integrated in it, and 2. it fails when considered relative to man, to the person it says to be representing.


1. As one of the State's institutions, as the “legislative power”, it carries out functions that are entirely alien and incompatible with a representative function. Representation implies a context of relation: one is represented before someone else, opposite or against an independent power. When that power is the “executive”, which precisely emanates from the “legislative” (this is in parliamentary systems; in presidential ones there is greater independence, but still limited since both belong to political parties), it is clearly impossible for there to be representation between two entities that are not independent from one another. If a kid in elementary school was treated unjustly by his teacher, he would want to take up his case to the principal. But, being little and defenseless and one out of many hundreds, he might ask his mother to go see the principal for him. If, somehow, a new law prohibited mothers from visiting principals and established that principals were to be named the students' representatives and take up the mothers' old function, then they would not be representatives at all, but tyrants, for they would both decide and represent. Therein lies the key. Even if the power that makes decisions is, shall we say, foreign to me, at least I will always have the assurance that I will be represented before it. If I were to choose this decision-making power, as I may do with parliament, it may now seem that the decision is made by an organ over which I hold some influence by voting its members. Nonetheless, since there is no bond of imperative mandate (through which the electors give instructions to the elected deputies that they must follow and must not exceed, thus truly making the elected a spokesperson of the concrete interests of the electors), this happens only in appearance, since ever since the moment of election said organ makes itself “independent” from me. Now, it is not undesirable at all that the organ in power be independent when it is time to make decisions, since otherwise it would be subjected to constant pressures and blackmail. However, the difference is that now, since the organ I choose to be in power calls itself representative, I surrender to it the possibility of being represented this time before parliament. I thus lose this very essential liberty. This way, the most “democratic” thing a parliamentary democracy can aspire to is to have a certain transparency in its decisions, that is, that citizens be spectators to what invariably is dictated from above (look, for example, to article 10.3 of the Treaty on European Union, which states in an involuntarily revealing manner what it really means for citizens to participate in the colossus of democracy:


“Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen ”).




2. In its second aspect, concerning the relation between the voter and the elected, parliament fails to be representative of society by only taking into account people as abstract individuals, devoid of all attributes, circumstances and singularities that configure them as a concrete person. It is clear that in practice nowadays in most democracies a person can't be represented by a deputy since the institution of political parties puts itself as intermediary in such a way that he only chooses a color, an ideological tendency (and one with ever less definition in our times) that, perhaps, represents him in the ideological sphere. But after all ideology is only a very small portion of someone's life and circumstance, and certainly the one portion that is least important for the State to consult him about. This way, he forgets to make himself heard as a worker, as a neighbor, as member of a family, cast under the illusion that every aspect of life is encompassed in his political tendencies. But even without institutionalized political parties, even in the most refined theory of liberal parliamentarism (without later modifications such as closed-list systems) representation is impossible, for there is no imperative mandate that maintains the bond between the represented and the representative and assures that he honors the duties entrusted to him.


These two aspects require separate analysis in detail, which will be the objective of the following posts in this series.

(Continues in Part II)






Modernity's Myths: Democracy and False Representation (I) | Firmus et Rusticus (in English)