Democratic malaise

Several months ago I wrote a letter to Tony Clement, the Conservative MP who had recently complained that only “elites” and “chattering classes” cared about the government’s second annual prorogation. Clement had told the press that he had received “maybe three dozen emails” from constituents voicing their concern, and although I wasn’t one of his constituents, I decided to send him an email of my own.

“If you are gauging the reaction of Canadians according to the feedback your office has received,” I said at the time, “then I might respectfully argue that a major part of the reason you have heard from fewer constituents than last year is simply because many of us have grown disillusioned with our government during the past year.

“Many Canadians who are critical of the decision to prorogue Parliament again feel that it reflects an unwillingness to engage with the citizens it serves, and these concerns may be having a very real and negative impact on the belief among Canadians that their government is listening. You may simply be receiving less emails because fewer Canadians believe there is a point to sending them.”

I never got a reply from Clement’s office. Oh, well.

At least I can rest easy knowing that Clement did go on to learn the value of a handful of emails. Two months after the prorogation thing, I noted that Clement publicly cited just one email as proof that Canadian women wanted a more gender-neutral national anthem. And although I can’t identify for certain the one person who’s been sending Clement emails directing his opinions on the census issue, the theory seems to be that it’s Harper himself – and that he hasn’t been giving Clement very good advice.

But that’s besides the point. The reason I mention all of this is because I’d like to keep the democracy thread rolling by getting back into Swift’s book. I got a fairly good response to my first post last week – although not in the comments, so please do feel free to share your thoughts on this stuff. Today, I thought I’d move into the all-too-relevant subject covered by Swift’s next chapter: democratic malaise.

“While democracy has triumphed as the political system of choice,” Swift says in his introduction to the chapter, “it is showing an increasing degree of popular disaffection. Voter turnout and other indicators of popular participation are in precipitous decline. The average citizen is feeling estranged from the political process and the more-or-less permanent political class that has come to dominate it. Money and those who control it easily shape the results of democratic decision-making. This is causing a crisis in the meaning of democracy although international surveys indicate that as a core social belief the majority still believes in democracy.”

The last point Swift makes above is, I think, the most telling and the most encouraging. The woes that he’s laid out in his introduction shouldn’t come as a shock to most people; every election brings with it a wave of editorials about the problem of voter turnout, and complaining about our “crooked politicians” is practically a national pastime in countries like ours. But most people still believe in democracy as a “core social belief” – and I think that suggests that even though people may think that our system of government isn’t a very healthy one, they recognize that we have – and deserve – a better option.

Indeed, Swift acknowledges that the idea of democracy is more popular and vital than ever; back in 2000, 120 of the world’s 192 existing countries, and roughly sixty percent of the world’s population, were represented by electoral democracies. But then he questions the current practice of democracy around the world by pointing towards events like the 2000 presidential election in the United States.

“Of the tens of millions of votes cast it boiled down to a few hundred votes in the State of Florida. This close contest hung on voting machines that didn’t properly record the voter’s intentions (particularly in poor areas), badly designed ballots that misled voters, police intimidation of some voters, the refusal by the highest court in the land to recount the vote, the exclusion of a significant portion of the electorate (mostly black) because they had (often trivial) criminal records, the use of vigilante mobs to stop the re-counting of ballots and the role of blatantly prejudiced authorities in adjudicating the outcome of the election. The result – a victory for Republican candidate George W. Bush through the vote of a winner-take-all Electoral College system that favors smaller often quite conservative states. He triumphed despite the fact he had received less of the popular vote than his Democratic challenger.”

He also points out the ways in which politicians and the media managed the vote. “It was as if the actual principles of democracy were less important than issues of stability, continuity and eventually ‘closure’… It had to be clear with as little doubt or delay (two things often necessary for democratic fairness) who was going to be at the ‘helm’ of global leadership… Maintaining the facade of democracy was more important than its substance… It felt very much like a case of ‘okay, we’ve gone through this vote ritual – now let’s get back to what really matters’. This undoubtedly touched a chord with a near majority of the US electorate that had given up on the electoral process anyway.”

Obviously, on a global scale, it’s not all bad news for democrats. Swift points towards the rapid decline in recent years of military dictatorships and socialist states, for example. But he also argues that this presents a new challenge to democracies everywhere; since the end of the Cold War in particular, he says, “it is no longer enough to have to justify a set of political arrangements… by reference to an undemocratic and sinister ‘other’ by simply saying ‘things could be a lot worse’. Now democracy or its absence must stand naked on its own and be judged for what it is rather than what it isn’t. And it is not just the intelligentsia of politics (political scientists, journalists, pundits and so on) who are now doing this but also ordinary citizens. The results of such judgments are quite sobering…”

That seems like a great place to leave off for the moment; we can save the sobering judgments themselves for another time. For now, what are your thoughts?

Posted in Democracy