Hendrik Wagenaar — Is democracy in crisis? No, there’s just a new type of emerging democracy

The question if there is a crisis of democracy is one of the most important and vexing issues of our days. So, let’s not rush into facile answers and first ask ourselves some basic questions about democracy. For example, what does this ideal that most people still believe in entail? The democratic theorist Mark Warren once said that democracy consists of two ideals whose realisation are both necessary for a healthy, flourishing political system: the distribution of powers of decision-making to those potentially affected by collective decisions, and equal participation in collective judgement. The first ideal is the one that figures most prominently in debates about democracy in the media and learned journals. This is, what you might call, the canonical image of democracy. The political contrivances that the media get excited about. This first ideal consists of the procedures, beliefs and practices that most Western nations have institutionalised over the course of the last two centuries, for the purpose of protecting against an arbitrary state and to develop structures of accountability. The result is the well-known ‘liberal electoral democracy’ that is characterised by a regime of competitive parties, limited opportunities for political participation through voting and organised interest groups, representative oversight and accountability, constitutional constraints on government activity, due process rights against the state, the right to speak and associate, and an administration of experts governed by an administrative ethos. It is one of the most important achievements of collective human ingenuity. When we talk of crisis, this is the kind if democracy that occupies our collective imagination. Let’s call it Democracy1. 

I want to focus on the second democratic ideal; that of collective judgement and individual development. I call it Democracy2. According to this ideal democracy is an arrangement for collective learning and problem solving. It is value-driven, but only in the way that values manifest themselves in concrete issues. It requires processes of communication through which individuals come to know each other and develop their preferences, articulate their values and beliefs, and develop skills of collective judgement; usually by forming civic associations based on voluntary attachments. When we see democracy in this light, two things immediately strike us: while it receives much less attention in the media, and is often actively discouraged by political elites, there is no talk of crisis. In fact, this developmental and participatory form of democracy is thriving in our post-crash world.… 

Some good news. I would call what he calls Democracy 1, representational democracy, as in the reputed slogan of the pre-revolutionary Boston Tea Party, "No taxation without representation." I would call what he calls Democracy 2, participatory democracy, as in the phrase Abraham Lincoln made famous, "government of the people, by the people and for the people." If participatory democracy is growing, that is a very good thing.

Open Democracy
Is democracy in crisis? No, there’s just a new type of emerging democracy
Hendrik Wagenaar

Don Quijones — Nato Summit Is Glaring Proof Of Demise Of Representative Government

A “ring of steel” some 12 miles long and costing over 110 million dollars was erected to protect the political representatives of some of the world’s freest and most democratic nations as they freely exchanged ideas and thoughts on how to preserve the West’s global domination at the barrel of a gun.…
The reason why Western political leaders feel the need for such heavy-duty protection from the people they’re charged with representing is quite simple: they no longer even pretend to represent them. Instead they have become little more than a protection racket for the world’s largest corporations and richest individuals. As the full scale of the betrayal slowly dawns on the people of the West, public rage is inevitably rising.….

Neoliberal capitalism and participatory democracy are antithetical. Capitalism prioritizes of the interests owners of the means of production, financial and actual over the interests and needs of society and the environment. This sets — money and machines ahead of people and the planet. Neoliberal capitalism is naturally oligarchic and anti-democratic, favoring representative democracy that can be captured by money and power to participatory democracy and genuine popular sovereignty.

Now, you can call such a system of governance whatever you want (I myself prefer the term “inverted totalitarianism), but one thing it is decidedly not is democracy.

Raging Bull-shit
Nato Summit Is Glaring Proof Of Demise Of Representative Government
Don Quijones

Robert Reich — The Disease of American Democracy

But did the average citizen ever have much power? The eminent journalist and commentator Walter Lippman argued in his 1922 book “Public Opinion” that the broad public didn’t know or care about public policy. Its consent was “manufactured” by an elite that manipulated it. “It is no longer possible … to believe in the original dogma of democracy,” Lippman concluded.

Robert Reich

The Disease of American Democracy

Theresa Riley, Bill Moyers & Company — Wisconsin Democrat who infiltrated ALEC: ‘They don’t want people involved in the political process’

I'd be shocked it this were not already so well documented. But here is a first hand report by an "infiltrator" on the neoliberal mind in action.

Here's an illustration of their idea of representative democracy."

One guy I was talking to, who was from one of these right wing think tanks was saying we need to curb Obama’s reckless power with these administrative regulations, and he wanted a federal constitutional amendment saying Congress has to approve federal regulations. I said, I don’t think most people are going to want to amend the Constitution for that. I don’t think that ignites people. Maybe it does on the far right, but most people don’t really care about that. And he said, “Oh, well, you really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both.”

That sentiment was underscored so many times to me, that they don’t want people involved in the political process, or in the policy process. And that seems to be the intent in a lot of ways: You have a think tank in every state and all they do is come up with these very, very regressive policies, you have corporations who are going to benefit so they fund it all, and then you have the legislators as your foot soldiers to carry out the tasks.

The best government that money can buy. And the best equipped security force to enforce it. The difference between fascism and communism is that fascism is corporate statism, and communism is corporate statism. Just a matter of emphasis. A neo-feudal elite are in control in both.

 I was really impressed by their infrastructure. I mean, we would never duplicate something like this on the left because, first of all, we would never take instructions from corporations, but the coordination that they have between these policy think tanks, the money and the legislators, in terms of just driving an agenda, it’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m fascinated by it because I’ve never seen anything like it from the left. I was the public policy director at Planned Parenthood, so I’m very familiar with building infrastructure. We did a lot of that in the state of Wisconsin. But we have nothing that I know of on the national front that connects all these things.

It is a well-oiled machine. They’re really organized, they’re really coordinated and they have the resources. And they’re not afraid to push it when they have the opportunities. Now they have 24 state legislatures that are Republican controlled and they have Republican governors. So they’ve had incredible success. They’ve had 71 bills introduced just this year that make it harder for most people who are injured to access the courts. We’ve certainly seen that here in Wisconsin. That was one of the first things that Walker did when he came in was push this tort reform through.

The Raw Story
Wisconsin Democrat who infiltrated ALEC: ‘They don’t want people involved in the political process’
Theresa Riley, Bill Moyers & Company

Corpocracy: The Tyranny of Neoliberalism and Detroit's Financial Crisis

Abstract: 
The city of Detroit in 2013 is confronted with a financial crisis so severe that municipal bankruptcy may be the only viable solution. Racial mistrust unfortunately structures the political communication between political leaders in Detroit, the suburbs, and the state. Amid this contentious political climate of racial mistrust, allegations of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption have been directed at the city of Detroit as causes of the crisis. The aura of racial mistrust makes it extremely difficult for city, county, and state officials to implement an equitable solution to the financial crisis. The most damaging aspect of racial mistrust is the obfuscation of the fundamental cause of the crisis. Building on the arguments of Wendy Brown (2003, 2006), Henry A. Giroux (2004,2005), and Michael C. Dawson (2012), we argue that the fundamental cause of Detroit’s financial crisis is the implementation of neoliberal fiscal and social welfare policies targeting the poor by chief executives and legislative elected officials in Washington D.C. and state capitals across the nation. This paper focuses on the Detroit’s financial crisis, and offers as an example, the policy solutions offered to address the thirty-five year federal government oversight of Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department, to illustrate both the perils and challenges facing citizens and political leaders whom are opposed to the anti-republican nature of neoliberalism. The Detroit financial crisis is not merely an isolated local issue; it is a referendum on the duties and obligations of government toward its citizens. Will federal and state governmental officials become more responsive to the concerns of its citizens of color, or will elected officials continue to implement policies that elevate the political desires of the free market above those of the citizenry and transform American governance from an inclusive representative democracy into a corpocracy.

Corpocracy: The Tyranny of Neoliberalism and Detroit's Financial Crisis

Henderson Butler III and Ron Brown | Wayne State University

(h/t James in the comments)

James Madison on democracy

[1:422; Madison, 26 June]
[Mr. Madison.] In all civilized Countries the people fall into different classes havg. a real or supposed difference of interests. There will be creditors & debtors, farmers, merchts. & manufacturers. There will be particularly the distinction of rich & poor. It was true as had been observd. (by Mr Pinkney) we had not among us those hereditary distinctions, of rank which were a great source of the contests in the ancient Govts. as well as the modern States of Europe, nor those extremes of wealth or poverty which characterize the latter. We cannot however be regarded even at this time, as one homogeneous mass, in which every thing that affects a part will affect in the same manner the whole. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, & secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this Country, but symptoms of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarters to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded agst. on republican principles? How is the danger in all cases of interested coalitions to oppress the minority to be guarded agst.?

The Founders Constitution

Chapter 15|Document 35

David Bollier — The Icelandic Putsch

Bad turn of events in Iceland.

David Bollier

The Icelandic Putsch

What are we to make of this contemptible turn of events?

The lesson for me: “Representative democracy” is too crude, centralized and corruptible a vehicle to faithfully represent people's collective interests.  Elected officials will rally to protect their own self-serving interests and power even if it means conspicuously flouting the public will expressed through legitimate channels.  I don't see this case as one of a few deceitful legislators.  I see it as a structural problem of liberal democracy as a system of governance.  Legislators see the will of voters as contrary to their own self-interests. 

The Icelandic putsch validates the claim made by Occupy, the Arab Spring, the Indignados of Spain and other citizen-protesters that state power as now constituted is itself the problem.  The conventional “checks and balances” on power imagined by 18th century constitution-writers are woefully inadequate today, and the system is incapable of reforming itself from within.

I think the Icelandic putsch illustrates why we need to develop different types of (distributed, democratic, commons-based) governance models.  These smaller provisioning and resource-management systems – for natural resources, research, software code, etc. – could not only be more responsive and accountable than state systems.  They could begin to supplant and challenge the state’s unaccountable power and its furtive, anti-democratic alliance with market players.