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The following text considers the outlook for democracy in the 21st century based on the theories by Tocquevilles and Bryce. This text addresses both the problems caused by a media democracy as well as the problems associated with a "lack of competition" for democracy following the collapse of the socialist alternatives. Overview:
Speculation about the future of the constitutional democratic state helps in determining the current situation. Speculation can help to mark out a path through the labyrinth of possibilities lying before every development of history. At the same time speculation forms a reference point from which the way in the future is opened up, that is, a sort of banister to guide those wanting to move forward into the future (...). Alexis de Tocqueville set the first modern standard for dealing with an idea that is as large as it is complicated during the 19th century. His work in America on democracy was more than just an analysis of the new world. This analysis fascinated this conservative European as much as it made him skeptical during his journey in America in the 1830s. Alexis de Tocqueville believed to have seen pure democracy in America and he believed that what he had seen would also become common across Europe. He anticipated how democracy might develop in the coming centuries and also anticipated many of the ambivalences that would indeed become established. De Tocqueville explained the nature of democracy from its anthropological premises rather than from its constitutional structure or from the procedures followed by its political institutions. The picture that people have of themselves, according to Tocqueville, is the constitutive basis for the democratic era. In this era, people strive with passion for freedom while at the same time searching for recognition by being equal with others. People's customs, referred to in Ancient Greece as "mores", are responsible for forming the soul of democracy: Democracy's soul is as good or bad as, firstly, the customs of the citizens in the democracy and, secondly, the customs of the citizens as compared with the democratic principles. Tocqueville goes on to say that when everyone wants to feel free, but at the same time unique and egalitarian in this freedom, a peculiar mechanism takes hold of individuals and all democratic peoples. This mechanism is characterized by a growing sense of mistrust among one another and an increasing tendency to submit to public opinion - or rather, that which claims to be public opinion. Pressure to conform spreads and works against the ideal of freedom. The drive that comes out of freedom leads to submission under the law of equality with an "incredible pressure on individual sprit from the mass soul". According to de Tocqueville, a situation arises in which the sense for virtuous citizenship and the meaning of political institutions fades away, while at the same time the "tendency towards comfort" increases. This tendency leads to an ever more striking appearance of self-satisfaction. Whereas our ancestors were only aware of egoism, a new phenomenon has grown out of egalitarian democracy: Individualism (...). Basically, people are no more egoistic today than they were in the past. But the implications caused by a democratic mentality created an increased need to fit in with its conditions and forms of expression: Society moved ever more, yet made increasingly less progress. The code of honour characteristic of a virtuous republican citizenship faded to the benefit of an individualistic search for happiness. The political dangers that de Tocqueville predicted would threaten egalitarian mass democracy are just as relevant looking at it from the 20th century: He envisaged a new type of dictatorship, which he called despotism for lack of a more precise term. Today we call this dictatorship totalitarianism. The susceptibility of up-rooted, individualistic mass society to a dictatorship of truth, which has the power to transform egalitarian conformity into control over the way in which society thinks using mechanisms of collective force, is well known and has had to be painfully suffered by many during the 20th century (...). Three generations after Alexis de Tocqueville and influenced by the First World War, James Bryce decided to put pen to paper and reflect on the future of democracy drawing on his long career as a scientist and politician. The American president, Wilson, wanted to make the world "safe for democracy". The monarchal empires of Germany, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and - effectively - the Ottoman Empire had collapsed following the end of an extended period of passage to arms. Democracy seemed to be on an unstoppable triumphant advance to victory. And it was set against this background that Bryce put down his thoughts on the situation facing the world's democracies and the future that awaited them (...). Bryce had no illusions about today's rather fashionable ideas regarding participatory democracy. In line with classic English thinking on representation and the control of power, he did not relate the principle of people's sovereignty to the direct structuring of politics for a given community. Indeed, he was careful to put plenty of daylight between his own position and the illusion that a pure form of democracy was possible: It's true that democracy is not rule "by the people", but for the people. The people declare the aim of government as being the well-being of the entire community and not just a privileged part thereof. The people leave the task of deciding upon the best means for reaching this aim to fellow citizens prepared to take the job on. The people monitor the chosen representatives to make sure that they do not abuse any of the powers entrusted to them." Bryce points out - like de Tocqueville before him - the decisive importance of the free press, that is, the opinion that is made public. This empiricist on democracy places his hope in the ability of the media to control democracy. The media has long been a fully established power in the democratic constitutional states, without, for the most part at least, being mentioned in their constitutions. Whereas the media serves in controlling the government in its role as the voice of the people, so it often has a great influence on determining the agenda for politics and plays a large role in forming public opinion, which, in turn is used for making political decisions. So, in a democracy at the end of the 20th century - a situation of which de Tocqueville and Bryce could not have been aware - the question is who is controlling the one responsible for control, that is, the constitutional and political position of the media, its rights and duties, its commission and its responsibility. The role of the media has become a central issue of modern-day democracy. Issues include, for instance, the inner ethics of the media, but also the effect that the media is having upon the direction of political discussion and the ability of political institutions to act under deadline pressure from the media. In view of the major role played by the free media in broadcasting and strengthening the democratic uprisings that took place during 1989, a great deal of wide-ranging respect has been voiced. If 1989 was the year of revolution, it was also the year of the media, in particular the electronic media. These positive events, however, cannot mask the widespread, if somewhat diffused, criticism about the role, power and arrogance of the media in modern western democracies. This criticism has exploded during the second half of the 20th century with the rise of the mass media in the form of radio and TV in particular (...). And so we have arrived at the juncture at which we ask as to the future of democratization. The reference points for this question are presented, firstly, by the conditions and the overall scheme of things in real-existing western democracies and, secondly, by the hopes and fears, by the sense of a new era and the discovery of limits, which were expressed in 1989 in all those countries that had had to exist for decades under totalitarian and late-totalitarian regimes. The question is, however, whether totalitarianism, which managed to pervade and shatter the political face of the 20th century in both in its left- and right-leaning variations so forcefully and effectively, has been replaced for good by a perpetual and universally recognized democratic consensus? If we look at the post-totalitarian countries only a few years after "1989" doubts still exist, or rather, are just beginning to be raised. And even in the long-established western democracies at the end of the 20th century, it would seem that there is less clarity now about the things that actually hold democracy together and about how it will come to terms with its inner deficits to make sure it remains viable in the future than there were a few years ago as democracy faced a totalitarian threat. In many regards today's western democracies with their apparently extreme stability have indeed been caught up by the very phenomenon and mentality described so carefully by Alexis de Tocqueville as being a brewing unavoidability. And wasn't James Bryce's forecast correct in saying that that democracies would miss their "spiritual oxygen", from which they are forced to live, if more and more citizens turn their backs on the political process and leave the field open to career politicians for the res publica - a field in which career politicians only face verbal complaints and incensed activists? Ever since the first theories about democracy in Ancient Greece, two fundamental questions have been used for considering the future of democracies regardless of changing times and changing objective content: Is democracy - and if yes: how - cyclical? Does democracy, then, express itself as a rising line on the chart with regard to society and politics, only for an inner exhaustion and a change of conventions and content to change its character to such a degree that it can only be superficially described as "democracy"? Does this mean that democracy will be forced to make space for other more oligarchic conceptions as to the way in which politics and government should be organized in society? From which social conditions do the institutions and procedures of a constitutionally controlled democracy live? What contribution does a pluralistic society make towards maintaining the spiritual and moral consensus regarded as being in constant need of renewal and activation, in order to prevent pluralism changing into self-destructive relativism Democracy without competition? Now, at the end of the 20th century, these questions are as relevant as ever. Indeed, if anything they have taken on even more relevance since the collapse of the totalitarian alternatives. The meaning of Aristotle's dictum has to be relearned in democracies, that is, that good has to be defined out of itself. And we are well aware of how difficult this is. The optimistic outlook which sees progress as being certain as the process of democratization goes forward has not become silent. Indeed, Martin Kriele was talking about a "democratic revolution of the world" before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of socialism. He founded his theory on Immanuel Kant's categorical enlightenment idealism and the moral force of the human rights idea. Francis Fukuyama even announced the "end of history" following the demise of the socialist alternatives while drawing on Hegel's historic and speculative theory on the unstoppable and permanent nature of progress in the consciousness of freedom. Despite appeals by great German thinkers, it is widely accepted that world history has taken on a peculiar and more complex course. Things have mellowed in the meantime. The demise of many of the certainties about progress that were taken for granted previously have become the intellectual signature of the post-totalitarian era. New doubts about democracy's triumphant progression have arisen: In theory democracy's inner contradictions have become more clear, while in practice it would seem that unavoidable and all-encompassing realization of democracy on a global scale is unrealistic. On the eve of the 21st century it seems essential to establish a clear and realistic view on the conditions needed for the realization and the maintenance of democracy (...). Set against these conditions and links, the future of democratization will depend on differing constellations that vary from country to country, region to region and from culture to culture. The multiplicity of future developments is reflected in the multiplicity of starting points. Following a century of totalitarian temptation and barbaric crashes, the fact that we now have a future that is principally open and complex is most likely the best thing that can be said about the beginning of the 21st century. Chances stand side-by-side with uncertainties wherever one looks. In the West itself, the cradle of modern democracy, a new sense for reflecting on democracy in a sober and self-critical way has spread. Questions in this regard ask:
The necessity for a debate on democracy There now exists the need for a large debate on democracy in the west, on the basis and conditions of democracy and on its possibilities and limitations. The future of democratization is particularly reliant on what consensus can be reached on the conception of democracy today. Common theories on democracy vary between the classic approach of a representative democracy, in which the idea about the ability of politics to act plays a central role, and the more idealistic approach of a participatory democracy, which is dominated by the idea of egalitarian participation spreading out beyond the boundaries of political institutions and into as many areas of public life as possible. In the face of these options and based on the conditions of pluralistic competition there will be an ongoing need to look for consensus. All efforts to reach consensus, however, will have to overcome two fundamental questions:
A general and more-narrow consensus now exists on both of these questions in the modern-day democracies of the West. This consensus has to be redefined and spread and, if necessary, argued out in the form of conflicting interests and opinions. Otherwise democracy is doomed to an almost unavoidable and increasing transformation into shapeless democractism. Surely this would be one of the most unfortunate things that could grow out of democracy's triumph over the large totalitarian, 20th-century ersatz religions. Western democracy has made progress and is now taken for granted to such an extent that questions as to the conditions that support it are hardly being heard. Yet it is on these very issues that discussion as to future of democracy in the West should be concentrated. Otherwise taking things too far could lead to a distortion of democracy's essence and to a draining away of the meaning of the things that are worth maintaining and worth protecting. A new consensus about democracy will have to grow during conflict over these questions. Other regions of the world, at least, will take the lead for their own discussions on the future of democratization from the way in which the West decides to live and explain democracy in the future. At the beginning of the 21st century so much is certain: Many of the rather skeptical predictions made by James Bryce and Alexis de Tocqueville have indeed caught up with present-day democracy as it stands before its new future. [Taken from: Ludger Kühnhardt, Die Zukunft der Demokratisierung, in: Karl Kaiser/Hans-Peter Schwarz (Hrsg.), Weltpolitik im neuen Jahrhundert (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 364) Bonn 2000, 233-242]
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Subjects: Human
Rights I Democracy I Parties
I Examples I
Europe
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Globalisation
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