Democracy is an Ongoing Project

An excerpt from an important new book, "Degenerations of Democracy"

Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

We often talk about democracy in action here—the players and the played, as well as some of the larger principles that define and drive the democratic process. But I’ve been looking forward to sharing a book excerpt from my friend and colleague, Craig Calhoun, who, with his co-authors Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Charles Taylor, have taken a deep, clear-eyed look at the troubled state of democracy and the erosion of social foundations, how we got here and what it will take to drive change. Craig is University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and previously was the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. I hope you find this wide-ranging view from Degenerations of Democracy as interesting as I do.

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Democracy is a project, not simply a condition. It is not switched on like a light and then safely ignored. Democracy is always a work in process, being built, being deepened, being renewed—or being lost. When renewal and advancement stall, democracy degenerates.

Democracy is advanced by enabling all citizens to vote; it degenerates with attempts to win elections by suppressing votes. Free speech is crucially important for democracy, but its abuse brings degeneration. It is abused when politicians call for supporters to physically attack or even kill their opponents. It is abused when judges say that armed men harassing voters at polling stations are just exercising free speech. It is abused when corporations are granted the same free speech rights as human citizens. It is abused when new media and massive money are deployed in deceiving or deluding the citizenry.

But there is no abstract clarity about where to draw the line. For this we need robust public discussion—public in crossing lines of difference and considering what matters to all. In a vicious circle, that is precisely what is being lost.

Polarization, hyper-partisanship and perceived disempowerment shape self-reinforcing downward spirals. Directly political problems are aggravated by erosion in the social conditions for democracy. These include robust local communities, communications and associations that connect across them, and national identity at once inclusive and cohesive. They include enough equality to make clear all share gains and losses, and enough shared prosperity and stability to think constructively, not just defensively about the future.  

The last 50 years have seen a wrenching change from an industrial economy to services. It was easy for elites to see this as inexorable progress, driven by technological innovation and globalization. Both were presented with a certain romantic enthusiasm, though benefits were very unequal. Whatever freedom “free trade” brought to consumers and owners of capital was not an improvement in choices or life chances for former industrial workers and their families and neighbors in towns blighted by factory closures. Citizens were told this was inevitable: Margaret Thatcher coined the acronym TINA for “there is no alternative.”

But, in fact, there were lots of alternative paths. Even without stopping globalization and automation there could have been more effort—some effort!—to help those they hurt. Government policies speeded change for the sake of profit rather than managing it for the sake of workers. Community decline could have been slowed or arrested by investment (and better regulation of credit markets). Instead, the epidemic of pain-killers and related addictions that accompanied the decline was actively promoted by profit-seeking corporations and wealthy families. Too many politicians of all parties simply looked the other way.

Globalization dominated by finance and shaped by neoliberalism left citizens feeling disempowered. After falling through the years of postwar boom, inequality rose since the 1970s. Returns on assets outpaced increases in income. The middle-class and once-prosperous working class were hollowed out and subjected to new stresses and precarity even while the wealth of billionaires grew. Trade unions were undercut. Working people were abandoned by political parties that once represented them but increasingly sought the votes of more fashionable urban professionals. Financial crises were recurrent. Whole communities were destroyed by deindustrialization and public health crises like opiate addiction.

There is a dangerous political geography to the experience of inequality. This is familiar to Americans through maps of “red” and “blue” states, but as basically the fault line is between “metropolitan” and “local.” Cities that are attractive to the educated, the upwardly mobile and immigrants can seem threatening and alien to others. Little Rock is different from the rest of Arkansas, Phoenix from the rest of Arizona.

The pattern is international: The politics of non-metropolitan Quebec marginalize any provincial voice for Montreal. The Brexit campaign mobilized non-metropolitan England against London as much as against Europe. Les gilets jaunes protested the policies and perceived arrogance of Paris on behalf of the smaller towns and villages of la France profonde. Yet both economic and population growth are concentrated in cities. Media silos reinforce divisions, but these are matters of demography as much as political opinion.

For corporate investors, globalization means profits; immigration means cheaper labor. Industries based on new technologies accumulate stunning wealth. Initially entrepreneurial, they increasingly use their market position to block competition and innovation. They bring consumers new products and convenience but avoid providing secure employment, health or retirement benefits, or opportunities for career advancement for any but the luckiest and most skilled workers. Use of offshore tax shelters deprives governments of resources to support public health, education, infrastructure or other shared goods.

Finance is an abstract global system; autonomous local banks are a thing of the past. Service work has opened employment for women, minorities and immigrants—though too often with low wages, no benefits and little job security. Commutes are longer, housing more expensive. Parents fear to let their children play outside. Logistical systems move products around the world and the country, connecting us at long distance but disconnecting us from familiar main street shopping and the support systems of local community.

Large majorities would benefit from improved health care, education, energy and transportation infrastructures, job prospects and rates of pay. But paths are blocked by powerful corporate interests, the ideology that markets follow impersonal necessity, and gridlocked partisan legislatures. In states across the US, minimum wage rates have been raised only in response to ballot initiatives by-passing parties and giving direct expression to these majorities.

Pursuit of the public good is commonly replaced with clashes over who are the “real” citizens. The pandemic becomes an occasion to portray mask-wearing as unpatriotic—and to condemn those challenging public health authorities as anti-science. Absurdly unequal opportunities for higher education become occasions to pit meritocracy against populism, beneficiaries of affirmative action against those they have allegedly displaced, middle-class graduates seeking debt forgiveness against workers with little chance to get an elite education or good career prospects in the first place.

Feeling disempowered, many citizens channel their frustrations into resentments. They blame immigrants, new opportunities for minorities and women, new freedom in sexuality. But actual disempowerment derives more from loss of good jobs, union support and strong local communities.

No debates have been more widely distorted by the promotion of resentment and fear than those about refugees and immigration. Countries frantically fending off immigrants actually need them to thrive economically and care for aging populations. Geopolitical upheavals, climate change and inequalities of opportunity and demography all make push factors more urgent. Well-intentioned liberals stress justice but deny that costs will be borne unequally. The right demonizes all immigrants as criminals.

Much the same has happened in debates over education and health care; pursuit of the public good has been sacrificed to partisan efforts to win. Nonpartisanship has become an illusion and parties have ceased to produce effective coalitions for effective compromise. Politicians play for short-term electoral gains not durable solutions.

We should not be nostalgic for the postwar years or even the 1960s. Despite crises and degenerations, democracy has seen genuine improvements over the last 50 years. But it is important to ask why these could not be incorporated into a happier polity. Why has modestly greater gender equality brought sharp backlash? Why have greater opportunities for Black Americans brought such resentment and now efforts at repression? Why has it been so hard to integrate immigrants socially and culturally even while most have thrived and contributed economically? 

Changes have not been approached as matters for democratic collective decision. They have been presented as necessary, or matters of absolute justice, or problems of technical policy. Much too little has been done to help those for whom the changes were hard. Too little has been done to reweave the social fabric. Freedom and equality have received far more attention than solidarity. Saving democracy now demands social and economic transformation as well as political repair.

Finally, current challenges are enormous, but taking action can be a path to democratic renewal. If we join with each other in great national—and local—projects, in building institutions, in providing mutual support, then we can renew solidarity and democracy. Essential as repair is, it is not enough.

We need new democratic experiments. We need to imagine new possibilities and test these innumerable experiments—sometimes in local government not national, in social movements rather than enduring institutions, and in policies that will be improved by repeated revisions not delayed in search of perfection.

Despite all the difficulties of existing democratic institutions, we need more democracy not less.

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