Democratic Thoughts Under Scrutiny

Interview - Roland Axtmann, PhD, Swansea University, United Kingdom, October 2007

Can we talk about democracy today at all or democracy today stands for oligarchy, whether political or economical?

That depends on how you define democracy. You have to start with the idea of politics and politics is about some kind of authoritative binding allocation of values where similarly political goods are also being allocated. Another question is how do you organize this allocation. It can be organized in a way that one person says how it should be done, how we should spend our money, this is what we do with regards to wealth and so on. And another way you can do it is by involvement of citizens. If you talk about involvment of citizens, we have to talk about democratic structures like institutions of parliament, elections, parties, public opinion and willingness of citizens to participate. All this has to be in place to talk about democracy. On the other hand when you say democracy, parties, interest groups, you necessarily say organization. Liberal democracy is built around organizations where there are always elements of oligarchy.

To say how in democracy all people are equal shouldn't there be more of a social and political equality?

The question we have to discuss is to which extent political equality can go hand in hand with manifestations of social inequality. For an example, if you have a society in which you would have a small group controlling all the essential economic, cultural and technological resources then quite obviously the social inequality leads to that there is no democracy. So now, another question arises. How do we minimize the difference between political equality on one hand and social inequality on the other hand. And that has very much for an example been the problem of expansion of welfare state.

In democratic societies there is a hierarchy which is not compatible with institution of democracy. Is that hierarchy being nourished even more by stressing out the importance of knowledge, education and expertise of individuals who know better than other "mortals" such as scientists? Does that lead to certain apathy in behavior of citizens?

Democracy does not mean that you don't have hierarchies. It rather has something to do with instituting mechanisms where different individual groups could take decisions that resell in the authoritative allocation of values. These groups are not hereditary.
The importance of expertise, knowledge and education today shows that we have moved to state of affairs where the complexity of modern society has prod about professionalization of certain groups. It has invited us to assume that there are experts in every field. These experts can have different solutions to one problem and they must be prod into the process of public opinion formage. But ultimately experts cannot take political decisions. Regarding the apathy in behavior of citizens in many western European country, citizens by enlarge are satisfied with society and world in which they live. Therefore they don't really feel the great need to get politically involved.

What are the perspectives of democracy today?

I don't know. But it is important to think about democracy beyond the locality where we live and to develop consciousness of interconnectedness of social and economic life. The decisions that are being taken in these networks need some kind of control and legitimacy. We have to expand democracy. I think it is our only option. Although we will not be able to talk anymore about the rule of a demos but of a rule of a demoi. That means for an example that we have to recognize that we live in a multicultural societies where we need a different notion of who the people are. The main enemy of democracy today is the degree of uncontrollability of economic processes. That's the most important challenge and the other challenge is very strong insistence of many groups on identity and identity politics which very often mean that such groups are unwilling to find compromises to live with diversity. Regarding bureaucracy in democracy is inevitable. Modern society is bureaucratic, administrative society. It is not a question how to get rid of bureaucracy or bureaucratic oligarchies but how to make them democratically accountable.

Can we talk about establishment of democracy if that is done through means of weapon?

We have to be very careful and look at some historical cases. If we are talking about external intervention, through use of weapon than quite clearly the answer is yes. If you think of Japan after the World War II, Germany after the World War II it was possible.
But you have to be very specific about the historical context in which this is happening. If we talk about domestic use of violence through revolution than of course again, quite clearly, it can be done and it has be done. One of the historical facts that very often are not looked at is that democratization in western Europe is linked to revolutionary violence. But when talking about intervention in Iraq, in my view, it was a violation of international law.

Interview by Karmen-Anastazija Škaro

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