Reported by Stein Ringen, Published: 03/28/14, The
Washington Post
Stein Ringen is
an emeritus professor at Oxford University and the author of “Nation of Devils: Democratic Leadership and the Problem of
Obedience.”
Behind dysfunctional
government, is democracy itself in decay?
It took only
250 years for democracy to disintegrate in ancient Athens. A wholly new form of
government was invented there in which the people ruled themselves. That
constitution proved marvelously effective. Athens grew in wealth and capacity,
saw off the Persian challenge, established itself as the leading power in the
known world and produced treasures of architecture, philosophy and art that
bedazzle to this day. But when privilege, corruption and mismanagement took
hold, the lights went out.
It would be
2,000 years before democracy was reinvented in the U.S. Constitution, now as
representative democracy. Again, government by popular consent proved
ingenious. The United States grew into the world’s leading power —
economically, culturally and militarily. In Europe, democracies overtook
authoritarian monarchies and fascist and communist dictatorships. In recent
decades, democracy’s spread has made the remaining autocracies a minority.
The second
democratic experiment is approaching 250 years. It has been as successful as
the first. But the lesson from Athens is that success does not breed success.
Democracy is not the default. It is a form of government that must be created
with determination and that will disintegrate unless nurtured. In the United
States and Britain, democracy is disintegrating when it should be nurtured by
leadership. If the lights go out in the model democracies, they will not stay
on elsewhere.
It’s not enough
for governments to simply be democratic; they must deliver or decay. In
Britain, government is increasingly ineffectual. The constitutional scholar
Anthony King has described it as declining from “order” to “mess” in less than
30 years. During 10 years of New Labor rule, that proposition was tested and
confirmed. In 1997 a new government was voted in with a mandate and
determination to turn the tide on Thatcherite inequality. It was given all the
parliamentary power a democratic government could dream of and benefited from
10 years of steady economic growth. But a strong government was defeated by a
weak system of governance. It delivered nothing of what it intended and left
Britain more unequal than where the previous regime had left off.
The next government,
a center-right coalition, has proved itself equally unable. It was supposed to
repair damage from the economic crisis but has responded with inaction on the
causes of crisis, in a monopolistic financial-services sector, and with a brand
of austerity that protects the privileged at the expense of the poor. Again,
what has transpired is inability rather than ill will. Both these governments
came up against concentrations of economic power that have become politically
unmanageable.
Meanwhile, the
health of the U.S. system is even worse than it looks. The three branches of
government are designed to deliver through checks and balances. But balance has
become gridlock, and the United States is not getting
the governance it needs. Here, the link between inequality and inability is on
sharp display. Power has been sucked out of the constitutional system and
usurped by actors such as PACs, think tanks, media and lobbying organizations.
In the age of
mega-expensive politics, candidates depend on sponsors to fund permanent
campaigns. When money is allowed to transgress from markets, where it belongs,
to politics, where it has no business, those who control it gain power to
decide who the successful candidates will be — those they wish to fund — and
what they can decide once they are in office. Rich supporters get two swings at
influencing politics, one as voters and one as donors. Others have only the
vote, a power that diminishes as political inflation deflates its value. It is
a misunderstanding to think that candidates chase money. It is money that
chases candidates.
In Athens,
democracy disintegrated when the rich grew super-rich, refused to play by the
rules and undermined the established system of government. That is the point
that the United States and Britain have reached.
Nearly a
century ago, when capitalist democracy was in a crisis not unlike the present
one, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned: “We
may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,
but we can’t have both.” Democracy weathered that storm for two
reasons: It is not inequality as such that destroys democracy but the more
recent combination of inequality and transgression. Furthermore, democracy was
then able to learn from crisis. The New Deal tempered economic free-for-all,
primarily through the 1933 Banking Act, and gave the smallfolk new social
securities.
The lesson from
Athens is that success breeds complacency. People, notably those in privilege,
stopped caring and democracy was neglected. Six years after the global economic
crisis, the signs from the model democracies are that those in privilege are
unable to care and that our systems are unable to learn. The crisis started in
out-of-control financial services industries in the United States and Britain,
but control has not been reasserted. Economic inequality has followed through
to political inequality, and democratic government is bereft of power and
capacity. Brandeis was not wrong; he was ahead of his time.
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