November 07, 2014

#BattleFest2014: Should we fear democracy?

1 hour 37 minutes

After surging forward through the latter

part of the twentieth century after the defeat of fascism,

decolonisation and the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy appears to be

in something of a retreat. According to the Economist, even

though 45 per cent of the world’s population live in countries that

‘hold free and fair elections’, there is now widespread recognition that

‘democracy’s global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone

into reverse’. After many years of trying to spread democracy abroad,

the US and other Western powers seem to have lowered their sights

following the tragic, contemporary debacle in Iraq. Elsewhere, the ‘Arab

Spring’ has fared little better. Even in the established democracies of

the West, democracy appears to have lost its enduring appeal, with

declining voter turnout and a hollowing-out of once mass-membership

political parties. It was once claimed that only democracies could

develop economically; now, democracy is blamed for gridlock. The

contrast between the failure of the US Congress to agree a budget and

the ability of China to get things done is much remarked upon.

Very few in the developed world openly discount democracy as an

ideal, but nearly everyone agrees the reality is flawed. Some would

reform it in various ways: lowering the voting age, using more new

technology, etc. Occupy activists oppose ‘representative democracy’

altogether, preferring ‘direct democracy’. Some argue for limits on

democracy in favour of the considered opinion of experts. Elected

governments in Greece and Italy have even been replaced by interim

technocratic administrations during the European economic crisis, and

democratic mandates can be annulled when people vote the ‘wrong way’, as

when the Irish voted ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 or when the

Muslim Brotherhood was voted into power in Egypt. And far from being

cheered as a historic democratic exercise that ousted an entrenched

Gandhi dynasty, this year’s election in India provoked fears that

815million voters were expressing atavistic religious prejudice.

If anything sums up the contemporary concern with democracy, it is

the word ‘populism’. In Europe, it is the fear of people voting for the

wrong sort of political party: the Front National in France, the PVV in

the Netherlands, UKIP in the UK. In America, it is the fear of what used

to be called the ‘moral majority’: conservative voters out of step with

the liberal consensus on social issues.

Are populist political movements simply throwbacks, appealing to the

bigotry of greying voters? Or do they give voice to the frustrations of

citizens who feel increasingly cut off from an aloof and deracinated

political class? Will the twenty-first century see the demise of

democracy in favour of technocratic governance? What has so tarnished

our view of what used to be the foundational principle of Western

civilisation?

Speakers

Professor Ivan Krastev

Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna

Professor Chantal Mouffe

Professor of political theory, University of Westminster; author, Agonistics: thinking the world politically

Brendan O'Neill

editor, spiked; columnist, Big Issue; contributor, Spectator

Dr David Runciman

professor of politics, Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Cambridge University; author, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War 1 to the Present

Chair

Claire Fox

director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze

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