CFP: Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2011

Please circulate widely!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2011

Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)

Mode: Online by Google+ video conference

Date: 15-16 November 2011

The "Anti-Democracy Agenda" is the premier resource on the net for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines. First introduced by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) as a blog in January 2010, it has since been reconstituted as a circle (with associated public posts, much like a blog) on the new social network Google+. An archive of the blog is to be found here: http://anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com

For the new circle, see here:
https://plus.google.com/109507108125539761871/posts

The Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2011 will be the third event we organize to advance the research agenda on anti-democratic thought and practice as well as old and new criticisms of democracy. It will build up on a highly successful workshop on anti-democratic thought SCIS organized at the Annual Conference Workshops in Political Theory in Manchester, England, in September 2007, as well as the Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010, taking place at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in November last year. Both events drew participants from the world over. The Manchester workshop led to the publication of an edited volume on "Anti-Democratic Thought" (Imprint Academic, 2008).

The Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2011 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Development Studies, Security Studies, Law, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Literature, History, Classics, Theology, Religious Studies, Education, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of criticisms of democracy and anti-democratic thought and practice, from perspectives including anarchism, libertarianism, conservatism, communism, Islamism, the extreme right, and others, but also related concepts such as authoritarianism, dictatorship, military rule, monarchy, chieftaincy, mixed constitution, the backlash against democracy promotion, terrorism, post-democracy, voter apathy, voter ignorance, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Work in progress is welcome too.

This symposium may be the first academic conference to make use of the “Hangouts” video conference facility that is an integral part of Google+. Due to technical restrictions, the number of participants in the Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2011 is limited to 10. All accepted participants will be required to create a profile on Google+ in order to be able to participate in the event. While we encourage the participation of scholars from developing countries, please only apply if you have access to a stable Internet connection. As in our previous physical events, over the course of two days, each presenter will have 60 minutes to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others. Due to the small size of the symposium, all participants are expected to attend both days fully.

As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' expenses (if any). We will be glad to issue letters of acceptance on request to assist participants in securing leave from work. Detailed instructions on how to set up a Google+ profile and join the video conference will be provided to confirmed participants.

Please send your proposal to: erichkofmel@gmail.com

Deadline: 15 October 2011

Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.

Cordially,

Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
https://plus.google.com/109507108125539761871
E-mail: erichkofmel@gmail.com

Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland

SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.

Report on the Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010: Setting the example for the debate of the future

The first event held by the Geneva-based Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) in conjunction with its "Anti-Democracy Agenda" blog, the Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010, took place to great acclaim on 8 and 9 November 2010 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.

Keynotes to the symposium were contributed by Professor Doh Chull Shin, a native of Korea, director of the Korea Democracy Barometer, and core partner in the Asian Barometer Survey (an ongoing research project monitoring democratization in Asian countries), who is based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri, a leading public research university in the United States, and Professor Kuldip Singh, Head of the Department of Political Science at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, India.

The Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010 attracted twelve papers submitted by participants from institutions such as the National University of Singapore, the University of the Philippines, the Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal), Ankara University (Turkey), the University of the Punjab, Quaid-i-Azam University (both Pakistan), the University of Central Oklahoma (USA), and the Islamic Azad University (Iran). Other countries and territories of origin or residence represented include Palestine, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the UK, Switzerland, Nigeria, Korea, and India.

Participants – from doctoral candidates to full professors – came from the disciplines of Political Science, Philosophy, Political Theory, Islamic Studies, Defence and Strategic Studies, Law, and Media Studies, giving theoretical as well as empirical presentations under the titles "Is Confucianism Anti-democratic?", "Islamic Philosophy and Criticizing Democracy", "Against Liberal Democracy", "Anti-Democracy Is Created By Means of Media", "Twenty-First Century Anti-Democracy: Theory and Practice in the World", "A Critique of Western Discourses of Sovereignty and Democracy from Chinese Lenses", "Reflecting on Anti-Democracy Forces in Arab Politics", "'Democracy' in Kazakhstan: Political System Managed from Above", "Pakistan’s Road to Democracy: Islam, Military and Silent Majority", "Democracy: A Form of Government or an Instinct?", "The Role of Ethics in Shaping Democracy: An Examination of Unethical Actions among House of Assembly Members in Nigeria", and "Pekan Anti Otoritarian: Some Observations on Anarchist Gathering at Indonesia".

After a workshop on "Anti-Democratic Thought" in Manchester in 2007, this was the second symposium on anti-democracy organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society and, once more, it opened up new frontiers for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice. Bringing together scholars from both sides of the debate, advocates of democracy as well as critics and opponents, it set the example for the proper academic conduct of a discussion that does not take place anywhere else, yet. Focusing on twenty-first century anti-democracy, rather than historical expressions and criticisms, it shone the way toward the most important debate of the near future. Asia will play as central a role in that debate as participants from Asia did in our symposium.

The Anti-Democracy Agenda blog and the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society will continue to be at the forefront of these developments.

CFP: Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010

Please circulate widely!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010

Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)

Location: Gottfried-Semper Villa Garbald, part of the Collegium Helveticum of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the University of Zurich, at Castasegna, in the Swiss Alps

Date: 8-10 November 2010

The "Anti-Democracy Agenda" (www.anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com) has been run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society since January 2010. The blog is the premier resource on the net for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines.

The Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010 will be the first event we organize in conjunction with the blog. It will build up though on a highly successful event on anti-democratic thought SCIS organized earlier, at the Annual Conference Workshops in Political Theory in Manchester, England, in September 2007, drawing participants from the world over. That workshop led to the publication of an edited volume, "Anti-Democratic Thought" (Imprint Academic), in December 2008.

The Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Development Studies, Security Studies, Law, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Literature, History, Classics, Theology, Religious Studies, Education, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of criticisms of democracy and anti-democratic thought and practice, from perspectives including anarchism, libertarianism, conservatism, communism, Islamism, the extreme right, and others, but also related concepts such as authoritarianism, dictatorship, military rule, monarchy, chieftaincy, mixed constitution, the backlash against democracy promotion, terrorism, post-democracy, voter apathy, voter ignorance, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Work in progress is welcome too.

We expect that 10-15 participants will be attending the workshop-style Anti-Democracy Agenda Symposium 2010. Over the course of two and a half days, each presenter will have 60 minutes to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others.

As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' travel and accommodation expenses. We will be glad to issue letters of invitation on request to assist participants in securing funding from their usual sources. The charges payable directly to the Villa Garbald (approx. $510 half-board/$570 full-board per person) cover accommodation for three nights and food and drink (except alcohol and minibar) throughout your stay. Participants will be arriving on Sunday, taking in the magnificent scenery of the Swiss Alps on a spectacular 5-hour train journey from Zurich airport (via St. Moritz) to a remote Italian-speaking Swiss valley (Val Bregaglia), home to Europe's largest chestnut forest, and leave on Wednesday after lunch, on the same way (cost of a return ticket approx. $115). Alternatively, you can get there in 3-4 hours by train from Milano airport, passing Lake Como. During the symposium there will be ample time to explore the surroundings. Please feel free to contact us with any questions. Detailed travel instructions will be provided to confirmed participants. Don't miss this unique opportunity.

The Italian-style Villa Garbald was built by German star architect Gottfried Semper (of Semper Opera in Dresden and Vienna Burgtheater fame) during his exile in Switzerland. A pro-democracy activist in aristocratic mid-19th century Germany, his experiences with direct-democratic government in Switzerland turned him in later life increasingly against democracy.

Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org

Deadline: 31 July 2010

Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.

Cordially,

Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.sussexcentre.org
E-mail: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org

Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland

SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.

Press release: Erich Kofmel promoted to research professorship

Press release: Erich Kofmel promoted to research professorship
26 February 2010

In accordance with Swiss legislation and the laws of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, Erich Kofmel has been promoted to the position of Research Professor of Political Theory at the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), with effect from 1 March 2010. Professor Kofmel will remain Managing Director of SCIS, the research centre's Board of Directors announced today.

Founded in 2006 at the University of Sussex, England, SCIS has been an international association under Swiss law, based in Geneva, since 2009.

SCIS is not an accredited higher education institution in Switzerland and does not regularly undertake teaching and the professorship awarded to Erich Kofmel, while a signifier of academic excellence, is a research professorship not a university professorship. As an inter- and transdisciplinary research centre, SCIS is formally independent of university structures.

Professor Kofmel (35) is the world's leading expert on anti-democratic thought and practice. He studied for a doctoral degree in social and political thought at the University of Sussex and Sciences Po Paris and holds Master's degrees in Public and Development Management and Roman Catholic Theology as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Comparative and Cross-Cultural Research Methods. Prior to taking up an academic career, he worked in project and general management in the private, public, and non-governmental sectors in Europe and Africa. A native of Switzerland, he lived for prolonged periods in Senegal, South Africa, England, and France.

Professor Kofmel is the editor of two contributed volumes, Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology and Anti-Democratic Thought (Imprint Academic, 2008), and the author of two academic blogs, the Anti-Democracy Agenda (www.anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com) and the Political Theology Agenda (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com). An edited volume on alternatives to democracy in development policy and a monograph, Me Against Mediocrity, are in preparation.

He is available for consultancy mandates particularly in the fields of anti-democratic thought and practice, political theologies, and the interaction of the individual and society.

SCIS continues to invite applications from suitably qualified candidates worldwide to join the centre as Research Associates or Senior Research Associates or to do internships. We are eager to work with people (in person or through electronic communication channels) who will produce original research at the cutting edge of the study of "the individual and society" in any discipline or area of study.

Website: www.sussexcentre.org

Contact: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org

Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland

"Anti-Democracy Agenda" now online

Please circulate widely! Blog about it! etc.

In January 2009, I started this blog – now called "Erich Kofmel Himself" – and a blog on political theology, now called the "Political Theology Agenda".

From the outset both these blogs bore the logo of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS). The renaming of the blogs at the end of last year was part of an improved online strategy of SCIS, which also includes the addition of a third blog in January 2010.

That new blog is called the "Anti-Democracy Agenda":

www.anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com

Description: "Conferences, Books, Articles, Trends: The Anti-Democracy Agenda is run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) in order to serve as a focal point and the premier resource on the net for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice as well as old and new alternatives to democracy. It wishes to facilitate the exchange on anti-democratic thought and practice across boundaries, be they disciplinary, ideological, national, cultural, generational, philosophical, religious (or non-religious), etc. By disseminating information on research, publications, and events, it hopes to increase awareness of the various traditions and current trends, and raise the academic and public profile of anti-democratic thought and practice worldwide."

Already, there are almost thirty posts on the Anti-Democracy Agenda. Namely, those posts on anti-democratic thought made here during 2009 and around twenty new posts introducing in detail scholarly resources (books, articles, and so on) for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice. In future, I may continue to post personal comments on anti-democratic developments here, while posting more objective news on the Anti-Democracy Agenda. (Where I will of course also provide links to posts made here.)

The Political Theology Agenda too seems finally to get properly indexed by Google and now holds top spots for "political theology" searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Throughout 2009, it accrued 75 posts, of which 31 during November and December 2009. I expect the number of posts in 2010 to be significantly higher, in line with the increasing number of people working on issues of political theology/-ies in all conceivable academic disciplines and the scholarly in- and outputs to be expected from this.

Just as I knew last year that the time had come for the Political Theology Agenda – the field had grown enough since 2006 to sustain such a blog –, the number and quality of posts on anti-democratic thought and alternatives to democracy I made here, the new publications and developments to be commented on in 2009 convinced me that the time had come for the Anti-Democracy Agenda. It will be sustained by things to come.

The term "Agenda" indicates the rationale of both blogs (and such further Agendas as SCIS may see fit to start in the future): originating from Latin, it means that "which ought to be done", a working programme – doing, acting, making. A list of matters to be worked on, to be taken up, to be contributed to. Notably, a schedule of events and readings, and a research agenda around which to coalesce.

These Agendas give visibility to novel areas of research, provide a focal point to informal networks of scholars (both at universities and independent) and people all around the world and from various backgrounds that may not know each other now and maybe never get to know one another. They provide resources, all in one place, for the benefit of those who come newly to the field or are just curious. They are an invitation to participate.

The time has come to give that kind of focus to the research agenda on anti-democratic thought and practice.

Feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

Climate scientists against democracy

One of the arguably most progressive movements of our times – environmentalists fighting global warming and climate change – shows signs of turning anti-democratic in the wake of the perceived failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen.

Before Copenhagen, hardly anyone took notice of anti-democratic thought arising out of environmental science, one of the most fashionable fields of research at this time. Let me highlight some of the recent developments.

Two years ago, Australians David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith published a book called "The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy" (Praeger, 2007):

www.praeger.com/catalog/C34504.aspx

From the publisher's description: "Climate change threatens the future of civilization, but humanity is impotent in effecting solutions. Even in those nations with a commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, they continue to rise. This failure mirrors those in many other spheres that deplete the fish of the sea, erode fertile land, destroy native forests, pollute rivers and streams, and utilize the world's natural resources beyond their replacement rate.

"In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction – and climate change in particular – is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government – and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance – an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society.

"Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.

"There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures – for example, in medicine and in corporate empires – that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life."

It is certainly noteworthy that both authors did not work at universities at the time this book was published – and haven't done so since. After holding faculty positions at Edinburgh and Yale, Shearman now works as a practicing physician. Smith is described as a lawyer, philosopher, and book author. Predictably, just like my own book, "Anti-Democratic Thought" (Imprint Academic, 2008), they received largely negative and even hostile reader reviews, simply for opposing democracy – along the lines of "Superficial Diatribe" and "Genocide, anyone? Sure would cut the ol' carbon footprint if you could just feed all those consumers and wrong-thinkers into the shredders ..."

Few academics showed themselves supportive: "For those wanting to think outside the square on climate change issues, this book is indispensable" (Bob Birrell, Monash); "This is an argument-moving book, a fresh and audacious contribution to the climate change debate" (Otis L. Graham, University of California, Santa Barbara); "If political thinking at its best makes the pressing questions of the day an occasion to revisit cherished fundamentals, then this book qualifies" (Gordon Graham, Princeton Theological Seminary – a fellow Imprint Academic author and critic of democracy).

However, since then a number of climate scientists have adopted positions akin to those advanced by Shearman and Smith. James Hansen, for example, a renowned climate modeller with NASA (and billed as "[t]he scientist who convinced the world to take notice [...] of global warming"), is quoted in the Guardian as saying "that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. 'The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working,'" for "money is talking louder than the votes". "In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics."

90-year-old British scientist James Lovelock (also a former NASA consultant and named one of the world's top-100 global public intellectuals by Prospect magazine in 2005), in "The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning" (Allen Lane, 2009), may be appalling his readers, according to Publishers Weekly, with "his contention that democracy may need to be abandoned to appropriately confront the challenge [of climate change]":

www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781846141850,00.html?/The_Vanishing_Face_of_Gaia_James_Lovelock

Hansen and Lovelock, too, have gained the freedom to say what they really think about democracy (and its dangers) by not standing in the (sole) employ of a university. While Hansen only holds an adjunct professorship at Columbia, Lovelock, though having been an honorary visiting fellow at an Oxford college since 1994, works independently out of his private laboratory.

Much more in this vein can be found in the fora and on message boards of the environmental science community.

It remains to be seen whether such sentiments uttered more frequently by climate scientists will be able to turn public opinion against democracy, and if the protesters that got themselves beat up and arrested on the streets of Copenhagen will turn away from the anti-authoritarian and decentralized grassroots democracy that is still the preferred mode of operation of most anti- and alter-globalization and environmental activism.

Also, Shearman and Smith are correct to stress that the environmental record of today's authoritarian regimes is by no means better than that of democratic governments. From what we heard last week, it appears that China with her obstruction policy is largely responsible for the apparent failure of the Copenhagen summit – for which the western democracies took the blame. China is not interested in curtailing her economic and industrial growth and the burgeoning capitalism (which, in time, will lead to democratic reforms).

Rule by experts, as proposed by climate scientists, is not a new idea either, though. It is as old as Plato's philosopher kings, H.G. Wells' liberal fascism, communist planning, and the EU bureaucracy. Let's just say, it hasn't worked.

We need new alternatives.

Olivier Rubin refutes the merits of democracy in famine protection

For the 30th Anniversary Conference of the Development Studies Association (DSA), taking place in London in November 2008 on the theme of hidden forces in social and economic development – "Development's Invisible Hands" –, I convened a panel "Anti-Democratic Development".

One of the participants in that highly selective panel was Olivier Rubin (a recent PhD graduate and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen) who ended up winning the prize awarded by the European Journal of Development Research (EJDR) to the best conference paper for his essay, "The Merits of Democracy in Famine Protection – Fact or Fallacy?" – an ambitious attempt to refute (or at least draw into question) an influential theory of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen (Harvard and Cambridge).

Rubin's paper has now been published in the November 2009 issue of EJDR (vol. 21/5: 699-717), as part of a Symposium of articles based on papers given in various panels of the 2008 conference. They treat forces as different as religion and conflict, political institutions, non-governmental action, the securitization of aid, and migration.

While I helped shape Rubin's paper both with extensive feedback after the conference and as peer reviewer for EJDR, I only provided input on fine-tuning an already impressive piece of work and all credit goes to him. That said, I greatly appreciate his public acknowledgement: "I wish to extend my gratitude to Erich Kofmel, Managing Director at the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), for convening the DSA 2008 Panel on Anti-Democratic Development. This article is highly inspired by his somewhat provocative idea of an anti-democratic bias in much of the Development Studies discipline." Thank you.

The EJDR is now making Rubin's article accessible free of charge until the end of the year:

www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v21/n5/full/ejdr200937a.html

Here's the abstract of the paper: "Amartya Sen's assertion that democratic institutions together with a free press provide effective protection from famine is one of the most cited and broadly accepted contributions in modern famine theory. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence, this article critically examines whether indeed democracies do provide protection from famine. The qualitative research builds on analyses of democratic political dynamics in famine situations (in Bihar 1966, Malawi 2002 and Niger 2005), whereas the quantitative research looks for cross-country correlations between political systems and famine incidents. The article calls into question the strength of the link between democracy and famine protection. Famines have indeed occurred in electoral democracies where the political dynamics at times were counterproductive in providing protection from famine. The article concludes that to fully grasp the complexities of famine, one should replace monocausal political explanations (such as democracy protects against famine) with general tools for context-specific political analysis."

Rubin finds that, "[r]egrettably, the discipline of Development Studies has often had a tendency of displaying less interest in critically testing assertions about the merits of democratic institutions than it has in exposing the adverse consequences of more authoritarian political structures. [...]

"Pointing to democratic mechanisms with a positive effect on famine protection does not exclude the possibility that others, even more effective, can be identified under authoritarian rule. The argument about the merits of democracy in famine protection has clear roots in cost-effectiveness reasoning (given the assumed superiority of the democratic political system, what are the processes that could account for effective famine protection?) when one really ought to rely on cost-benefit reasoning (under different political rules, which political processes foster the most effective famine protection?).

"From the perspective of short-term famine relief, it is not difficult to present arguments that could favor a more authoritarian political system. Some of the counterproductive mechanisms described [for democracies] (log rolling, vote trading, pork barrel politics, not in my backyard and the political blame game) would be largely absent or assume a different form under authoritarian regimes. [...] It is also possible that authoritarian regimes could manage a much prompter and more extensive mobilization of resources for famine prevention when needed. An elected government might have to engage in compromises and negotiations with other political parties, which might not only slow down the process, but also avert resources to other political purposes through log rolling.

"Theoretically, therefore, the democracy hypothesis is not convincing."

In his article, Rubin refers to a Malawian saying: "Sungadye demokalase, which loosely translated means that you cannot eat democracy."

EJDR is a prestigious and well-regarded publication of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

Experimental "competitive government" instead of democracy

Until recently, the term "competitive government" has been used to refer to competing policies with regard to democratic institutional arrangements and to the (neo-liberal) introduction of (market-)competitive elements to public administration, such as the privatization and outsourcing of public services (provision of water and electricity, waste disposal, public transportation, health care, etc.), public-private partnerships, and so on.

The term now is about to receive a new meaning thanks to the work of Patri Friedman and others. For them, "competitive government" describes the competition between the political arrangements of entire (future) nation states, be they democratic or otherwise. It is about the freedom of people to decide themselves in what political system they prefer to live and the freedom for every individual to move to a "nation" state/country of his or her choosing. It is about diversity in the forms of government worldwide rather than the uniformity of international "democracy promotion".

For a number of reasons the term "competitive government" may not be ideal, though, for what Friedman and others envisage. After all, unlike today there would be no real competition between such (new) nation states/countries. (Traditionally, competition between national governments and nations too often ends in war.) It's not about dominance, but rather about co-existence and tolerance for other, alternative, diverse forms of government, even "niche" government (political systems that only a minority of people would volunteer to live in). In a competition-theoretical sense, "competitive government" means, however: no monopoly for democracy.

At the same time, the "nation" would have to lose any connotation of blood, ethnicity, and nationalism and come to stand for communities of politically like-minded people instead.

It is safe to say that Friedman is stuck in the terminology of Economics ("competition" rather than accommodation or tolerance, "nation" as the basic entity of political-economic discourse – western democracy promotion suffers from the same competitive misapprehension, inherent in its linkage to capitalist market philosophy and mechanisms).

In Patri Friedman's case this is owed to his family heritage and background. His grandfather, Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics, was one of the professors who turned the University of Chicago into a centre of so-called neo-liberal thought. The author of books such as "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962), Milton Friedman was a stout defender of the view that capitalism and democracy are inextricably linked.

Albeit deeply critical of the (welfare) state and pleading for a government that refrains from interventions in the economy, limits its activities to the bare minimum, and leaves the individual as much as possible alone, he still charged the state with the promotion of competition and the provision of a legal and monetary framework for individual and corporate action, primarily in the market place.

Political power should be dispersed as widely as possible, though, so as to avoid coercion of the individual by his fellow men. Dismissing "welfare" and "equality" as the "catchwords" of paternalistic politics against which classical liberalism fought, Milton Friedman held democracy to be merely a means guaranteeing individual freedom.

Now his grandson, Patri Friedman, declares his opposition to democracy.

Taking his clues from his grandfather and father (David D. Friedman) as much as from the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist traditions, Patri Friedman goes further when claiming – on the most elaborate of his many fragmentary websites and blogs – that he is "deeply dissatisfied with current forms of social organization (western democracy)".

http://patrifriedman.com/aboutme/politics.html

He finds "[s]ocial organization (aka government) [...] is being done really badly right now (democracy is better than previous forms, but still awful), and it can be done better. [...] I think most political discussion is [...] nonsensical reasoning about a useless tradition which has accumulated concentrated interests who benefit from it and have entrenched themselves [...]. By stepping up a level, we neatly avoid getting trapped in endless policy debates, debates which are almost pure intellectual masturbation because the problem is not figuring out a good policy, the problem is that the system (say, democracy) doesn't optimize for 'good'. We can argue for hours about the best tax system – but politicians don't want 'the best', they want one where they can profit by selling loopholes."

The solution Patri Friedman proposes is "competitive government" – and the creation of new spaces in which various forms of government and institutional arrangements (some of them non- or anti-democratic) can develop in their own "nation" states/countries. While people (unless they live in some form of democracy) may no longer get to elect their leaders, they would get to decide under what system of government they wish to live – and move there.

Friedman writes: "My path is not just a path to libertarianism, but to a wider variety of governments and societies. I wish to convince non-libertarians that this is an attractive vision, and that it is something they would like to see happen. I also want to help people of many different political persuasions to get along by seeing ways in which each group can have what they want, instead of arguing endlessly over what they should all have."

The way of getting there, according to him, is experimentation: "Government has stagnated. Very little experimentation. (What do you expect when it's basically impossible to start a new country or change an existing one? How do you expect to get technological advances without experimentation?) [...] Experimenting has some important benefits: It gives us empirical evidence about what rule-systems work. This is enormously more valuable than theoretical debates which depend on model assumptions; It enables people to live under a system while learning about it; It gives people a specific, real example to point to when debating the merits of various systems; They let people actually experience a society, physically and emotionally rather than as a mental abstraction. [...]

"The fewer, larger political systems we have, the less experimentation there will be. Also, the less different types of society we will have. I believe that a world with a diverse set of governments, peacefully competing for citizens, would be a much better one. We might see the technologies of social organization advancing as fast as other areas of science and technology."

Patri Friedman recognizes the difficulty of experimenting with political systems in existing nation states/countries. Much like the Zionists at the beginning of the twentieth century, he aims to solve this problem by creating new nations. (One of the blogs he writes on is entitled "Let A Thousand Nations Bloom".) He proposes to "open the new frontier of the oceans", because international waters provide "a very low barrier to entry to creating a new government, and avoid the powers-that-be". " By building cities on the ocean in a modular fashion, the ocean becomes a permanent frontier, because any dissatisfied group can go to a new, empty patch of ocean, and take their houses and offices with them!. This lets them reset at far lower cost."

"And if we build these cities out of modular platforms, so that people can vote with their house (instead of just their feet), we get a world of unprecendented mobility (ie free association). Together, these have the potential to transform the governing industry from an oligopoly into a competitive market."

Patri Friedman calls this "seasteading". He even founded his own organization, the Seadsteading Institute in Palo Alto, California, whose mission statement reads: "To further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems". It may be the first serious project in the direction of "competitive government" since it received a financial contribution of half a million US dollars from billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal.

www.seasteading.org

Questions remain, of course, like on what basis people are supposed to come together to form a new "nation"/country/community if they do not before have an abstract idea, model, conception of a future society all of them aspire to?

Like anarchist, capitalist libertarians, others too will have to find ways of conceptualizing such non- or anti-democratic societies first, and then put their ideas into practice and to the test in existing or new states, while never ceasing to experiment.

Patri's own libertarian project (which attracted the Silicon Valley start-up funding for his Seasteading Institute) suffers from his erring belief that capitalism can durably be separated from democracy. As his grandfather, Milton, knew full well a capitalist economy will (in the long run) always lead to democratic forms of government – and thus the same old problems.

New forms of government will not be democratic. They will not be capitalist either.

To build a swimming country will always require a lot of money. New non-democratic, non-capitalist societies are therefore unlikely to arise on the high seas. But arise they will.

"Political non-voters" in Germany

A new type of non-voter grabbed the attention of the German media prior to last month's federal election: the conscientious, or political, non-voter.

Non-voting as a political stance against the shortcomings of parliamentary democracy appears to have been popularized by renowned journalists and writers like Gabor Steingart and Thomas Brussig. They and others of similar thinking participated not only in many pre-election talk shows, but published books and essays calling for voter abstinence.

Steingart's book, for example, is titled "Die gestohlene Demokratie" (Stolen Democracy; Piper, September 2009):

www.piper-verlag.de/taschenbuch/buch.php?id=15942&page=buchaz

Non-voting they identify as a mode of resistance to the "political class", the "cartel", and as objection to being treated like "cattle" led to the voting booth. They feel defrauded by the party state and the interchangeability of the programmes of political parties that may have become obsolete and overextended, but cling to power. Parties, they argue, are no longer representative of the people they rule. German democracy thus has become dull and tired. It is a "democracy from above" and politics is made without the people.

In the May 2009 issue of the "magazine for political culture", Cicero, Brussig, a former inhabitant of the German Democratic Republic, wrote: "Every generation deserves its revolution. There was 1968, and there was 1989. From that timing, something is bound to happen soon". With a view to the current economic crisis: "A system that has positioned itself for eternity can collapse all of a sudden. It happens very fast and with a dreamlike ease. Moreover, it is wondrously beautiful" (my translation).

There is no shame in not voting, so their message. If you don't vote, you still set a political sign. Non-voting is the "enlightened" thing to do.

Participation in this year's German elections was indeed the lowest since the end of the Second World War.

A positive agenda for anti-democratic thought

In my book "Anti-Democratic Thought" I first laid out what I like to call "a positive agenda for anti-democratic thought":

In a historical and cross-cultural perspective the fact cannot be denied that most democracies failed. Many formerly democratic countries do not have a democratic government now. Many countries have never known democracy. Only western democracies for a short while – maybe to be dated from the fall of Soviet communism to the rise of radical Islam – believed themselves invincible. It may therefore seem expedient to think about political alternatives once more and to study threats to democracy from within and without as well as common modes of failure of democracy across times and cultures.

Will people's disillusion with democratic practices (such as the impact money has on campaigning), mass politics, and the equal inconsequence of everyone's vote ultimately terminate democracy?

I do not believe that all political systems have been tried yet. Our world is changing rapidly. Will the technological innovations of recent decades, and those to come, make possible political forms that never existed (nor could be imagined) in history – or will we have to fall back, post democracy, into the abyss of authoritarian despotism, as envisaged by Plato and Aristotle?

Oswald Spengler said that money would finally lose its value, its meaning, and politics would reclaim its rightful place.

That is the challenge of our time: reclaiming politics.

My book marks the beginning of a daring new debate. It is not satisfied with studying the historical dimensions of anti-democratic thought – as were so many of our predecessors –, but wishes to study its future too.

The (re-)introduction that opens the volume approaches anti-democratic thought from an angle different from that of earlier authors. Rather than focusing on discourse analysis and similarities in the arguments advanced by various strands of anti-democratic thought, the focus here lies on anti-egalitarianism and the underlying causes that led individuals to thinking and taking up arguments against democracy in the first place.

These reasons have not changed.

Exceptional men and women still are dissatisfied with democracy and the rule of everyone-else over the individual and unwilling to accept at face value the old tendentious and partisan adage that, despite its admitted shortcomings, no better political system is imaginable.

There are many difficulties in trying to make valid statements about anti-democratic thought. That should not stop us. We have to navigate the difficulty that anti-democratic thinkers may contradict each other. So too do democratic thinkers. Anti-democratic thought as much as democracy theory is not a coherent body of work. We need to understand the context in which anti-democratic thought arose and arises. Anti-democratic thought resulting from support for alternative political systems should be kept separate from anti-democratic thought directed against more fundamental principles of democracy, such as equality.

Anti-democratic thought can be – must be – re-invented as a positive project for the twenty-first century. In doing so, we need to avoid making claims that are obviously wrong. To distinguish ourselves from earlier polemical attacks on democracy, we need to phrase each word, each sentence, our whole argument carefully and in a manner that is simple and straightforward and cannot easily be refuted. We need to submit anti-democratic polemics, plays and novels to academic study and turn what we find into scientific knowledge and political resources.

Much nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anti-democratic thought suffered from unfamiliarity with the practical workings of democracy. Criticism was often unsophisticated, repetitive and superficial. It will be the challenge of twenty-first-century anti-democratic thought to criticize democracy, with hindsight, in a more sophisticated manner, to develop and formulate more subtle expressions of anti-democratic thought, to move away from cheap stereotypes and become as analytical and diverse as pro-democratic thought. Different traditions and strands of anti-democratic thought must be allowed to compete freely with each other and with democracy. Intellectuals need to lose the unjustified prejudice in favour of democracy – now just as unjustified as the largely prejudicial anti-democratic thought two-hundred years ago.

We need to confront those who call "anti-democratic" everything they don't like about democracy, and whatever kind of social and political thought they do not understand or approve of, by giving anti-democratic thought clearer contours and new substance.

Anti-democratic thought is no longer to be treated as an inconsequential appendage to democracy theory. University and college courses on "Democracy and Its Critics", may their teachers be in favour or critical of democracy, will benefit from the serious discussion of anti-democratic thought on offer in my book, more than from any apology of democracy.

For more on the history and background of anti-democratic thought and why to study anti-democratic thought and think anti-democratically today, see my chapter "Re-Introducing Anti-Democratic Thought", which is available here:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA1,M1

Arundhati Roy turns on democracy

Even renowned Indian novelist and anti-globalization activist Arundhati Roy has come to perceive "The Dark Side of Democracy" – so the title of a text in her most recent collection of previously published essays, "Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy" (Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, 2009):

www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241144626,00.html

The book is described by its publisher as looking "closely at how religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism and neo-fascism simmer just under the surface of a country [India] that projects itself as the world's largest democracy", but is now being turned "into a police state", threatening its "precarious democracy" and sending "shockwaves through the region and beyond".

An adapted version of her introduction to the book was published under the title "Democracy's Failing Light" in Outlook India magazine:

www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?250418

She has since used this introductory essay as her opening speech at the ninth International Literature Festival in Berlin, Germany (September 2009), thus indicating that her critical thoughts on democracy address a global rather than merely an Indian audience.

Polemically, Roy asks: "Is there life after democracy?", once it "has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that resolves almost entirely around the idea of maximising profit? [...] Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?"

Democracy, according to Roy, "can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would". Her collected essays, some new, some dating back to the turn of the millennium, are "not about unfortunate anomalies or aberrations in the democratic process. They're about the consequences of and the corollaries to democracy; they're about the fire in the ducts".

India's parties spent two billion dollars on the 2009 general elections. "That's a lot more than the budget of the US elections. According to some media reports the actual amount spent is closer to ten billion dollars. Where, might one ask, does that kind of money come from? [...] Clearly, without sponsorship it's hard to win an election. And independent candidates cannot promise subsidised rice, free TVs and cash-for-votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been reduced to".

German media reported Roy's Berlin speech (the German translation of her essay) as depicting democracy-that-is, in India and elsewhere, as a milder form of civil war.

Book: Democracy Kills

A welcome contribution to the commencing debate on anti-democratic thought: On 4 September 2009, Pan Macmillan published the new book by veteran BBC foreign correspondent, Humphrey Hawksley, bearing the suggestive title "Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having the Vote?".

Pan Macmillan promotes the book as "[a] compelling and thought-provoking examination of the dangers of democracy":

www.panmacmillan.com/titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=419097

Their description: For many years western governments have insisted that the only way to achieve long-term prosperity and political stability is through a combination of free-market economics and democratic government. Yet, all evidence now indicates that this argument is both flawed and can also be the direct cause of war, disease, and poverty. From Pakistan to Zimbabwe, from the Palestinian territories to the former Yugoslavia, from Georgia to Haiti attempts to install democracy through elections have produced high levels of corruption and violence. Parliaments represent not broad constituencies but vested interests and, amid much fanfare, constitutions are written, but rarely upheld. Humphrey Hawksley has reported economic and political trends throughout the world for more than twenty years. In "Democracy Kills", he offers a vivid – and frequently devastating – analysis of our devotion to democracy.

There is of course a simple reason why Hawksley, as he writes on his blog, experienced "overwhelming support" when launching the book at the Edinburgh Literary Festival last month – and this from "a highly-intelligent, thoughtful, liberal audience". The cases he discusses in the book are far away. It is easy to agree that democratization had devastating consequences in places like Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Unlike myself, Hawksley appears still to favour democracy when it comes to the West. The argument he says "no-one disagreed with" remains thus theoretical to most people. They are not asked to take a stance.

In an early review of the book, Gerard DeGroot (Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews) concedes in this vein that

"[w]hile democracy seems in theory admirable, too often its hasty implementation brings bloodshed, poverty, disease and death". In the Ivory Coast, for example, "[a] succession of weak governments [left] the country open to free-market exploitation by rapacious chocolate producers. Adults now have the vote, but their children are often slaves", harvesting cocoa.

Only in developing countries, according to that line of thought, "the people often lack the experience to behave like full-fledged democrats. The result is either chronic political instability or, worse, elected autocracies. [...] The argument brings to mind the colonial era when self-determination was perpetually denied on grounds that the natives were not ready. Today, the politically correct attitude is to assume that all people are capable of being good democrats, or at least should be allowed to make their own mistakes. Yet democracy is much more than an ideology worthy of adoption simply because it is noble. It is, in truth, a culture – one that took centuries to take root in Europe. The idea that it can be quickly transplanted in places where the soil is rocky and the climate harsh is simply naïve".

Concluding his discussion, DeGroot relates "the experience of Usama Rehda, an Iraqi citizen for whom democratic change has meant poverty, corruption and the constant threat of car bombs. 'You know what they say [... .] Be nice to the Americans or they'll punish you with democracy.'"

Pirate parties against private property and surveillance

Every so often, political movements seem to sweep across Europe that cause people in different countries to form parties of a similar hue, pursuing programmes of an identical (or closely related) nature. The first such movement, in recent times, may have been liberalism, followed by the labour movement and the Greens, among others.

All of a sudden, we see "pirate parties" spring up all over Europe (and, indeed, the world). With the information and communication technologies at their disposal, the spread of this movement is even faster than on previous occasions.

Founded only in 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party already won a seat in the recent elections to the European Parliament – receiving 7.13% of the votes –, after having become the third largest national party in terms of membership (before the Green Party, Left Party, Liberal Party, Christian Democrats, and Centre Party). In Germany, albeit shortly before the end of term, a member of parliament last week switched allegiance from the Social Democrats to the German Pirate Party, becoming the pirates' first representative in a national legislature.

Pirate parties everywhere seek a reform of their countries' and international laws regarding copyright and patents. They fight against the surveillance state and for a strengthening of the right to privacy, on the Internet as well as in everyday life. They seek full transparency of state actions, government and administration. For now, they abstain from positioning themselves on the left-right political spectrum, in favour of forging alliances with all parties that are willing to support their goals.

There is no reason for pirate parties to remain single topic, though. Concerns with the coming (European) surveillance state encompass all spheres of life, wherever databases are kept to store information about us and infringe on our privacy. Informatics and the Internet permeate leisure and work alike and the state pries on us in private and in public. Labour – the Social Democrats – also started out as a single-topic movement, seeking the improvement of labour conditions, but swiftly transformed itself into a political force to be reckoned with more broadly.

The true significance of pirate parties is under-analyzed and under-theorized, not least due to the fact that they are run mostly by technologists (programmers, developers, IT entrepreneurs, etc.) with little background in social and political thought. Outside Sweden, they are often led by very young people (digital natives who do not remember a time before private computing) with no political experience at all. They are a reaction to real-life problems perceived first by people at the forefront of technological developments, but bound to become of ever greater importance to all of us.

The silly name, Pirate Party, proudly betrays the semi-criminal (at least, not law-abiding) background of this political movement. It has its roots in the Wild West anarchism of the early Internet and (illegal) file-sharing communities that are now being criminalized in most jurisdictions. The German member of parliament accepted into the folds of the Pirate Party is being investigated by the authorities for possession of child pornography (which, as he says, he obtained in the exercise of his duties as his former party's parliamentary spokesperson for Education and Research and New Media).

Whether known or unknown to them (and all their members), pirate parties fight the logic of capitalist market economy, and the laws protecting it, by supporting the pirating of goods (such as music and films), informational self-determination on the net, and open-access policies for scientific research findings. While pirate parties propose to abandon private property in the form of copyright and patents, it will, consequently, be necessary to abandon property at a more fundamental level, in all its forms.

Here the question arises whether the foundation of a political party is the right way – and a traditional party is the right form – to fight surveillance and property. After all – and hardly considered by the technologists behind these parties –, it is democracies that protect private property and, through security scares and fears of crime, give rise to the police or surveillance state (even though the latter may yet prove to be democracy's downfall).

I hold that it won't be possible to fight property and surveillance by democratic means. If pirate parties, in the course of time, grow less radical and become satisfied with introducing safeguards to surveillance and exceptions to property they may be accommodated within the democratic and capitalist system (just as Labour and the Greens were).

Ultimately, however, something more basic is beginning to take shape. The opposition against property and the police/surveillance state will form outside of parliaments and the fight will be fought against democracy and the indifference of the majority.

If the pirates make it their fight they will play a role of utmost historical significance. Otherwise, they will (have to) be superseded.

On the crisis of parliamentarianism in the United Kingdom

Much is being written these days on the crisis of parliamentarianism in the UK, caused by the exposure of practices apparently shared by parliamentarians across all political parties and factions of claiming unjustified allowances and expenses that had either not arisen to them (for example, for a non-existent second home in their constituency or in London) or that were not linked to their political mandate (porn films, garden manure, dog food, etc.). Some resignations from the parliamentary benches and government have already been tendered and more are expected to follow.

There is growing concern that the unfolding of events may lead to anti-democratic sentiment and action amongst the populace (such as gains for the neo-fascist British National Party in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament) and it would indeed be easy for an avowed anti-democrat to take this as an occasion to slap and slander parliamentary democracy, just as the mainstream media, led on by the newspaper Daily Telegraph, "glory" in doing.

The usual mode of anti-democratic thought and criticism of democracy would have been to take the news from Britain as a proof of the inherent weakness of every democratic system of governance. Let's be real, though, and agree that this just as easily could have happened in any corrupt authoritarian country. The real lesson to be learned here is that democracies are no better than authoritarian governments. They can claim no moral advantage or high ground – or they will do so at their own peril.

As I wrote in my paper "Fighting Capitalism and Democracy", the notion that democracy is intrinsically linked to money, and democratic power is linked to material wealth, is as old as democracy itself. In the very first democracies, in ancient Greece, as James Bryce stated,
'[t]he power of money and the greed for money appears from the prevalence of bribery and the frequent embezzlement of the public funds' (Modern Democracies: I/206). The same has held true for every democracy since.

The new mode of anti-democratic thought that I am propagating takes the recent events not as sufficient reason to doubt democracy. It rather takes them as one more reason to doubt capitalism and the fixation on money that characterizes our present time and order – and to doubt democracy because of its inherent linkage to capitalism.

Just a few years back similar "scandals" erupted in Germany and at the European Union as well as in South Africa ("Travelgate"). In all these countries, parliamentarianism survived – as it will undoubtedly, for the time being, in the UK.

The difference between now and then, other countries and the UK is however significant. What British members of parliament now experience and endure is a sort of personal and professional destruction – that will be satisfied only with complete annihilation of the man or woman targeted. Other people, less in the public spotlight, have been enduring such treatment at the hands of the UK media for a long time. Myself, I have been subjected to it by an anonymous cyberstalker and compliant media for over a year now.

It's the naming and shaming that the media laws in most other countries prohibit – people, parliamentarians and others, being called criminals and frauds by journalists and not given the chance to set the record straight and defend themselves against allegations that are either false, unproven, or rest on the worst possible interpretation of shaky evidence and questionable facts. There is no presumption of innocence here and the sentence is not to be spoken by a court of law or a body of parliamentary control, but by public opinion. The sentence is the destruction of people's reputations and existence at the hands of unaccountable forces, with no right to appeal.

That is the way the media work in the UK. As the Guardian newspaper reports: "The MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, claimed the Telegraph's expenses campaign was proving so invasive that some MPs were on suicide watch. 'The atmosphere in Westminster is unbearable,' she wrote on her blog. 'People are constantly checking to see if others are OK. Everyone fears a suicide. If someone isn't seen, offices are called and checked.'"

In another country with similar penchant for personal destruction, South Korea, former president Roh Moo-hyun was driven to suicide only last week by corruption charges he strongly denied. Again in the Guardian, a citizen of South Korea comments: "I've never been so ashamed of being a citizen of this country, a country that kills its own president [...]. It feels like we've lost all respect in pushing each other to extremes."

The partner of a UK member of parliament, in the same newspaper, meant likewise: "The British public – not all of them, but the smug guardians of morality who are enjoying this crisis so much – say they are disgusted by the behaviour of our elected representatives. Let me say that it works both ways: for the first time in my life, I am sick of my country. I am sick of the daily undermining of democracy, and sick of the sadistic pleasure people take in humiliating decent public servants. Even so, I will go on urging my friend not to give up her seat. She is a brilliant constituency MP, and I don't believe anyone should give in to bullies."

As if to prove the fact that the victims of such mob rule and media man hunt deserve no right to defend themselves, or point to the media's agenda and consequences of their actions, lawyers acting for the Daily Telegraph swiftly got a court order against Nadine Dorries that forced her to shut down her blog:

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/23/dorries-tory-mp-blog-taken-down

This is not about democracy or anti-democracy, or about whether someone may have bent the rules. It's not about being in favour of or against parliaments. Make no mistake, I am against them. The issue here is personal. It's a personalized smear and defamation campaign against particular parliamentarians, although numerous, not against parliament as an institution. That is why most people in the UK do not perceive what is happening as an attack on democracy. The campaign is not anti-democracy, it's anti-those-representing-democracy.

It is not aimed at democracy as an abstract principle, but at humans who are being thrown to the wolves, merciless, by corporate interests and base instincts. This campaign is the biggest thing since 9/11, with new revelations day after day after day. Self-righteously, it claims to be about the misuse of public funds. In sober truth, though, it is about selling newspapers. It is almost certain that the Daily Telegraph paid money – that is, employed corruption of public officials itself – to obtain the information they now use against MPs. Money, here as always, shapes public opinion. And no one believe for a moment that one could not uncover similar stories about each and every Daily Telegraph executive and manager – they are just not likely ever to be published.

Nothing of the scale of the public reaction in the UK has happened or could even be imagined to happen in similar cases elsewhere in Europe. The British "stiff upper lip" is an imperial upper-class myth that always hid the fact that Britain is a nation of binge-drinking chavs and the venomous media serving them. In its majority, it is a vile people full of spite and bile that enjoys wallowing in the gutter. It is a sign of the times that even the conservative and formerly serious Daily Telegraph has stooped so low.

While indeed such a "scandal" could happen under authoritarian rule too, the moralistic and moralizing nonsense, the media's double standards now so publicly exhibited in the UK, and the vilification of members of parliament lies entirely in the nature of the beast, in the nature of democracy. Already in ancient Greece, politicians who had fallen from public favour were subjected to a vote in the citizens' assembly that would decide whether they should be killed or merely sent into exile.

The sentence was as harsh as any passed by a tyrant, but a collective decision meant that no one had to feel responsible individually when fellow men were stripped of their rights as citizens.

It's the politics of anonymous total personal annihilation and character assassination.

Short, suicide or murder by proxy.

Bruce Gilley on anti-democratic thought

Bruce Gilley (Portland State University), the author of the article "The New Antidemocrats" (Orbis 50, spring 2006: 259-71), has made a further contribution to the commencing debate on anti-democratic thought.

In the January 2009 issue of the (pro-democracy) Journal of Democracy (113-27) he had an article published under the title "Is Democracy Possible?". The article can be read free of charge at:

www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/Gilley-20-1.pdf

Gilley writes that "in recent years, a slowly accelerating wave of skeptical and at times even hostile thought has arisen to challenge democracy’s claim to be the best form of government [...], it is a carefully argued, social-scientific, and respectable critique of democracy that has been developed largely by Western scholars. Almost unbeknownst to the legions of democracy-builders or to the nearly four billion democratic citizens worldwide, the belief in democracy has begun to crumble inside some of the world’s finest minds and institutions."

In particular, Gilley is concerned with the age-old, yet recently renewed and substantiated claims "that citizens are too ignorant, irrational, or both to rule themselves". While the article summarizes the relative arguments only superficially, it offers a bibliography for further reading. Most of the literature, though, is North America-centred and may thus not be of as much value to scholars (or activists) living, for example, in those countries the United States seeks to "democratize", unlike what Gilley seems to suggest.

At a more fundamental level, most countries do not have the kind of direct democracy practised most famously in Switzerland. In countries with a representative democratic system any public ignorance (or irrationality or misinformation) argument becomes somewhat (although not completely) irrelevant. The policies a parliament will enact are seldom those that individual parliamentary candidates campaigned on. Once elected, parliamentarians have to take into account the interests of different (and differing) parties and politicians, whether or not they form a coalition government. Only in a direct democracy will people get to vote on political issues themselves and only then public ignorance really matters.

If one took the public ignorance argument as seriously as Gilley does one would have to exclude the "public" (that is, everyone) from many more spheres of life. It is unrealistic to assume that people are generally better informed about most non-political issues. For example, public ignorance contributed significantly to the current crisis of the capitalist economy. It has proven true that the market is a mirror of democracy. As in democratic politics, people get to participate in the economy even if they do not understand how it works. In consequence, the market has failed (though mediated by managers and stockbrokers, it is the people who elected to make use of subprime mortgages, etc.) – and, I argue, so will democracy (blame it on democratic politicians' desire, or need, to give the people what the people want, if you will).

Public ignorance, irrationality or misinformation arguments are thus an unsophisticated form of critique of democracy. They can be no more than a starting point for the more serious anti-democratic thought called for in the twenty-first century. Once scholars begin to realize the public’s ignorance, irrationality and general misinformation (as I did some ten years ago), they should get started thinking about more fundamental flaws of democracy (and the human nature) and come up with the spelled-out anti-democratic alternatives Gilley so rightly demands of us.

The debate on anti-democratic thought begins

The renewed debate on anti-democratic thought that I sought to initiate with my first book has definitely taken off. The SCIS-organized workshop on “Anti-Democratic Thought” on which the book is based took place in September 2007 in Manchester, England. This heavily publicized initial event was followed by a conference organized by the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE) at the University of Brighton, England, in September 2008, titled “What's the Big Deal about Democracy?”:

www.brighton.ac.uk/CAPPE/Confevents/Profiles/1.html

And now, students at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy (AGSIRD) are organizing a Graduate Student Conference, “Questioning Democracy in the 21st Century: Relevant, Redundant, or Risk?”, to take place in Paris, France, on 2-3 June 2009:

www.apsanet.org/content_63384.cfm?navID=603

Their call for papers reads: “Democracy as a form of governance has a tumultuous history. Today, it has entered the jargon of international governance as the buzzword signifying civility and order. Democracy, its definition and content have been highly debated, recommended, exported, and above all, highly criticized. George Bernard Shaw said, 'Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.' And J.S Mill wrote 'If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.'

“The 21st century was inaugurated by an almost complete lack of other dominant forms of governance on the world’s stage. Democracy became the catchword not only for aspirations of peoples but also for foreign policy goals of western governments. But, if history is to teach us anything, it is that nothing is static and nothing is stable.”

Paper proposals for the Paris conference can still be submitted until 30 April 2009.

It is interesting to note that once more this debate is carried on by graduate students, young researchers and professionals rather than by established academics. It is the coming great debate.

CFP: Democracy's Linkage to Capitalism

Please circulate widely! Blog about it! etc.

Call for papers: “Democracy's Linkage to Capitalism”

Fourth Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), 7-9 September 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland

For decades, scholars have been describing the period we live in as “late capitalism”. Why then have so many people been surprised that capitalism could indeed fall into a global crisis? And how do we explain the silence of the political left in the face of that crisis of the despised capitalist order? Besides the academic self-assertion of a few leftist scholars and publicists that had already given up on the revolution, there appears to be no organized political movement (anywhere) that seeks to overthrow capitalism now that it is weak. Anti- and alter-globalization movements and protests (most recently observed at the Nato and G20 summits) are smaller now than they were ten years ago. New scholarship is scarce on the failure of (neo-)liberal political-economic theories and the “science” of Economics.

The reason for all this, I propose, is that we are only too aware that any fundamental criticism of capitalism in the current situation would also imply a fundamental critique of democracy. As we all know, it is democratic nation states that keep capitalism alive now. Never before has it been so obvious that democracy is intrinsically linked to capitalism. No one dares to point it out: whoever wants to fight capitalism now must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

I argued this first in 2004 in my paper “Fighting Capitalism and Democracy”:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA187,M1

A summary of which is to be found here:

www.erichkofmel.blogspot.com/2009/04/fighting-capitalism-and-democracy.html

Why don't people dare to criticize democracy? While capitalism has been in crises before (though arguably not of such global dimensions), it is the first time that there exists no obvious alternative to capitalism and democracy. At the time of the last crises, socialism/communism or even fascism seemed viable political options. They are not anymore, and no new alternatives have arisen. China has become capitalist, and so has Russia. All criticisms of democracy available to us hail from a time when democracy had not been consolidated yet, in most countries. All this results in empty gestures of (journalistic) criticism of capitalism, without political content or demands.

On this, see my book “Anti-Democratic Thought”:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC

None of this should stop us from using the moment to further investigate the intrinsic linkage of democracy to capitalism. Papers on this and related themes are invited from affiliated and non-affiliated scholars of any discipline or background. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature.

Deadline for proposals is 30 June 2009, but later submissions may be accepted. Earlier submission is strongly encouraged and proposals may be accepted as they come in. Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@scis-calibrate.org

SCIS Symposia are small interdisciplinary workshop-style events with 15-20 participants. Each paper is allocated about an hour for presentation and discussion. Previous SCIS Symposia took place at the University of Sussex and the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, England (2006); University of Pisa and Hotel Santa Croce in Fossabanda, Pisa, Italy (2007); and Sciences Po/The Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France (2008). Keynote speakers included full professors from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Duke University; King's College London/British House of Lords; etc.

As always, no fees will be charged for participation in this Symposium, and no funding is available for participants' travel and accommodation cost. We will be glad to issue letters of invitation on request though to assist participants with applications to their usual sources of funding. All participants are responsible to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements. The Symposium starts Monday afternoon and ends Wednesday at lunchtime.

Because we expect that particularly doctoral candidates and young researchers may experience problems obtaining funding for travel in the current economic situation, we will also accept tabled papers (i.e. authors do not need to be present personally; their full papers will be circulated among all participants prior to the Symposium). If in such a case you would like to make a video of your presentation, it can be shown to participants during the Symposium. If not stated otherwise, we will assume that proposed papers are to be presented in person in Geneva.

Erich Kofmel
Managing Director
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
http://www.scis-calibrate.org/

Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland

SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.

Fighting capitalism and democracy (summarily)

“What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.” – Qoheleth 1:9

The concluding paper in my volume “Anti-Democratic Thought”, entitled “Fighting Capitalism and Democracy”, was written in 2004, long before the global financial crisis set in. Surveying various bodies of theory and research (historical and empirical evidence, liberal and modernization theory, among them), the paper argues that democracy and capitalism are inextricably linked – and goes on to ask what this means for a politics of resistance.

The paper finds that capitalism can exist (for a lengthy period of time) without needing or leading to democracy. (Ultimately, though, every form of capitalism will lead to some form of democracy.) Democracy, on the other hand, cannot exist without capitalism. (The few cases in which democracy survived in not-yet-capitalist circumstances only confirm that rule – the reasons for the survival of democracy lie in circumstances outside the democracy-capitalism nexus.)

I didn't need the global financial crisis to realize this. However, the financial crisis most certainly has confirmed all my findings in that much earlier paper. Democratic governments everywhere have found it necessary to stabilize the capitalist economic system(s) without which these democracies would fail immediately. (Due, for example, to popular uprisings caused by economic distress of the population.)

My paper comes to some conclusions. If the basic assumptions of the paper have been reinforced by the financial crisis, so must have been the conclusions drawn from the linkage between capitalism and democracy: whoever wants to fight capitalism (like Islamist terrorists or the anti- and alter-globalization protesters we observed most recently at the Nato and G20 summits) must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

Here a summary of the argument:

Since the 1950s, political scientists, historians, sociologists, and economists have been attempting to prove scientifically common sense observations about an inherent linkage between capitalism and democracy (“Any causal glance at the world will show that poor countries tend to have authoritarian regimes, and wealthy countries democratic ones”: Przeworski et al.: Democracy and Development).

They built upon arguments presented in the literature that emerged in the wake of the Second World War and the independence of former colonies on the economic development of so-called underdeveloped or developing countries. Soon this body of literature led to the academic discipline of development studies and a scientific theory of development, usually called “modernization theory”, which was of major influence in the 1950s and 60s and again, along with neo-liberalism, in the 1980s and 90s.

While many of the early authors of modernization theory were only concerned with the economic side of capitalist development, others such as Seymour Martin Lipset (1959 in his article Some Social Requisites of Democracy) assumed that economic development – capitalism –, would lead to political development – democracy.

One year earlier than Lipset, in an often cited non-empirical study (The Passing of Traditional Society), Daniel Lerner had already proposed a causal sequence of urbanization leading to literacy and media growth, which in turn would lead to the development of institutions of participatory politics. Karl de Schweinitz (Industrialization and Democracy) went on to claim that the process of causation runs from industrialization to political democracy and he linked this to people being “disciplined to the requirements of the industrial order” and therefore more willing to resolve conflicts, arising for example from the distribution of national income, peacefully.

De Schweinitz affirmed that this form of rationality would only develop “in a high-income economy”, but not in a mere “subsistence economy”. Samuel P. Huntington, an influential author of the second wave of modernization theory, argued that democratization will usually happen “at the middle levels of economic development. In poor countries democratization is unlikely; in rich countries it has already occurred” (The Third Wave).

Processes associated with industrialization make it, in Huntington's eyes, more difficult for authoritarian regimes to control the population, not least because they promote the growth of an urban middle class.

With their writings authors of modernization theory prepared the theoretical foundations for numerous comparative and cross-cultural studies trying to establish correlations and the causal relationship between capitalism and democracy. The task is made more difficult by the fact that there is no agreement as to what constitutes either “capitalism” or “democracy” and the proper measures of both remain contested.

This as well as the application of a wide array of research designs did however not change the fundamental finding of such studies that democracy, at the national level, stands little chance of survival if not coupled to a capitalist economic system.

In my paper, I suggest that the few deviant cases in which a democratic constitution that predated capitalism did not fail were sustained by variables external to both capitalism and democracy.

While there is disagreement as to whether democratization is a linear or near-linear positive function of economic growth or a threshold phenomenon associated with a country (or its citizens) reaching a particular level of income, either accounts for the fact that capitalism can, and does, exist in countries without democracy.

Still others have argued that only in countries above a certain economic threshold democracy will not be overthrown once it has been introduced. Steady economic growth appears to mitigate the danger of failure of democracy even in circumstances in which such a threshold has not yet been reached. Democracy, in its turn, has been shown to stimulate further economic growth.

Before Francis Fukuyama proclaimed The End of History and that liberal democracy and capitalism might constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”, only once in twenty years a major liberal author had bothered to write about the linkage of democracy to capitalism at all, and then, as Milton Friedman put it, “to keep options open until circumstances make change necessary [...], to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable” (Capitalism and Freedom).

Jeremy Bentham and James Mill had been the first though to become convinced, in the early nineteenth century, that far from destroying “property” the poor would let themselves be guided by the property-owning classes. Vladimir Lenin thus called democracy “the best possible political shell for capitalism”. Capitalism, he concluded, could not be overcome by democratic means (The State and Revolution).

Oswald Spengler put it succinctly: “In the form of democracy, money has won”. It becomes effective, he said (often repeated since), by manufacturing public opinion and enslaving free will through the media and campaigning and the systemic corruption of all the people (The Decline of the West).

Henry C. Simons, the first of many professors to turn the University of Chicago into a centre of so-called neo-liberal thought, took the “preservation of democratic institutions” to be one of the “objectives of economic policy” in the US in the face of communism and fascism (A Positive Program for Laissez Faire).

Decades of economic growth under democracy as well as the welfare state, much despised by the Chicago school, further consolidated the capitalist economic system in the West by bestowing property and entitlements upon almost every citizen and thus muting fundamental opposition.

The notion that democracy is intrinsically linked to money, and democratic power is linked to material wealth, is as old as democracy itself. Athenian democracy excluded men who did not own property and Caesar, who brought the Roman Republic to its end, was the richest man of his time.

Wherever a form of democracy arose, be it the Italian city republics or the Swiss ur-cantons, preceding economic development and the introduction of “capitalist” modes of production can be detected. The American Revolution only took place, it appears, once there was a “capitalist” cause to fight for – the spoils of the New World. All Americans were united in their ardent desire for what Alexis de Tocqueville called “material well-being” (Democracy in America).

Much of what has been written against an inherent linkage between capitalism and democracy appears, after the fall of communism, outdated. Socialists may still argue that the two are separable and that one can fight capitalism without harming democracy. However, while capitalist democracy continues, all attempts at socialist democracy collapsed at an early stage.

One cannot fight capitalism, it seems, and replace it with some non-liberal democracy because every form of democracy, if sustained long enough, will in turn give rise to some form of capitalism.

Factors associated with a capitalist economic system are among the necessary preconditions for a stable democracy.

This is the deeper meaning of the inextricable linkage of democracy to capitalism: whoever wants to fight capitalism must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

Being anti-capitalist one must be anti-democratic too.

Islamist terrorists have understood this.

The one who really means to fight the system must stand entirely outside of it.

> Read the full paper here:
books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA187,M1

"Anti-Democratic Thought" on Google Book Search

Finally, my edited collection “Anti-Democratic Thought” has become fully searchable on Google Book Search:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC

In particular, I would like to point readers to my own two chapters.

- “Re-Introducing Anti-Democratic Thought”, by Erich Kofmel:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA1,M1

- “Fighting Capitalism and Democracy”, by Erich Kofmel:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA187,M1

Links to various online bookstores where you can buy the book after browsing are provided on the site.

Resources on anti-democratic thought

A list of books and journal articles tagged anti-democratic / antidemocratic / anti-democracy / antidemocracy / post-democratic / postdemocratic / post-democracy / postdemocracy / democracy and its critics / critics of democracy

Resources for the study of anti-democratic thought:

"Anti-Democratic Thought", by Erich Kofmel (Editor), Exeter and Charlottesville: Imprint Academic, 2008
www.amazon.com/Anti-Democratic-Thought-Erich-Kofmel/dp/1845401247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233149632&sr=8-1

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search:
books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC

"Beyond Democracy to Post-Democracy: Conceiving a Better Model of Governance to Supercede Democracy", by Peter Baofu, Lewiston/NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004
vol. 1:
www.amazon.com/Beyond-Democracy-Post-Democracy-Conceiving-Governance/dp/0773462163/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233068461&sr=1-4
vol. 2:
www.amazon.com/Beyond-Democracy-Post-Democracy-Conceiving-Governance/dp/077346218X/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233068542&sr=1-17

"Antidemocratic Trends in Twentieth Century America", by Roland L. DeLorme and Raymond G. McInnis (Editors), Reading/MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969
(out of print)

"Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti-Democratic Thought Since the French Revolution", by Joseph V. Femia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001
www.amazon.com/Against-Masses-Varieties-Anti-Democratic-Revolution/dp/0198280637/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233068780&sr=1-9

"The Case Against the Democratic State: An Essay in Cultural Criticism", by Gordon Graham, Exeter and Charlottesville: Imprint Academic, 2002
www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Democratic-State-Societas/dp/090784538X/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233068925&sr=1-30

"Democracy: The God That Failed", by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001
www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233068978&sr=1-1

"Hatred of Democracy", by Jacques Rancière, London and New York: Verso, 2006
www.amazon.com/Hatred-Democracy-Jacques-Ranciere/dp/1844670988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069014&sr=1-1

"Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought", by Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994
www.amazon.com/Athens-Trial-Jennifer-Tolbert-Roberts/dp/0691029199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069052&sr=1-1

"Democracy on Trial", by Jean Bethke Elshtain, New York: Basic Books, 1995
www.amazon.com/Democracy-Trial-Jean-Bethke-Elshtain/dp/0465016170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069096&sr=1-1

"What's Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship", by Loren J. Samons II, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004

www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-Democracy-Athenian-Practice/dp/0520251687/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234882802&sr=8-1

"Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought: An Analysis and A Criticism, with special reference to the American political mind in recent times", by David Spitz, New York: Macmillan, 1949

(out of print)

"Democracy and Its Critics", by Robert A. Dahl, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989
www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300049382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069139&sr=1-1

"Post-Democracy", by Colin Crouch, Cambridge: Polity, 2004
www.amazon.com/Post-Democracy-Themes-Century-Colin-Crouch/dp/0745633153/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069194&sr=1-1

"Counter-Terrorism and the Post-Democratic State", by Jenny Hocking and Colleen Lewis (Editors), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007
www.amazon.com/Counter-Terrorism-Post-Democratic-Monash-Studies-Movements/dp/1845429176/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069227&sr=1-1

"Cynicism and Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Postdemocratic Society", by Meg E. Cox (Editor), Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009
www.amazon.com/Cynicism-Hope-Reclaiming-Discipleship-Postdemocratic/dp/1606082140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069262&sr=1-1

Book chapter:

"China's Political Trajectory: What Are the Chinese Saying?", by Andrew J. Nathan, in"China’s Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy", by Cheng Li (Editor), Washington/DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008
www.amazon.com/Chinas-Changing-Political-Landscape-Prospects/dp/0815752091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233069301&sr=1-1

For the "out of print" items, check your library or used-book sellers.

Journal articles:

"The New Antidemocrats", by Bruce Gilley, Orbis, 2006, 50 (2): 259-71

“The Enemies of Democracy”, by Laurie Calhoun, International Journal of World Peace, 2007, 24 (2): 63-83

"Was Democracy Just a Moment?", by Robert D. Kaplan, Atlantic Monthly, 1997, 280 (6):55-80