Problems of Democracy: Probing the Boundaries

Edited by

Nico Bechter & Gabriele De Angelis 

Problems of Democracy

Probing the Boundaries

Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Daniel Riha Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ Hostility and Violence: Hub ‘Problems of Democracy’

2010

Problems of Democracy: Probing the Boundaries

Edited by

Nico Bechter & Gabriele De Angelis

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2010 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

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ISBN: 978-1-84888-037-5 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2010. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Nico Bechter & Gabriele De Angelis Section I:

Assessing Democracy in the West Pluralism, Legitimacy and Radical Democracy Thomas Decreus

Section II:

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The Hatred of Democracy Revisited Franc Rottiers

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Democracy as a Collection/Society of Porcupines Erdal Yıldız, Uğur Ekren & Nil Şimşek

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Eliciting Students’ Attitudes towards Democracy: Towards a More Inclusive Understanding of What a Democratic Way of Life Entails Isolde de Groot

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Democracy – National, Transnational What Counts as Democracy? Is Democracy Really what Counts? Giuliana Di Biase

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The Right to Democracy Rory O’Connell

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Democracy and the World Social Forum: Democratic 55 Ideas in Transnational Social Movements Gabriele De Angelis Section III:

Radical Perspectives Imminent or Spectral Democracy? The Problem of Political Representation for Bruno Latour and Antonio Negri / Michael Hardt Dominik Hasler

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Revisiting the Public/Private Distinction: A Deleuzian 79 Perspective Mohammadbagher Forough

The Problem with Equality: An Adornian Perspective 89 on a Contested Idea in Democratic Theories Nico Bechter Section IV:

National Case Studies Direct Democracy vs. Democracy by Representation 101 in the Middle East Zvi Bar’el A Fight for Democracy Internal to Democracy Itself: 109 The ANC and the Media in South Africa Glenda Daniels

Section V:

Democracy in Silence: Speaking, Silence and the Saturday Night Vigils in Turkey Zeynep Gülru Göker

119

The Controversy of Muslim Education in an Austrian Democracy Cornelia Caseau

131

Reassessing Decision-Making and Participation Let the Dice Decide! A Qualified Argument for Sortitionist Democracy Paul Lucardie

143

The Deliberative Case against the Secret Ballot and why It Fails Bart Engelen & Thomas Nys

153

Universal Choice or Democracy Mary-Ann Crumplin

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Democracy and Intimacy: Contrasting Views on a Controversial Connection Joaquim Negreiros

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Introduction Nico Bechter & Gabriele De Angelis It is by now a common place that the debate about democracy did not stop with the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Fukuyama’s well-know theory that ‘while earlier forms of government were characterised by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy [is] arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions’ points out the fundamental lack of credible political alternatives to democracy worldwide. Nevertheless, several questions still await plausible answers. As the literature on democratic systems shows, democracies go along with different institutional arrangements and political cultures, and displays considerable cultural varieties and national specificities, not least as to their relationship with welfare systems. Moreover, further questions arise as to the democratisation of supranational and international institutions such as the UN or the WTO. The increasing importance of continental blocs such as the EU calls for new theories of democratisation beyond the state. Finally, the rise of global social movements and the on-going debate on transnational civil society press on scholars for a stronger engagement with processes of democratisation on a global scale. All in all, what Habermas dubbed a ‘post-national constellation’ reiterates old questions and opens up a wide array of new ones as to how to conceptualise and assess both the quality and the evolution of democracy at the national as well as the global level. ‘Democratic participation’ ranges among the most widely discussed topics. Hailed since the late 1960s as a means to improve the protection of individual rights, heighten the quality of democracy and close the gap between decisionmakers and citizens, participation lends itself to multi-level analysis that may include voters’ turn outs, forms of public deliberation, social movements, as well as what Toqueville dubbed the ‘intermediate corps’, i.e. the wide range of institutions - such as workers’ unions and interest groups - that mediate between the people’s interests and wills and decision-making bodies. Thus, participation is tightly connected with the topic of political contention and democratic consensus. It is a source of new inputs as to how to theorise the involvement of citizens and their relationship with the political system. Furthermore, the triad of conflict, procedural legitimacy, and consensus raises questions as to the extent to which a political system requires shared values, the place for political conflict and the source and limits of legitimacy. The present volume, which collects some of the papers read at the First Global Conference on ‘Problems of Democracy’ that the Inter-Disciplinary Network organised in April-May 2010, in Prague, attempts to contribute to this debate by addressing some of the most pressing issues about democracy today. Section I collects assessments of the state of democracy in the West, most of which deal with the ‘fundamentals’ of democratic theory. Inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s influential

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__________________________________________________________________ work, Thomas Decreus revisits the relationship between democratic legitimacy and political conflict, and critically addresses conceptions of democratic consensus. He claims that ‘democracy is essentially a conflict about the meaning of liberty and equality’. This conflict is nevertheless part of our historical and cultural heritage and takes place by and large within the boundaries of peaceful political interactions. Therefore, reference to political tradition ‘is needed when we want to understand legitimacy,’ a tradition that can be understood in a non-conservative way. Franc Rottiers revisits Jaques Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy and deals with two competing excesses in a democracy: public participation and individualistic consumerism, and argues for a ‘new metaphysical perspective’. He raises critical questions as to the relationship between forms of participation and consumeristic ways of life, and deals with their relationships with democratic quality. Yildiz, Ekren and Şimşek open their paper with the metaphor of the society of porcupines in order to address the importance of spatial and temporal distance between the citizens of a democracy. With reference to Heidegger and Derrida they plead for closer forms of organization in which humans ‘can touch the others without fear’. Isolde de Groot addresses democratic education and youth’s attitude towards democratic values. This has become a pressing issue in Europe after in different countries concrete worries have been voiced as to the democratic engagement of young generations, also - but not exclusively - in relation to phenomena of immigration. Her essay addresses modes and effects of discussion and mediation of values with regard to young people with different background. Section II is devoted to transnational issues and to the impact of globalisation on national democracies. Giuliana Di Biase addresses both the impact of global economic oligarchy on national welfare and internal - national - shifts in the democratic balance of power, with examples from the Italian experience. She discusses the role of media in democratic processes, the populist dangers connected with distortions in their control, and recent patterns of media influence on democratic processes in Italy. In his paper, Rory O’Connell presents a legal perspective on the problems of democracy and looks at the interplay of International Law and democracy and the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. He addresses the importance of international law for the study of democracy and illustrates the benefits that political theory can draw from legal analysis when dealing with issues of fundamental rights. Gabriele De Angelis addresses democratic practises and representations of democracy at the World Social Forum as an example of a transnational social movement. He addresses the conceptions of democracy produced by Forum’s participants and organisers, the ideals and representative procedures that the latter promote, and the symbolic, visual, and spatial representations of democratic

Nico Bechter & Gabriele De Angelis

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__________________________________________________________________ practices at the WSF. His essay highlights the import of global social movements on idea(l)s of political participation. Section III offers some radical perspectives on democracy from the standpoint of leftist critics. Dominic Hasler addresses the problem of political representation in the eyes of Bruno Latour and Antonio Negri/Michael Hardt. Hasler combines Hardt/Negri’s idea of ‘multitude’ with Latour’s epistemological actor-network theory, and points to the similarities and differences between both. Mohammadbagher Forough revisits the public/private distinction and casts a Deleuzian glance on this topic. Summarising the various ‘discourses’ that Jeff Weintraub suggested in order to analyse the private/public distinction, Forough suggests three new discourses (counterprivacy, subaltern counterpublics, and transnational public spheres) for a better understanding of this very interesting and important issue in democratic theory. Nico Bechter examines the problem of equality in normative democratic theories. He argues that in capitalistic societies equality is only possible as an ideological deformation and as an oppressive call. Referring to Theodor W. Adorno, Bechter argues for a rethinking of the principle of exchange and the establishment of a society in which ‘people can be different without fear’. Section IV opens insights into the state of democracy in some non-Western countries. Zvi Bar’el discusses the state of democracy in Egypt on the basis of the distinction between the ‘formal’ checks and balances of liberal democracy and direct democracy. He addresses ideas of representation, ‘leaderism’, and control of political processes through an analysis of recent developments and while taking into account the recent history of Egyptian democracy. Glenda Daniels addresses the relationship between the South-African ruling ANC and the media, and focuses on freedom of expression. Illustrating some recent confrontations between ANP leaders and the media as well as their attempts at gaining higher control on news production, she critically questions the political ethics of the South-African ruling elite. In her paper, Zeynep Gulru Goker makes the case for silence as an expression of protest - a largely under-theorised topic in democratic theory. Goker uses the socalled ‘Saturday vigils’ in Istanbul, where women demonstrated silently against the disappearance of their relatives in Turkish prisons, as a case study for the idea of silence as a form political participation. She devotes particular attention to the symbolic characteristics of this significant initiative and casts light into political agency and the relationship between citizens and institutions in Turkey. Cornelia Caseau deals with Islamic immigration, democratic values, and public education in Austria, thus touching on a subject matter that is highly controversial and of great importance in several European countries. Caseau moves from a heated debate that took place in 2009 about the refusal of numerous Moslem teachers to teach democratic values on the grounds that they were incompatible with Islam. Taking into account the history of the Moslem presence in Austria, she

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__________________________________________________________________ analyses the relationship between Islamic minority and public institutions. Finally, Section V closes the circle by including re-assessments of decisionmaking and participation in Western democracies. Bart Engelen and Thomas Nys critically address the deliberative case against secret ballot. They assume that a coherent endorsement of deliberative democracy should face the challenge of abolishing the secret ballot in order to improve the quality of decision-making. They maintain, however, that this and similar solutions pose ‘high demands on citizens’ in terms of knowledge and engagement, ‘and thus inevitably face certain limits’. Mary-Ann Crumplin critically addresses the ideal of democratic participation and makes a case for individual freedom from participation. She endorses an ideal of individual life free from constrictions of political participation. In his paper, Paul Lucardie argues that the way in which representative Western democracies are lead by politicians is aristocratic rather than democratic. He therefore suggests a sortitionist democracy in which the representatives are chosen by lot rather nominated in party meetings and chosen by means of elections. Finally, Joaquim Negreiros deals with the question as to whether new forms of intimacy have influence on the civic engagement of citizens. Does it strengthen the individual giving him/her a better basis for political participation or does it prevent individuals from engaging? Negreiros cannot yet give an empirically proofed answer, but aims to point to the fruitful (or dangerous) implications of new forms of intimacy.

Bibliography Fukuyama, F., ‘Introduction’. The End of History and the Last Man. Penguin, Oxford, 1992. Habermas, J., The Post-National Constellation. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001.

Section I: Assessing Democracy in the West

Pluralism, Legitimacy and Radical Democracy Thomas Decreus Abstract A significant number of contemporary democratic thinkers seem to agree that the core of democracy consists in keeping alive the discordant atmosphere in the political process. Their fundamental claim is that there can be no real pluralism without real conflict. Of course, not any kind of conflict or pluralism can be tolerated. The specificity and uniqueness of democracy is precisely the way in which we deal with conflict and pluralism. But, in order to have democratic conflict instead of, for example, an armed conflict, we have to agree on certain principles, such as liberty and equality for all, which are constitutive of democracy and democratic society. In my paper, I will discuss the nature of the consensus on these constitutive principles of democracy. I will claim that Chantal Mouffe offers several possible solutions to the problem of consensus, but that none of them are sufficient. Through an analysis of Mouffe’s treatment of these issues, I will attempt to highlight some important insights on possible preconditions that would allow for consensus and legitimacy to emerge. Key Words: Hegemony, discourse, tradition, legitimacy, the political, consensus, pluralism, conflict. ***** 1. Introduction I began this paper with the following question in mind: can the democratic symbolic order be conceived of as merely a hegemonic order? I will claim that it cannot. This is due to the fact that when the democratic symbolic order is thought of as being merely hegemonic, one fails to take into account the hegemonic struggles within this democratic order. As a result, it becomes unclear how to understand conflict and true pluralism in democracy. This lack of clarity also affects the question concerning legitimacy. My aim, in this paper, is to prove that in order to conceptualize a maximization of pluralism without losing a grip on how we can think about legitimacy, one has to find alternative ways in which to think about the relation between hegemony and democracy. In the following paragraphs, I will present two possible alternatives that I found in the work of Chantal Mouffe, namely: the ‘democratic revolution’ and ‘tradition’. But first, let me begin with a sketch of the theoretical background that Mouffe starts from. 2. The Political and Hegemony Mouffe, influenced by thinkers such as Derrida and Saussure, claims that every kind of identity can only exist by exclusion. The construction of a ‘we’ is only

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Pluralism, Legitimacy and Radical Democracy

__________________________________________________________________ possible if distinguished from a ‘them’.1 But, since a ‘we’ can only exist as the exclusion of a ‘them’, it follows that this ‘them’ is always a possible threat to the identity of the ‘we’.2 So, the excluded ‘them’ is constitutive for a given identity, but at the same time the ultimate threat towards that identity. As a result, every social reality is always negative and conflictual in nature: the possibility of an antagonism is always there. For Mouffe this notion of conflict or antagonism is ‘the political’: the horizon from which we have to understand every particular political order. Compared to the political, politics is the specific way in which a particular political community deals with antagonisms. According to Mouffe, it should be clear that if every identity is negative and conflictual, it follows that every identity is contingent. But then the question becomes: how is any sustained order or identity possible in a domain characterized by absolute contingency? The answer to this question is: hegemony. Hegemony refers to a dimension of power wherein those in power perpetuate their position, not merely by the use of violence, but rather through establishing a certain image of social reality as objective and undeniable.3 A successful hegemony is able to present contingent acts of power as necessary ones. In this way, hegemony forms the condition of possibility for a more or less sustainable order.4 Given these notions of the political and hegemony, which are applicable to any political order or identity, we have to ask ourselves how the political regime of liberal democracy fits within this framework. For Mouffe, democracy is the political institution wherein hegemony is recognized as hegemony or, to put it differently, wherein every power act is ultimately presented as contingent and therefore debatable.5 This means that critique and thus conflict are necessary features for a regime to become democratic. In a democracy we must disagree about what we should do as a community. Resulting from this disagreement, different political parties and factions, with their own hegemonic projects, are born. In this way, we can say that conflict is a precondition of pluralism. 3. The Need for a Consensus This positive view on conflict as the precondition for plurality raises important questions. There must be limits to pluralism and conflict in order to create a society. But how then can pluralism become a bounded pluralism? And how can conflict be tempered? How can we turn a potentially violent confrontation into a debate wherein the only force used is that of words? Or, as Mouffe puts it, how can antagonism (conflict as such) be changed into agonism (democratically tempered conflict). Mouffe addresses this problem when she states that in order to have a non-violent democratic organized dissensus, some kind of consensus is needed:6 Consensus is needed on the institutions constitutive of the democracy and on the ethico-politico values informing the political association - equality and liberty for all - but there will

Thomas Decreus

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__________________________________________________________________ always be disagreement concerning their meaning and the way they should be implanted.7 (my italics) Although this thesis appears to be acceptable at first glance, on closer analysis it becomes highly problematic. Theoretical problems emerge when we start asking what the nature of this democratic consensus might be. For Mouffe, this consensus is also hegemonic in nature.8 This conclusion seems plausible in light of the theoretical frame we sketched in the previous paragraph. But if we want to radicalize pluralism in a democratic regime we have to conceive of democratic conflict as a hegemonic conflict. This entails a conflict between groups that attempt to establish different political orders starting from the notions of liberty and equality, and not just a discussion on some technical details on how to organize society. So, if we embrace the notion of true pluralism, then democratic conflict should be (seen) as a conflict between different hegemonic projects. But here a conceptual problem arises. If both consensus on the basic principles of democracy and dissensus about the meaning of these principles are hegemonic, then a doubling of the concept of hegemony takes place. Hegemony explains too much and therefore too little. For the reasons mentioned above I choose to consider the democratic conflict as being hegemonic. But what about this democratic consensus itself then? Why do most hegemonic projects in a democracy agree on giving a central place to ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’? How is a consensus on these principles possible if it is not hegemonic? In the writings of Mouffe, two different principles can be found to explain this consensus, namely: tradition and the ‘democratic revolution’. I will elaborate the latter first. 4. The Democratic Revolution The notion of democratic revolution refers to the historical origins of the fundamental democratic principles. It is the name given to the break with the ancient regime. This break, for which the French Revolution is exemplary, brought about a change in how social reality was symbolized. It marks the replacement of a non-egalitarian representation of social reality by an egalitarian one.9 It was the emergence of an external discourse by which inequalities came to be seen as being inequalities, and the start of political modernity as such. Again, I think this democratic revolution cannot be conceived of as merely a hegemony. Instead, it should be understood as a discourse, as in the tradition of Foucault. Following Foucault, one has to understand a discourse as an order that sets the conditions for the distinction between what is true and false, good or bad. A discourse does not refer to pre-existing objects, but creates the objects, in the same way the democratic discourse ‘creates’ inequalities.10 In a comparable fashion we can claim that the democratic revolution is not hegemonic but created the possibility to speak about a power as being hegemonic and it opened up the conditions for a hegemonic struggle.11

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__________________________________________________________________ This notion of democratic revolution explains the centrality of principles such as equality and freedom by pointing to their historical roots. But, this picture remains incomplete. It does not sufficiently give an account of the way in which a consensus on these principles is explained. For Mouffe, consensus is more then the centrality of freedom and equality. Consensus, in her view, has also to do with accepting the basic democratic institutions and agreeing on how we should deal with conflict, namely: in a non-violent way and in respect for institutions that facilitate this. The democratic revolution does not explain the latter. This observation can be substantiated by the fact that the centrality of notions such as equality and liberty both equally generated revolutionary currents that violently disputed the legitimacy of existing democratic institutions in the name of radical interpretations of liberty and equality. Consider, for example, of the anarchist terrorist groups of the nineteenth and twentieth century who wanted to destabilize the state and its institutions in the name of liberty and equality. To explain why the legitimacy of basic institutions and the non-violent way in which we deal with conflict can be, and is, accepted, a third concept has to be invoked, namely: tradition. 5. Tradition This concept of tradition emerges in the later works of Mouffe and is associated with a ‘form of life’ - a concept originally elaborated by Wittgenstein. Essential to such a ‘form of life’ is that the implementation and compliance with rules are inseparable from a ‘form of life’. Furthermore, rules only become meaningful with reference to a certain ‘form of life’. In a more general and less philosophical way, we can speak about ‘tradition’, in the sense of a ‘common and shared frame of reference’. This means that we identify ourselves with democratic values if they become part of our frame of reference. This identification is created in many ways, such as shared practices, the educational system, popular culture, etc.12 The introduction of this concept of tradition implies that, in contrast to most liberal philosophers, Mouffe starts from a particularistic view of democracy. For her, the constitutive principles of democracy are not universal and can only be valid within a common frame of reference. Thus, a radical particularization and historization of the concept of the democratic revolution takes place.13 By introducing Wittgenstein into our story it becomes clear that the democratic revolution could only arise and persist within a shared way of life and a given frame of reference. But this leads to a devaluation of the revolutionary aspect of the democratic revolution. The revolution as revolution seems to have its roots in a particular frame of reference constituted by a Jewish, Christian and Greek heritage.14 Seen from a Wittgensteinian perspective, if this were not the case then the democratic revolution would not have persisted. But this de-revolutionalizing of the democratic revolution refers also to a very problematic aspect that hangs together with the Wittgensteinian form of life or the notion of tradition in general.

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__________________________________________________________________ Namely, does not the introduction of the concept of form of life leads to a depolitization of the political? It seems so. Devotion to democratic principles and, as a consequence, the legitimacy of a democratic regime, is connected here with the sharing of a certain identity. Given this theoretic connection, it is a very small step to claim that those who do not share our western, democratic identity are unable to fully be citizens of our democracy. In order to answer this criticism, it must be mentioned that Mouffe speaks about identification with a common frame of reference. Identification is not the same as identity. The latter would mean a reduction: a subject that is inseparable from his way of life. The subject is his way of life. The former refers to the idea that nobody is ever reducible to his particular way of life. When we speak about identification, the subject is presented as a subject of the lack. The subject is, in its very existence, dependent on a frame of reference, but cannot be reduced to that frame of reference. There is always a lack. In the same way, citizenship can be dependent on a cultural identity, but can never be reduced to it. So, conversely, this approach also shows why citizenship, legitimacy and consensus on democratic principles can never be disconnected from the tradition in which they are situated. The democratic ideal must be embedded in some tradition in order for it to operate as a real ideal, for tradition is also the precondition for devotion to that ideal.15 This approach has some radical consequences. It means that we should democratize democracy, to say it in the words of Anthony Giddens. By this I mean, contrary to Giddens, that different traditions will understand democratic ideals in different ways, and, as a consequence, will know different institutions and political mechanisms. We will have to accept that the Western interpretation of democratic ideals and the way in which we materialize our interpretation, is only one way of understanding democracy.16 We do not have a monopoly on the meaning of equality and liberty. Needless to say that this democratization of democracy will never be a flawless process and always will continue to give rise to discussion and conflict. But the alternative of this ‘democratization of democracy’ is much less attractive. Simply exporting the model of Western democracy has proven to be disastrous. And it will remain so. The notion of tradition offers us a particular explanation of how to think of legitimacy. At the same time it opens up a possible radicalization of democracy. But, it remains unclear how this notion of tradition exactly fits with the notion of hegemony and discourse. What is clear is that ‘tradition’ has to be situated on another theoretical level than the concepts of hegemony and discourse. Let me address this problem in the form of a conclusion. 6. Conclusion Following Mouffe, I claim that democracy is essentially a conflict about the meaning of liberty and equality. The nature of this conflict has to be thought of as hegemonic, in order to connect the notion of conflict with real pluralism. But the

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__________________________________________________________________ centrality of this notions of freedom and equality cannot be understood as merely a hegemony. The importance of these concepts for the struggling hegemonic camps should be explained by the existence of a democratic discourse. The latter is another name for political modernity as such: a total change in how social reality is symbolized. This can be more adequately understood in terms of a ‘Foucaultian’ discourse. Yet, to understand why this consensus also counts for the basic democratic institutions and why we can deal with conflict in a non-violent way, we have to refer to the notion of tradition. A certain kind of political tradition is needed when we want to understand legitimacy. Yet, this notion of tradition can and should not be understood in a conservative way. On the contrary, I argued that it opens up a more radical notion of what democracy is about. These three notions the democratic revolution, tradition and hegemony - are all important when we want to talk about legitimacy and radical (pluralistic) democracy. But, as a final remark, one should acknowledge that some theoretical problems remain here. Tradition, democratic revolution and hegemony must be distinguished when we speak about legitimacy. But at the same time it must be noted that these notions cannot be completely separated from each other. Of interest for further research is the ways in which these notions are interconnected.

Notes 1

C Mouffe, On the Political, Routledge, New York, 2005, pp. 15-16. C Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, Verso, London, 2009, pp. 12-13. 3 Ibid, p. 21. 4 E Laclau, Emancipations, Verso, London, 2007, pp. 43-44 and Mouffe, On the Political, p. 17. 5 E Laclau, Emancipations, pp. 45-46. 6 C Mouffe, The Return of the Political, Verso, London, 2005, pp. 131-132. 7 C Mouffe, On the Political, p. 31. 8 C Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, p. 49. 9 C Mouffe, The Return of the Political, p. 51. 10 I acknowledge the possible objection that there is no clear distinction between discourse and hegemony in the sense that a discourse can be hegemonic and that the establishment of a discourse has always something to do with power and exclusion. The relation between discourse – as I understand it here - and hegemony is far more complex then sketched above. Yet, in the limited context of this paper I cannot go into this matter. 11 Compare C Mouffe and E Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso, London, 2001, pp. 151, 138. 12 C Mouffe, The Return of the Political, p. 52. 2

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C Mouffe, The Return of the Political, p. 144 and C Mouffe, ‘Wittgenstein and the Ethos of Democracy’, The Legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction, C Mouffe & L Nagle (eds), Lang, Frankfurt a. M., p. 132. 14 C Mouffe, The Return of the Political, p.17. 15 C Mouffe, ‘Democratic Politics Today’, Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, C Mouffe (ed.), London, Verso, 1992, p. 10. 16 C Mouffe, On the Political, p. 125.

Bibliography Laclau, E., Emancipations. Verso, London, 2007. Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C., Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Verso, London, 2001. Mouffe, C., The Return of the Political. Verso, London, 2005. _______

, The Democratic Paradox. Verso, London, 2009.

_______

, On the Political. Routledge, New York, 2005.

_______

, ‘Democratic Politics Today’. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. Mouffe, C. (ed), London, Verso, 1992. _______

, ‘Wittgenstein and the Ethos of Democracy’. The Legacy of Wittgenstein: Pragmatism or Deconstruction. Mouffe, C. & Nagle, L. (eds), Lang, Frankfurt a. M. Thomas Decreus is a PhD candidate at the Research Institute on Political Philosophy, Leuven (RIPPLE), University of Leuven, Belgium.

The Hatred of Democracy Revisited Franc Rottiers Abstract In his Hatred of Democracy Jacques Rancière defines democracy as a way to have power over two ‘excesses’. On the one hand there is the excess of public participation in democratic life. On the other hand there is the excess of individualistic consumerism. Rancière points out that both are currently identified as ‘not done’ and need to be ‘controlled’. By drawing upon Rancière’s characterization of democracy, this article will lay out the conditions under which ‘control’ has emerged as the democratic principle par excellence and explore how exactly this principle limits what it means to be a citizen. The question that will be put forward is how, within a globalized world where participation in democratic life is limited and individualistic consumerism is not attainable for all, this principle can be validated. It will be argued that, while from the perspective of ‘participation’ in democratic life, this principle might have value; from the perspective of ‘contributions to society’ it has not. Given the fact that these perspectives are both ‘there’, the challenge that will be taken up in this article is to explore how exactly these two perspectives can be made intelligible. The aim is not to come to a reconciliation of two distinct perspectives, i.e. to describe what they are and offer a ‘third’ possibility, but to explore the conditions of possibility of their materialization and/or dematerialization. In order to render these conditions comprehensible - and maybe even implementable in the democratic field - it will be argued that a ‘new’ metaphysical perspective is needed to lay them bare without them being absorbed into a ‘control’ discourse. The point of departure - and arrival - of this article is to make visible and communicable those contributions that emerge in the field of social interactions of have-not people such as undocumented migrants. Key Words: Democracy, Jacques Rancière, undocumented migrants. ***** 1. Introduction In his Hatred of Democracy Jacques Rancière claims that democracy today equals anti-individualism. He argues that democracy is merely a way to have power and control over two excesses: (i) the excess of public participation in democratic life and (ii) the excess of individualistic consumerism. The perspective from which Rancière addresses his claim and argument is that the hatred of democracy is the result of an elitist fear that the division of the world they subscribe to is not shared by others. However, rather than focussing on challenging the elite as Rancière does, I will address Rancière’s claim and argument from the

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__________________________________________________________________ perspective that hatred is a response to what is ‘not done’ and that ‘control’ is at the same time the fixated expression as also the covering up of this hatred. It will be shown that this is something we all do, but also that this is not the only thing we do. In the first section I will sketch the conditions under which ‘control’ has emerged as the democratic principle par excellence. In the second section I will focus on the function of hatred by reformulating and re-interpreting it as the individual negation-agency of individuals. In the third section I will argue that, in order to articulate ‘what we all do’ from a non-control perspective, such a reformulation and re-interpretation requires a new metaphysical perspective. 2. Control Conditions Distributed by specialists that gathered a group of followers, ‘specialism’ can be regarded as the common denominator for all -isms alike. However, as a specialist cannot single-handedly distribute the totality of an -ism to a larger community, subspecialists that safeguard its execution are needed. Moreover, conditional to the survival of a specialism, the status of the specialist as the one that first formulated a specialism needs to be rendered invisible. In the cases where the originary specialist can be retraced, this adds up to transforming his status from a ‘real’ individual to an ‘ideal’ one. As such, for an -ism to be an -ism, three elements are required: (i) one originary specialist, (ii) subspecialists and (iii) followers to be specialized. An interesting case at hand is Christianity, particularly because its ‘specialism’ depends upon the followers of a scripture and the way its subspecialists are able to control them.1 The most explicit contribution of the Scripture was that it offered its followers a means to divide the visible world while at the same time giving a name to the invisible, the one originary specialist whose ‘reality’ is legitimated by his ‘ideality’, i.e. God. For the followers to connect the visible with the invisible lawlike rituals were provided.2 It were exactly these rituals that made it possible to safeguard the power of the representatives of the voice of God, the subspecialist ‘Jesus’ in particular, over the followers to be specialized. Though the presence of Jesus was real to his followers, his status was not. Jesus was an ‘ideal’ individual.3 As such, he not so much voiced his own individual perspective, nor the perspective of the one originary specialist, but, in fact, was the group. Indeed, as an ideal individual Jesus was the personification of the invisible, which made it possible to provide his group of followers with a glimpse of the ideality of God. As such, the group of followers to be specialized, while part of the division of the visible world, could claim an ‘ideality’ articulated by a name and an identity: ‘we’ the twelve apostles, ‘we’ the group ‘Jesus’, ‘we’ Christians. The latter names and identities however, could not have emerged were it not for the Church to introduce more ideal individuals so that a large community could be attracted by their specialism. The solution the Church came up with was to make

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__________________________________________________________________ room for Saints whose ideality was enforced by that fact that you had to be dead and thus ‘invisible’ - to become one.4 More than filling up the gap left by the death of Jesus, the Saint business had an interesting consequence related to the complexification of societal life. Adhering to one of them did not imply that you were excluded from adhering to other ones. You could pray for Saint Christopher while being on the road and at the same time pray to Saint Anthony for finding the purse you lost while being on that same road. In this way, the complexities of the life of those chaotic individuals, that passionate mob that should be monitored because it once even dared to build things such as a Babel tower, could be grasped and fixated in more manageable group contexts. At the same time however the precise borders that delineated these groups as groups were ingeniously covered up so that the individuals that took part in particular groups could have the impression that they were free to take part in other ones. Free, off course within the framework of the ideal community as prescribed by the Scripture in which existence was allowed to an ideal community and ideal groups but not to real-life individuals. Individuals were no part of the Scripture’s divide of the visible world.5 With the dawn of modern science things did not change that much. The scientific endeavour was still about dividing the visible world. Also the invisible was still there, not in the name of a God who could not be challenged, but in the names of a wide array of invisibles that stirred or disturbed the interest of the newborn scientists. For example, Newton had it in for invisible forces, while Kant was bothered by the Ding an Sich. Another element that can be traced back to Christianity is that the ‘rituals’ that connected the visible with these invisibles remained the same: they all were of a law-like nature. Also the address was the same: they all wrote their science for a group of followers for whom they became, après coup, ideal individuals. Moreover, the division of the world as described by these ideal individuals - who did not relate to the ideal community as prescribed in the Scripture but to the ideal of the universal - reached up to the level of the group in the same way the Scripture did. Nevertheless, one particular aspect did change: it was no longer an invisible voice that gave, through the Scripture, orders to the ideal individuals, it were the individuals themselves that wrote books in their own names. What I want to retain for from the modern scientific endeavours, is the fact that they were (i) about an individual being stirred or being disturbed by invisibles, and as such (ii) about negating these invisibles by turning them into laws. Related to the topic of this article, this leaves the question whether we should, if we talk about democracy today, turn invisibles into laws? The exact problem with democracy today is that here the same law-like attitude reigns. The specialism that distributes this law-like attitude is named ‘politics’. Politics can be regarded as a piece of science that reintroduced an invisible voice that submits a particular control-mechanism to its subspecialists. These are,

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__________________________________________________________________ among others, government personnel that guards over and thereby controls a group of people that, e.g. need to pay taxes, or politicians that guard over and thereby controls the group of people from whom they need a vote. The law-like ritual thus introduced by politics is situated in the juridical realm where it becomes possible to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with one exception: in the same way you, as a Christian, cannot say no to God, you, as a person controlled by laws and rights, cannot say no to politics. So if politics is the new God, how does its scripture, the book of politics, divide the visible world? It is a question eloquently answered by Jacques Rancière: ...le partage du sensible refers to the implicit law governing the sensible order that parcels out places and forms of participation in a common world by first establishing the modes of perception within which these are inscribed. The distribution of the sensible thus produces a system of self-evident facts of perception based on the set horizons and modalities of what is visible and audible as well as what can be said, thought, made, or done. Strictly speaking, ‘distribution’ refers to both forms of inclusion and to forms of exclusion.6 Rancière talks here, not so much about politics, or, to put in ‘invisible’ terms, about God himself, but about the police order - the army of subspecialists that enforces this particular distribution of the sensible. It is this same order that has the power to include (saying yes) and exclude (saying no). The ideal name and identity of this order is ‘democracy’ and functions as the ideal invisible feeding machine that keeps the police order alive. In this way ‘[d]emocracy is simply the power of those who have no more entitlements to govern than to submit’.7 3. Please do not Disturb, We are (all) Participating Though, in our largely service based society, we function most of our working life in subspecialist contexts and, thus, to a certain extent, all have become subspecialists, we do have moments in our lives that do not entail a subscription to ‘control’. The question that emerges here is how to make individual life intelligible without making reference to the control issue? This adds up to questioning where and how we lost track of making intelligible the perspective of being disturbed before a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ comes into the picture and how to retrace individual disturbances? The above questions relate to a reformulation and re-interpretation of ‘hatred’ as the individual negation-agency of individuals. Such a reformulation and reinterpretation requires taking meaning into account. More particularly meaning as in the ethical and aesthetical expressions one utters or performs when being stirred up or disturbed by invisibles. But how to proceed here, certainly when taking into

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__________________________________________________________________ account Wittgensteins dictum that there is nothing either ethical or aesthetical conveyed through language?8 How to proceed if we have to remain outside scientific language to convey something about the ethical and aesthetical aspects of life? The solution I advance is to look for people, more particularly individuals, whom are stirred and disturbed by the prevailing community and group ideals but nevertheless contribute to the community and group by respectively supplementing and challenging them. However, In order to be able to look, you have to be able to look beyond the community and group ideal par excellence, i.e. participation. Participation is about complying to the police order in any way possible. As participation equals control and is, as such, inherently not ethical or aesthetical, looking for ‘participants’ is not the way to go. Participants do not do what should not be done and conveniently hate those that do what should not be done. This hatred is at the same time fixated as also covered up by ‘control’. That is, while hatred is about negating those that do what should not be done and thus excluding them, ‘control’ fixates this hatred and thus recognizes its status. At the same time ‘control’ covers up this hatred and thereby diffuses the fact that people are excluded in the process of being ‘inclusively’ controlled. So, the answer that people look for should better be replaced by the question, ‘which meaningful practices remain discernable outside the practices that belong to the realm of participation?’ Are there any such meaningful practices, which do not enter the realm of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, good or bad, one or zero? Indeed there are. 4. Towards a ‘New’ Metaphysical Perspective Covering up ‘hatred’ is a typical and even constitutive element of the current metaphysical perspective that validates control. It is the perspective that subscribes to the necessity of the question in view of a variety of possible answers. From a metaphysical point of view, control encompasses a wide variety of possible responses, i.e. ‘answers’, that are all constrained by the necessity of the question ‘who needs to be hated’. The latter question however is itself generated and necessitated by the variety of possible answers, which are of the form ‘X must be hated and we will control X by doing A or B or C or...’. This variety however is not infinite but limited by what is legitimately recognized as control up to now. This means that the limitations of control can expand as long as those who need to be hated can be controlled. Off course, the circularity thus establishes itself can claim validity only by those who are in control. The perspective I advance takes ‘hatred’ itself, instead of ‘control’, as a constitutive element. However, here hatred is detached from a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and as such detached from ‘control’. As a form of negation-agency, hatred makes it possible to formulate possible questions in view of a necessary answer. This ‘new’ metaphysical perspective subscribes to the fact that the answer is necessarily there, while what it is, is up to the possible questions that can be formulated to it. Related

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__________________________________________________________________ to my research subject ‘undocumented migrants’, that they are there can be considered the necessary answer, while what their status is, is dependent upon the possible questions that can be formulated. For such a questions to be formulated, ‘covered up hatred’ fails because it is only from a control perspective that the undocumented would then be approached. From a negation agency perspective however, it becomes possible to allow different kinds of negation-attitudes to question the fact that the undocumented are there and explore a range of possible question without subscribing to ‘control’ and its derivate ‘participation’. Moreover, while ‘control’ and ‘participation’ allows for people to observe and analyse, which is something everybody is capable of, it does not allow for people to make choices based on these analyses nor initiate negation based on the choices made. The choice allowed in a ‘control’ environment is already chosen as a hatred to be veiled instantly while negotiation merely equals ‘participation’. The ‘new’ metaphysical perspective I advance here makes it possible to approach the fact that all people are able to observe and analyse what they observed as initiated by their individual ‘negation-agency’ and advance on their analyses by making choices for further negotiation. It proclaims that what we cannot negotiate about, we must pass over in silence and remain uneducated.

Notes 1

It should be noted that the historical trace here described does not account for the various religious traditions existing in the world. Thus the trace described does not claim universality. What is interesting however is the way 2 For example, followers receive, through the host, the body of Christ. 3 The question wheather Jesus actually existed as a historical person is not at stake here. The point is that his figure made Christianity possible. 4 For being able to receive a Saint status you had to be dead. 5 Their pains and sorrows, guilt and penance, were a matter to be solved in close ritualistic contact with the realm of the invisible, one-on-one with the invisible specialist God. 6 J Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, Continuum, 2007, p. 85, italics added. 7 J Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, Verso, London-New York, 2007, p. 46-47. 8 L Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Dover Publications Inc, 2009.

Bibliography Rancière, J., The Politics of Aesthetics. Verso, 2007. _______

, Hatred of Democracy. Verso, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico Philosphicus, Dover Publications Inc., 2009. Franc Rottiers is currently employed as a doctoral researcher at Ghent University. Besides the stimulating philosophical environment that is creatively developed and critically sustained by his supervisor Gertrudis Van de Vijver and his fellow colleagues at the Centre for Critical Philosophy and the Centre for Intercultural Communication and Interaction, this paper could not have been written without contributions of the people he engaged with during his fieldwork and the discussions with the consortium partners of the PROFACITY project (7th Framework Program; contract 225511) on which he is working now.

Democracy as a Collection/Society of Porcupines Erdal Yıldız - Uğur Ekren - Nil Şimşek Abstract We are all aware that a contract is a prerequisite in order to protect citizens from each other, to make agreements with each other and to construct a social/political structure within human society. Thus, citizen’s relationships with each other require a deeper analysis of the issue. Where the extent of freedom/liberty/equality in-between a citizen and other citizens begins and ends will be our subject of debate. Today, the term, ‘citizen of a nation’ equally represents men, women and even children from various ethnic identities and dozens of religious beliefs. This contemporary citizen profile seems to provide a homogeneous unity of citizens but it also carries congregativeness/ghettoization and may be illusion of freedom/liberty/equality. Accordingly, what kind of presuppositions, for example, is the relationship between a citizen and another citizen based upon? What should the environment be like in order to develop norms in accordance with people’s common perceptions/sensations and thoughts and so how can it be assured that the values targeted by those norms do not conflict with the starting perceptions or sensations and thoughts? Furthermore, how will the freedom/liberty/equality of the citizens become a reality? We will address such questions by using the metaphor of a ‘citizen as a porcupine’ (Schopenhauer, Grimm Brothers, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida) as a base. Key Words: Democracy, freedom, liberty, equality, society of porcupines, citizen, citizens’ relationships. ***** 1. Porcupine Citizen We are all aware that a contract is a prerequisite in order to protect citizens from each other, to make agreements with each other and to construct a social/political structure within human society. Citizen’s relationships with each other and thus with any kind of political power require a deeper analysis of the issue. So, where the extent of freedom/liberty/equality between one citizen and other citizens begins and ends and whether it is necessary to prioritize those concepts, will be our subject of debate. For this purpose, the first question is how near can a person be to another person or how remote can he be from the other? What about a porcupine? How near can a porcupine be to another porcupine or how remote can it be from the other? We would like to think of the citizen in a modern society as a porcupine. First, it can be useful for the course of this essay to remind that the Greek word, meta-phora means to transfer/ to carry away.1 Will the porcupine bring us to the modern citizen and modern democracy or will we travel

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__________________________________________________________________ to the society and democracy of porcupines? In fact, the question has a fuzzy answer for now and rush answers and decisions are more destructive than being undecided. So the answer will hopefully be enlightened in the course of this paper. Now, what is the state of affairs between man and man? In the first place, man has to be near to the other within a society. Then, what kind of act for a man to be near to the other? As microporous residents of Bos-phorous, which is, the place of doors, bridges, passages and differences, we would like to get in Schopenhauer’s porcupine metaphorikos: A number of porcupines move closer to each other on a cold winter’s day in order to keep from frozen to death. When they huddle together, however, they start to prick each other with their stiff, sharp, erectile quills. And because of the pain, they disperse and loose the comfort of each other’s warmness. So the cold redirects them to each other again and the sharp quills of the animals injure each other again. That cycle of freezing to death and the pain of the sharp quills repeats as they struggle to find a comfortable distance between the two. At last, they discovered a moderate distance, which is the only tolerable condition for both troubles. On one hand the monotony and emptiness and the natural needs of their inner worlds drive men to construct a social/political structure within human society. On the other hand, the untenable characteristics remote them from each other. Ultimately, they intercourse in a midpoint where they can together exist in an environment which is determined by attention and forms of politeness and good manners. Those who violate that moderate distance, in English phrase, are warned to keep their distance. At that distance, the mutual want of mild temperature of the environment can be satisfied to a certain degree but in return the pain of the spines cannot be felt.2 Schopenhauer afterwards mentions that a man, who has some heat in himself, prefers to remain outside of the communities, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself. Since only the philosophers and philosopher-like people can feel the heat in themselves, the remaining needs the moderate distance. Then what is the gap length of this moderate distance? But first, what is the meaning of being near to or being remote from something/someone? What is nearness and remoteness? The relationship between nearness and remoteness or in other words the longness or shortness of the distances have intermingled in our daily modern societies and it seems that the distances begirding us have now been diminished

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__________________________________________________________________ and have come nearer. In today’s modern world, technological efforts to make everyone draw close do not give us nearness; no matter how much closer we draw toward things and people, the feeling that we have lost nearness permeates sneakingly. We gradually see more things/objects/events/people, but we approach/touch fewer of them. Well then, what is this nearness we have forgotten, we have lost? Our answer this time will come from a neighbour of thinking: Heidegger criticizes nearness and remoteness together with the calculating, measure-oriented thinking of today’s modern society: ‘To the calculating mind, space and time appear as parameters for the measurement of nearness and remoteness, and these in turn as static distances.’3 But it is clear that nearness and remoteness cannot be totally grasped through physical measurements. Moreover, the relationship between two people must be defined somewhere out of this distance and measurabilities. The relationship between two porcupines or two people, on the condition that they have the same meaning, should be re-established considering another concept. What should be this new concept? The answer would come from long ago: Neighbour. We are trying to re-use this concept, which we have known for a time out of mind and the conceptual use of which we have reduced to a physical, quantitative dimension in modern world: Two isolated farmsteads—if any such are left—separated by an hour’s walk across the fields, can be the best of neighbors, while two townhouses, facing each other across the street or even sharing a common wall, know no neighborhood. Neighboring nearness, then, does not depend on spatial-temporal relation. Nearness, then, is by its nature outside and independent of space and time. This view, however, would be premature. We may say only this, that the nearness which prevails in the neighborhood does not depend on space and time considered as parameters.’4 Let’s go back to the porcupines again. Undoubtedly, in cold weather two porcupines can survive as much as they keep their distance between each other. Let’s look at the people in today’s world. In modern liberal democracies and also societies, modern individual is just like the porcupine at first. An individual who is on his own and curls himself up with his quills against threats, who develops his individual existence and his relationship with other individuals in terms of distance (nearness and remoteness) and his quills. Nowadays this individual is called modern citizen. This modern citizen congregates with another modern citizen akin to himself and forms a mini-society.5

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__________________________________________________________________ 2. The Hare and Pseudo-Identical Porcupines Unlike what history suggests, today, the term, ‘citizen of a nation’ equally represents men, women and even children from various ethnic identities and dozens of religious beliefs. This contemporary citizen profile seems to provide a homogeneous unity of citizens but it also carries congregativeness/ghettoization6 and may be illusion of freedom/liberty/equality. One of the foremen of the liberal theory, Jürgen Habermas, describes to live with the other as: In multicultural societies, the coexistence of forms of life with equal rights means ensuring every citizen the opportunity to grow up within the world of a cultural heritage and to have his or her children grow up in it without suffering discrimination. It means the opportunity to confront this (and every other) culture and to perpetuate it in its conventional form or to transform it, as well as the opportunity to turn away from its commands with indifference or break with it self-critically and then live spurred on by having made a conscious break with tradition, or even with a divided identity.7 Surely, through this approach, every individual may be considered as a citizen of the world, or the situation of each citizen may be reviewed by focusing on the local/regional bonds and in both ways, a citizen society in which citizens do not touch each other, can be formed. Yet that will not be enough. The possible conclusion that can be drawn from this is the formation of a collection/society of porcupines/citizens consisting of amphibious islands, of mini-societies which are respectful for each other’s rights and freedoms, which do not touch each other unless necessary. There is no doubt that such a collection/society would bring about a pre-imposition which would make identical the different ones before law. This is the precondition of holding the porcupine citizen together who exists at different/distinct places and times. We can ground this with another metaphor as such: Once upon a time…there was an old porcupine that was a slow walker like all porcupines and he had just reached a large cabbage, when from behind the leaves, out popped a hare.’ So you have arrived at last!’ said the hare. ‘I’ve been watching you for half an hour. Do you always dawdle?’ Slow on his feet but a quick thinker, porcupine rapidly hit on a plan. ‘I can run faster than you if I try,’ said the porcupine. Ha! Ha!’ the hare shrieked with laughter, raising a large paw. ‘You can’t compete with this!’ The porcupine paid little heed to the hare’s words and quietly accepted the challenge. ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow down at the

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__________________________________________________________________ ploughed field. We’ll race in parallel furrows. And see who wins!’ The porcupine, however, had a bright idea. When he arrived home, he told his wife what had happened. Just before dawn next day, he gave his instructions, and off they set for the field. Hare appeared, rudely remarking: ‘I’ll take off my jacket so I can run faster!’ Ready! Steady! Go! And in a flash, the hare streaked to the other end of the field. There, waiting for him was a porcupine, which teasingly said: ‘Rather late, aren’t you? I’ve been here for ages!’ Gasping and so breathless his throat was dry, the hare whispered: ‘Let’s try again!’ ‘All right,’ agreed the porcupine, racing up and down the field the hare sped, trying to beat the porcupine. And every time he came to the end of the field there stood a porcupine saying ‘I’ve been here for ages!’ [‘İch bin schon da!’]8 We would like to read the hare in this metaphor as the sovereign in Modern liberal democracy. According to this reading, sovereign hare resembles all porcupine citizens, sees them as identical, does not, cannot realize them; as we may say it in the language of democracy: even he should not realize them. Does today’s modern understanding of law also not propound that it rises on a basis of legislation and conduct, which discriminates citizens, communities, and gradually ethnic and religious or sexual groups? The problem here – although the eyes of the goddess of justice are shut; she is depicted as her eyes shut – is the constant watchfulness of the one who legislates and conducts, meaning the sovereign, or ‘big brother’ in other words, his abiding observation, his vision of his citizens in every space either public.9 Such that sovereign can ignore his own law when he realizes that the law he enacted is not appropriate for his economic political state based on his abiding vision or observation, law/sovereign is the one who legislates, who is above law, who suspends law; moreover, he is the one who can decide what is ordinary and what is extraordinary.10 But the eye of the hare, meaning the eye of law, cannot see the difference/distinction between two porcupine citizens even if it wanted to. If we may say in a philosophical way, the hare cannot see the ontic distinction, difference between Being and being.11 Sovereign assumes that the same, the identical is consisting merely of qualitative sameness. However, we know that identity/identicalness/self-identicalness is at the same time related to space. Consequently, the ones who are in different spaces, who occupy different spaces, are different since they are found in different spaces although all of their qualities are identical. If the hare saw the two porcupines in different places at the same moment, could it do the same distinction? Of course, we do not know. But it is clear that even if the eye of the hare can see the relationship between the other and the identical, the eye of the law cannot. The eye of hare or that of law is equalising,

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__________________________________________________________________ standardizing; in other words, it is an eye which sees all the porcupines as identical, equilises them, and annihilates the distinction between them. Regarding exactly this point of view we may now say: we transferred our thought from one porcupine metaphor to another. In the first porcupine metaphor the point was ‘keeping your distance.’ This was later denominated ‘porcupine distance’ by Freud as the basis for an aggregate between two people to be able to stay together. It is clear that the emphasis here was on the distance. Of course nearness and remoteness cannot be appraised as merely physical qualities in inter-human relationships. And this led us to another metaphor, the one between the porcupine and the rabbit. Here the main problem was again spatial. However in another form. Here, space becomes the basic determinant of personal identity. 3. Proposal of a Microporous Thinking Model We may sum up taking up from here: we should neither relate the relationship between two porcupine citizens to distance, to space, nor to the [with salutation to Derrida12] poem-like, rotund, curled up on himself, turned his back to himself and to others and, due to exactly these reasons, the overall unsecure deeds of porcupine citizen. Let’s place Schopenhauer’s, The Grimm Brothers’, Freud’s, Heidegger’s, Derrida’s porcupines in cold, and let them feel cold in the society/collection of porcupines. Instead of this, let’s propound microporous man and microporous thinking model instead of the one that raises its spines against any kind of threat and danger and defines him and the other in terms of the space it occupies. As a chance of a new democracy or a new society, let’s provide citizens or society of citizens that interpenetrate with each other by its microporous thought and microporous existence or microporous places instead of a porcupine citizens society, which constantly pricks each other, or similarizes each other by means of law. Let’s bring forward a microporous citizens society and democracy which carry a mutual permeability on itself that can affect and be affected from each other instead of this total which is made up of self-enclosed and problematic individuals. Let’s hope that the members of such society are not far away from each other both in temporal and spatial way, and may form a society/democracy of individuals that can tolerate the distances. Instead of the understanding of homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to [his fellow] man)13 or the porcupine should keep its distance from another porcupine, let’s try to develop the understanding of citizen who can touch the others without fear, abstinence or anxiety, go beyond any distance far-close. For such a mutual touch incognizant of distance in microporous society and democracy to be the initiator of a new blossom of thinking, feeling/sensing together (salutation to Empedokles) let’s again carve out reciprocal, new, and direct channels. And let’s proceed to it from spined relationship to microporous relationship, from spined thinking to microporous thinking. In order to attain microporous men, microporous society, and microporous democracy out of democracy as a collection/society of porcupines, let’s ride on a metaphor again and

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__________________________________________________________________ anew, let’s go to a microporous metaphor, which deserves and is worth a detailed examination. And we believe that as a consequence of this kind of enquiry, microporous democracy can demonstrate itself as an environment inclined to develop norms in accordance with microporous men’s common perceptions/sensations and thoughts. And in such an environment the values targeted by those norms do not conflict with the starting perceptions/sensations and thoughts, unlike today’s democratic systems. Furthermore, the expected freedom/liberty/equality of the citizens would be moved nearer.

Notes 

We would like to warmly thank our friend and colleague Guvenc Sar whose support led our microporous thinking to be flourished in the foundation of this text. 1

For the relation between metaphor and metaphorikos see: J Derrida, ‘Der Entzug der Metapher’, Romantik, Internationale Beiträge zur Poetik, Volker Bohn, Bd. 1, Literatur und Philosophie, Frankfurt, 1987, pp. 317–355. Also see: G Lakoff & M Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, 2003. 2 A Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, Vol. II, S Werke, A Hübscher & EB Verlag (eds), Wiesbaden 1947, p. 690. 3 M Heidegger, Das Wesen der Sprache, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, p. 209. 4 İbid p. 210. 5 In his study where he aimed at outlining mass psychology, Freud asserts the behaviours of the individual in a mass by referring to Schopenhauer’s porcupine metaphor we used above: ‘The evidence of psycho-analysis shows that almost every intimate emotional relation between two people which lasts for some time – marriage, friendship, the relations between parents and children – leaves a sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which have first to be eliminated by repression. This is less disguised in the common wrangles between business partner or in the grumbles of a subordinate at his superior. The same thing happens when men come together in larger units. Every time two families become connected by a marriage, each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth than the other. Of two neighbouring towns each is the other’s most jealous rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt. Closely related races keep one another at arm’s length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon the Scotsmen, the Spaniards despises the Portuguese. We are no longer astonished that greater differences should lead to an almost insuperable repugnance, such as the Gallic people feel fort he German, the Aryan fort he Semite, and the white races for the coloured.’ S Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, trans. J

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__________________________________________________________________ Strachey, Hogarth Press, London, 1949, p. 54-55. Regarding this subject also see L Breger, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Canada, 2000. 6 Chinatown in the USA and examples in other democratic countries. 7 J Habermas, The Inclusion of The Other, C Cronin & P De Greif (eds), MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998, p.223. Uniform Title: Die Einbeziehung des Anderen Studien zur politischen Theorie. 8 J Grimm & W Grimm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Die Maerchen der Brueder Grimm, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1990. 9 George Orwell (1903-1950), journalist, political author and novelist wrote Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949): ‘It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.’ Regarding this subject also see: M Stolleis, Das Auge des Gesetzes- Geschichte einer Metapher, CH Beck (ed), Verlag, München, 2004. The Eye of the Law: Two Essays on Legal History, Birbeck Law Press. 10 C Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. GD Schwab, MIT Press, 1985 & University of Chicago Press, 2004. 11 M Heidegger, Die Onto-Theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik, İdentität und Differenz, GN Verlag, Tübingen, 1957, p.60. 12 J Derrida, Qu’est-ce que poesie?/Was ist Dichtung?, Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1990. 13 The sentence was drawn on by Thomas Hobbes in the dedication of his work De cive (1651): ‘To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities.’ Hobbes's observation in turn echoes a line from Plautus claiming that men are inherently selfish.

Bibliography Breger L., Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Canada, 2000. Derrida J., Qu’est-ce que poesie?/Was ist Dichtung?. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1990. _______

, ‘Der Entzug der Metapher: Romantik, Internationale Beiträge zur Poetik’. hg. v. Volker Bohn, Bd. 1, Literatur und Philosophie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1987.

Erdal Yıldız – Uğur Ekren –Nil Şimşek

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__________________________________________________________________ Eyüboğlu I.Z., Etymology Dictionary of Turkish Dictionary. Sosyal Yayinlari, Istanbul. Foucault M., Özne ve İktidar (Dits et ecrits). Trans. I. Erguden-Osman & A. Ayrinti, Istanbul, 2005. Freud S., Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. trans. Strachey, J., Hogarth Press, London 1949. Geuss R., Kamusal Seyler, Ozel Seyler (Public Goods, Private Goods). trans. Kocak, G. YKY, 2007. Grimm, R. & Grimm W., Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Die Maerchen der Brueder Grimm, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1990. Habermas J., The Inclusion Of The Other. (Uniform Title: Die Einbeziehung des Anderen - Studien zur politischen Theori). Cronin, C. & De Greif, P. (eds), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Heidegger M., Das Wesen der Sprache. Verlag, Stuttgart, 1993. _______

, Die Onto-Theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik, İdentität und Differenz. Verlag, Tübingen, 1957. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M., Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 2003. Orwell G., Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1st World Library-Literary Society, 2004. Schopenhauer A., Parerga und Paralipomena. Hübscher, A. (ed), Wiesbaden, 1947. Schmitt C., Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. trans. Schwab, G.D., MIT Press, 1985. Stolleis M., Das Auge des Gesetzes- Geschichte einer Metapher. Beck, C.H. (ed), Verlag, Münich, 2004. Touraine A., Esitliklerimiz ve Farkliliklarimizla Birlikte Yasayabilecek miyiz? Pourrons-Nous Vivre Ensemble/Egaux et Differents. trans. Kunal. O., YKY, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ Erdal Yildiz, PhD Faculty Member, The Department of Philosophy, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul – TURKEY. [email protected] Ugur Ekren, PhD Faculty Member, The Department of Philosophy, Istanbul University, Istanbul – TURKEY. [email protected] Nil Simsek, Graduate Student, The Department of Philosophy, Istanbul University, Istanbul – TURKEY. [email protected]

Eliciting Students’ Attitudes towards Democracy: Towards a More Inclusive Understanding of What a Democratic Way of Life Entails Isolde de Groot Abstract In the last decade, several researchers have tried to capture what it takes to become a democratic citizen. In this paper, we discuss one important element of democratic citizenship, as displayed in several theories of a democratic way of life, while comparing it with the story of one 16 year old student, whom we call Ben, about his attitude towards democracy. This enables us to get a more elaborate understanding of Ben’s contribution towards democracy. It also enables us to investigate to which extent these theories can capture Ben’s contributions towards democracy, and which aspects of these theories might need further elaboration, in order to become more inclusive and do more justice to the way in which Ben does participate. Key Words: Democratic citizenship, diversity, identity development. ***** 1. Introduction When people talk about democracy, they often display different ideas of what democracy means, both in theory and in practice. The visions on democracy which people hold have a huge impact on the way different democracies are shaped and nurtured. Many people for instance have adopted a so called ‘thin’ concept of democracy. This means they understand democracy as a political system, whose most important characteristic is that people can vote, and that the majority wins. In line with this, they understand their own role as a citizen is ‘not to harm others’ and ‘to vote, if we feel like it’. Several researchers on democratic citizenship have warned that this limited understanding of both democracy and democratic citizenship will not enable people to maintain and develop the democratic character of their society. They argue for more attention to an elaborate concept of democratic citizenship in educational settings. They for instance advocate that living in a ‘truly’ democratic way, means that people have to appreciate diversity.1 Although there is a lot of theoretical research on how young people should develop in order to become democratic practitioners, few empirical studies discuss this very question with young people themselves. In the last decade, a couple of survey studies have investigated the way students relate to democracy, based on different conceptualizations of citizenship.2 We became more interested in students understanding of what democratic citizenship entails and why they might (not) be interested in becoming one.

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Eliciting Students’ Attitudes towards Democracy

__________________________________________________________________ Therefore we decided to investigate the stories of thirty students in the Netherlands about their attitude towards democracy in a pluralist country. Aim of the study is both to investigate how students relate to different dimensions of democratic citizenship, and to investigate what their stories might add to current theories of what democratic citizenship entails, in order to develop a more elaborate and inclusive conceptualization of democratic citizenship. Prior to the empirical study, we developed a theoretical model of five dimensions of democratic citizenship, each containing elements that are considered of crucial importance for the development of democracy, as advocated in several studies on democratic citizenship.3 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

An elaborate understanding of the value of democracy and diversity for one’s own life and for the common good: reflection, moral sensitivity Capacity: internal and external efficacy Active relations: commitment and connection The willingness to transform: open-mindedness, doubt The ability to engage in dialogue: deliberation skills, empathy.4

In this paper, we focus on how the story of one student, whom we named Ben, relates to several theories of democratic citizenship in one dimension of (his attitude towards) a democratic way of life: their attitude towards democracy and diversity. We chose the story of Ben, a pre-university student who lives in an upper class, white neighborhood, because at first glance he - like many other students – seems to have a rather ‘thin’ perception of what democracy entails, and what his responsibilities towards democracy are. In this paper we investigate what can be said about Ben’s contribution to democracy from different theoretical perspectives. 2. Method Because of the exploratory character of the study, we chose to conduct a qualitative study. We decided to interview sixteen-year-old students in high school, both preparing for university and vocation. Because of the complexity of the topic, in order to collect a rich set of data, and in order to enhance a process of reflection with the students, we chose to interview each student six times. All the interviews where conducted with a preset list with questions, which were developed to illicit students’ stories on the dimensions. Furthermore, we used open interview techniques in order to stimulate them to elaborate on their stories. In the interviews, we addressed their attitude towards democracy, citizenship, diversity and societal issues (in order to cover each element in the five dimensions). We asked them about their attitude towards citizenship, because their associations with ‘good citizenship’ most likely affect their attitude towards democratic citizenship.

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__________________________________________________________________ We asked students about their attitude towards diversity because as expected, they often mentioned responsibilities towards diversity issues, which they did not relate to democratic citizenship. And we interviewed students about their attitude towards several societal issues to learn more about their commitment towards societal issues, their understanding of different interests involved, and of their role and that of a democratic society in addressing these issues. 3. Ben’s Understanding of the Value of Democracy and Diversity for his own Life One could assume that, in order to contribute to democracy in a more substantial way, people first of all need a more elaborate understanding of what democracy entails. Parker advocates that people for instance have to be aware of the interrelatedness of democracy and diversity, that they should be aware of their responsibilities beyond voting, and that they actively have to appreciate diversity.5 Although Ben doesn’t seem to have an elaborate understanding of what democracy is, and what his responsibilities are, he does actively appreciate diversity to a certain extent. Let us take a closer look at Ben’s story, concerning his interrelatedness of democracy and diversity and his perception of his responsibilities. Ben understands democracy as a political system, in which his main and only responsibility lies in voting, in case one has an opinion on something. And in order to enable himself to vote in an informed way, he thinks people should also ‘do some research’. Next, he states that people should respect each other. This however is perceived as a generally good thing to do, not as a feature of democratic citizenship. While Ben doesn’t relate democracy and diversity in a conscious way, one could say that he does link them in practice, for instance because he thinks we have to accept that people are different. Ben thinks it is inherent to a society that things change, and that you have to search for ways to appreciate and become, or stay, part of these developments. The same can be said about Ben’s perception of his responsibilities. As displayed before, Ben does not think he has any responsibility towards democracy but to vote, in case it suits his schedule and in case he has an opinion about something. On the other hand, when talking about good citizenship he says: ‘I think we should try to have a positive impact,’ which he later on specifies by stating that ‘a person needs to contribute in a positive way by doing good to others/society’. He also states people need to respect others and be open-minded. He thinks it is important to try living together in a pleasant way with all people. This brings us to the third question: to what extent does Ben appreciate diversity in an active way? Ben does not perceive this as an issue: Yes, people still do discriminate a lot in the Netherlands, but one just has to discuss issues they struggle about. For instance, when an Imam refused to shake hands when a female minister visited

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__________________________________________________________________ him in his mosque. This Imam should adjust to the common standards, but these standards might change over time. One just has to check once a while if they are still accurate. This utterance holds a lot of information about Ben’s attitude towards diversity. He thinks (some) newcomers need to adapt more, and native citizens need to be open to change. Important furthermore is that they should try to relate to each other in order to enable people to live together in a pleasant way and avoid hatred. The utterance also explains why he does not think he has a responsibility towards nourishing diversity: he does not feel an urge to do so, because he has the feeling problems will resolve by themselves. Also, Ben considers conflicts as part of the deal. They will always be there, because there always will be different people with different interests. And since they go on endlessly, why bother about them? Mouffe stresses that it is important for citizens in a democracy to adopt a positive attitude towards conflicting preferences.6 She stated that in a democracy, people need to appreciate agonisms. Although Ben does not relate this to democracy, one could state that he does appreciate this characteristic of a democratic society. A last feature of a democratic way of life that relates to the way one understands democracy we want to discuss here is the idea that democracy is first and foremost about addressing issues of social injustice in a structural way, as advocated by Westheimer and Kahn.7 Ben is very clear about this: he does not want to address issues of social injustice. This stems from his distaste for protests, actions, and projects, which, he imagines go on endlessly and are boring. This has nothing to do with his idea of efficacy: the extent to which he thinks he can have an impact. Ben thinks he could make a difference if he wanted to. When discussing how one could address a social justice issue, Ben for instance talked about the procedural aspects of addressing issues in a democracy: by writing a letter, organizing or signing a petition, and sending it to politicians. Still, he does not want to become involved in such activities, and he does not imagine he will need/want to do so one day. Ben prefers hanging around with friends. Feels he is entitled to spend his leisure time the way he likes it best. While Ben chooses not to participate actively, he does ‘automatically’ contribute to respectful relations between people in his own environment. He for instance considers it his responsibility to reflect on the impact of his behavior, when he hangs around on the streets with friends. And when engaging with his criminal friends, he looks for a way to still hang out together, without having to become involved. Should these activities be perceived as general assets of good citizenship, or is there something typically democratic about them? Westheimer and others would probably be pleased with the fact that Ben did develop some sense of moral sensitivity, and that he tends to think critically, for these are considered key

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__________________________________________________________________ elements of democratic citizenship as well.8 Still, they might add that Ben has insufficient knowledge about current inequalities, and is unaware of the fact that some of these inequalities can only change when more people search to interfere with the status quo. Interesting to note in this regard, is that Ben – and many other students – consider democracy as a fact. Many students had a hard time during the interviews, imagining people who are worse off in the Netherlands, or things that might threaten our democracy. ‘We simply have a democracy. Things are fine the way they are’. 4. Conclusion From discussing Ben’s attitude towards democracy, we can conclude that Ben contributes more to democracy, and that he has developed more elements of a democratic citizen, than he is aware of. We can also conclude that he did not develop some other elements which are considered of crucial importance for the development of the democratic character of a society: he does not want to become actively involved in bridging,9 or address social justice issues, and he does not see why he should learn more about persisting inequalities in his society, or why he should contribute to democracy in general. Now what does Ben’s story teach us about possibilities for theories of democratic citizenship? First of all, we think it might be worthwhile explicating to a greater extent if, and why, it is important for people to become aware of the ways in which they do and do not contribute to democracy. Ben did develop an appreciation for diversity and for agonisms, but he does not see why he should pay further notice to it. Does this make him democratic enough? Or does a democratic society need him to develop more?10 Second, we think it might be interesting to add ‘having conversations about their attitude towards democracy and diversity’ to the menu of a democratic way of life. We think it is important that people become aware of the ways in which they currently contribute towards democracy, because of the impact they might have on the development of our democracy. Similar to that, we think it might be interesting to pay more attention in theories of democratic citizenship to the things that do go well in our democracies; the ways in which students already contribute to the democratic society; and to investigate in which contexts this might (not) be sufficient. This way we might be able to develop theories of a democratic way of life where students can more easily relate to, and which also stimulate students’ awareness and appreciation of the different ways in which people contribute to a democratic society.

Notes 1

See M De Winter, ‘Democratie moet je leren- wanneer beginnen we?’ [Electronic Version], 3, from http://www.burgerschapindeschool.nl, 2004; A Gutmann, ‘Unity

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__________________________________________________________________ and Diversity in Democratic Multicultural Education: Creative and Destructive Tensions’, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives Perspectives, Jossey-Bass, Indianapolis, 2003, pp. 71-95; C Mouffe, The Return of the Political (2nd ed), Routledge, New York, 2005; W Parker, Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Teachers College Press, New York, 2003; R Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York Simon & Schuster, 2000; B Thayer-Bacon, Beyond Liberal Democracies in Schools: The Power of Pluralism, Teachers College Press, New York, 2008; W Veugelers, ‘Creating Critical-Democratic Citizenship in Education: Empowering Humanity and Democracy in Dutch Education’, Compare, 37, 105-119. 2007; and J Westheimer & J Kahne, What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy, American Educational Research Journal, 41/2, 237-269. 2004; and M I Young, Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. 2 See J Amadeo, J Torney-Purta, R Lehmann, V Husfeldt & R Nikolova, Civic Knowledge and Engagement: An IEA Study of Upper Secondary Students in Sixteen Countries, IEA, Amsterdam, 2002; P Carr, ‘Educators and Education for Democracy: Moving beyond ‘Thin’ Democracy’, Interamerican Journal of Education for Democracy, 1(2), 18, 2008; and P Dekker, ‘Sterke democraten, zwakkere democratie? Veranderingen in politieke betrokkenheid en participatie 1970-2000’, Beleid en Maatschappij, 29 (2), 2002, pp. 55-66. 3 See A Gutmann & D Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2004; C Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, Verso, London, New York, 2000; W Parker, Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Teachers College Press, New York, 2003; W Veugelers, ‘Creating Critical-Democratic Citizenship in Education: Empowering Humanity and Democracy in Dutch Education’, Compare, 37, 2007, pp. 105-119; J Westheimer, & J Kahne, ‘Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do’, Phi Delta Kappan, 2003, pp. 34-67. 4 This model is discussed in detail in I de Groot, ‘Why We are not Democratic Yet: The Complexity of Developing a Democratic Attitude’, W Veugelers (ed), Education and Humanism, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, Taipei, Boston, in press. 5 See W Parker, Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Teachers College Press, New York, 2003. 6 See C Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox. Verso, London & New York, 2000. 7 See J Westheimer & J Kahne, ‘Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do’, Phi Delta Kappan, 2003, pp. 34-67. 8 See W Parker, Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Teachers College Press, New York, 2003; W Veugelers, ‘Creating CriticalDemocratic Citizenship in Education: Empowering Humanity and Democracy in Dutch Education’, Compare, 37, 2007, pp. 105-119; J Westheimer & J Kahne,

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do’, Phi Delta Kappan, 2003, pp. 34-67. 9 Putnam introduced the term bridging, which (opposed to bonding), refers to people actively trying to relate to people outside their personal sphere: people with different interests, customs or people from different social groups, backgrounds. 10 Most theories of democratic citizenship focus on developing an image of the most desirable development: the most elaborate understanding of what democracy entails, or the most sophisticated way in which people should deliberate, or address social justice issues. Most citizens however, think things will turn out all right when others – who have a talent for it - do the job. Where does this leave them? Does this mean that they are less democratic citizens? What does a democratic society need from these people?

Bibliography Amadeo, J., Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Husfeldt, V. & Nikolova, R., Civic Knowledge and Engagement: An IEA Study of Upper Secondary Students in Sixteen Countries. IEA, Amsterdam, 2002. Carr, P., ‘Educators and Education for Democracy: Moving beyond ‘Thin’ Democracy’. Interamerican Journal of Education for Democracy. 1(2), 18, 2008. De Winter, M., ‘Democratie moet je leren- wanneer beginnen we?’ [Electronic Version]. 3, from http://www.burgerschapindeschool.nl, 2004. Dekker, P., ‘Sterke democraten, zwakkere democratie? Veranderingen in politieke betrokkenheid en participatie 1970-2000’. Beleid en Maatschappij, 29 (2), 2002, pp. 55-66. Gutmann, A., ‘Unity and Diversity in Democratic Multicultural Education: Creative and Destructive Tensions’. Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives. Jossey-Bass, Indianapolis, 2003, pp. 71-95. Gutmann, A. & Thompson, D., Why Deliberative Democracy? Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2004. Mouffe, C., The Democratic Paradox. Verso, London, New York, 2000. _______

, The Return of the Political. (2nd ed), Routledge, New York, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ Parker, W., Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life. Teachers College Press, New York, 2003. Putnam, R., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000. Thayer-Bacon, B., Beyond Liberal Democracies in Schools: The Power of Pluralism. Teachers College Press, New York, 2008. Veugelers, W., ‘Creating Critical-Democratic Citizenship in Education: Empowering Humanity and Democracy in Dutch Education’. Compare. 37, 2007, pp. 105-119. Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J., ‘Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do’. Phi Delta Kappan. 2003, pp. 34-67. Isolde de Groot is a PhD researcher at the University for Humanistics, Department of Education, The Netherlands. E-Mail: [email protected].

Section II: Democracy – National, Transnational

What Counts as Democracy? Is Democracy Really what Counts? Giuliana Di Biase Abstract The question of investigating the assumptions which lie behind democracy has become very pressing today: according to some political scientists we are living in an age of ‘post-democracy’, since the ideal of democracy has entered in collision with reality. As a political system of government, democracy was born to put a limit to the absolute power of kings and aristocrats, but today it seems it has become a tool in the hands of new powerful oligarchies that control the global economy and that exert an enormous influence on public life, without being themselves object of control. In this sense, Robert Dahl has spoken of actual existing democracies as poliarchies, given the plurality of powers, which lie behind the surface of democratically legitimated systems of government. Public life manifests clearly the symptoms of a crisis involving the traditional forms of political participation; moreover, according to Dahrendorf, parliaments seem today no more able to represent citizens’ interests, and the absence of truly independent media makes it quite impossible the formation of a really committed, pluralistic public opinion. Democracy seems capable of guaranteeing us from the hard power of tyranny, not from the soft power of media distorted by the mechanisms of power. John Rawls said that all existing liberal democracies are very far from being perfect: in America, for example, some political reforms appear as really necessary, especially in the field of elections financing and in that of the sanitary assistance. But perhaps all actual existing democracies need reforms truly inspired to what counts really as democracy. In my paper, I argue that the most urgent reforms needed by our democratic systems are those in the field of distributive justice. Key Words: Democracy, liberal-democratic system, media, parliament, welfare state, post-democracy, public opinion, deliberative democracy, distributive justice. ***** 1. Democracy and Liberalism Democracy may frighten: Plato thought that democracy was the domain of disorder and vice, and many centuries later Hegel affirmed that democracy was an imperfect form of government since it was grounded on a (virtuous) disposition of the soul, instead of being the rational development of the idea of Right. Hegel was referring to Montesquieu, who thought that democracy was a form of government which could work only where the governors were virtuous people: being the case

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__________________________________________________________________ that this quite never happens, Montesquieu recommended a fragmentation of the sovereignty as a guarantee against the abuses of power. The same idea was sketched about one century before by Locke in his Two Treatises on Government: here Locke clearly formulated the core of the liberal political theory, assessing the necessity of a separation between political powers and that of a legitimacy of governments coming from the citizens’ consent. According to Locke, only the representative mechanism based on permanent or temporary parliaments can assure to citizens the possibility of renewing or retiring their consent: they should be entitled to resist actively (Locke called it ‘appeal to heaven’) to the abuses of power, claiming back their natural freedom and their right to get out of the civil state. Locke’s idea of a representative political system was refined through time, but from a political point of view liberalism does not exhaust the meaning of democracy. Democracy is not only a system of guarantees, which protect individual freedom, but also a system of social guarantees that give to the welfare state its content. Of course, the coupling of these two values, freedom and justice, has never been easy as the history of liberal democracies teaches, and today it seems still more difficult than in the past: western democracies clearly show the symptoms of a crisis whose historical, social and cultural significance perhaps can not yet be understood in its full complexity. 2. Two Liberal-Democratic Systems From a historical point of view, the liberal-democratic system which prevails today in the western world is the second, the first being the system which affirmed itself in the first half of the twentieth century. The last one was characterized by universal suffrage, by political massive parties and by ideological and social conflicts between the classes and their political representatives. The second liberaldemocratic system, that is the one we live in, is mainly characterized by the weakening of the sovereignty of national states, by the increasing power of international financial and industrial oligarchies, and by the decline of the antithesis between classes and ideologies. Moreover, it is typical of our liberal democracies the transformation of massive parties into the so called ‘light parties’, which mobilize only during election times; light parties are no more supported by political activists distributed on the territory and their organization is entirely resigned to the media and to their strong capacity to shape and influence a more and more passive public opinion. The actual liberal democratic system gives a clear evidence of a process of deterioration involving many important aspects of the political life: the ideal of democracy is becoming strongly divergent from the reality of democracy in our western world. The decline of the welfare state, clearly visible in the shrinking of the net of social protections assured in the past by social democratic governments to workers and lower classes, is maybe the most devastating effect of the new-

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__________________________________________________________________ conservatism and new-trade liberalization which have inspired the politics of many western countries in the last two decades. The flexibility required from workers by the market and the diminishing influence of trade unions are some of the effects of the economic globalization, and they have contributed to reshape citizens’ perception of democracy in a way that deeply affects the common conception of justice. Nonetheless, democracy is still perceived as ‘the Good’ in our western world: in its name western countries make wars (actually, all the big wars in which Great Britain and America have engaged since the second half of the nineteen century had the purpose to defend and install democracy). Now, apart from the strategic games played by governments in the name of a pseudo-democracy, what does democracy still mean for the common people? 3. The Deliberative Democracy and its Limits As a political system, it is essential to democracy the extension of political participation to all citizens: probably this is what the term ‘democracy’ evokes in the mind of the common people: that is the direct opposite of tyranny. Maybe less clear is that, in a democracy, citizens have to be informed about the nature of the problems which are object of the debate at the representative level, in order to give consent or dissent efficiently. In other words, citizens must have the possibility to know the mechanism by which their governments take every decision, in order to acquire a detailed opinion about the subject. Now, one of the most controversial points regarding our contemporary democracies is the existence of an informed public opinion: perhaps Pierre Bourdieu was right when he said that l’opinion publique n’existe pas and that it would be a pretence created ad hoc by the opinion polls, in any case political participation is declining in all western democracies. Surely this fact represents a serious challenge for the liberal ideal of an informed citizenship strongly involved in political life; at the core of this challenge we find the question of the crisis of public opinion, which is object of many, sometimes complementary interpretations. Some political thinkers attribute the passive nature of contemporary public opinion to a lack of competence: citizens would not have the necessary cognitive resources to deal with the complexity of political questions, so they would not be able to participate actively;1 others prefer to focus on the easiness with which citizens are influenced by the media and on their attitude to be impressed more by emotional than by rational argumentations inside the public debate.2 Some political thinkers have explained the progressive shrinking of the space traditionally assigned to public debate referring to the tyranny exerted by majorities (this was the argument first stated by Tocqueville),3 while others have attributed to the elites which form the new leadership the full responsibility of shaping mediatically the public into consumers.4

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__________________________________________________________________ One of the most important approaches to the question of public opinion and to its actual stagnation is the theory of deliberative democracy: it suggests that, in order to promote public debate, it would be necessary to enlarge the number of the themes which are underpinned by citizens’ discussion. According to this theory, public debates would have to multiply, but at the same time they would have to be regulated in order to guarantee full respect for dissenting opinions, reciprocity, responsibility and publicity of the debate. Moreover, the theory of deliberative democracy considers dissenting as an important critical resource and promotes a public debate in which the agreement between participants has to be reached without undermining anyone’s principles. The point is this: can an enlargement of the number of themes underpinned by public debate solve the problem of a passive public opinion? As a matter of fact, abstention is increasing in all western democracies, so it can not be taken for granted that citizens would participate actively in a more intense public debate. One of the most alarming facts in the context of our western democracies is the progressive transformation of voters into passive politics consumers, and it is difficult to imagine that an enlargement of the themes which are object of debate would be sufficient to counter this tendency. 4. Living in a Post -Democracy Contemporary liberal-democratic political systems manifest the symptoms of a crisis which affects them directly at their heart: as Dahrendorf said, parliaments seem today no more able to represent actively the interests of citizens and they are often bypassed by carismatic political leaders who appeal directly to the people. Moreover, the lack of truly independent media makes it quite impossible the formation of a really committed, pluralistic public opinion; as a system of government, democracy seems capable of guaranteeing us from the hard power of tyranny, not from the soft power of media that are distorted by the mechanisms of power. In the first liberal-democratic system (the one with restricted suffrage), the voters belonged to the same class as their governors, so they could exert quite easily a political influence on them; today the political debate takes place mainly on television and the representants themselves can neither influence nor exert control on the economic oligarchies since these have deprived governments of their power. The liberal idea of a separation of powers in order to prevent abuses seems, in this context, no more useful, since the greatest part of the economic power lies beyond the democratic control; plutocracy is not conditioned by governments, it buys governments. The citizens of the first liberal democratic system were more active and influent than today: political parties strongly engaged their supporters into a permanent mobilization, ideologically structured as a lifestyle. Contemporary political parties are under the strong, ‘monocromatic’ influence of the American model, which is a

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__________________________________________________________________ highly commercial one; so, in the end, the political competition is shaped into an economic competition. The American political system, at the very beginning of the twentieth century, was already a clear example of how plutocracy can deeply influence and dominate governments; more recently, Regan and Bush’s administrations have opened the doors to economic oligarchies and identified their interests with public interests. Kein Phillips wrote in 2002 that in the USA wealth had progressively concentrated in very few hands, because of political corruption,5 market idolatry and economic Darwinism; some years before, Robert Dahl had observed that no political majority in America had ever seriously engaged in making pressures for a substantial redistribution of wealth. According to Dahl, this fact was due to the absence of a strong socialist movement in America: this lack would have greatly contributed to leave the problem of distributive justice behind the American political scene. Moreover, although America is perceived in the entire world as the custodian of democracy, the land in which social mobility is high and opportunities are more equally distributed, the access to presidency government is substantially blocked to all the political forces which are not supported by the consent of the economic oligarchies. American political system shows on a large scale the contradictions which afflict the life of our democracies. As John Rawls said, all existing liberal democracies are very far from being perfect: in the USA some political reforms seem really urgent, especially in the field of elections’ financing and in that of sanitary assistance, but perhaps all our western democracies show the same urgent need of reforms. Robert Dahl6 has spoken of the existing democracies as poliarchies, given the plurality of powers which lie behind the surface of democratically legitimate systems of government; according to Dahl, pluralism is, as a matter of fact, a democratic desirable order, nontheless it can contribute to stabilize inequalities, to deform civic consciousness and to deprive citizens of the final control on the political debate. The same concept was expressed by Colin Crouch some years ago,7 when he used the term ‘post-democracy’ to define a political system that is not essentially democratic. Crouch focused on the increasing power of economic lobbies and on the decreasing power of citizens, stressing also the weakening of social policies oriented to a redistribution of wealth; he concluded that democracy has remained behind in the capitalistic run to globalization, and that we live in an ‘after state’, although probably we still do not know what this means. 5. Has Democracy a Future? So, what counts really as democracy? The first function of a democratic system is to guarantee the governed the possibility to exert power on governors. But if the governments themselves are confined to the role of local administrators of

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__________________________________________________________________ international financial and industrial oligarchies, the hierarchy of powers inside the poliarchy destroys democracy. It is essential, in a political perspective, to consider the concept of popular sovereignty in order to define democracy: now, can we still use this concept when referring to the citizens of the second liberal democratic systems, whose role is that of consumers of politics? The only power citizens seem to have today is to change shop, and of course this is better than not having power at all. Surely it is better than living under a dictatorship; so, perhaps, what counts as democracy today is every political system which is not a dictatorship. This is of course a minimalist definition of contemporary democracies which does not help much, therefore a positive definition may be better: the liberal democratic political systems are those which are passively legitimated. Has democracy a future? Democracy was born and flourished to answer the political and social needs of the national systems, which today are living a deep crisis; the nature itself of the crisis is such that it doesn’t leave us the possibility to dream about possible ways back. This in turn affects the liberal democratic system in the form it has been theorized and has developed for over two centuries. Is democracy what really counts? The answer here is more difficult. The entire history of democracy has been dominated by a fundamental principle, which has submitted every possible extension of rights ad liberties to the preservation of individual property and to the safeguard of all the traditional institutions based on money. So, to speak properly, the ideal of democracy that is built inside the meaning of the word itself (power of the people) has been never seen by western liberal-democratic systems as a point of arrival: in this sense, a deep contradiction has always been at the very heart of our democracies, since they have consented to enlarge the basis of the power only to the extent it left everything unchanged. This contradiction today has become so radical that it risks destroying completely the system. So, in the end, is there a future for democracy? In order to give it a renewed sense, I think that at least three reforms are really necessary: 1) a reinforcement of national governments, that should be able to exert control on economic oligarchies; 2) the promotion of independent media, in order to have a public opinion which is informed in a truly pluralistic way; 3) a serious engagement in politics aiming at reducing the excesses of inequality, and this of course means going back to the welfare state.

Notes 1

W Lippmann, Public Opinion, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1922; W Lippmann, The Phantom Public, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1925. 2 Lippmann, The Phantom Public, p. 47; D Katz, D Cartwright, D Wldersveld & S Lee (eds), Public Opinion and Propaganda, Dryden Press, New York, 1954.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3

E Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984. 4 CW Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1956; J Habermas, Structurwandel der Offentlichkeit: Untersuchunghen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1991. 5 K Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Broadway Books, New York, 2002. 6 R Dahl, Poliarchy: Participation and Opposition, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1971. 7 C Crouch, Post-Democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004.

Bibliography Bobbio, N., Il futuro della democrazia. Einaudi, Torino, 1984. Crouch, E., Post-Democracy. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004. Dahl, R., Poliarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1971. Dahrendorf, R., Furet, F. & B. Geremek, La democrazia in Europa. Laterza, Roma, Bari, 1992. _______

, Die Wiederbeginn der Geschichte: Vom Fall der Mauer zum Krieg im Irak. Verklag, München, 2004. Katz, D. et. al., Public Opinion and Propaganda. Dryden Press, New York, 1954. Lippmann, W., Public Opinion. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1922. _______, The Phantom Public. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1925. Mills, C.W., The Power Elite. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1956. Noelle-Neumann, E., The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984. Phillips, K., Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. Broadway Books, New York, 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ Salvadori, M., Democrazie senza democrazia. Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2009. Giuliana Di Biase has a PhD in Ethics and Antropology. She teaches at University D’Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara and has published on R. M. Hare and I. Murdoch. Currently her research work is devoted to J. Locke.

The Right to Democracy Rory O’Connell Abstract: This paper presents connections between the law of the European Convention on Human Rights and different models of democracy. Key Words: Human rights law, European  Convention on  Human  Rights, democracy. ***** 1. Introduction In this paper I will present some of the legal developments on the right to democracy, focusing on legal issues before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. My aim is to make connections between the jurisprudence of this Court and different theories of democracy, and see if those theories of democracy might suggest new lines of argument before the court. The outline of my paper is to say a few words on the approach of international law to democracy and the benefits of a legal analysis of democracy. I will then introduce some of the textual provisions and concepts relevant in the ECtHR jurisprudence. My third section will highlight some of the case law of the ECtHR and how different models of democracy figure in the case law. 2. International Law and Democracy International law was traditionally not concerned with the internal affairs of states. This respect for state sovereignty did not disappear with the birth of modern human rights in international law after the Second World War. The UN Charter does refer to human rights and even starts off with an invocation of ‘We the peoples’. However it also stresses the principle of non-interference with the domestic affairs of the states (Article 2(7)). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 does not mention the term democracy though it does refer to ‘democratic society’ once (Article 29(2)). It has only oblique references to the problems of colonialism (Article 2) and no reference to self-determination. There is however a provision on the right to take part in public affairs (Article 21).1 When the UDHR was supplemented with binding treaties - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) , the right to self-determination was included as Article 1 of both covenants. Also the ICCPR protected the right to take part in public affairs in Article 25.2

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__________________________________________________________________ Despite these normative developments the idea of a right to democracy was largely ignored during the Cold War. The one exception to this was Europe and more particularly Western Europe. However since the end of the Cold War there has been an explosion of interest in the idea of a right to democracy in international law and what this might mean. The Committee charged with interpreting the ICCPR has developed guidance on Article 25 ICCPR. The UN is in the business of democracy promotion. Its efforts in this field involve cooperation with intergovernmental efforts by the International Conference on New and Restored Democracies3 and the Community of Democracies,4 as well as the Inter Parliamentary Union. There has been considerable institutional and normative development at the regional level, with both the Organisation of American States and the African Union adopting charters on democracy.5 3. Textual Provisions and Concepts in the Work of the ECHR The idea of a right to democracy fared somewhat better in Europe than in the rest of the world during the Cold War. The Council of Europe adopted the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in 1950 and this document makes several references to democracy. Most importantly its Preamble states that justice and peace depend on both an observance of human rights but also the existence of an ‘effective political democracy’. The Convention itself refers on several occasions to the requirement that rights may be limited no more than is necessary in a democratic society. Despite this the provisions on specifically democratic rights are very tentative. Indeed, although the right to expression and to association are found in the ECHR itself, rights about elections are not. There are found in a separate Protocol to the Convention (Protocol 1) along with education and the right to property. This separate protocol reflected concerns about whether democracy could be treated as a right like the others and also concerns about not interfering too much in the design of political systems.6 Even the language used is unlike that used for other rights. Article 3 of the First Protocol (P1-3) is expressed not as a right of individuals but as an obligation on the state: The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature. This language left some doubt as to whether the Convention actually protected democratic rights at all. Indeed for a long time the ECHR institutions did not treat P1-3 as conferring any individual rights. It is important to note that the Convention, like any legal text is open to interpretation. The ECHR has stressed that the Convention must be interpreted to

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__________________________________________________________________ make its rights effective in reality. This means that we sometimes say the interpretation of the Convention evolves over time. This aspect of the interpretation of the text is exciting, as litigants, parties and judges struggle over the meaning of the law. The position that the Convention did not protect individual political rights started to change in the 1970s and more dramatically with the first decision of the ECtHR on the provision in 1987. The case, Mathieu-Mohin v Belgium, concerned the consociational arrangements in Belgium.7 The ECtHR decided that P1-3 did protect individual rights and specifically the right to vote and the right to run for election. The ECtHR explained that the ‘obligation’ language used in P1-3 had been intended to confer greater solemnity on the rights being protected, rather than to deny the existence of individual rights. The ECtHR laid down some important guidelines on how to understand the protection of these individual rights. First, the right are qualified, that is to say they can be limited. This is in line with many of the rights in the Convention. Actually the Court seemed to go further and suggest that limitations might be more easily accepted in relation to these rights than others. In any case, these rights can be limited by the state if there is a legitimate reason to do so, and if the limitation is not disproportionate. Further any limitation must not affect the core of the rights that elections should respect the ‘free expression of the people in the choice of the legislature’. The ECHR was well aware that there were political sensitivities involved. To respect this it invoked another mainstay of its jurisprudence, the so called ‘margin of appreciation’. In its case law, the Court refers to a margin of appreciation owed to the states who are better able to judge the requirements of human rights and the common good in a concrete case. In some areas a wide margin of appreciation is justified (national security, public morality, new technologies, planning law, economic questions and generally any area where there are no common European standards) while in other cases a narrow margin is required (eg decisions affecting political expression or private sexual behaviour). In Mathieu-Mohin the Court stressed that a wide margin is justified in P1-3 cases because political systems have to accommodate conflicting possibly irreconcilable demands. No political system can be perfect and each state must develop a political system suited to its own needs and history. How have the democratic rights fared since 1987? Until the 21st Century the case law remained somewhat moribund. This has started to change, partly because of the case law coming from the new member states of Eastern Europe, partly because all states now accept the right of individual petition. However the case law is not only from Eastern Europe. There are important cases on the democratic rights from Italy and Greece, and two or three of the most important instances of violations were from the United Kingdom.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. ECHR Case Law and Models of Democracy A. Liberal Representative Democracy The dominant conception of democracy emerging from the convention and case law is that of a liberal representative democracy. The dominant model is representative in nature. The political rights protected are the right to vote and to run for election – for a legislature. States party to the ECHR P1 have no choice in the matter – they must establish an elected legislature and hold periodic elections for it. One of the earliest cases of the ECHR institutions saw the European Commission on Human Rights condemn Greece for suspending parliament and elections in the wake of the colonels’ coup.8 Models of participatory democracy do not figure in the text of the convention. The Convention is in this regard more limited that the UDHR and the ICCPR. Both of those texts start off with wider terms than electoral rights. They both refer to the right to take part in government or public affairs. Indeed the focus on representative democracy is limited to the election of a legislature. The Convention cannot be brought in to play in cases involving the election of the head of state or government, consultative bodies, local government (unless local authorities have law making functions that put them on a par with a devolved or federal legislature). Further the text of the Convention does not refer to direct democracy. The Convention’s voting rights do not apply to referenda or plebiscites or recall provisions. This of course does not mean that States may not introduce such measures - they may. Rather it means that if States choose to adopt referenda or the like, then the Convention cannot be invoked if someone is denied a right to vote in them or if the voting system for them is flawed. The conception is a liberal one for three reasons. First democracy has to be compatible with human rights in the Convention scheme. Rights of course can be limited or qualified, but they cannot simply be ignored. A democratic majority cannot override the Convention rights, but may adopt restrictions on rights provided these are lawful, legitimate and proportionate. Second, the range of rights protected in the Convention is somewhat limited – the text of the Convention is largely limited to the traditional civil and political rights – life, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery, liberty, fair trial, private and family life, religion, expression, association, right to marry, nondiscrimination, right to vote and run for election. The right to property is also protected. There are some economic or social rights such as education and the right to form trade unions, but for the most part social and economic rights are not explicitly found in the ECHR. Third, the court has indicated that its conception of a democratic society includes respect for the values of pluralism, tolerance, and broad mindedness. This means that the Convention tolerates the expression of ideas that ‘offend, shock and disturb’.

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__________________________________________________________________ There are important caveats to enter. First most of the Convention rights can be subject to lawful, legitimate, proportionate limitations. These limitations can be for a wide range of public interests. So political rights can be limited to protect interests like transparency or equality. Second, in deciding whether states have appropriately limited rights, the Court often speaks of the margin of appreciation. The right to property for example is one where the Court speaks of a wide margin of appreciation. Third, the rights in the convention impose not merely negative obligations but also positive obligations. So as well as negative obligations not to interfere with the free expression of the media, there may also be positive obligations to secure the media’s independence and impartiality. Fourth, although the Convention mainly protects civil and political rights, there is an increasing trend towards interpreting the convention to give protection to a range of social and economic rights. Whilst not going so far as to make other treaties (eg the 1961 European Social Charter) unnecessary, such developments do offer the possibility of rebalancing somewhat the liberal /social balance in the Convention.9 B. Deliberative Democracy? Does the Convention go beyond a fairly traditional model of liberal and representative democracy in any way? Is there for example any hint of support for a specifically deliberative model of democracy? One of the difficulties in answering this is the difficulty of pinning down the exact requirements of a deliberative democracy. In so far as it requires a vibrant public sphere in which free expression and association rights are protected, this does not seem very different from liberal democracy. One possible way to identify the difference might be to look to see if the ECtHR requires that decisions limiting political (or indeed other) rights are subject to actual deliberation. There are for example cases where the ECtHR has upheld a restriction on political citing, citing among other reasons the fact that the restrictive measure had been the subject of political debate.10 Perhaps more surprisingly the ECtHR has referred to the absence of a debate to find a violation. In Hirst v United Kingdom, the Court found that a legislative ban on convicted felons in prison voting was a breach of the right to vote.11 While the prohibition was found in legislation adopted in the 1980s the ECtHR actually suggested that Parliament had simply automatically included the ban which dated to the 19th Century without proper consideration. A significant number of dissenting, and indeed concurring judges criticised this reference to the parliamentary debates.

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__________________________________________________________________ C. Consociational Democracy? Does the ECHR contemplate, condone or condemn consociational models of democracy? This is an especially sensitive issue. Consociational arrangement often emerge as a response to conflict; involve questions of identity; and frequently involve special rules not associated with democratic institutions. The ECtHR position is that such arrangements – like many questions of political design – fall within the margin of appreciation. The Strasbourg institutions have frequently upheld the special arrangements in Belgium for instance. However there are limits. The existence of a consociational system must not be allowed to justify the exclusion of certain persons from the right to vote or to run for election. The exclusion for instance of a Turkish Cypriot from any right to vote for the legislature in Cyprus since 1963 due to the suspension of the consociational system was unjustifiable in Convention terms.12 Similarly, more dramatically and controversially, the ECtHR has found that aspects of the consociational system in Bosnia and Herzegovina to violate the Convention.13 The consociational system allows only Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs to serve on the three person presidency or in the upper chamber of the federal legislature. This had the effect of excluding the applicants, who identified themselves as being of Jewish and Roma ethnicity. This the ECtHR found to be a violation of the Convention. 5. Conclusion Where does this take us? I hope to have given a flavour of the case law of the ECtHR in so far as it concerns questions of democracy. Of course the ECtHR approaches these as legal questions involving the application of specific legal doctrines, but the cases clearly have political implications. Are there advantages to organising the case law in terms of political models of democracy? For me there are at least two advantages. First, political theorists may have already identified problems with the particular conceptions of democracy and it is important to be aware of any problems which might stem from the Convention and the Court’s case law. Second, the different political models might suggest new Convention interpretations to explore. The Convention is a living instrument and must be interpreted in an evolving sense so as to give effect to the rights it protects. Possibly avenues to explore include developing more specifically deliberative 14 and participatory15 approaches to human rights, and perhaps developing positive obligations relating to equality in relation to the media and political parties.

Notes 1

Article 21: (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in

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__________________________________________________________________ periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. 2 Article 25: Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions: (a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives; (b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors; (c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country. 3 http://www.icnrd.org/. 4 http://www.community-democracies.org/. 5 Inter-American Democratic Charter 2001, http://www.oas.org/charter/docs/reso lution1_en_p4.htm, African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance 2007 http://www.un.org/democracyfund/Docs/AfricanCharterDemocracy.pdf. 6 See DJ Harris, et. al., Law of the European Convention on Human Rights, OUP, Oxford 2008; and P Van Dijk, et. al., Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights, Intersentia, Hart, Antwerp; Oxford 2006. 7 Mathieu-Mohin and Clerfayt v Belgium (App no 9267/81), [1987] 10 European Human Rights Reports 1. 8 Denmark and others v Greece (The Greek case. Application 3321/67) (1969) 5 November 1969. 9 On the ‘unbalanced’ nature of the Convention rights see KD Ewing, ‘The Unbalanced Constitution’ Sceptical Essays on Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001. 10 Mathieu-Mohin and Clerfayt v Belgium (App no 9267/81), [1987] 10 European Human Rights Reports 1; Sukhovetskyy v Ukraine (Application no. 13716/02), [2007] 44 EHRR 57. 11 Hirst v United Kingdom (No. 2) (App. no. 74025/01), [2005] 42 EHRR 41. 12 Aziz v Cyprus (69949/01), (2005) 41 EHRR 11. 13 Sejdic and Finci v Bosnia and Herzegovina (application nos. 27996/06 and 34836/06), 22 December 2009. 14 S Fredman, Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. 15 R O'Connell, ‘Towards a Stronger Conception of Democracy in the Strasbourg Convention’, European Human Rights Law Review, 2006, pp. 281-293 .

Bibliography Ewing, K.D., ‘The Unbalanced Constitution’. Sceptical Essays on Human Rights. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ Fredman, S., Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. Harris, D.J., et. al., Law of the European Convention on Human Rights. OUP, Oxford, 2008. O'Connell, R., ‘Towards a Stronger Conception of Democracy in the Strasbourg Convention’. European Human Rights Law Review. 2006. Van Dijk, P. et. al., Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights. Intersentia, Hart, Antwerp; Oxford 2006 Rory O’Connell is a Senior Lecturer in the Human Rights Centre, School of Law, Queen’s University of Belfast. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of human rights, equality and constitutional law.

Democracy and the World Social Forum: Democratic Ideas in Transnational Social Movements Gabriele De Angelis Abstract Meant as an open space in which all organisations sharing a relatively succinct list of principles are allowed to participate, the World Social Forum (WSF) and its organisers have produced in a long-standing meeting practice a political arena in which social movements from all over the world can gather in order to discuss ‘alternatives to neoliberal politics’. These include both alternatives to economic policies and a general questioning of democratic representation at the global level. Thus, at the WSF a ‘theory’ of global political representation is elaborated that revolves around a conception of the peoples’ interests, and criticism of current international and supranational institutions is expressed. However, the WSF is also confronted with the task of granting adequate and fair representation and voice to the participating movements. Its organisers have tackled this task in multiple ways. A Charter of Principles regulates the internal democracy and explains character, conception, and rules of the Forum as a space for discussion and exchange of experiences. Conceived as a mirror of ‘transnational civil society’, the WSF aims to embody the innovative political and representational practices of its (multifarious) constituencies. Moreover, such practices as well as the reality of the WSF are juxtaposed to the current practices of international and supranational institutions in order to produce an idea of political legitimacy different from what the so-called neoliberal ideal. This paper aims to show what these political visions are, how they are theorised, and how the WSF’s symbolic and organisational space has been shaped in order to reproduce this ideal of democratic politics. To do so, the paper analyses the documents produced at the Forum and disseminated through its website and takes into due account the Forum’s organisational structure. Key Words: Transnational social movements, World Social Forum, transnational civil society, democratic practices, symbolic practices. ***** 1. Research Questions and Data An analysis of the relationship between the World Social Forum and ‘democracy’ has to take into account four dimensions: 1. 2. 3.

How global governance and neoliberal agency is made thematic both by Forum’s participants and by Forum’s organisers;

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. 5. 6.

How democracy is dealt with inside the WSF’s organisational structures; How the Forum itself is organised and decisions are made; How ‘democracy’ is represented, enacted, and ‘lived out’ at the WSF.

The present paper deals for the most part with 1b. and 4. The analysis presented in this paper is conducted on the basis of the Charter of principles and of the documents that the organisers produced in order to illustrate the main characteristics of the WSF, as well as the texts that resume the history and development of the WSF.1 This choice aims to capture the WSF’s selfcharacterisation. Additionally, the documents produced by the International Committee (IC) in charge of organising the WSF process are taken into account. 2. Democracy and the World Social Forum The perhaps most remarkable feature of the WSF as a political event is how the Forum’s structure and articulation offer a symbolic representation of the political visions that the organisers lay at the basis of their efforts. Both these visions and their symbolic representations are tightly connected to the criticisms levelled against global (and often national) political processes. The Forum addresses this double nexus of platform and critique from its very beginning. After its first edition in 2001 the Brazilian organisers and the IC fixed the Forum’s key-principles in a Charter that ought to explain meaning and scope of the event. Accordingly, the WSF is intended as an ‘arena’ in which actors of ‘transnational civil society’ engage in a communicative process that aims to promote an exchange of ideas. Political commitments - as to building ‘another world’, solidarity, people’s sovereignty, human rights, etc. - are also specified.2 Communication is clearly characterised as the central activity deployed at the Forum. This is the first element that we can reconnect to ‘democracy’. It offers also an insight into the kind of democracy intended by the organisers, which usually runs under the label of ‘deliberative democracy’. We can break ‘communication’ further down into a conjoint of components that also belong to the traditional acceptance of deliberative democracy: voice - the Forum has to make place to the experiences of those who suffer from the consequences of neoliberal globalisation, to their struggles and grievances,3 and free exchange of ideas - as opposed to political processes biased by power struggles.4 Voice and the free exchange of ideas figure alongside a series of characteristics meant to highlight both the conception of democratic policy that the Forum is intended to embody and the criticisms levelled against international economic institutions and global politics. ‘Real democracy’, spelled out as ‘participatory democracy’, goes along with ‘equality and solidarity’, mutual ‘understanding’ and

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘recognition’, and all this is opposed to ‘domination’, ‘power’, ‘inequality’, ‘exclusion’. Additionally, a second set of terms is employed to further mark the contrast between the conception of democratic politics that the WSF intends to promote and neoliberal global politics. This second set implies references to the cultural dimension. Thus, ‘diversification’, ‘decentralisation’, ‘pluralism’, and ‘diversity’ both cultural and ethnic - are opposed to ‘power’, ‘hierarchy’, mentioned in the same breath with ‘restrictions’ to communication and, tellingly enough, ‘censorship’. These characterisations address the current and prospective constituency of the WSF. Indeed, the WSF is confronted with the task of binding together and interlinking diverse movements stemming from different world regions and with different cultural and political backgrounds. Besides tackling an organisational as well as political matter, pressing on diversity is an important aspect of global politics as conceived of at the WSF. Neoliberal politics is understood as levelling out cultural differences and stamping out culturally specific ways of living and organising local community and interactions. The reference to diversity is thus both meant to satisfy an internal need and to mark off a goal of the envisaged political relationship: preserving cultural differences both in the procedures and in the results. Additionally, references to the aim of politics altogether - ‘meeting the needs of the people’ - intervene to enrich the former ideal. Thus, the idea of democratic relationships that emerges out of the documents in which the WSF is characterised revolves around a definition of their inclusiveness and of their aims. All in all, there emerges an ideal of political relationships that makes explicit reference to diversification and decentralisation, participation and mutual recognition, diversification and diversity. These elements characterise both the participatory policy to be observed at the Forum and the goals that it is supposed to promote. These characterisations are contrasted to an opposite set of terms that describe global neoliberal politics and their consequences on the WSF’s current or potential ‘constituency’. All these elements add up to qualifying the WSF’s democratic politics as a form of culturally tinged participatory, inclusive and ‘horizontal’ democracy as opposed to neoliberal politics perceived as vertical, exclusive, hierarchical. 3. Deliberation and Decision-Making However we may want to define democracy, the WSF seems at a first glance to lack one its key-features: binding decision-making.5 Moreover, the WSF lacks two further key-dimensions of democracy: political subjectivity, i.e. the selfqualification as a (collective) author or body to whom decisions and actions can be ascribed, and therefore also accountability.

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__________________________________________________________________ As a matter of fact, both political subjectivity and accountability have been object to an on-going controversy among the WSF’s participants. It has been observed that - similarly to social movements organisations (SMOs) in general two different types of WSF participants can be ideal-typically distinguished: ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ ones. Horizontal SMOs are characterised by flat, nonhierarchical forms of organisation, openness to participation (often without any kind of formal affiliation), lack of formally distinguished roles, nonprofessionalism, and consequential lack of accountability in decision-making. Most grass-roots groups are reckoned among this category. Vertical SMOs, which usually include NGOs (especially the larger ones), labour unions, etc., are characterised by the existence of a formal structure and a set of rules that determine internal decision-making, assign responsibility, and regulate affiliation. This kind of organisations are expected to display at least some mechanism of accountability, although there is no lack of proofs to the contrary.6 Within the so-called ‘global justice movement’,7 ‘horizontal’ groups are likelier to practise ‘occasional’ and ‘loose’ forms of protest such as ‘summit hopping’. Although this does not necessarily imply a lesser degree of persistence of protest activities over time, it certainly implies a lesser ability or willingness to promote long-term or more articulated political platforms.8 Formally structured SMOs are expected to display a higher degree of organisational activity and stability, to be more willing or ready to entertain relationships with governmental institutions, to formulate complex political platforms, and to use occasions of mass mobilisation to press them on. Inside the WSF this opposition has come to the fore with regard to the question as to whether the Forum should take position on political issues or rather abstain from doing so, as in the intentions of the original organisers. As a matter of fact, for the WSF to turn into a political actor able to take stances and to interact with (national and international) institutions, it should be endowed with both political subjectivity and accountability. However, this runs contrary to the intentions of those who see in the Forum a means to forge international alliances and networks of movements while taking into account, and accommodating for, political and cultural diversity.9 And yet, a core set of political stances on which participants are supposed to agree is, as stated at the beginning, easily recognisable. Such a set includes the distinctions between two kinds of actors who enact two different kinds of policies, and are committed to two different conceptions of how global governance and world society ought to be shaped. It is this opposition, rather than a precise conception of deliberative democracy to be applied to global governance, that is characteristic of the WSF’s political outlook. In this respect, participatory democracy without binding decision-making best characterises what is upheld and practised at the WSF.

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__________________________________________________________________ This label also describes sufficiently well what opposes the WSF’s participants and their networks to neoliberal politics. ‘Participation’ brings to the point what WSF participants claim for themselves and their ‘constituencies’. It characterises a group of actors rather than a set of mechanisms to which international and multilateral institutions are supposed to measure up. Thus, the oppositional emphasis seems to prevail over the platform. However, a more varied picture obtains if we look at the symbolism deployed at the WSF and analyse the event as the construction of a political landscape. 4. Embodying Democracy: The WSF’s Political Landscape The WSF is an event organised and shaped around four symbolic axes: a socalled ‘Territory’, an on-going intermingling of political and everyday activities, a widespread display of signs of cultural diversity, and, finally, the omnipresent slogan ‘Another world is possible’. All four make of the WSF a ‘symbolic landscape’ that conveys a political message. The ‘WSF Territory’ endows the Forum’s premises with some symbolic characteristics of (national) sovereignty: at the opening ceremony a flagpole is erected and then taken down at the closing meeting. Furthermore, the ‘Territory’ is subdivided into areas that are also meant to represent portions of communal life characterised by a solidarity economy, self-organisation, ecologically and culturally respectful interactions, etc. The ‘Territory’ hosts a characteristic intermingling of political and everyday activities that can be best understood as representing a politicisation of everyday life. Everyday activities become the object of campaigns and actions aimed to shape everyday life according to a wide array of principles that cover different aspects of social life, such as ecological, etc. Through this vast set of activities, the idea(l) of a self-responsible, autonomous (small) political community is meant to rise up to visibility and concreteness. Cultural diversity is both implicit in the variety of activities deployed at the WSF and its ‘Territory’ and explicitly upheld by its organisers in meetings and speeches. Their co-existence in the ‘Territory’ is highlighted as an example of pluralism and convergence of interests under preservation of diversity. Finally, the slogan sums up all this through evoking ‘another possible world’ that the former elements conjoin up to anticipate as a reality to come. As is clearly underscored in the documents, these four elements - the ‘Territory’, cultural diversity, the politicisation of everyday life, and the slogan that summarises the former three - suggest a political, communal form of life conducted under the aegis of co-decision, self-determination, and autonomy. We can thus understand these symbolic elements as the anticipation of a participatory form of life - something that the participants can live out at the Forum and that is supposed to fill political positions with a tangible content.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. The WSF and Participatory Democracy in Social Movements From within protest movements criticisms arise with regard to formal democratic processes and political systems. Scholars have therefore attempted to pin down the difference between the model of democracy proper to (national) political systems and the one put forth by social movements. Current research characterises ‘democracy’ in transnational social movements, and especially in the ‘global justice movement’, as made out by forms of ‘deliberative participatory democracy’ that aim to represent an alternative to ‘institutional politics’ on the one hand, while strengthening on the other hand forms of ‘public reason’ through a transparent process of communication.10 The above considerations have highlighted how the WSF displays some of the central characteristics of this model of democracy. Among the first range the emphasis on equality and solidarity among participants, inclusiveness, reason and free communication, and the search for consensus. However, in the case of the WSF and its organs remarkable are also the scarce presence of properly understood processes of decision-making and the lack of ‘political subjectivity’. The reason for this being so is to be found in the effort to gather different and manifold movements around the same event and to set off a process of communication that is supposed to be conducive to ever larger convergences on platforms and political intents. Thus, internal organisational and political needs seem to shape both the democratic practices and their conceptualisation, especially with regard to the insistence on communication and openness. At the same time, a symbolic framework is set up that ought to suggest a direction in which political interactions should develop. What is staged at the WSF is intended as an anticipation of the future state of a democratic, communal form of life under the aegis of self-government and collective autonomy.

Notes 1

http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/. For a summary of the topics discussed and the claims raised at the first WSF, including issues of democratisation and political participation, see J Seoane & E Taddei, ‘From Seattle to Porto Allegre: The Anti-Neoliberal Globalization Movement’, Current Sociology, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2002, p. 100. 3 With regard to the claim of ‘voice in international institutions’ as a central concern of the ‘global justice movement’ altogether see F Dupuis-Déri, ‘Global Protesters Versus Global Elites: Are Direct Action and Deliberative Politics Compatible?, New Political Science, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2007, p. 168). Marcon and Pianta highlight the relevance of the topic at the WSF 2002; similarly Hammond with regard to the WSF 2003. 4 See Art. 6 of the Charter of Principles http://www.forumsocialmundial. org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2. Art. 12 and 13 reinforce this 2

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__________________________________________________________________ characterisation by qualifying the Forum as a ‘framework for the social exchange of experiences’ and a ‘context for interrelations’, respectively. Both ‘voice’ and the ‘free exchange of ideas’ acquire a more specific flair when linked to a conception of communication within civil society that is also present at the WSF and consists in the trust in the liberating function of truth. According to this idea, which, as highlighted by Habermas in his well known Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, belongs to the repertoire of republicanism from the French revolution onwards, the communication of truth is itself a means of forging social solidarity and joint action. Although not explicitly mentioned in any of the documents drafted by the organisers, it is made explicit in documents produced by alliances of movements in which figure some prominent WSF promoters. See for instance the „Call From Social Movements For Mobilization Against The War, Neoliberalism, Exploitation and Exclusion. Another World Is Possible’ (2005), now to be found at http://www.fao.org/righttofood/kc/downloads/vl/docs/ AH411.pdf. On the conceptual origins of deliberation and the public sphere see also Heurtin’s L’espace publique parlementaire. Essai sur les raisons du législateur. 5 Art. 6 of its Charter of Principles states, indeed, that ‘The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a body. No-one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for interrelation and action by the organizations and movements that participate in it.’ 6 See for instance P Routledge, C Nativel & A Cumbers, ‘Entangled Logics and Grassroots Imaginaries of Global Justice Networks’, Environmental Politics, Vol. 15, No. 5, November 2006, pp. 839-859. 7 D Della Porta, ‘The Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’, The Global Justice Movement: Cross-National and Transnational Perspectives, D. Della Porta (ed), Paradigm Publishers, Boulder/CO & London, 2009, pp. 1-28. 8 See for instance J Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization, Duke University Press, Durham-London, 2008. 9 The following oral communication of Thomas Ponniah’s brings the controversy to the point: ‘Social movements produced the greatest global demonstration in history, but they did not stop the war. However, Spain elected a Socialist government, and they immediately pulled their troops out of Iraq. Political parties cannot mobilize the public the way that social movements can. The parties could

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__________________________________________________________________ not have as successfully organized the 2003 February 15th demonstrations. However, the movements cannot stop the war, while governments can. Clearly we need a new relationship between social movements and political parties that will allow us to catalyse the best of both agents’ (oral communication to Becker at the WSF 2005). 10 See D Della Porta, ‘Organisational Structures and Visions of Democracy in the Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’, Democracy in Social Movements, D. Della Porta (ed), Oxford, OUP pp. 1-2.

Bibliography Becker, M., ‘World Social Forum’. Peace & Change. Vol. 32, No. 2, April 2007, pp. 203-220. Ching, P.Y., ‘Critical Views of the World Social Forum: From Mumbai Resistance’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004, pp. 331-335. Della Porta, D. (ed), Democracy in Social Movements. OUP, Oxford, 2009. _______

, ‘The Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’. The Global Justice Movement: Cross-National and Transnational Perspectives. Della Porta, D. (ed), Paradigm Publishers, Boulder,CO & London, 2009. _______

, ‘Organisational Structures and Visions of Democracy in the Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’. Democracy in Social Movements. Della Porta, D. (ed), OUP, Oxford, 2009. Dupuis-Déri, F., ‘Global Protesters Versus Global Elites: Are Direct Action and Deliberative Politics Compatible?’. New Political Science. Vol. 29, No. 2, 2007, pp. 167-186. Habermas, J., Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT Press, Cambridge/Mass, 1964/1989. Hammond, J.L., ‘Another World Is Possible: Report from Porto Alegre’. Latin American Perspectives. Vol. 30, No. 3, 2003, pp. 3-11. Heurtin, J.P., L’espace publique parlementaire: Essai sur les raisons du législateur. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2003.

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__________________________________________________________________ Juris, J., Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization. Duke University Press, Durham-London, 2008. Marcon, G. & Pianta, M., ‘Porto Alegre-Europa: I percorsi dei movimenti globali’. ConcettiChiave. Special Issue: Mappe dei movimenti Da Porto Alegre al Forum sociale europeo, 2002, pp. 5-35. Offe, C., ‘New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics’. Social Research. Vol. 52, No. 5, 1985, pp. 817-68. Routledge, P., Nativel, C. & Cumbers A., ‘Entangled Logics and Grassroots Imaginaries of Global Justice Networks’. Environmental Politics. Vol. 15, No. 5, November 2006, pp. 839-859. Seoane, J. & Taddei, E., ‘From Seattle to Porto Alegre: The Anti-Neoliberal Globalization Movement’. Current Sociology. Vol. 50, No. 1, 2002, pp. 99-122. Smith, J. et al., Global Democracy and the World Social Forums. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder/CO, 2008. Gabriele De Angelis is Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Language of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova, Lisbon. His research focuses on the World Social Forum and global justice.

Section III: Radical Perspectives

Immanent or Spectral Democracy? The Problem of Political Representation for Bruno Latour and Antonio Negri/Michael Hardt Dominik Hasler Abstract The present paper considers two separate discourses which are occupied with a critique of existing representative democracy. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, a philosopher and left-wing political activist working together with a literary theorist, base their democratic theory on a vitalistic and seemingly humanistic notion of the multitude as a new political subject. A deficit of Negri and Hardt’s theory might be epistemology which, in turn, is in the focus of Bruno Latour. The French sociologist and second main figure for this paper is known for his actornetwork theory and outlines an attempt to introduce non-human ‘things’ into political assemblies. In contrast to the immanent concept of democracy, his reflections on ‘Dingpolitik’ lead to a democracy of ‘spectral’ representation. The paper shows that multitude and assembly, immanent democracy and spectral Dingpolitik have a common starting point in similar ontological setups but come to dissenting conclusions. They share a notion of politics as a rupture in the existing order, a non-successional concept of time and the principle of inclination. Furthermore, the argument attempts to trace bifurcations that lead to the separation of the two political theories discussed. The problem of labour marks one of the most important differences and can serve for challenging the divide between posthumanist and humanist theory in the present case. Key Words: Michael Hardt, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, Spinoza, democracy, representation, biopolitics, actor-network theory, multitude. ***** 1. Political Epistemology Bruno Latour is well known for his attempt to articulate a theory of associations encompassing humans and non-humans as well as for his critique of the modernist distinction between two essentially different spheres called nature and society.1 In his unusual political article ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik – or How to Make Things Public,’ Latour starts from two contrasting epistemologies which parallel the approaches of two early modern students of nature discussed in one of his earlier books: Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle.2 According to Latour, approaches known as realism or Realpolitik pretend to be a ‘matter-of-fact way’3 of dealing with politics but are based on an ‘unrealistic epistemology.’4 In a political system in which knowledge is not bound to power there can be no undisputable Hobbesian ‘matters-of-fact that some enlightened

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__________________________________________________________________ people would have unmediated access to’5 and that have an abstract universal validity.6 To the contrary, the more detailed and accurate the perception of an object is expected to be, the more complicated mediations in between object and observer are necessary. According to the fundamentals of an experimental science, as promoted by Boyle, the existence of an object cannot be proved in isolation because it can only be perceived insofar as it influences other objects.7 Applied to representative democracy, this perspective reveals the question of how to represent a political subject undistortedly as pointless. We are asking from representation something it cannot possibly give, namely representation without any re-presentation, without any provisional assertions, without any imperfect proof, without any opaque layers of translations, transmissions, betrayals, without any complicated machinery of assembly, delegation, proof, argumentation, negotiation and conclusion.8 Thus, the immediate and accurate representation of a pre-existing political subject or general will by means of an apparatus of representation is impossible on an epistemological level. For this reason, Latour encourages an analysis that does not focus on a comparison of the two hypothetical poles of representation: the political subject and its representatives. For him, democracy is not about accurately imaging a given sovereign people by means of elections and a parliament, as if we would deal with matters of fact. To the contrary, the task of political representation is to trace how multiple things affect different actors. It is the operation of assembling a decentred network of translations and interactions. ‘To raise a political question often means to reveal a state of affairs whose presence was hitherto hidden,’9 but at that moment political action is already over and every further step can only be talking about politics.10 Tracing the connection is the only political gesture and at the same time this is the task of the actor-network researcher. That is why Latour comes to the conclusion that ‘to study is always to do politics in the sense that it collects or composes what the common world is made of.’11 2. A Virtual Rule of All by All Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt see representation not only as epistemologically impossible but as a concept that has been invented deliberately not to promote but to limit democracy.12 It is not a theory of democracy but of the monarchic state.13 The concept of representation and its underlying assumption of a sovereignty of the people is exactly what Negri and Hardt want to overcome and replace by an immanent concept of legitimacy.14 They try to outline a movement that enables democracy to ‘return [...] to its older meaning as the rule of everyone by everyone.’15 Borrowing a term from Spinoza, Negri and Hardt label this type of

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__________________________________________________________________ democracy ‘absolute.’16 They conceive of the multitude as the only political subject that can realise such an absolute democracy.17 The multitude is a network of singularities connected not by their property but by what they share.18 There is a variety of ways in which Negri and Hardt illustrate the multitude. Negri considers the multitude as ‘a physical power, [...] as a natural, or better, an animal power.’19 ‘Rather than a political body with one that commands and others that obey, the multitude is living flesh that rules itself.’20 These are typical examples of the duo’s vitalistic descriptions of the multitude, which stand in strong contrast to the deliberately technical and abstract vocabulary characterising actor-network-theory. But there is a discrepancy between the irresistible powers of the multitude evoked by the two scholars’ impressive prose and its position up to now as not adequately respected by politics and materially exploited by capital.21 Where exactly does the strength of the multitude lie? The answer Negri and Hardt give is that the power of the multitude is not located in empirical strength but in the potential of its constant metamorphosis, which exceeds every measure.22 The multitude is in ‘an uninterrupted process of self-transformation.’23 Whereas the virtual power of the multitude comes from its own immanent movement, the parasitic structures of the capitalist empire exploiting the multitude have no independent existence. Their omnipresent transcendent power is dependent on the multitude.24 Unlike Empire, the multitude is amorphous.25 It cannot have a stable form but ‘represents the constitutive rupture’ of the social, ‘which is incessantly relaunched.’26 This is exactly how Negri understands the notion of the political in Spinoza: the political exists only as the gesture of a momentary change and not as a force stabilising the new situation. Bruno Latour does not explicitly attack the notion of representation like Negri and Hardt do. Nevertheless, he arrives at a similar conclusion regarding the representation of a political subject. He radically changes the meaning of this concept and adds to it a temporal dimension. As a result, being represented means to be exposed to multiple actions that are distributed throughout the collective in non-linear ways. Every actor in a collective is affected by others and at the same time affects others by actions. Thus, the collective is thus continuously represented differently. There is neither a privileged site of political action nor an initial source of legitimacy, but the Leviathan circulates.27 This spectral representation of the collective can be legitimised only by its radical inclusiveness. Whereas a linear concept of time allows permanent exclusion from a political assembly by the ‘cleansing march of progress,’28 the new contrary challenge in a world ordered by the principle of space is total cohabitation.29 In the collective, every actor is virtually included and one ‘can get rid of nothing and no one.’30 It requires constant efforts of assembling and reproduction to be kept up. For this reason, Latour criticises those theories that describe a stable and self-explicative social structure, which only serves as a passive backdrop for action. This

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__________________________________________________________________ perspective slows down the multiple actors’ efforts to assemble the collective and consequently is ‘a political crime.’31 Borrowing a term from the American intellectual Walter Lippmann, Bruno Latour characterises the political collective he has in mind as a ‘Phantom Public.’32 Unlike the unified image of the ‘Body Politik’ one eagerly looks up to, the ‘fragile and provisional’33 phantom of politics ‘move[s]’34 the political actors. In an exhibition related to the publication of Latour’s article, there is included an ‘invisible work of art’35 designed by the media artists Michel Jaffrennou and Thierry Coduys. They try to give the visitors a vivid impression of the Phantom Public, whose existence is proved by its flux only: By moving through the various exhibits, the visitors will trigger various captors that will be used as so many inputs to trigger outputs which will give a vague and uneasy feeling that ‘something happens’ of which the bystanders are responsible but in a way that is not directly traceable. Politics will pass through you as a rather mysterious flow, just like a phantom.36 Responsibilities difficult to attribute, the uneasy feeling of ‘something happening’ and politics as an indefinable flow of events, don’t these descriptions appear quite familiar? Even when illustrated in the French scholar’s own words, the Phantom Public does not intuitively make a desirable impression. It seems that Latour does not describe a utopian scenario but a contemporary reality. But unlike voices warning of a decline of the political, Latour’s description is clearly intended to be affirmative.37 The shifted perspective of actor-network-theory reveals that ‘parliaments are only a few of the machineries of representations among many others and not necessarily the most relevant or the best equipped.’38 No revolution is necessary. According to Latour, it is ‘simply that our usual definitions of politics have not caught up yet with the masses of linkages already established.’39 What is usually considered to be a distortion or threat to existing representative democracy should instead be seen as its new and more realistic version. 3. The Material Foundation of Political Organisation The central notion in Latour’s article is that of ‘things’40 or ‘matters of concern.’41 He explains the coherence of associations of human beings by their being-concerned by shared things. Those are ‘the missing masses’42 capable of tying human beings together. Such things can be tangible non-humans as well as abstract or immaterial objects. Discussing the role of things in politics, he invokes the etymology of the word ‘thing,’ which originally referred not to a passive object but to an archaic assembly.43 In particular, it stood for ‘the issue that brings people together because it divides them.’44 Thus, the proposition that people gather in the

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__________________________________________________________________ gravitational field of matters of concern does not mean that things have a unifying effect. Hence, the people, the demos, are made up of those who share the same space and are divided by the same contradictory worries. [...] Strangely enough, we are divided and yet might have to divide, that is to share, even more.45 For Negri and Hardt, among the multitude’s shared things there exists a privileged one: the common product or the common as a product of which the multitude can make a living. Negri and Hardt identify immaterial labour and biopolitical production as hegemonic modes of production and interpret these contemporary conditions as an opportunity for realising absolute democracy. Answering their critics, they admit that people are not ‘spontaneously, by nature, capable of cooperating with another freely and together governing the common.’46 But the capacities for cooperation and self-organisation required for biopolitical production are at the same time an ideal training for the practice of absolute democracy.47 More radically, biopolitical production as ‘the production and reproduction of forms of life is a very precise definition of political action,’48 as understood by Negri and Hardt. They see social life, biopolitical production and political action as one indistinguishable process.49 The main difference between Latour’s collective and the multitude is that actornetwork-theory, due to its origins in epistemology, has no theory of value and therefore does not know a distinct activity called labour. The actors connected in a network translate the actions of others but in the process do not create something persistent. Forms of life, styles, or habits, in Latour’s terminology, are crucial for the reproduction of the collective. But Latour does not assign an additional surplus value to them. In contrast to this conception, the singularities assembled as a multitude are not only connected but cooperate. In consequence, the autoproduction of the multitude is not only a political but also an economic process. Cooperation creates common wealth in material and immaterial goods. The problem of labour raises a further question: which role do non-humans play in biopolitical production? Negri and Hardt start from the Marxian model, according to which surplus value always resides in human labour.50 Although they make considerable efforts also to encompass non-humans, they do not achieve a convincing conceptualisation of their economic importance. Instead of an economy, the authors describe an ‘ecology of the common - an ecology focused equally on nature and society, on humans and the nonhuman world in a dynamic of interdependence, care, and mutual transformation.’51 With the rise of biopolitical production, production seems to become even more centred on humans. In the ‘anthropogenetic model,’52 they not only play the role of labour but can also function as fixed capital and as product.53 Again, other examples of biopolitical

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__________________________________________________________________ production seem to contradict this conclusion: the modification of genetic code is not productive without animated creatures which are able to express it.54 In the final analysis, the multitude does not share itself but the common, a distinction that comes close to the modernist separation of political society and unpolitical nature. But it is difficult to imagine that non-humans are important in biopolitical production but not in the political process, as both are indistinguishable according to Negri and Hardt. The attempt to combine political interpretations of actor-network theory and the discourse on biopolitical production promises a fascinating discussion of these issues. The concluding part of this paper tries to overcome the difficulties that accompany the question of labour in a more provisional manner. 4. Contemporary Spinozism: Love as a Political Concept There is a general ontological paradigm that Negri and Hardt share with Latour and that can be found in the work of Spinoza: ‘being is subjected to a process of becoming.’55 The process of becoming or the constant transformation of the multitude originates in what philosophy traditionally refers to as clinamen. 56 Singularities are not enclosed in themselves but tend to deviate from parallel paths. Their inclination leads to experimental encounters that can be confrontational as well as associative and creative.57 At this point, the controversy between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle reappears: Negri and Hardt discover Boyle as an early modern apologist of ‘processes of mixture and composition’58 in line with Spinoza. The latter’s ontology is summarised by the philosopher Etienne Balibar as follows: ‘[t]o exist means to operate, or to act upon other things,’59 a viewpoint perfectly compatible with Latour’s epistemology discussed above. Negri and Hardt see themselves confronted with doubts concerning the humaneness of their concept of love.60 When discussing love as a political concept, they are not interested in ‘corrupt forms’ of it that ‘pass[es] for love today in ordinary discourse,’61 but refer to the principle of inclination that brings the multiplicity together. For the two authors, love means ‘that our expansive encounters and continuous collaborations bring us joy.’62 When understood in this way, desire and love can be identified as the basic stimuli of the multitude’s promiscuous productivity and creativity.63 Productivity based on love cannot be attributed to one of the actors involved but ‘emerges in the space between.’64 Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the agencement can help to understand this type of productivity. Mutual desire ties together human and non-human actors as well as their actions as an agencement and sets it on the incalculable trajectory of creative production. In contrast, capital fails to be creative. Its asexual multiplication is the manifestation of a corrupt love for sameness.65 Finance is the primary means of controlling, reflecting and exploiting the multitude’s productivity today because it is the only economic instrument able to deal with potentialities not yet realised.

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__________________________________________________________________ Inspired by the multitude to fantasies of exuberance and magnitude it ends up in financial crisis and consequently blocks biopolitical production.66 Nevertheless, Negri and Hardt speculate on the perspective that abstract money and finance could be politically reappropriated from capital and ‘provide the instruments for making the multitude.’67

Figure 1. Poster in a German nightclub. (Photograph taken by the author, 2009). Negri and Hardt’s attempt to reintroduce love as a political concept is reminiscent of rave culture. Thus, it is not surprising to find an emblem which could possibly replace the famous picture of the Leviathan in the era of the multitude next to people dancing. This subtle parody of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam does not show a weak and isolated individual, receiving the power of life from transcendence. Instead, the multitude of hands looks vigorous but confused. In the end, they stay distant from the one reaching down from an invisible sphere above and instead begin to embrace each other. But would the fingers ever have touched without having longed for somewhere else first? For the moment shown in the picture, it remains unclear if this multitude will discover and mobilise its immanent potential or not.

Notes 1

B Latour, Das Parlament der Dinge: Für eine politische Ökologie, Trans. Gustav Roßler, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ 2

B Latour, Wir sind nie modern gewesen: Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie, Trans. Gustav Roßler, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2008, pp. 3139. 3 B Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public’, in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, B  Latour & P  Weibel (eds), ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 2005, p. 14. 4 ibid., p. 21. 5 Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’, p. 19. 6 Latour, Wir sind nie modern gewesen: Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie, pp. 38-39. 7 Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’, p. 21. 8 ibid., p. 26. 9 ibid., p. 39. 10 ibid., p. 39. 11 B Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford UP, Oxford, 2005, p. 256. 12 M Hardt & A Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, Penguin Books, New York, 2004, pp. 241-242. 13 A Negri, ‘Reliqua Desiderantur: A Conjecture for a Definition of the Concept of Democracy in the Final Spinoza’, Subversive Spinoza: (Un)Contemporary Variations, Manchester UP, Manchester, 2004, p. 31. 14 Hardt and Negri, Multitude: war and democracy in the Age of Empire, pp. 79-80. 15 ibid., p. 237. 16 ibid., p. 240. 17 ibid., p. 100. 18 Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, pp. 99100. In the following pages Negri and Hardt make considerable efforts to distinguish the multitude from other concepts like the people united by the construct of an identity, the undifferentiated crowd and masses, or the working class engaged in class struggle. See also: M Hardt & A Negri, Commonwealth, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009, p. 325-332. 19 A Negri, ‘Reliqua Desiderantur: A Conjecture for a Definition of the Concept of Democracy in the Final Spinoza’, p. 42. 20 Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 100. 21 M Hardt & A Negri, Empire, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000, p. 359. 22 Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, pp. 105 and 192. 23 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, p. 173. 24 Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp. 359 and 361.

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__________________________________________________________________ 25

Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, pp. 158159. 26 A Negri, Spinoza: une hérésie de l’immanence et de la démocratie, Uitgeverij Spinozahuis, Voorschoten, 2009, p.17. Translation by the author: ‘il en [le social] représente la rupture constitutive sans cesse relancée’. 27 Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, p. 245. 28 Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’, p. 39. 29 ibid., p. 39-40. 30 ibid., p. 40. 31 Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, p. 85. 32 Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’, p. 38. 33 ibid., p. 38. 34 ibid., p. 38. 35 ibid., p. 38. 36 ibid., p. 38. 37 ibid., p. 29. 38 ibid., p. 31. 39 ibid., p. 37. 40 ibid., p. 24. 41 ibid., p. 24. 42 B Latour, ‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’, The Object Reader, Routledge, London, 2009, p. 230. 43 Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’, pp. 22-23. 44 ibid., p. 23. 45 ibid., pp. 25-26. 46 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, p. 362. 47 ibid., pp. 175-176. 48 ibid., p. 364. 49 ibid., p. 301. 50 Hardt & Negri, Empire, p. 222. 51 ibid., p. 171. 52 C Marazzi quoted in Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, p. 132. 53 ibid., p. 132. 54 Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, pp. 179188. 55 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, p. 171. 56 ibid., p. 317. 57 ibid., pp. 42-43 and 184.

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ibid., p. 43. E Balibar, Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality, Eburon, Delft, 1997, p. 14. 60 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, p. 189. 61 ibid., p. 182. 62 Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 351. 63 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 186-188. 64 Hardt & Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 222. 65 Hardt & Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 183-186. 66 ibid., pp. 289-301. 67 ibid., p. 295. 59

Bibliography Balibar, E., Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality. Eburon, Delft, 1997. Hardt, M. & Negri, A., Commonwealth. Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009. —, Empire. Harvard UP, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000. —, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Penguin Books, New York, 2004. Latour, B., Das Parlament der Dinge: Für eine politische Ökologie. trans. Gustav Roßler. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001. —, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public’. Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, 2005, pp. 12-43. —, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford UP, Oxford, 2005. —, ‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’. The Object Reader. Routledge, London, 2009, pp. 229-254. —, Wir sind nie modern gewesen: Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie. trans. Roßler, G., Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Negri, A., ‘Reliqua Desiderantur: A Conjecture for a Definition of the concept of Democracy in the Final Spinoza’. Subversive Spinoza: (Un)Contemporary Variations. Manchester UP, Manchester, 2004, pp. 28-58. —, Spinoza: une hérésie de l’immanence et de la démocratie. Uitgeverij Spinozahuis, Voorschoten, 2009. Dominik Hasler is a student in the research master’s programme Cultural Analysis at Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Revisiting the Public/Private Distinction: A Deleuzian Perspective Mohammadbagher Forough Abstract The paper will revisit the public/private distinction (with more focus on the public) by mapping out seven discursive arenas in which theories of public and private function and then, from a Deleuzian lens, investigate some of the interrelationships among these arenas and the ways in which the two concepts relate to other concepts such as the political, the social, the sovereign state, etc. on other planes. I will take as my point of departure Jeff Weintraub’s delineation of the four major discursive fields (‘Liberal-Economistic’, ‘Civic’, ‘Social History’, and ‘Feminist’ Perspectives) in which we can meaningfully talk about the distinction, and will add another three (‘Counterprivacy’, ‘Subaltern Counterpublics’, and ‘Transnational Public Spheres’) to Weintraub’s list, and then launch an analysis of some of the interrelationships and resonances among the different senses of the concepts at stake from a Deleuzian perspective. To put matters in Deleuzian terms, the concept has a ‘history’ and a ‘becoming’, in the process of which it undergoes ‘mutations,’ which are the result of its addressing new life-problems. The objectives of the paper are: a) to demystify some of the ambiguities and misunderstandings surrounding the public/private distinction by investigating seven moments of mutation in the evolution of the concepts in question; b) to offer a Deleuzian reading of concepts in political philosophy; and c) to suggest in the end some Deleuzian analytical trajectories along which investigations into the nature and contours of ‘transnational public spheres’ could be launched. The overall argument of the paper is that by using a Deleuzian philosophical perspective and conceptual vocabulary, it is possible to move beyond the traditional ‘bipolar disorders’ of political philosophy (such as realism/idealism, individual/social, particular/general, etc.) and their respective limitations. Key Words: Public, private, Deleuze, concepts, assemblages, political, transnational public spheres, state, Westphalia. ***** 1. Introduction: Slippery Concepts, Illusory Boundaries The public/private distinction has since days of yore been part and parcel of our moral, political, and legal vocabularies, but not quite innocently. The distinction is one of the grand dichotomies of Western thought,1 which subsumes in its binary structure a host of other distinctions, and helps mark off the boundaries of different planes of life. This leads unavoidably to an overloading of the two concepts, which tend at times to confuse as much if not more than they clarify. One of the best

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__________________________________________________________________ renderings of this discussion that I have encountered thus far has been provided by Weintraub,2 where after pointing to the ‘confusing’, and ‘misleading’ nature of the distinction, he concludes that we can neither conveniently simplify nor wholly jettison the distinction, and then delineates four major discursive fields within which theories of public and private could be discussed. In what follows, I will recount in the briefest way possible the four frameworks, and then will build upon them by adding another three. A. Liberal-Economistic Model: ‘… one man… the great Leviathan’ (Hobbes) This is the first framework put forth by Weintraub, in which the distinction between public and private corresponds roughly to the distinction between the administrative ‘state’ and the ‘market economy’. This is where the basic assumptions of neoclassical economy reign, which, if translated into a grander theoretical perspective, are tantamount to the basic assumptions of utilitarian liberalism.3 At stake here is the issue of government control and supervision of the market economy, which naturally involves questions of jurisdiction, concerned with marking off the boundaries of the ‘public’ authority of the state from the private sphere of the economy. B. Civic Perspective: ‘That is no city at all, owned by one man alone.’ (Antigone) The civic perspective, best formulated by Hannah Arendt4 and Jurgen Habermas,5 sees the ‘public’ sphere as ‘the realm of political community based on citizenship.’6 At the heart of public sphere is a process of active participation by the members of the political community in matters of collective decision-making about all things affecting the body politic, carried out within a framework of fundamental solidarity and equality. Weintraub argues that the public means ‘political’ in both perspectives I and II; in the former, political means the state, whereas in the latter politics means a sphere of collective action and communication, which is analytically distinct from both the administrative state and the market economy. C. Public as Sociability Sphere: ‘All the world’s a stage.’ This perspective is exemplified by the work of scholars such as Aries, Elias, Goffman, Foucault, and others in social history and anthropology, who in different ways see the public realm as a sphere of fluid and polymorphous sociability, and seek to analyse the cultural, historical, and ‘dramaturgical’7 conventions that make it possible. Public in this sense is described by Roger Scruton as ‘a sphere of broad and largely unplanned encounter…’8 Weintraub does not name this perspective; for the sake of convenience, let us call it the ‘sociability sphere’, because as he explains ‘the key to it is not solidarity or obligation, but sociability.’9 This sphere, Alan Wolfe argues, ‘can resemble either [public or private sphere] in particular instances, but can be equated with neither.’10

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__________________________________________________________________ D. Feminist Perspectives: ‘The personal is political’ This is the last major discursive field formulated by Weintraub. The split between public and private spheres, Weintraub argues, has been a defining characteristic of the feminist scholarship: ‘broadly speaking the characteristic tendency in most branches of feminist scholarship is to treat family as the paradigmatic ‘private’ realm, so that the formulation ‘domestic/public’ is often used almost interchangeably with ‘private/public’.11 The public sphere, it follows, is the extrafamilial ‘economic and political’ arenas, from which women used to be systematically excluded. The general trend in most feminist scholarship has been to bring to light the fact that gender informs the very ways in which society structures itself ideologically based on dichotomies such as public/private, which serve as instruments of oppression and exclusion.12 Weintraub’s list, as he reminds us, is not exhaustive; hence, my contribution to the list: E. Counterprivacy : ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres!’ (Sartre) I have taken the idea of counterprivacy from André Gombay.13 He argues that a man’s state is counterprivate if he alone, when he is in that state, cannot judge that he is. Others can think [and say] it, but he himself cannot’. Counterprivacy can be ‘crudely’ defined as ‘what is true in what all except me can think about me.’14 So, the private, I would argue, is the ‘I’ that I can truly and/or falsely know; the counterprivate is the ‘I’ that others can truly know and I myself cannot; the public is the non-I. F. Subaltern Counterpublics: ‘The Subaltern cannot speak.’ (Spivak) The term ‘subaltern’ was first used by Gramsci to refer to economically dispossessed social groups, but later picked up by Spivak, who first used it in its current postcolonial sense in ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’15 Rita Felski coined the term ‘counterpublic’ when referring to the feminist public sphere that offered a critique of cultural values of the bourgeois public sphere from the standpoint of women as a marginalized group within society.16 It was Nancy Fraser who put both terms together for the first time and, drawing on scholars such as Joan Landes, Mary Ryan, Geoff Eley, problematized some of the ‘dubious assumptions’ that underlay the bourgeois public sphere, as it ‘rested on, indeed was temporarily constituted by, a number of significant exclusions’.17 Subaltern counterpublics as a critical term denotes the oppositional groups or dissident networks of communication and action from different racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, linguistic backgrounds that are systematically excluded from and oppressed by the hegemonic official public spheres.

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__________________________________________________________________ G. Transnational Public Spheres (TPS): ‘mapping… countries yet to come.’ (Deleuze) To put it briefly, TPS are discursive arenas of collective dissident communication and action that overflow the territorial boundaries of nation-state rooted in the Westphalian political imaginary. The Habermasian public sphere tacitly presupposes,18 if not idealizes,19 the basic parameters of the Westphalian etatism. In the transnationalist frame, participation in the TPS is not limited to the national citizenry but is open to almost everybody. TPS can be temporary or can become permanent (i.e., institutionalized). They can have both private and public participants. This type of public does not logically entail the private, but does so by implication only, and addresses and defines itself explicitly against one or more other publics and/or private entities. The issues that TPS address can be local, national, or global. The concept of TPS is young and yet undertheorized. The task of critical theory is to recontextualize public sphere theory in the transnational frame if it is to retain its emancipatory possibilities.20 The Deleuzian philosophical perspective, I will suggest below, can shed light on the contours of such concepts in political philosophy. 2. Conclusion: Some Deleuzian Reflections: ‘Philosophy stops people from thinking’ (Deleuze) In what follows, I will examine some of the characteristics of the concepts at stake here from the perspective of the Deleuzo-Guattarian conceptual philosophy. In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari give us their conception of philosophy, and how it relates to art and science. They define philosophy as ‘the art or the discipline that involves creating concepts,’21 and find the trait common to art, science, and philosophy to be creativity. Each, however, creates its own specific outcome. Philosophy produces ‘concepts’. Then they enumerate some principles with regard to concepts. Concepts have their own way of not dying, although they become ‘dated, signed, and baptized’. They remain subject to constraints of ‘renewal, replacement, and mutation.’ In what follows I will try to study the dynamics at work at seven moments of mutation discussed above. ‘There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them. It therefore has a combination [chiffre]. It is a multiplicity, although not every multiplicity is conceptual.’22 I don’t think we can agree more on the fact that in the case of public, given only the seven perspectives discussed above, we have a very complicated concept with numerous components. The public, one could say, is the sum of all its multiple components or its constituent members or, if you will, its senses. If this principle holds true, it follows that ‘every concept has an irregular contour defined by the sum of its components.’23 This means the concept can never become a fixed totality. The contours of publicness are ‘confusingly’ irregular and vague. When it joins the ‘private’ (and all its components) a grand dichotomy24 is created; if we add the social sphere, a grand trichotomy.25 The next principle is that

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘all concepts are connected to problems without which they would have no meaning, and which can themselves only be isolated or understood as their solution emerges.’26 As we saw above, in each of the perspectives discussed we use the concepts to resolve a problem. In perspective A, for instance, the problem is the relation between the state and the market. In perspective B, we deal with the problematics of social relations, justice, participatory parity, etc. In ‘philosophy,’ Deleuze argues, ‘concepts are only created as a function of problems which are thought to be badly understood or badly posed.’27 When the public in perspective B comes into play, it is because its members feel that public (as state) has organized the social relations badly; therefore, they offer (or impose) their alternative formulation of the problem and the solution, thereby deterritorializing the public as state; when counterpublics come into being, it is because public in sense B has formulated and answered societal problems badly; the same can be applied to other perspectives. ‘Every concept always has a history, even though this history zigzags, though it passes, if need be, through other problems or onto different planes.’28 The concept of public has a long history too. It came into being in its primitive sense probably since humanity began living in groups, and decided that some things were to be visible and accessible to the group, and some other things (i.e., taboos) not. In the Roman republic, res publica (‘the public thing’) denoted matters or properties that concerned or belonged to the state, as opposed to res privata, to wit, matters and properties which did not concern or belong to the state. Then res publica developed into meaning the republic itself, and later on, the other senses. What makes a concept relevant to other concepts? ‘A concept requires not only a problem through which it recasts and replaces earlier concepts but a junction of problems where it combines with other coexisting concepts.’29 The conjunction of problems discussed above is therefore what interlinks public to other concepts. Each of the seven discussions was centred on a problem or set of problems, which are interconnected to one another but are analytically distinct. It then follows that ‘every concept relates back to other concepts, not only in its history but in its becoming or its present connections.’30 We already saw how the public is related to the political, social, private, etc. and that each moment of mutation in one is contemporaneous with mutations (and becomings) of the other ones. The connecting thread is the junction of problems at a given moment in time. The next principle is that a concept ‘renders [its] components inseparable within itself. Components or what defines the consistency of the concept, its endoconsistency, are distinct, heterogeneous, and yet not separable.’31 What glues the components or the constituent parts of a concept together: a gray in-between area, on which the Deleuzian concept of ‘zone de voisinage’ (‘zone of neighborhood’) can shed light. All the components within the concept have zones of neighborhood among one another. Components remain distinct, but something cuts through them that is ‘undecidable between them’. These zones are responsible

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__________________________________________________________________ for the internal consistency of the concept; otherwise the concept would break apart or lose its concepthood, if you will, or become a totally different concept. The confusions that plague discussions of public and private stem from such overlapping zones between two or more senses of the concepts. We can take the internal components of publicness to be the constituent members of the public, or the different senses which the concept carries. Given these zones of neighborhood between the components of the concept and the sum total of the components constituting the concept, it follows that ‘the concept, therefore, is both absolute and relative.’32 This is interesting and complex! ‘It is relative to its own components, to other concepts, to the plane on which it is defined, and to the problems it is supposed to resolve;’ but it is also ‘absolute through the condensation it carries out, the site it occupies on the plane, and the conditions it assigns to the problem.’33 In case of the public, we can safely assume that it is always relative and protean in relation to its constituent members; it is always porous and contestable in relation to other concepts such as the private, political, social, etc; it is relative in terms of the problems it tries to resolve, i.e., the same public can have different answers to the same problem at different moments. The public in its different senses is also absolute at specific moments and in specific contexts (‘the sites it occupies’) where it takes positions in relation (or ‘assigns a condition’) to a problem. Let’s take the example of public as the sovereign state: it is absolute as a mythological and discursive construction, where it assigns an absolute condition to the problem of self-governance. But it is relative when it interacts legally or economically with other sovereigns. This Deleuzian perspective can go beyond the two sides of the debates regarding the death of sovereignty. Along the same lines, the concept is ‘infinite through its survey [survoler] or its speed but finite through its movement that traces the contour of its components.’34 Publicness is infinite in that it remains infinitely open to ever-new visions and revisions. It is finite in that it has in a certain context a certain number of components, which rearrange themselves so as to assign a certain condition to a certain problem. There are other conceptual principles and characteristics, which could be further elaborated along such lines. The preceding was just a very brief attempt to show some potentialities of a Deleuzian approach in social and political philosophy. Deleuzian conceptual philosophy can help map out the contours of concepts and analyze how they relate to other concepts (and the problems they address) on different planes and in different disciplines. His ‘assemblage’ approach can offer a solid social and political ontology, that transcends, as mentioned earlier, the traditional bipolar disorders of philosophy, such as subject/object, general/particular, social/individual, etc.35 TPS and the problems they address, for instance, seem to be promising grounds for Deleuzian philosophical excavations, as they are mostly temporarily assembled social and political entities, composed in

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__________________________________________________________________ the spirit of ‘nomadic politics’, which aim at ‘deterritorializing’ the ‘striated’ ‘territories’ (both symbolic and material) of sociopolitical ‘regimes’.

Notes 1

See N Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power, Polity, Oxford, 1989. 2 See J Weintraub, ‘The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction,’ Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1997. 3 Weintraub (1997) makes a distinction between two different liberal trends: the Utilitarian and the Kantian, and uses the concept in the former sense. For the differences between and critiques of the two liberalisms see M Sandel, 1996 & 2007. 4 For Arendt’s formulation, see H Arendt, ‘Public Rights and Private Interests’, Small Comforts for Hard Times: Humanists on Public Policy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1977 and also H Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998. 5 See J Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989 & J Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996. 6 Weintraub, 1997. 7 See E Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, N.Y., 1959. 8 Weintraub, 1997, 18. Weintraub here quotes from Scruton’s Public Space and the Classical Vernacular. 9 Weintraub, 1997, 18. 10 Ibid, 182. 11 Ibid, 27. 12 See JB Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought, Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1981 & JB Landes, Feminism, the Public and the Private, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998. 13 See A Gombay, ‘Some Paradoxes of Counterprivacy’, Philosophy, Vol. 3. No. 244, April 1988, pp. 191-210 & A Gombay, ‘Love and Judgment in Descartes’, René Descartes: Critical Assessments, Routledge, London [etc.], 1998. 14 See Gombay, Paradoxes, 1998. 15 See G Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Macmillian Education, Basingstoke, 1988. 16 See R Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989. 17 N Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’, Habermas and the Public Sphere, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, p. 113.

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__________________________________________________________________ 18

See N Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Polity, Cambridge, 2008. 19 See Felski 1989. 20 See Fraser, 2008. 21 G Deleuze & F Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. H Tomlinson & G Burchill, Verso, London, 1994, p. 5. 22 Ibid, 15. 23 Ibid, 16. 24 Bobbio, 1989. 25 See, Arendt, 1998. 26 Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, 16. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid, 18. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid, 19. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid, 21. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 For a successful attempt along such lines see M DeLanda, The New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, Continuum, London, 2007.

Bibliography Arendt, H., ‘Public Rights and Private Interests’. Small Comforts for Hard Times: Humanists on Public Policy. Columbia University Press, New York, 1977. —, The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998. Ben, S.I. & Gaus, G.F. (eds), Public and Private in Social Life. Croom Helm, London, 1983. Bobbio, N., Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power. Polity, Oxford, 1989. Colebrook, C., Gilles Deleuze. Routledge, London, 2002. DeLanda, M., The New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum, London, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. trans. B Massumi, Athlone Press, London, 1988. _____

, What is Philosophy?. trans. Tomlinson, H. & Burchill, G., Verso, London, 1994. Elshtain, J.B., Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1981. Felski R., Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989. Falk, R., ‘Revisiting Westphalia, Discovering Post-Westphalia’. The Journal of Ethics, 6, 2002, pp.311-352. Fraser, N., ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’. Habermas and the Public Sphere. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992. —, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. Polity, Cambridge, 2008. Goffman, E., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, N.Y., 1959. Gombay, A., ‘Some Paradoxes of Counterprivacy’. Philosophy. Vol. 3. No. 244, April 1988, pp. 191-210. —, ‘Love and Judgment in Descartes’. René Descartes: Critical Assessments. Routledge, London, 1998. Habermas, J., Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989. —, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996. Landes, J.B., Feminism, the Public and the Private. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998. Panagia, D., The Poetics of Political Thinking. Duke University Press, Durham, 2006.

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__________________________________________________________________ Sassen, S., Territory, Authority, Rights: from Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J, 2006. Spivak, G., ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Macmillian Education, Basingstoke, 1988. Weintraub, J. & Kumar, K., Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997. Wimmer, A. & Schiller, N.G., Methodological Nationalism and Beyond. Global Networks, 2,4, 2002, pp. 301-334. Mohammadbagher Forough is a PhD Candidate, at the Department of International Relations, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Dissertation Topic, Transnational Public Spheres: A Deleuzian Perspective, Email: [email protected].

The Problem with Equality: An Adornian Perspective on a Contested Idea in Democratic Theories Nico Bechter Abstract: The paper deals with the problem of equality in normative democratic theories. It is to be shown, that following the ideas of Frankfurt School scholar Theodor W. Adorno, the call for equality in bourgeois society can never be a call for freedom, but only for homogenisation and domination. Therefore normative democratic theories should focus on difference, diversity and possibilities to overcome the bourgeois society rather than on equality. Key Words: Critical theory, democratic theory, equality, Frankfurt School, Adorno, ideology. ***** 1. Introduction Equality is one of the most contested ideas in democratic theories. Since the beginning with the preoccupation in this field in the ancient Greek world, (social) philosophers of every age, from Roman jurists to mediaeval philosophers, have in one way or the other dealt with the problem of equality. In the field of ethics it often was combined with the term justice and it was mostly used even synonymously: Justice meant equality and equality meant justice. The topic then was prominent on the philosophic agenda of the enlightenment thinkers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.1 In the second half of the 20th century equality and justice were, for example, discussed very significantly around John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.2 This study started a long lasting and very fruitful discussion on the topic and is still not over yet. Famous philosophers and social scientists such as Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Crawford Macpherson are some who were involved in the current debate, to name just a few. I deliberately named only men in this context as I want to mention the efforts of female (and often feminist) authors separately as they contributed heavily to the current debates. In feminist theories the discourse of equality vs. difference is very important in defining the goals and methods of feminist interventions. At the beginning, the debate is about the differences between men and women and then on the differences within women (differences in race, class, etc3). Later on it was made useful on a broader level for a democratic theory by Anne Phillips4 and Iris Marion Young.5 In this paper I would like to make a plea for inequality or to be more precise for difference and diversity. By taking the ideas of Theodor W. Adorno6 I want to

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__________________________________________________________________ show that equality in a capitalistic society is always inequality and that a normative democratic theory, whose goal is to establish a truly free society, has to get rid of the idea of equality. Just to make sure that there are no misunderstandings: I am not against equal rights for marginalized groups (women, migrants, homosexuals, etc) in our society. Nothing would be more against my political views. However, the paper is about normative democratic theories, so it is about a society beyond the one we are currently living in, one where equality is not necessary anymore. At this stage we already encounter two major problems for this paper: Firstly, neither Adorno nor anyone linked to the first generation of the Frankfurt School ever wrote a democratic theory and secondly these scholars hardly ever talked about how a future society, beyond a bourgeois society, would actually look like. They were very strict in obeying a secularised version of the Jewish Bilderverbot (image-ban).7 Nevertheless I think it is possible to write this paper and that it is a very awarding effort. Adorno wrote quite a lot on equality and its dangers in various contexts, ranging from very abstract, philosophical thoughts to the problem of equality and sameness in such different fields as for example music8 or empirical social research.9 2. Basics of Adorno’s Theory: Political Economy, Ideology, Equality A. Political Economy During his 40 years of writing and teaching, Adorno always remained a Marxist. The Critique of the political economy, the subtitle of Marx’ most famous book Das Kapital, was always the fundament of his thoughts. Yet, he never was a member of any Communist Party and was never a follower of the orthodox marxistic-leninistic interpretation. By concentrating on the first chapters of Das Kapital, where the fetish-character of the commodity is explained, he was often in opposition to the orthodoxy who preferred the later chapters on the class-struggle. I cannot give a comprehensive introduction on the political economy, but I will only focus on the issues important for this paper. For Marx one of the fundamental differences between a feudal and a capitalistic society was the absence of direct domination in modern societies. Whereas in feudal societies the domination of the master over the servant was very direct, as the master often literally owned the servant, in modern societies the citizens are formally free, but, unfortunately, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power.10 As this new type of domination is not direct, but socially mediated Marx

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__________________________________________________________________ therefore calls it abstract domination.11 Important for us is that although the bourgeois society guarantees formal equality to every individual, it never is real equality, as ‘the social more powerful counterpart [receives, NB] more than the other.’12 B. Exchange of Equivalents and Ideology For Adorno, the relation between the labourer and the capitalist is just an example for a much broader topic, the exchange of equivalents. For him this is the core of the bourgeois society, which can be traced back to ancient times, when people sacrificed for their gods. To make it short, they gave something and expected something in return.13 The proclaimed equality of the participators was never true and can in effect in a bourgeois society never be true. Anyhow, it is not only false either. It is a dialectical relation that can not be solved in one way or the other: The assertion of the equivalence of what is exchanged, the basis of all exchange, is repudiated by its consequences. As the principle of exchange, by virtue of its immanent dynamics, extends to the living labours of human beings it changes compulsively into objective inequality, namely that of social classes. Forcibly stated, the contradiction is that exchange takes place justly and unjustly.14 To understand this fully we have to examine ideology, another very important cornerstone in Adorno’s philosophy. Ideology is directly connected to the principle of exchange and the problems we just mentioned. Barter as a process has real objectivity and is objectively untrue at the same time, transgressing against its own principle, the principle of equality. This is why, of necessity, it will create a false consciousness: the idols of the market.15 To Adorno ideology is a more complicated thing than it is to many other (Marxist) thinkers.16 It is not just false consciousness and therefore wrong, it is both, true and false at the same time. It is true in the double sense that ideology has effects on the people and influences their lives in many different ways, and it is furthermore true, that it once had an emancipatoric potential. This is also true for equality: For enlightenment philosophers, who did not live in a capitalistic, industrialized society, there was no reason to doubt, that once civil equality has been established, freedom will be established too.17 This means that equality was indeed an emancipatoric idea, but it turned to a tool of domination in a class society:

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__________________________________________________________________ [I]ts formal equality has the function both of oppressing the class with which it is contrasted and of using the strongest [men, NB] to control members of its own.18 3. Equality Adorno has two problems with the idea of equality and I will dedicate myself to both of them in this paper. The first one is the problem of equality in barter, which was already mentioned as an example a bit earlier; the second problem has to do with the tendency of the capitalistic society to homogenize its members and its cultural products. So the first point deals with an abstract problem and the second one with an applied problem. A. Equality as Ideology Following Adorno’s ideas, the call for equality in a society, which is based upon the principle of exchange, is never an emancipatoric call, but just a tool of domination. Adorno thinks that ideology is linked to modern societies. Only if power relations are opaque and societally mediated or in other words, abstract, ideology is needed.19 A master-slave relation does not need ideology. By law their roles are determined. Only a society, whose legitimacy is based upon the equality and freedom of its members, needs ideology to veil inequality and domination. So the problem of equality is not a problem of ‘more sophisticated definitions’20, as many theorists of egalitarianism are obviously thinking, as they are fine-tuning their models of equality more and more21, but is linked to the ‘structural constitution of society itself.’22 This is not only true for the exchange of equivalents, as mentioned above, but also for the (meanwhile) alleged equality of the genders in a bourgeois society.23 So there can be no doubt about Adorno’s solution to the equality problem. It is to overcome the capitalistic society, to overcome ideology and to overcome the principle of exchange as the constituting element of human organisation. ‘The abolition of the exchange of equivalents would be his fulfilment. As long as equality rules as a law, the individual is defrauded of equality.’24 B. Equality as Homogenisation Many texts of Adorno deal with phenomena that I am going to call homogenisation.25 This phenomena can be observed on two different levels: The first one concerns collective entities. In Adorno’s view, in order to be able to define a collective identity, another group differing from one’s own is needed to clearly mark the alleged differences. For example, the equality of the Polis-citizens in the Greek antiquity was contrasted with the inequality of women, children and slaves or the gentiles who constituted their equality by differentiation towards the Jews.26

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__________________________________________________________________ On the level of the individual this problem has different effects. Adorno saw a tendency in mass societies to homogenize its members to an average person, with the goal of shaping conformist, easy to govern citizens. In this sense the call for equality is an oppressive call against the individual as such and against all who differ from the norm. This tendency was later also identified by various scholars in the field of social sciences, as Anne Phillips states: Feminist theorists, in particular, have identified liberalism with an abstract individualism that ignores its own gendered content, and many have criticized the homogenizing ideals of equality that require us to be or become the same.27 So the mechanism of oppressive equality towards individuals is different than the one concerning groups. The central terms in this context are fungibility, identity and specimen. The assumption is that individuals are reduced to ‘a repeatable, replaceable process, a mere example’28 of the human genus and are therefore fungible. This means that the individual is in a tenuous and threatened position against the totality of the society. This is probably the core of Adorno’s philosophy. It is a problem which concerned him all his life and it is a pattern that can be found in all the topics Adorno dealt with, starting from enlightenment and reason in general to the state of social sciences or the philosophy and sociology of music. The terms sometimes change, but the meaning stays the same: particular vs. general, individual vs. society, non-identical vs. identical, difference vs. sameness. Adorno made it his assignment to try and save any form of non-identical from being incorporated into the totality or to put it in other words, to save the difference from being equalized. Two short examples shall illustrate this: In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer write a lot on the equalizing tendencies of the Nazi-rule and try to interpret the Nazis’ behaviour and appearance in that sense: ‘The meaning of fascist phrasing, ritual discipline, the uniforms and the whole, allegedly irrational, administration, is to enable mimetic behaviour.’29 In this quote we can see very well, how and why the call for equality can be considered a tool of domination.30 Another example is the whole field of the Kulturindustrie (culture industry). One of the main problems Adorno and Horkheimer diagnose in cultural production of a mass society is its function to equalize its consumers. 4. Beyond a Bourgeois Society: The Free Association of Free Individuals After having heard so much on the dangers of equality it is now time to focus on the emancipatoric perspective. How would Adorno have imagined a world after a bourgeois society and what would human organisation have looked like? As I already mentioned at the beginning of this paper, there are not a lot of clues how such a society could look like in Adorno’s writings. Yet, on very rare occasions, a

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__________________________________________________________________ hint slipped through. Such a hint can be found in one of the aphorisms in Minima Moralia. The aphorism is called Melange and since it deals with difference and equality I would like to a long part of it: The familiar argument of tolerance, that all people and all races are equal, is a boomerang. It lays itself open to the simple refutation of the senses, and the most compelling anthropological proofs that the Jews are not a race will, in the event of a pogrom, scarcely alter the fact that the totalitarians know full well whom they do and whom they do not intend to murder. If the equality of all who have human shape were demanded as an ideal instead of being assumed as fact, it would not greatly help. Abstract utopia is all too compatible with the most insidious tendencies of society. That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done, that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality. (...) An emancipated society, on the otter hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences. Politics that are still seriously concerned with such a society ought not, therefore, propound the abstract equality of men even as an idea. Instead, they should point to the bat equality today, the identity of those with interests in films and in weapons, and conceive the better state as one in which people could be different without fear.31 This is a very important quote for my argumentation in this paper. Not only does it summarise the problem with equality, it also gives a perspective on a democratic theory. A truly free human organisation can only be established if the constituting members are recognized as being different or in other words, are recognized as individuals rather than as a member of any form of collective identity. 5. Conclusion Whereas for many authors equality and freedom belong together or are even used as synonyms, for Adorno these two ideas can not be in the same room at the same time. As long as equality is demanded, the human organisation is not a free society and once the ‚free association of free individuals’ is established, equality is not necessary any more, as the people can live without fearing their difference. Equality in a society which is based upon the exchange of equivalents is never real equality, but only the ideological deformation of it and a tool of domination.

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__________________________________________________________________ For a normative democratic theory this means that diversity, not equality should be the leading idea and the abolition of the principle of exchange its goal and conditio sine qua non. Nevertheless diversity must not be confused with relativism towards any form of political ideas. Not everything has to be accepted as an expression of diversity. There must be a universal idea of the individual as emancipatoric subject, whose establishment and development have to be assured.

Notes 1

JJ Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’, Great Books of the Western World, Montesqieu, Rousseau, Encyclopedia Britannica, London, 1952, p. 323-366. 2 J Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971. 3 A Stone, An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007. 4 A Phillips, Engendering Democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991. 5 IM Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990. 6 In this paper I tried to quote Adorno from sources available in English. In such a case I always added the source, as it can be found in the Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) in the form of GS, followed by the number of the volume and the page. If I could not get hold of an English source, I quoted directly from the Gesammelte Schriften and translated it on my own. 7 TW Adorno, ‘Vernunft und Offenbarung’, Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft II (GS 10.2), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, p. 616. 8 TW Adorno, ‘Der Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens’ Dissonanzen. Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (GS 14), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, p. 26f. 9 TW Adorno, ‘Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’ Soziologische Schriften I (GS8), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 1979, p. 558. 10 K Marx, Capital: An Abridged Version, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 109. 11 For a more detailed summary, see: M Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 123. 12 TW Adorno, ‘Fortschritt’, Kulturkritk und Gesellschaft II (GS 10.2), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, p. 636. 13 M Horkheimer & TW Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main, 2004, p. 55ff. 14 TW Adorno, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Harper & Row, New York, 1976, p. 25. 15 TW Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Continuum, New York, 1973, p. 190.

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L Althusser, Marxismus und Ideologie. Probleme der Marx-Interpretation, VSA, Westberlin, 1973. 17 TW Adorno, ‘Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre’, Soziologische Schriften I (GS 8), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 1979, p. 464. 18 TW Adorno, ‘Reflections on Class Theory’, Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003, p 98. 19 TW Adorno, ‘Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre’, p. 467. 20 TW Adorno, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, p. 115. 21 See, pars pro toto, the various contributions in: N Holtung & K LippertRasmussen, Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007. 22 TW Adorno, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, p. 115. 23 Even though Adorno certainly was no feminist thinker, some ideas of his philosophy are certainly very useful for feminist agendas, whereas others have to be given up. Regina Becker Schmidt, an assistant of Adorno, did this very impressively by formulating a critique of the gender relations as a critique of ideology. R Becker-Schmidt, ‘Identitätslogik und Gewalt. Zum Verhältnis von Kritischer Theorie und Feminismus’, Fragmente kritischer Theorie, Edition Diskord, Tübingen, 1991, p. 59-78. 24 TW Adorno, ‘Zum Klassizismus von Goethes Iphigenie’, Noten zu Literatur (GS 11), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2002, p. 508. 25 In German the word Gleichheit refers to sameness as well as to equality. I know that these two words have different meanings, but I think that I am interpreting Adorno correctly, if I state that sameness is the ultima ratio of equality in a bourgeois society. 26 M Horkheimer & T W Adorno, p. 194. 27 A Phillips, ‘Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas, or a Politics of Presence’, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, p. 139. 28 M Horkheimer & T W Adorno, p. 91. 29 ibid., p. 194. 30 To understand how mimetic behaviour is a tool of domination, Sigmund Freud’s writings on group psychology have to be considered: S Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main, 2005. 31 TW Adorno, ‘Melange’, Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003. p. 54.

Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Negative Dialectics. Continuum, New York, 1973.

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__________________________________________________________________ —, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Harper & Row, New York, 1976. —, ‘Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’. Soziologische Schriften I (GS8). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 1979, pp. 547-565. —, ‘Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre’. Soziologische Schriften I (GS 8). Frankfurt/Main, 1979, pp. 457-477. —, ‘Melange’. Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2001, pp. 183-185. —, ‘Zum Klassizismus von Goethes Iphigenie’. Noten zu Literatur (GS 11). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2002, pp. 495-514. —, ‘Der Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens’. Dissonanzen: Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (GS 14). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, pp. 14-50. —, ‘Fortschritt’. Kulturkritk und Gesellschaft II (GS 10.2). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, pp. 617-638. —, ‘Reflections on Class Theory’. Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003. —, ‘Vernunft und Offenbarung’. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft II (GS 10.2). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 2003, pp. 608-616. Althusser, L., Marxismus und Ideologie: Probleme der Marx-Interpretation. VSA, Westberlin, 1973. Becker-Schmidt, R., ‘Identitätslogik und Gewalt: Zum Verhältnis von Kritischer Theorie und Feminismus’. Fragmente kritischer Theorie. Edition Diskord, Tübingen, 1991. Benhabib, S., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Freud, S., Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse. Fischer, Frankfurt, Main, 2005. Holtung, N. & Lippert-Rasmussen, K., Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Horkheimer, M. & Adorno, T.W., Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Fischer, Frankfurt, Main, 2004. Marx, K., Capital: An Abridged Version. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 1995. Phillips, A., Engendering Democracy. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991. —, ‘Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas, or a Politics of Presence’. Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Postone, M., Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971. Rousseau, J.J., ‘A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’. Great Books of the Western World, Montesqieu, Rousseau. Encyclopedia Britannica, London, 1952. Stone, A., An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007. Tiedemann, R., Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003. Young, I.M., Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990. —, ‘Communication and the Other: Beyond a Deliberative Democracy’. Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Nico Bechter is a PhD student at the department of Political Science at the University of Vienna and is currently holding a research fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Additionally to Democratic theory and the Frankfurt School, he is interested in the research on anti-Semitism and writes his thesis on the operas of Richard Wagner and the problems of the German socialisation in the 19th century.

Section IV: National Case Studies

Direct Democracy vs. Democracy by Representation in the Middle East Zvi Bar’el Abstract ‘We are not Syria, we do not transfer our regime from father to son’ said Egyptian president Hosni Mubark when he was faced with his opposition criticism over his apparent decision to transfer his responsibilities to his son Gamal. But it was exactly this kind of opposition which had driven Mubarak to amend some articles in the Egyptian constitution, amendments that may pave the way for more candidates to run for presidency. How, then, can we define the Egyptian ‘democratic’ structure? Indeed it has a parliament, but it is under the president’s control, its public opinion was always considered as irrelevant, yet it forced the president to listen to it and to act accordingly. The Egyptian case is just an example for an alternative structure of regime-public relationship. We can detect similar structures in most Arab and Islamic states where the formal democracy is substituted by ‘direct democracy’. Perhaps its roots could be traced in the 7th century Caliph Mu’awiya’s famous saying, ‘I do not apply my sword where my lash suffices, nor my lash where my tongue is enough. And even if there be one hair binding me to my fellow men, I do not let it break. When they pull, I loosen, and if they loosen, I pull.’ In these states a different parallelogram of forces takes place. The regime has to work its way between ‘liberals’ and ‘religious’ factors, between traditional and global forces rather than between competing opposition political parties. In my paper I argue that this ‘other’ form for regime-public relations should also be considered as part of ‘democracy-scape’. This argument addresses the question of ‘what do we want from democracy’ rather than ‘what is the right democracy’. I believe that watching and analysing some Middle Eastern cases along the line of my arguments way stimulate some thoughts about the scope of democracy. Key Words: Middle East, New Media, Democracy, Paralleogram of forces. ***** 1. Introduction The essentialist axiom concerning democracy in the Middle East claims that democracy and Middle East is inherently an oxymoron. As the geo-political definition of the Middle East is still debated, I would like to suggest here that the Western use of the term ‘Middle East’ implies that there is a monolithic entity, based on one or several essentialist common denominators, and it subscribes to the notion that these common denominators are the result of Arabic- Islamic ‘genetics’. This definition dictates not just an anticipated common

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__________________________________________________________________ behaviour and beliefs of the individual but also the nature of states in this area. In other words: such people create such states and not the opposite. Yet, rulers in this area although supporting a vague Pan-Arab notion are not contradicting the Western essentialist perception. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt or Bashar Assad in Syria have addressed the question of democracy in their countries along the following lines: every country has to have its own definition of democracy in accordance with its own culture. According to these leaders culture in this sense is what fits the rulers, as the sole interpreters of and designers of the public’s will. As if to say ‘we, the leaders know what a good Arab is, what a good Muslim is and who is a good citizen’. Hence, they in effect adopt the very definition of the West of the characteristics of the Middle East. In order to break the ‘coalition of essentialists’ which exists between the West and Arab rulers I suggest to consider using the term ‘direct democracy’ as a tool to understand the relations between regimes and their publics in Muslim states. 2. Parallelogram of Forces For that purpose the following parallelogram can be useful to describe the structure of power in most Muslim states. It consists of 4 pillars: The regime, the religious state’s institutes, the liberals and the public. To maintain stability, means that the ruler has to maintain ‘good relations’ with the forces that credit them with legitimacy. When one of the pillars tends to stretch its limits the ruler reacts in two ways: appeasements and/or tight control up to a degree of ‘owning’ these pillars. Nationalizing the media or al-Azhar, the highest religious institute in Egypt, in the early sixties is one example for this kind of practice, where the ruler has adopted tight control as a means to regulate the balance of powers. On the other hand, allowing al-Azhar to control religious and by extension, moral censorship, over literary and artistic production is an example for appeasement. Balancing the parallelogram of forces was easily achieved when rulers in many Arab countries were able to maintain a closed arena for their ruling practice. By this I mean an arena that could efficiently filter external influence, either from other Middle Eastern or from Western sphere. The result was that media knew its limits and so did the religious institutes, thus the threat of the ‘unhappy citizens’ rebelling against the regime could be avoided or at least be limited to a bearable level. 3. The New Media Effect This model is now shattered due mainly to what we may define as the media revolution which threatens the very existence of that parallelogram of forces. The term media in the Middle East is demanding a new definition. It is not anymore just the print press owned by the ruler. Since the early nineties it is an open sphere. LBC, MBC, Abu-Dhabi satellite TV, Rutana, and of course al-Jazeera

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__________________________________________________________________ are not just supra-national, inter-Arab stations, they are symbols of that revolution which have three new characteristics: 1.

2.

3.

It operates according to professional journalistic criteria: i.e what is new, interesting and important will be filtered into the screen. Now with one important change: it is not what is important interesting and new for the ruler, but to the public. The target public of the new media is vague and sometimes unknown. By and large editors have to assume that they are catering to the whole Arabic speaking population and not to a particular, nationally defined audience.. Editors and managers of such stations have to report to a new kind of owners. These are businessmen rather than kings or presidents, shareholders and not ideologues. In other words, the new media have to make money.

These new criteria when applied on what Stuart Hall describes as the communicative process, i.e. production, circulation, use, and reproduction, demonstrate the dimensions of the Arabic media revolution in its entirety.1 To paraphrase on Appadaurai’s terminology, it creates an ‘Arabic-media scape’. This is not to say just that the new media is received now in the whole Middle East, speaks Arabic and construct common cultural components which are above and beyond the local. The most significant change that the new media revolution has brought about into the area is the creation of a new pillar in the parallelogram of forces. It is becoming, and in some places it has already become a power of its own, a power that has to be tended to by the regime, and has the same standing as religion, liberal forces or the public itself. This power has direct line to the public, it cannot be appeased or bribed by local governments, it has its own agenda, derived from its owner agenda and it has the potential to define the nature of the local power that be. In time of supra-national satellite TV what is crucial for rulers is how to reconcile the idea of ‘One Arab Nation’ or at least one Arab culture, or the Arab imagined community, with the multitude of Arabic cultures that flood the local spheres. This dilemma needs to be addressed by rulers for practical reasons; most importantly it intimidates their governability. Since the new media reveals new secrets about the misconduct, diversity in culture, the different extent of freedom practiced in different states, and of course the different standards of living, rulers will have to supply a new set of answers to their citizens.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. Media vs. Religion The new media is affecting also the way religion is received and perceived. As long as the ‘chain of religious command’, say in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, was established by the state, the parameters of religious conduct were negotiated between the ruler and ‘his’ religious institute, ensuring, thus, the balance of the parallelogram of forces. Competitors, like radical movements - let alone terror organizations motivated by religious argumentations- were brutally crushed. Yes, the Sharia is the major source of legislation, but what part of the Sharia, the extent of its flexibility, its interpretation and finally its implementation were decided by the state. In other words, religion as a governing tool is the ruler’s monopoly. But what is the state’s mufti or the head of al-Azhar in Egypt, the head of Dar al Ifta in Saudi Arabia or the state’s mufti in Syria to do, when Sheikh Yusuf alQardawi, the most prominent religious scholar and orator who has no State’s affiliation, from within the living room TV set, contradicts the state’s mufti or the local TV preacher whose airtime is allocated to him by the state? In several cases the head of al-Azhar had to change his judgment due to harsh criticism by al-Qardawi in al-Jazeera or other scholars in different parts of the Middle East. The two have clashed on many issues, including the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and the role of women. ‘Al- Azhar used to represent the moderate Islamic mind and it was respected all over the world’ says Fahmi Howeidi, a Cairo- based commentator.2 ‘It is no longer what it used to be. When it is seen as an institution that represents the government instead of the Muslim people, there is the danger that people will look for leadership elsewhere’ he warned. If in earlier times clashes between Qardawi and Tantawi were confined to the scholars’ domain, with the new media it is not only part of the public domain, it takes immediate effect. But this competition is not merely between two scholars. It is between the state’s religious institute and a supra-national competitor using a supra-national tool, the satellite TV, that local government cannot negotiate with. The new media does not stop there. There are over 600 satellite stations in the Arab world, about 30 of which are dedicated only to religious content, but many of them include a daily religious program lasting an hour or more.. This is a new sphere that has yet to be researched for its impact on religious conduct in the Islamic world. It is important to find out to what extent it shatters the ability of rulers to keep their national religious institute relevant. In fact, to what extent their religious legitimacy in their own states may be determined by preachers, muftis or scholars from other countries or worse yet, from the virtual sphere.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Liberals vs. State The next pillar in the parallelogram of forces is that of the liberals. By liberals I mean the sector of intellectuals, professionals, writers, journalists, politician who do not ascribe any religious value to their activities, and in general all those who believe that ‘the state is for all and the religion belongs to god’ (al din lilah waalwatan liljami’i)3. This group derives its importance from what we may call here the Western hegemony over concepts of democracy. This is not confined just to the ways and means by which intellectuals in the West view democracy, rather, it is connected to the fashion by which Western powers, most notably the United States are forcing these definitions through local regimes. A case in point in Egypt would be that of Ayman Nour the former leader of ‘alGhad’ (‘Tomorrow’) party who set an example, not only for state harassment but more importantly, to the Western intervention in what was believed to be until lately a forbidden area for outsiders. Ayman Nour was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and arrested on January 29,2005 He was charged with forging Powers of Attorney to secure the formation of the el-Ghad party. Nour vehemently denied the charges. The arrest, occurring in an election year, was widely criticized by governments around the world as a step backwards for Egyptian democracy. Few seem to regard the charges as legitimate. In February 2005, the American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abruptly postponed a visit to Egypt, thus demonstrating U.S. displeasure at the jailing of Nour, who was reported to have been brutally interrogated. That same month, the government announced that it would open elections to multiple candidates. In March 2005, following a strong intervention in Cairo by a group of Members of the European Parliament led by Vice-President Edward McMillan-Scott (UK, Conservative), Nour was freed and began a campaign for the Egyptian presidency. In June 2005, Rice addressed democracy in the Middle East at the American University in Cairo. She stated: Across the Middle East today, millions of citizens are voicing their aspirations for liberty and for democracy…demanding freedom for themselves and democracy for their countries. To these courageous men and women, I say today: All free nations will stand with you as you secure the blessings of your own liberty.4 Nour was the first runner-up in the 2005 presidential election with 7% of the vote according to government figures and estimated at 13% by independent observers, although no independent observers were allowed to monitor the elections.

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__________________________________________________________________ On December 24, 2005 he was sentenced to five years in jail. On the day of Nour’s guilty verdict and sentencing, the White House Press Secretary released the following statement denouncing the government’s action: The conviction of Mr. Nour, the runner-up in Egypt’s 2005 presidential elections, calls into question Egypt’s commitment to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law... The United States calls upon the Egyptian government to act under the laws of Egypt in the spirit of its professed desire for increased political openness and dialogue within Egyptian society.5 This kind of American pressure could under different circumstances play into the hands of Egyptian liberals whose demands from the Egyptian regime are similar to the American ones. Yet, the problem with the American pressure is exactly that: it is an American pressure. It is an effort to impose democracy from outside. This is unacceptable even by liberals who spent years in jail. Democracy, from their point of view can be achieved either top-to-bottom or bottom-to top but not outside-to-top or outside-to- bottom as this would be tantamount to national treason either by the state or by the public. Nour’s case is interesting because it had involved the new media in a way that could not be perceived just a few years ago. Creating a parallel world of discourse and operation is far from being perfect. Not just because this new media is controlled by businessmen who in many cases have close relations with the state, and sometimes, like in the case of al-Arabiya, they are part of the ruling family, but because the supra-national media is by definition too remote from the localities. Into this lacuna enters the blogosphere, YouTube and the talkbacks. This new space is growing daily and encompasses now tens of thousands of active participants. Governments in the Middle East are well aware of their impact. 6. Common Knowledge It is too tempting to start measuring the influence that the new media-sphere has on governments and rulers in the Middle East and the contribution it has democratisation. Suffice is to notice that there is a flow of informal knowledge between individuals in a fashion that never occurred before. This flow of information creates common knowledge in two important aspects: The diversity of life style, culture and language in the Middle East, and the differences in ruling styles in different Arab states. These areas of common knowledge are not limited anymore to a certain elite that has the ability to purchase and handle computers, or has access to the Internet. The public is a full partner, thus complying with the definition of direct democracy practiced by what Negri defines as multitudes.6

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__________________________________________________________________ Media spheres, be it local, national, supra-national or international, are not autonomous and so are local democracies. They are interconnected and influence each other. They operate in different layers, which are interconnected as well. They seem to act collectively but in fact they act simultaneously. In this respect one can argue that even state controlled media are part of the network since it has to react to the other media’s output. If so, where does in put the individual Muslim state and where does it locate democracy? Middle Eastern states are wrongly perceived by the West to work collectively, subscribe more or less to similar ideologies, and seem to cherish the same values, but in reality cultivate local particular identities. But these local identities cannot be defined anymore as state-built. As more parts of the local societies develop ‘congruent knowledge’ of their counterparts in other Arab states, local regimes have to adapt to the ‘new knowledge’ and adopt it as if it was its own, or risk losing the claimed monopoly over the design of local identity or the local shape of ‘their’ kind of democracy.

Notes 1

S Hall, et. al. (eds), Culture Media Language, Routledge, New York, 1980. Howeidi Fahmi in an interview to the Irish Times 30 June 2006. 3 Saad Zghlul coined this phrase during the Egyptian revolution of 1919. 4 Condoleezza Rice speaking at the American University in Cairo 20 June, 2005. 5 White House press release. 24 December 2005. 6 M Hardt & A Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, The Penguin Press, New York, 2004. 2

Bibliography Hall, S. et al. (eds), Culture Media Language. Routledge, New York, 1980. Hardt, M. & A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. The Penguin Press, New York, 2004. Zvi Bar’el, PhD., is the Middle Eastern affairs analyst for Haaretz daily in Israel. Lecturer at Sapir Academic College (Ashkelon, Israel); a senior research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University and a research fellow at the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His forthcoming book is about defining democracies in the Middle East (Hakibutz Hameuhad, Israel).

A Fight for Democracy Internal to Democracy Itself: The ANC and the Media in South Africa Glenda Daniels Abstract This paper elucidates the ANC’s democratic project through the prism of its relationship to the media. Several theorists have been referred to in order to put together a theoretical framework with which to clarify and account for the emergent pattern of interpellation against those in the media who highlight the short comings of the ruling party. The case of the subjectivisation and ideological interpellation of South Africa’s award winning and irreverent cartoonist, Zapiro, shows how through experience, a participant in democracy, discovers that democracy does not exist without freedom of expression. The question is: what do ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘democracy’ mean in the new South Africa when a cartoonist is sued for defamation by the country’s president, Jacob Zuma, over a cartoon, referred to as Lady Justice? The paper scrutinises the changing meanings of democracy and freedom of expression especially when the former anti-apartheid activist, cartoonist is hailed as a ‘racist’, ‘enemy of the people’ and a ‘right-winger’ by Zuma supporters. The argument here is: the ANC makes a mockery of democracy when it attempts to create unity in the social by foreclosing open spaces through interpellation and lawsuits, thus hindering the deepening of democracy. The conceptual framework adumbrated in the analysis draws heavily from Zizek, Mouffe, and Butler. Their conceptual tools are deployed to account for the compulsion that characterises certain discursive interventions on the media by the ANC, which are always in some respect in ‘excess’ of expectations. Key Words: Democracy, freedom of expression, ideological interpellation, subjectivisation, legitimate adversary, agonistic pluralism, enemies of the people and social fantasy. ***** 1. Introduction This paper argues that democracy is an empty signifier, when a cartoonist is sued for defamation, and interpellated as ‘racist’, ‘enemy’ and ‘right-wing’ because he expressed criticism about the president of his country, President Jacob Zuma, in a hard-hitting cartoon. These discursive interventions: ideological interpellations and lawsuits constitute significant foreclosures for the unfolding of the unrealised democracy project in South Africa. A former anti-apartheid activist, cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro, who works under the name, Zapiro, stands fast to his original principles, the same ones he stood for during his anti-apartheid activist days. And, while politics have changed, his principles and progressive values have not. So he

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__________________________________________________________________ finds himself railing against ‘inconsistencies and contradictions’ in the new democracy.1 Zapiro discovers through experience that democracy does not exist without freedom of expression. The question is: What does ‘freedom of expression’, as encapsulated in the South African constitution, mean in the new democracy when there are damage claims against the cartoonist for R7-million (R5-million for defamation and R2-million for damage to dignity) by Zuma over an insulting cartoon, referred to as ‘Lady Justice’?2 In the cartoon, Zuma is depicted as unbuckling his belt to rape Lady Justice, whose hands are pinned down, while the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partners enthuse: ‘Go for it Boss!’ The enthusiasts are the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, South African Communist Party (SACP) secretary general Blade Nzimande, ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema and ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe. After this cartoon was published, in September 2008, Zapiro was labelled a right-winger by some leaders within the alliance. This paper, first, explains the cartoon, and then describes the furore over it. Second, it deploys the theoretical concepts ‘legitimate adversary’, ‘ideological interpellation’ and ‘subjectivisation’, in relation to the outcry over the cartoon by Zuma supporters, on the one hand, and then civil society support for the cartoonist, on the other, to make some conclusions on the kind of democracy that is unfolding. Third, it shows up the contradictions in the transitional democracy. The cartoon that caused the trouble and the dislocation in the social is depicted below.

© 2010 Zapiro. Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com

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__________________________________________________________________ 2. In Excess It was the rape metaphor that stirred the emotions. The image of Zuma with the showerhead refers to his rape trial in April 2006, when he replied that he took a shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman. Aids activists, women’s groups, public health experts, as well as the media denounced Zuma for this statement, which was understood as: I had sex with an HIV-positive woman, then, to prevent Aids, I had a shower. What message was he sending out to people in South Africa, which has one of the highest HIV/Aids related incidences in the world? Zapiro’s image was deliberately ambiguous and played on the issues of rape and showering after having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. The cartoon is also about the rape of justice. The justice system is shown to be powerless and is being depicted by the figure of Lady Justice. She, or the justice system, is raped by powerful political forces in the form of populist support for Zuma. The rationale for the lawsuits is that he is merely exercising his right as a citizen, having stated that he has never had a hostile attitude to the role of the media in society and its place in a democracy.’3 However, it must be noted that Zuma is not just a citizen of South Africa he became president in April 2009, and, a year into his presidency, by May 2010, he had not dropped the lawsuits. So, I argue, his actions are inappropriate, and in excess of expectations. The challenging voices to the status quo come from civil society in the form of trade unions, the churches and other religious institutions, non-governmental organisations’, women’s groups, and Aids activists groups and the media. The media is a powerfully challenging voice to the ruling party in the way that it highlights the short comings of, for instance, the lack of service delivery to the poor, and instances of corruption. This is precisely why it is good social fantasy of the ANC that the media is the enemy. The media’s role is not to promote national reconciliation or to be loyal to the new government, just because it is run by the ruling party that was the liberation party. The media’s loyalty has to lie with its professional role as watchdog, and holding power to account, therefore its loyalty is to democracy itself. However, an unprogressive hegemony has begun to emerge in the way that the media is viewed: as enemy of the people. Thus far the subjectivisation of the media has taken place in the form of lawsuits and ideological interpellations, as shown in the case of Zapiro. The emergent pattern, which I have argued is in excess of expectations, is that when the government or its leaders are criticised or exposed for corruption the media is hailed as anti-transformation, racist or enemy of the people. 3. Populist Ideological Interpellations Zapiro’s critique of the new democracy was perceived as ‘anti-transformation’, by the alliance, hence the unprogressive, populist interpellations of ‘right winger’, ‘racist’ and ‘enemy’. The conflations included that Lady Justice was depicted as a white woman, and to Zuma supporters this meant that the cartoon was about black

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__________________________________________________________________ men raping white women, and that it exposed Zapiro’s attitude not only about the president but about ‘black leaders in general’.4 Cosatu’s secretary general, Zwelinzima Vavi, usually a fan of Zapiro, felt ‘shocked, devastated and lost for words. Zapiro has equated us to rapists…What is he saying to the world? Is he saying Zuma is a rapist? This cartoon goes beyond acceptable levels of freedom of expression’.5 For Zapiro, the fiasco raised the essential question of ‘cartoonist as watchdog, not lapdog’. 6 He explained himself and his cartoon: Yes, the cartoon is over the top that does not mean I would not do it again. Cartoons work by putting together things that are unexpected, occasionally shocking, joining dots that did not look like they could be joined and making an image that looks like it was there all the time …I refuse to apologise for something that was done in good faith … I’m not going to shy away from things that would offend a lot of people. At the moment, the stakes are high and the politics are polarised.7 The clause regarding freedom of speech in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 Act 108 states that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media’ but this does not extend to incitement of violence and hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion. However, while the Constitution stipulates that freedom of speech is protected as long as it does not promote hatred and incite violence, no specific line is drawn. The interpellations of racist and right winger can be understood as an attempt at creating unity in the social, suggesting foreclosures; an attempt to create homogeneity from heterogeneity which stunts the flow of democracy. What the ANC and its alliances partners do when they label all critics of the new regime, especially critical voices from the media fraternity, is to create ‘others’ in society, others, which the ruling bloc imagines, in a social fantasy, who create disharmony. The assumption by the ANC is that there is already harmony and society is one homogeneous bloc. In fact, the social is fractured, uneven and disputatious, with more dissensus than consensus. To show some of this, I turn to some views from the public after the Lady Justice cartoon was published. While the ruling bloc hailed the cartoon as right wing and racist, voices from the public were not so quick to jump onto these easy bandwagons. Their free-floating views showed a lack of identity to any one particular signifier. 4. Free-Floating Heterogeneity in the Fractured Social The views of the public can be gleaned from some of the letters to the newspapers. The free-floating views, shown below, elucidate a lack of homogeneity in the social. They are not rigidified on nodal points of gender or race identity. For example: ‘The cartoon is not offensive to females and it hit the nail on

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__________________________________________________________________ the head.’ Kirsten Zissimides.8 ‘Like diagnostic surgery, it is invasive, damaging – and necessary.’ David Le Page.9‘As a woman I am in no way affronted by the cartoon …rape is quite an apt metaphor for the sense of entitlement and ‘might is right’ that Zuma and his supporters are displaying.’ Evyl Shnukums.10 ‘The ANC and its hagiographers are mad because someone is calling it as it is.’ Mokone Molete.11 ‘After seeing Zapiro’s latest masterpiece, I asked myself whether we need say more about what the ANC and its alliance partners are doing to our justice system. The bullying, verbal attacks and protests are doing great damage to our country in general. If you don’t understand in words what they are doing, Zapiro captures it all in his cartoon.’ Thabelo Lebona.12 ‘…I was shocked by Zapiro’s cartoon, which equated a number of our democratically elected leaders with the dregs of society planning the most abhorrent crimes. Cartoons like this close the door on rational debate.’ Peter Cownie.13 The above citizen discourse signals an optimistic moment for democracy as it elucidates: free-flowing heterogeneity, support for freedom of speech and a lack of unity of identity on the basis race or gender, for instance, two women felt this was not an anti feminist cartoon (Zissimides and Snukums), a white felt offended (Cownie), and some blacks supported Zapiro (Lebona and Molete). This raises the question: How good is democracy for democracy? Democracy is good for democracy when views can be elucidated in the public without fear. This has happened and continues to happen, in the transitional democracy. However, the attempts by the ruling party and its alliance partners, to halt freedom to be critical of its leaders, signal fairly gloomy moments for democracy. On the other hand, is this not precisely what a radical democracy is about, fights that are internal to democracy itself, with adversaries challenging each other? The problem of course, lies in how the challenging voices are viewed and accepted, or not. 5. Towards a Theoretical Understanding: Democracy is an Empty Signifier How are we to understand these developments theoretically? These populist interpellations, ‘racist’, ‘enemy’, ‘right wing’, are really empty signifiers, which can be put to the most disparate ideological use, as Laclau argued14. Mouffe’s argument for a radical democracy in several works15, distinguished between legitimate adversaries and enemies. The failure to distinguish between the two could mean democracy itself might be jeopardised. She posits that democratic debate is not a deliberation aimed at reaching the one rational solution to be accepted, but a confrontation among adversaries …16 ‘The adversary is, in a sense an enemy, but a legitimate enemy with whom there exists common ground. Adversaries fight each other, but they do not put into question the legitimacy of their respective positions.’17 For her the democratic paradox is that ‘antagonism is ineradicable and pluralistic democratic politics will never find a final solution’.18 In other words, democracy is an unending, disputatious process.

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__________________________________________________________________ Within this theory, Zapiro represents a legitimate adversary, intrinsic to agonistic pluralistic spaces but his subjectivisation took place through ideological interpellation via the hailing of him as racist and right-winger. Zapiro represents in the democratic transition, division and difference, both of which are necessary for the unfolding of the unrealised democracy in the diverse social in South Africa. A well-functioning a radical democracy calls for a vibrant clash of political positions’.19 The ANC’s interpellations suggest foreclosures in an attempt to create hegemonic unity out of irreducible heterogeneity. And, as Laclau argued, one of the dimensions of populism is the aggregation of heterogeneous forces and demands which cannot be integrated within the existing social structure.20 The ANC’s foreclosing actions signify an unprogressive hegemony.21 The ideological hailing of Zapiro is directly Althusserian, as explained by Zizek,22 and Butler,23 in several works whereby a subject is hailed through a name, and that subject sometimes turns around towards the voice of authority, thereby accepting the injurious naming term and becoming a subject. There is a social fantasy in operation within the ANC’s hailing of Zapiro. In Zizek’s seminal work, The Sublime Object of Ideology, he asserts that fantasy is precisely the way the antagonistic fissure is masked.24 The ANC traverses the social fantasy, as in Zizek’s example about the Jew in Nazi Germany: Society doesn’t exist: and the Jew is its symptom.25 In the same way, in South Africa, the media is the symptom and society is prevented from achieving its full identity because of the media: hence the paranoid discursive construction of the media as enemy and racist. This projection shows the social fantasy of the ANC, where there is a surplus attached to the media, which exceeds expectations. A further Zizekean point applies to the Zapiro case: Let us take, for example, the series feminism-democracy-peace movement-ecologism: insofar as the participant in the struggle for democracy ‘finds out by ‘experience’ that there is no real democracy without the emancipation of women, insofar as the participant in the ecological struggle finds out by experience that there is no real reconciliation with nature without abandoning the aggressive masculine attitude towards nature,’ and so forth…26 Zapiro, a participant in democracy, discovers through experience that there is no democracy without freedom of expression. The ideological interpellation failed, he refused the injurious terms, he talked back,27 to use Butler’s concept of ‘resignifications’.28 His irreverent cartoons keep flowing. Zapiro committed to his subject position of democracy. But then so too, were his critics committed to their subject position of ‘democracy’, showing a fight internal to democracy itself. Zapiro has been sued for defamation and damage to reputation for amounts twice as much than any other cartoonist in the world, but he has said that he would

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__________________________________________________________________ defend the cartoon and he had no doubt he would win29. He suspended the shower after Zuma became president30: ‘I want the country to succeed. I don’t want the country to go down the tubes.’ If one considers Butler’s philosophical trajectory which relies heavily on Freud, Zapiro’s discourse showed division, ambivalence, a mourning of the loss of an ideal. Mourning might be a ‘reaction to the loss of loved person, or the loss of some abstraction that has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal...’31 Zapiro wants the country to succeed, so he gave Zuma the benefit of the doubt, removing the wicked shower head, when he assumed presidency. Then the contingent nature of politics reared its head: in February 2010, after the polygamous Zuma was found to have fathered a child out of wedlock while already having three wives, media nationally32 and internationally33, lambasted him for being sex-obsessed. And, Zapiro reinstated the shower head. This paper has argued that the society that exists in South Africa is fractured and full of fights. A radical democracy is unfolding but there are attempts by the ANC to stop the sliding of meanings, to unify, and essentialise the social via an unprogressive hegemony i.e. loyalty to the ruling party. The ideological interpellations against Zapiro were structured in social fantasy, seen through the excessive properties attached to him (right winger, racist and enemy) constituting pre-ideological enjoyment, to use Zizek’s Lacanian philosophy.34 The function of ideology is to mask inconsistencies; the media shows the inconsistencies. The attempted subjectivisation of Zapiro failed. He made no reflexive turn, which would have showed passionate attachment to the past. This is cause for celebration for democracy, but the lawsuits remain, as a form of subjectivisation. Zapiro’s discourse showed ‘loss’; of an ideal, and ambivalence. The interpellation must be seen within the historical context of him being a fierce opponent of apartheid. In the transitional democracy’s context to be labelled a racist and a right-winger is the equivalent of being an ‘enemy’, which ultimately shows up ‘democracy’ to be an empty signifier.

Notes 1

In an interview on freedom of speech and the role of political satire in a democracy by G Daniels, 22 July 2009. 2 The cartoon was first published in the Sunday Times on 7 September 2008. 3 The Weekender, (15-16 August 2009): In theory, Zuma supports a free press. 4 The Times, September 9, 2008; ANC says Zuma cartoon not funny. 5 Ibid. 6 The Sunday Independent, 14 September 2008: I did it in good faith, says Zapiro. 7 In an interview on freedom of speech and the role of political satire in a democracy by G Daniels, 22 July 2009. 8 Mail & Guardian September 12-18, 2008.

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Mail & Guardian September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian September 12-18, 2008. 11 Mail & Guardian September 12-18, 2008. 12 Sunday Times,14 September, 2008. 13 Sunday Times, 14 September, 2008. 14 See E Laclau, On Populist Reason, London, New York, Verso, 2005. 15 Mouffe in several works (C Mouffe, The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, London, Verso, New York, 1999; The Democratic Paradox, Verso, London, 2000; On the Political, Verso, London, 2005) argues that a distinction must be made between adversaries and enemies so that an agonistic pluralism can be realised which would in turn deepen democracy. 16 Mouffe, The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, 1999, p. 4. This is also her critique of Habermas, Rawls and others who argued for rational consensus. 17 Ibid, p. 4. 18 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, p. 139. 19 Ibid., p. 104. 20 Laclau, On Populist Reason, p. 180. 21 Hegemony, used here in the Gramscian sense of in the Gramscian sense of establishing moral, political and intellectual leadership in social life by diffusing one's own world view throughout the fabric of society. 22 S Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, Verso, London, New York, 1999; Interrogating the Real, Continuum, London, New York, 2006; The Indivisible Remainder, Verso, London, New York, 2007. 23 See J Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1997, p. 106. Butler pointed to Althusser’s famous example of the passer-by being hailed as ‘hey you’ by the policeman, and the passer by turns around towards the voice of authority as though guilty. 24 Ibidem, p. 126. 25 Ibidem, p. 125. 26 See S Zizek, Interrogating the Real, Continuum, London, New York, 2006, p250 27 See B Schippers, The Politics of Radical Democracy, Radical Democracy and Micro-politics, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009, p. 78 28 Butler meant by resignification that the subject can refuse the identification and through these there are possibilities which can undo passionate attachment. 29 Interview G Daniels, September 2009. 30 Zuma became president of SA in April 2009. 31 Butler quoting Freud in The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1997, p172. 32 See for example the Mail & Guardian (5-11 February 2010) Anger at Big Daddy Zuma grows. 10

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The Daily Mail 4 March 2010: Zuma is a sex obsessed bigot with four wives and 35 children. So why is Britain fawning over this vile buffoon. 34 See Zizek in The Sublime Object of Ideology, Verso, London, New York, 1989, p125. He argues that there is always enjoyment attached to ideological fantasy. Zizek, a Lacanian would be basing this on Lacan’s Jouissance, which meant variously over excitedness, surplus excitation, that which is Real outside symbolisation and meaning, it may mean enjoyment but in Lacanese it means that which is too much to bear, suffering in other words. In paranoia, jouissance is linked to something outside, for instance, an external agency. In this case, that is, South Africa’s transitional democracy, there is paranoia about the media.

Bibliography Books: Butler, J., The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1997. Laclau, E., On Populist Reason. Verso, London, New York, 2005. Leader, D. & Groves, J., Lacan for Beginners. Icon Books, Cambridge, 1995. Little, A. & Lloyd, M., The Politics of Radical Democracy. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009. Mouffe, C., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. Verso, London, New York, 1999. —, The Democratic Paradox. Verso, London, 2000. —, On the Political. Verso, London, 2005. Schippers, B., ‘Judith Butler, Radical Democracy and Micro-Politics’. The Politics of Radical Democracy. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009, pp 73-89. Zizek, S., The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, London, 1989. —, The Ticklish Subject. Verso, London, New York, 1999. —, Interrogating the Real. Continuum, London, New York, 2006. Zizek, S., The Indivisible Remainder. Verso, London New York, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Documents: The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 Act 108 of 1996. Newspaper Articles: The Weekender: In Theory, Zuma Supports a Free Press: 15-16 August 2009. The Times: ANC Says Zuma Toon not Funny: September 9, 2008. The Sunday Independent: I Did it in Good Faith, says Zapiro: 14 September 2008. Mail & Guardian: Time for a Cold Shower, 12-18 September 2008. Sunday Times: Letter from Thabelo Lebona, 14 September, 2008. Sunday Times: Letter from Peter Cownie, September 14, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Letter from Ndo Mangala, September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Letter from Kirsten Zissimides, September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Letter from David Le Page, September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Letter from Evyl Shnukums, September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Letter from Mokone Molete, September 12-18, 2008. Mail & Guardian: Anger at Big Daddy Zuma Grows, 5-11 February 2010. Internet Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article/1254748/Jacob, Accessed, 17 March 2010. Glenda Daniels is a final year PhD researcher in the Political Studies Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been a newspaper journalist for the past 20 years but has taken some time out to be involved in academe on a topic which is her burning passion: The media’s role in South Africa’s transitional democracy.

Democracy in Silence: Speaking, Silence and the Saturday Vigils in Turkey Zeynep Gülru Göker Abstract Starting with an assertion that democratic theory has to pay attention to the formation of democratic subjectivities in actual practices, this paper focuses on a silent demonstration that took place in Turkey to discuss the notion of silence visà-vis democratic theory, especially in its deliberative and agonistic manifestations. Vis-à-vis silence, the paper discusses the notion of speaking and its association with democracy and the experience of democratic citizenship. The paper aims to show that a positive discussion of silence largely misses from democratic theory while democratic citizenship is implicitly equated with speaking, either as reasoned speech or as the manifestation of the excluded voice. The paper suggests that it is possible to frame silence in a political way such that it constitutes a democratic engagement and demonstrates that democratic subjectivities are also formed in actions and places that are largely overlooked. The investigation of the Saturday Vigils, held by the relatives of the disappeared-under-arrest between 1995 and 1999, confirms that silence does not necessarily represent compliance or a deadend in communication but carries the potential to turn into democratic engagements, opening up spaces for active listening and plurality, especially in contexts where speech is burdened with barren dichotomies, as well as in expressions of the unspeakable. Especially in such politics of mourning, or vigils which implicitly invite gendered analyses of democracy and militarism, it is seen that the presence of women in the public space challenges the association of certain values with the private realm as mothers display them as democratic tools in the public sphere, hence constituting a gendered response to the militarization of everyday life that limits the experience of democratic citizenship. Key Words: Democracy, deliberation, silence, militarism, Saturday vigils, Turkey. ***** 1. Introduction Democratic theory often discusses democracy in abstract while the discussion of concrete cases where democratic institutions are vulnerable largely takes place within the area studies and transitions literature. Although fixing a meaning to democracy is impossible the very struggle to achieve it shall not be undermined.1 Derrida’s notion of democracy-to-come perfectly captures the urgency of democracy to the present with its implication that democracy embeds a promise established in the past that negotiations will never close in the future.2 Especially in contexts where the institutionalization of rights itself is largely incomplete,

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__________________________________________________________________ discussion of democracy itself becomes crucial. Democracy requires democratic subjectivities, hence it is necessary to look for democratic engagements in places and forms under-theorized, such as in political actions framed in silence. This paper suggests a discussion of the notion of silence vis-à-vis democratic theory to call for an expansion of existing notions of democratic expression. I argue that silence can be framed politically to constitute democratic engagements as seen in the example of the Saturday Vigils in Turkey, held by the relatives of the disappeared-under-arrest every Saturday in the period between 1995-1999. 2. Democracy and Speech From Aristotle to contemporary democratic theory political actors have been conceived as speaking actors. Aristotle’s political animals are speaking animals3; Arendt’s public sphere is marked by words.4 Human beings are by nature political animals more than any other creature because it is human beings alone who possess speech.5 Citizens participate in office to deliberate about things which are in their control and attainable by action.6 Arendt stated that speech and only speech makes sense in the polis, where all citizens to talk to each other; a life without speech and action is like living in a dead world.7 Speech, understood as an act of disclosure, becomes the means through which actors appear in public to give an account of themselves and create an in-between.8 Such intersubjectivity is also the centerpiece of Habermas’s theory of democracy. In his formulation of communicative reason, Habermas defines the site of rationality as intersubjective, linguistic communication.9 Speech geared towards understanding, with the necessity of orienting oneself towards ‘criticizible validity claims’10 inspires contemporary accounts of the deliberative model of democracy.11 Deliberative democracy rests on the idea that legitimacy of decisions should be driven from public deliberation.12 Procedures that enable free and open participation of all those affected convey legitimacy to decisions and enable consensus among various views. Although the deliberative model, driven from Habermasian discourse ethics is suggested narrowly as a theory of political legitimacy, where the ‘ideal speech situation’ is conceived as a regulative idea,13 informed public discussion understood as public reason giving constitutes a narrow framing of democratic communication. Where this attraction to speech comes from is one of the questions that inspired this project initially. Habermas explains an ideal community as one in which all dispute is settled without violence because the community uses discursive means of will- and opinion- formation to settle conflicts.14 Why is it that the spoken word replaces violence or is assumed to replace violence? Does this assumption also take into consideration the violence within language and more specifically the violence of and within words such that a performative theory of speech manifests?15 I aim to direct attention to the possibility that silence may not merely be the end result of violence, but can also constitute a powerful response to it. The idea that weapons

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__________________________________________________________________ start where words end, where convincing fails, is a familiar idea yet one should be careful against solely understanding silence as the loss of communication. When posited solely as the lamentable consequence of the failure or the repression of speech, silence is conceived as the binary other of speech. This dichotomous thinking also puts a teleological burden on speech as truth revealing and emancipating, which does not take power dynamics within language seriously, nor the ways in which the idea of emancipation through speech carries its own tools of subjugation.16 Chambers acknowledges this possible poststructuralist critique and admits that even if we do not fight, we might still bash each other over the head with words,17 however she believes that persuasion has to be defended over coercion because it allows for public defense via rational discussion. Yet the opportunity to make use of that also requires the ability to express oneself in reasoned speech and moreover, the ability to be heard and listened to, which is a point often raised in criticisms of the deliberative model. When certain modes and forms of expression, which are – dispassionate, orderly and articulate – are valorized over others they in turn lead to the exclusion of those who cannot express themselves as such, those who are already underprivileged in society and politics. 18 Moreover, the necessity to give defendable public reasons also paves the way to the critique of deliberative democracy as cold and un-political and dismissive of passions and affects.19In any communication structural inequalities and epistemological authority will determine not only who makes the better argument but also who will be listened to.20 As women of color have shown, speaking freely and openly has different meanings for those coming from oppressed groups.21 As hooks argues, especially in the U.S. the idea of ‘finding a voice’ risks being romanticized in the rhetoric of those who advocate a shallow feminist politics which privileges the ‘act of speaking’ over the content of speech turning the voices of the non-white women into a spectacle.22 Hence it is necessary to be cautious against holding speech as a measure of democracy and inclusion, yet we should also refrain from holding silence as the antithesis of speech; silence has been so commonly set in opposition to speech that silence as a will not to say or a will to unsay, as a language on its own, has never been questioned.23 Why would actors enter into dialogue? Curiously enough, not many defenders of deliberation have asked this question. The very avoidance of the question also shows how much speech and the ability as well as the willingness to speak up is taken for granted. In terms of the matter of joining communication, Habermas argues that it is in fact not a matter of choice, as we all are already soaked in the communicative practices of everyday life.24 An enlarged understanding of communication which does not narrow communication down to speaking should also leave room for silence. Radical/agonistic democrats focus on the importance of the creation of democratic subjectivities and a democratic ethos, conceiving democracy as an ongoing process. The subversive potential of democracy becomes visible in radical democracy25 when democratic engagement is understood as the

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__________________________________________________________________ extension of demands of the subordinate against oppression, defined by Laclau as the equivalences established between people’s claims; claims that are formed when people’s demands are ignored or not responded to. 26 Claim making creates new subjectivities, as a democratic subject emerges in and through the process of making claims.27 The question I would like to propose is that if we are to understand the creation of democratic identifications through claim making, can we think of ways in which claim making takes a non-verbal form? Furthermore, can democratic engagements take place through the avoidance of claim making? In the next section, I will briefly discuss silence vis-à-vis the Saturday Vigils that took place in Turkey in 1995-1999. 3. Democracy in Silence Ordinary language contains the richness of the unsaid, there is unsaid in what is said.28 Kleinberg-Levin argues that in every discursive situation there are consonances and dissonances, the spoken and those that remain unspoken, where speech denies or where speech is afraid to say so requires listening between the lines.29 ‘Silence is our listening openness: in order to hear something, we must first give it our silence.’30 Thus Kleinberg-Levin argues that we need to cultivate silence. What I suggest is to think about silence as an intersubjective and communicative experience; the ways in which it becomes possible to frame silence in a political way; where performative, active silences bring about a democratic engagement and a notion of responsibility through presence; that is why I choose to focus on vigils. The Saturday Vigils, held by the relatives of the disappearedunder-arrest in Turkey in 1995-1999 is an example of a democratic action framed in silence.31 Accompanied by a small group of human rights activists, relatives of the disappeared, most of whom were Kurdish women, made an ad-hoc decision to meet every Saturday at a central square in Istanbul, to hold a silent vigil for half an hour.32 Kayılı states that they wanted to take an action in which anyone could participate. Ethnic, religious, cultural identities or political leanings of the disappeared should not be the matter, what mattered was that they were disappeared and anyone who wished to participate could go and join.33Their four years long presence in Galatasaray Square brought the issue into public and international perspective34 and enabled the formation of deep and lasting political bonds as the vigils became the longest lasting act of civil disobedience in Turkey, opening up an essential space in contentious practice. During this period of four years Galatasaray had become more than a space for protest but a space for mourning for those who did not know where to go. With increasing international and national attention directed towards the vigils, the state which was reluctant at first to take notice of the actions soon started taking harsh measures, violently repressing the vigils every Saturday; hence on the 200th week the participants made a joint decision to suspend their action.35 Tanrıkulu states: ‘they used silence to

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__________________________________________________________________ have their voices heard.’ 36 Mater, one of the initial organizers of the vigils explains this choice as: Silence is very important. Thinking about our initial worries, if we were to allow noises then it would be hard to perceive what would be voiced there. Silence actually shouts the action you want to make in a better way.37 What is seen here is the political framing of silence. Such silent framings become noticeable especially in contexts where the existing language is trapped within barren dichotomies – such as nationalist or separatist, Turkish or Kurdish or in situations where expression within the given discourses is difficult given the pervasiveness of militarism and violence.38 Saturday People/Mothers39 present one example of such direct, unmediated democratic action, which challenges the gendered limits of citizenship and women’s role in politics and in the militarization of everyday life.40 The traditional association of silence with mourning and death does not necessarily make silence a negative, which is why it is important to look at the ways in which people respond to extreme violence in democratic ways. In such protests or performative politics of mourning we can see similar framings in silence.. As seen in a description by Women in Black41: We chose not to speak excessive words, and therefore we think that it is important to express and experience these feelings and experiences with silence. With silence like a protest here from where the war is waged, a visible silence like a cry and a warning. With silence and black we also want to speak shame and compassion.42 Corradi-Fiumara argues that listening silence gives space to the inexpressible.43 In this case it is the state inflicted violence that neither the state can admit nor the participants of the vigils could express. Hence the silence also reflects the ambivalence of the situation, particularly that of the relationship between the state and its citizens, especially with those at the margins.44 The uncanny quality to silence marks that ambivalent relationship between the citizens and the state in a context where the state itself is the projector of violence. Silence, unlike speech, is not revealing, yet symbolically powerful; hence it is neither the representation of the voice of the excluded in a heroic fashion, nor a direct confrontation with the state, yet creates an important symbolic realm. Corradi-Fiumara talks about a ‘dialogical patience’ which accompanies silence as a necessary part of communication.45 As she states: ‘we might even understand it to mean that only when we know how to be silent will that of which we cannot speak being to tell us something.’46 Silence allows for such kind of listening openness and creates a gap,

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__________________________________________________________________ a space, which is required for the creation of shared meanings and understanding. That is why it is important to avoid treating silence only as a symbol of repression and subordination or the result of shying away from ‘heroic speech,’ but instead recognize it as part and parcel of communication and sometimes the very condition of any meaningful speech and discussion that is to come. That is why I focus on a political framing of silence, especially as it takes the form of a performative politics of presence, because in such moments silence creates a pause, for the ones who are silent and for the onlookers, the passer-by, as well as the state/police forces. Not only does it allow a kind of collective intimacy, but also allows for a moment of pause for those who contemplate about the issue and these vigils, namely, the story-tellers who are the real narrators of political actions, according to Arendt.47 Such that when I focus on the expression of violence inflicted yet unacknowledged by an authoritarian and militaristic state, asking the question ‘how silence expresses the unspeakable through presence,’ I aim to show the possibility of democratic opening and action where existing linguistic and political frameworks are inadequate for the expression of certain emotions. 4. Conclusion Rational communication processes offer important venues for the formation of democrats, so do social movements that resist oppression. Democrats require constant persuasion to stay as democrats.48 When understood beyond the name of a regime, democracy necessitates attention to the formation of subjectivities in practice. In this paper I suggested that this formation could take place in multiple ways, one of which, currently under-theorized, is silence. In politics of mourning and movements against militarism, in which women play an important role, performative silences act out as gendered responses underlining the links between democracy, militarism and language. Silence, traditionally associated with death and the termination of communication, allows openness, pluralism and listening crucial to any democratic communication. I would like to conclude stressing once again that I do not wish to valorize silence neither present it as an alternative to speech or deliberation; in fact, I wish to point out that they should not be thought of in dichotomous ways. Yet I also do not think that silent protests are just another form of political protest that do not deserve any special attention. The silence that is employed to politically frame an action also makes us question the taken for granted quality of speech to political and specifically democratic theory.

Notes C Mouffe, On the Political, Routledge, London; New York, 2005. J Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2005. 3 Aristotle, E Barker & RF Stalley, Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford & 1 2

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__________________________________________________________________ New York, 1998. 4 H Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958. 5 Aristotle, Politics, p. 11. 6 Aristotle, WD Ross, JO Urmson & JL Ackrill, Nichomachean Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York; Oxford, 1998, p. 55. 7 Arendt, p. 27. 8 ibid, p. 183. 9 J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol I., Beacon Press, Boston, 1984. 10 J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol II., Beacon Press, Boston, 1987, p. 149. 11 S Benhabib, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996. J Bohman, et. al., Deliberative Democracy Essays on Reason and Politics, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997; S Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1996; and J Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996. 12 Bohman & Regh. 13 Benhabib, loc. cit. 14 Chambers, loc. cit. 15 J Butler, Excitable Speech: a Politics of the Performative, Routledge, New York & London, 1997. 16 P Bourdieu & JB Thompson, Language and Symbolic Power, Polity in association with Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1991; W Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2005; M Foucault & J Pearson, Fearless Speech, Semiotext, [Distributed by MIT Press], Los Angeles, CA, 2001; and M Kohn, ‘Language, Power and Persuasion’, Constellations, Vol. 7, no. 3, 2000, pp. 408-429. 17 Chambers, op. cit., p. 7. 18 IM Young, Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Also see L Sanders, ‘Against Deliberation’, Political Theory, Vol. 25, no. 3, 1997, pp. 347-376. 19 See B Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2006 and Young, Inclusion and Democracy, for a critique of the dichotomy between deliberation and rhetoric. See also N Urbinati, ‘Unpolitical Democracy’, Political Theory, Vol. 38, no. 1, 2010, pp. 65-92. Urbinati warns against the tendency of the strategic use of deliberation as an antidote against democracy. She is skeptical of contemporary attempts that prioritize good decision making and impartiality, which hold truth against passion, rhetoric, the partisan, and hence the political. From a different perspective, Mouffe,

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__________________________________________________________________ On the Political, also criticizes the deliberative model arguing that procedures are necessary yet not adequate, the availability of democratic outlets for passions and affects are crucial for democracy. She conceives of these identifications in the form of resistance and dissidence and calls this model of democracy ‘agonistic pluralism’ which entails a conception of democratic citizenship that take many forms beyond mere reason giving and of democratic conflict that take place between adversaries. 20 Sanders, p. 349. 21 B Hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, South End Press, Boston, Ma., 1989. 22 Ibid., p. 14. 23 M Trinh, ‘Not You/Like You: Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference’, Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color, Aunt Lute Foundation Books, San Fransisco, 1990, pp. 371-375. 24 J Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, p. 100. 25 E Laclau & C Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, Verso, London, 1985. 26 E Laclau, On Populist Reason, Verso, London; New York, 2005. 27 Laclau, p. 171. 28 D Ihde, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2007: 1976, p. 165. 29 DM Kleinberg-Levin, The Listening Self: Personal Growth, SocialChange, and the Closure of Metaphysics, Routledge, London; New York, 1989, p. 195. 30 Kleinberg-Levin, p. 232. Also see S Bickford, Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship: The Dissonance of Democracy, Cornell UP, Ithaca, London, 1996 for her discussion of listening as a democratic virtue. 31 The problem of disappearance under arrest started to get public awareness in the aftermath of the 1980 military intervention when the security forces arrested thousands of people to ‘restore public order.’ Political unrest mounted in the southeastern provinces between the security forces and Kurdish organizations especially after 1983. Most of the disappeared are Kurdish citizens arrested for political reasons. 32 They were inspired by the Argentinean mothers/grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who had held similar vigils every Thursday at 3:30 PM in Buenos Aires, for the disappeared-under-arrest under the junta regime that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. 33 E Kayılı, ‘Çıplak’ itaatsizlik olarak ‘cumartesi anneleri’, Kamusal Alan, Hil, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, 2004, p. 350.

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__________________________________________________________________ 34

With the awareness created international human rights organizations started pressuring Turkish politicians about the disappearances. 35 In the last thirty weeks human rights violations against the participants had reached a significant threshold with 431 people arrested, 40 put on trial, and sometimes kept in custody as long as five days. In 2009, the vigils started once again. The discussions about a democratic opening with respect to the Kurdish issue and the Ergenekon trial that investigates coup d’état plots and contra-guerrilla organizing within cadres of social, political and military elites in Turkey have brought the issue of disappearance onto the agenda once again. This paper only focuses on the first period of the vigils. 36 N Tanrıkulu, ‘Bizde yok!’, Toplumsal Hareketler Konuşuyor, Alan, Cağlıoğlu, Istanbul, 2003, pp. 275-292. 37 Personal communication with Nadire Mater conducted on June 9, 2009. 38 Performative framings of silence in similar authoritarian or militarized settings take the form of politics of mourning, such as the Mourning Mothers in Iran, Saturday Vigils in Turkey, or movements against war and militarism such as the Women in Black vigils in Israel and Belgrade. The analysis of these movements require a gender lens because even when the participants are not all women, dominant discourses tend to attribute such movements to crying women and mothers alone. Hence they are either downplayed with the assumption that women are doing what is expected of them, or paradoxically, degraded because women exceed the boundaries of proper femininity/motherhood. The ambivalence of the state and militarist discourses in the treatment of such actions is a significant acknowledgment of the ways in which the actions constitute powerful gendered responses to the militarization of everyday life. Moreover, these actions challenge the traditional association of values and practices such as mourning and care with the private sphere and hence their depoliticization, and instead underline their gender-free democratic character. 39 They wanted to call themselves the Saturday People but mainstream media coined the name Saturday Mothers although there were men among them. 40 As part of an effort to discredit the actions of the Saturday People/Mothers, mainstream and nationalist media presented mothers of the martyred soldiers - died in armed combat with Kurdish organizations - as Friday Mothers to celebrate one form of motherhood over its ‘others’. The very juxtaposition sheds light on how crucial women’s actions and conceptions of gender are to the continuation of militaristic politics and militarism as a discourse. 41 After the Palestinian Intifada in 1988, Women in Black, a group of women in Israel, started holding weekly vigils against the occupation. Today it has turned into a global network of women’s peace and antimilitarist activism. 42 Women in Black Belgrade in V Pavlovic, Zene u Cronom [Women in Black], Standard 2, Belgrade, 2002, p. 62.

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__________________________________________________________________ 43

G Corradi-Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening, Routledge, London; New York, 1990, p. 98. 44 For a discussion of how the state itself becomes an object of ambivalence through the coexistence of violence with paternalism see B Aretxaga, ‘Maddening States’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 32, 2003, pp. 393-410. W Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1995. 45 Corradi-Fiumara, p. 98. 46 ibid, p. 99. 47 Arendt. 48 A Norval, ‘Democratic Identification: A Wittgensteinian Approach’, Political Theory, Vol. 34, no. 2, 2006, p. 250; also see A Norval, Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York, 2007.

Bibliography Arendt, H., The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958. Aretxaga, B., ‘Maddening States’. Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 32, 2003, pp. 393-410. Aristotle, Barker, E. & Stalley, R.F., Politics. Oxford University Press Oxford & New York, 1998. Aristotle, Ross, W.D., Urmson, J.O. & Ackrill, J.L., The Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1998. Benhabib, S., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996. Bickford, S., Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship: The Dissonance of Democracy. Cornell UP, Ithaca, London, 1996. Bohman, J. Et. al., Deliberative Democracy Essays on Reason and Politics. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997. Bourdieu, P. & Thompson, J.B., Language and Symbolic Power. Polity in association with Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1991.

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__________________________________________________________________ Brown, W., States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1995. —, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2005. Butler, J. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. Routledge, New York & London, 1997. Chambers, S., Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1996. Corradi-Fiumara, G., The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening. Routledge. London; New York, 1990. Derrida, J., Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2005. Foucault, M. & Pearson, J., Fearless Speech. Semiotext, [Distributed by MIT Press], Los Angeles, CA, 2001. Garsten, B., Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol I. Beacon Press, Boston, 1984. —, The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol II. Beacon Press, Boston, 1987. —, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990. —, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory ofLaw and Democracy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996. Hooks, B., Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. South End Press, Boston, MA, 1989. Ihde, D., Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Kayılı, E., ‘Çıplak’ itaatsizlik olarak ‘cumartesi anneleri’, Kamusal Alan, Hil, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, 2004. Kohn, M., ‘Language, Power and Persuasion’. Constellations. Vol. 7, No. 3, 2000, pp. 408-429. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C., Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, London, 1985. —, On Populist Reason. London. Verson, New York, 2005. Mouffe, C. On the Political. Routledge, London & New York, 2005. Norval, A., ‘Democratic Identification: A Wittgensteinian Approach’. Political Theory. Vol. 34, No. 2, 2006, pp. 229-255. —, Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York, 2007. Pavlovic, V., Zene u cronom [Women in Black]. Standard 2, Belgrade, 2002. Sanders, L., ‘Against Deliberation’. Political Theory. Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, pp. 347-376. Tanrıkulu, N., ‘Bizde yok!’, Toplumsal Hareketler Konuşuyor, Alan Cağlıoğlu, Istanbul, 2003. Trinh, M., ‘Not You/Like You: Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference’. Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras, Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color. Aunt Lute Foundation Books, San Francisco, 1990. Urbinati, N., ‘Unpolitical Democracy’. Political Theory. Vol. 38, No. 1, 2010, pp. 65-92. Young, I.M., Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Zeynep Gülru Göker is a PhD Candidate in the department of political science at City University of New York Graduate Center.

The Controversy of Muslim Education in an Austrian Democracy Cornelia Caseau Abstract At the beginning of 2009, a Lebanese researcher living in Vienna, Mouhanad Khorchide, published a dissertation which caused a scandal. Khorchide revealed that 21.9% of Islamic teachers in Austria refuse to teach democratic values because of their incompatibility with Islam. This exposure was very shocking, because for nearly one century, Austria has been proud to maintain a privileged relationship with its Muslim community (Bosnia-Herzegovina had been occupied by the Habsburg Empire in 1879 and annexed in 1908). In 1912 the ‘Islamgesetz’, the ‘Islam Law’, was adopted, recognizing it as a religious community and guaranteeing Muslims their right to self-determination. Especially through education (Austria is the first European country to have introduced Islamic religious instruction in public schools in 1982), the government wanted to show its openness towards Muslim immigrants. In my paper, I will analyze the role of Muslim education in Austrian democracy and Khorchide’s revelation of certain points of incompatibility. Then I will show Austria’s concept of democracy today and the place taken by the Muslim minority. My last point will treat the reactions and solutions adopted with regard to undemocratic thinking in Islamic education. Key Words: Austrian democracy, FPÖ, IGGiÖ, Islamgesetz, Islamic education, Khorchide. ***** 1. Introduction In my paper I will talk about the publication of the dissertation of Mouhanad Khorchide, a Lebanese researcher, teacher and Imam, living in Vienna, and the controversy it caused.1 In his book, published at the beginning of 2009, and entitled Der islamische Religionsunterricht zwischen Integration und Parallelgesellschaft, ‘Islamic religious education between integration and parallel society’ he revealed, that 21.9 % of Islamic teachers in Austria refuse to teach democratic values because they believe these values to be incompatible with Islam. As the exposure of Khorchide confirmed a suspicion, stirred up by the Populist right wing Party FPÖ several years earlier, the public reactions in Austria were thus extremely vehement. Political parties and Liberal Muslims demanded a reform and a supervision of Muslim education in public schools. Muslims represent 400,000 people out of a total number of 8.3 million inhabitants. Statistik Austria estimates there will be an increase to 500,000 in 2011.2 Certain journalists think that Islam already occupies the second place among the religious communities after

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__________________________________________________________________ Catholicism and before Protestantism. In 2001, according to the national census, Protestants held the 2nd place. As conveying democratic values in religious education is an essential element for a successful integration of the Muslim minority into Austrian society, the question of teaching has thus to be treated with an absolute priority. This paper will analyse the role of Muslim education in Austrian democracy and Khorchide’s revelation of certain points of incompatibility. Then I will show Austria’s idea of democracy today and the place taken by the Muslim minority. My last point will treat the reactions and solutions adopted with regard to undemocratic thinking in Islamic education. 2. The Controversy of Muslim Education in a Democratic Society In Austria, religious education is a part of the national education system, and religion plays an important role in everyday life. Currently, 13 religious communities are recognized by the Austrian government, and 11 of them provide religious education in public schools.3 Islamic education was introduced in 1982 thanks to the collaboration between the Austrian State and the IGGiÖ, the Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, the ‘Islamic religious community of Austria’. This organisation, officially recognized by the Austrian government, was founded in 1979 and theoretically represents all Austrian Muslims. Austria was the first European state to introduce Islamic teaching in the German language in public schools.4 The government provides only the infrastructure such as for example the school buildings and the teachers’ salaries, and approves or disapproves the curriculum. Whereas, the IGGiÖ is responsible for the elaboration of the course contents, the choice of the teachers and their inspection.5 This is in contrast to Germany, where the Federal Republic and the Lands have the entire responsibility for teaching, and where an institution such as the IGGiÖ doesn’t exist.6 The Austrian system gives a lot of autonomy to religious communities, which includes, certainly, the risk of abuse.7 On the other hand, the relative independence of public education avoids children being sent to Koranic schools, reputed to be less open to occidental values.8 Since 1982, Islamic education is a required subject at public schools, but pupils have the right to withdraw their participation at the beginning of the school year (about 50% do it). In 2005, the IGGiÖ had included about 350 teachers for 40,000 Muslim pupils and 2700 schools throughout the whole country.9 When Islamic public education started, the lack of qualified teachers and teaching material constituted a major problem which still continues. Austrian-born Islamic teachers, very often students in other fields, did not have a sufficient academic religious education, and teachers coming from Turkey, did not speak enough German, or were not familiar with occidental culture. Since 1998, teachers have been educated by the IRPA, the Islamische Religionspädagogische Akademie, the ‘Islamic Academy for Religious Education’, and since 2003 by the IRPI, the Islamisches Religionspädagogisches Institut. To

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__________________________________________________________________ cover the need for well-educated higher level teachers, the University of Vienna proposes since 2006 studies for Islamic religious education at high schools.10 All these enhancements were intended to improve the quality of teaching, but, apparently, were not sufficient to prevent cases of undemocratic thinking. In June 2007, with the agreement of the IGGiÖ, Mouhanad Khorchide carried out his study among 250 Islamic teachers in Austria, most of them living in Vienna.11 As Islamic teachers play an important role for the integration of Muslim pupils in Austrian society (they are the first addressed in case of problems, and must have a very high social competence), Khorchide wanted to show, how the claims of the IGGiÖ concerning this integration are put into practice.12 He made a detailed comparison and analysis between the aims of the IGGiÖ, and the statements of the teachers. When we consider, that the slogan of the IGGiÖ is: Integration durch Partizipation, ‘Integration by participation’, many of the answers were very satisfying, as for example the question of the integration of Muslim teachers in Austrian society:   

73.8 % consider Austria as their new homeland 77.2 % see themselves as a part of Austrian society 86.1 % think that it is important that Muslims try to become part of Austrian society without losing their Islamic identity

For the critics however, the most important result of Khorchide’s work was the revelation that 21.9% of the interviewed teachers refuse to teach democratic ideals because of its incompatibility with Islam. This can be seen in headlines such as ‘Jeder fünfte Islamlehrer lehnt Demokratie ab’ (Every fifth Islamic teacher refuses democracy).13 When we look for the controversial sentence presented in the study we read the statement: ‘I refuse democracy because of its incompatibility with the Islam.’ Questioned teachers had to choose among 4 possible responses, and the result was the following: 1) 2) 3) 4)

I totally agree (with the incompatibility of democracy and Islam): 7.1 % I somewhat agree: 14.8 % I do not really agree: 14.8 % I do not agree at all: 63.3 % 14

Among all the positive answers, it can be established that 78.1 % identify themselves with democratic values. More disturbing were the facts that 27.1% of the teachers refuse the Declaration of Human Rights because of its incompatibility with the Islam, and 18.2 % accept the death penalty for people breaking with Islam. In these fields, there are undoubtedly big efforts to be undertaken so that teachers might transfer more democratic values to their pupils. With all the

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__________________________________________________________________ discussions about the lack of democratic thinking among Islamic teachers (and this is the danger of the current discussion in Austria) it is possible to sometimes forget, that Islam and democracy are not necessarily incompatible. According to the Iranian Advocate and Nobel peace prize winner of 2003, Chirin Ebadi, for modern Muslims, there is no incompatibility between democracy and the Islam.15 3. The Conception of Democracy in Modern Austria and the Consequences for the Integration of Muslims Given these revelations it might be interesting to examine how the Catholic majority of the Austrian population identifies itself with democracy. Austria is often called the Alpenrepublik, the ‘Alps republic’, or Die Insel der Seligen, the ‘Island of the Blessed’, and the Austrians are very proud of their small country. 16 The Alpenrepublik was the part of Austria left after the breakdown of the farreaching and powerful Danubian Monarchy, which many people did not consider capable of surviving.17 The term of the ‘Island of the Blessed’, probably made allusion to the general performance of this country after World War II, its particular position in Central Europe, at the Western side of the Iron Curtain, and its status of eternal neutrality.18 The importance of democracy for this country (in a different meaning than in the countries of the neighbouring Eastern Bloc) and the fact, that the Austrian people love democracy has thus always been emphasized by politicians.19 What is a democratic country? A definition given by the Austrian Political Encyclopedia says: Democratic countries are those states who protect and support fundamental rights and Human rights and who make sure that all people living in one state have the same rights and duties, but also the same possibilities, and equal opportunities.20 The majority must not decide on the rights of the minorities, and must not abolish Human rights.21 In 2000, after the Parliamentary Elections and the building of the new government coalition with the Right-wing-political party FPÖ under its head Jörg Haider, Austria was accused by the European Union of undemocratic actions. Through sanctions against this country, the European Union wanted to present itself as a community for the defence of democratic values. Three experts were sent to Vienna, to examine the situation regarding democracy there, but the sanctions were finished some months later, without particular results.22 So much for politics, what about outside the political realm? A recent study on the importance of democracy for the Austrian population shows an unexpected result.23 The European Value Study, also carried out by other European countries, has been conducted in Austria with 1,500 adults between July and October 2008. The central themes were: the role of work and profession, relationships, family, religion and politics. In spite of their prosperity, (according to a study of the World

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__________________________________________________________________ Bank in 2005, Austria is the seventh richest country in the world) Austrians are not satisfied.24 The Austrian Value study published under the title Die Österreicher innen. Wertewandel 1990-2008 by Christian Friesl, Regina Polak and Ursula Hamachers-Zuba, shows that the disenchantment with politics is considerable.25 Only 54 % of the population approves of Austrian democracy, whereas 46 % are unsatisfied. Particularly among young people, the lack of interest in politics is alarming, and the desire for a ‘strong individual leader’ is very present.26 One of the reasons for the disenchantment towards politics might be that some necessary reforms in healthcare, pensions and educational policy have been announced a long time ago without ever having been carried out.27 It is possible to compare the situation with the one described by Jürgen Habermas speaking about Europe: ‘The citizens despise their own politicians who promise many things, but who have no perspective and change nothing.’28 Austria might be, according to Colin Crouch a post democracy with institutions which do not interest people.29 In any case we can determine that the discontent with democracy, the right political orientation and the lack of interest in politics correlate with a claim for a stricter migration policy.30 This latter is the crucial point, where Austrian right-wingparties find their followers.31 Even if the different religious communities try to form common integration concepts for the Muslim minority by confirming ‘Österreich ist ein Zuwanderungsland’, ‘Austria is an immigration country’,32 the FPÖ, the so-called ‘liberal’ party, has based its election campaigns on its open hostility against Muslims by choosing election slogans such as Wien darf nicht Istanbul werden, ‘Vienna must not become Istanbul’, or Pummerin statt Muezzin, ‘the ringing of the Pummerin, the famous and symbolic bell of St Stephens Cathedral in Vienna, instead of the call of the muezzin’ for the local elections in Vienna in 2005, or Daham statt Islam, for the parliamentary elections in 2006.33 Daham is the word in Austrian dialect for ‘at home’, in opposition to Islam as both these words rhyme in German. The last slogan for the elections of the European Parliament in 2009 was Abendland in Christenhand , ‘the Occident in the hands of Christians.’34 These slogans were displayed throughout the country, so that anti-Muslim thinking and discourse became socially acceptable, even beyond the traditional electorate of this party.35 Werner Perger, in the weekly paper Die Zeit, speaks of a ‘desensitizing’ with regard to intolerance and xenophobia.36 Consequently, young people, who have the right to vote at the age of 16, consider the two right-wing parties FPÖ and BZÖ in the same way as other political parties- an alarming sign for democracy.37 Even if the FPÖ doesn’t represent the majority, its influence and pressure on public opinion and the current government coalition is so strong, that the rights of the minority, guaranteed in the previously quoted definition, risks being affected.38 The weakening of these rights would correspond to a curtailing of democratic rights in a multicultural society.39 The claims of philosophers such as Arendt, Lévinas, Waldenfels or Habermas, who wish to include difference, to

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__________________________________________________________________ accept difference and pluralism and to find our identity thanks to this difference, would not be respected.40 4. The Reactions and Solutions adopted with Regard to Undemocratic Thinking in Islamic Education The Islamgesetz, the ‘Islam Law’, of 1912, (passed and completed by the Religionsgesetz 1949)41 determines, that only teachings and customs would be tolerated and protected, which might not be in contradiction with official national law.42 Many Islamic teachers had declined to participate in Khorchide’s study because of the suggestive formulation of some of his questions.43 As a result the general condemnation of Islamic teachers in Austria shocked those who were not involved. The ILMÖ, the Initiative liberaler Muslime Österreichs ‘The initiative of liberal Muslims in Austria’ asked for the dismissal of the president of the IGGiÖ, Anas Schakfeh, and the supervision of Islamic teachers by the Ministry of Education.44 It also demanded the dissolution of the IGGiÖ and its divisions, and the creation of a new, more democratic structure. Concerning Khorchide’s study with regard to democratic deficiency in teaching, Ednan Aslan, professor at the IRPI and at the University for Educational Sciences at the University of Vienna, furnished an analysis. For him, there persists:  

the problem of elderly colleagues having come from nondemocratic countries in the 80s who are still not yet familiar with democratic values and to question if the theology taught at the Islamic Academy for Religious Education (IRPA) still corresponds to the challenge of the present. It should be modernized by the awareness for social values, migration, the new homeland and the equality between men and women.45

According to Ednan Aslan, the IGGiÖ must organize an Inner-Islamic, global discourse.46 As to the Austrian coalition government it was necessary to show its reactivity on this question and to take decisions rapidly. A five point programme was elaborated between Anas Schakfeh, the president of the IGGiÖ, and the Education Minister Claudia Schmied.47 The measures having been decided in February 2009, it was normal to expect some results in the following months. The Ministry of Education published a first report in May 2009, confirming, that the new curricula were transmitted to the Ministry which would examine the content formally and legally. The teaching material would be checked by an independent scientific committee, and teachers would have to prove knowledge of the German language at the standardized European B2 level. Those who do not reach this level have to attend language courses or to abandon education.48 The controversy about Muslim education seems to have already borne fruit.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Conclusion According to the previously given definition of democracy, people living in a country do not only have the same rights but also have the same duties. Consequently it seems logical, that the principles of a democratic teaching have to be respected, and that efforts have to be made to reach this goal. Ednan Aslan, editor of a comparative study of Islamic teaching in 25 European countries confirms, that the Austrian model, in spite of this controversy, may be considered as exemplary.49 We must hope, that the current measures undertaken by the Government and the IGGiÖ allow the reconciliation of Islamic and democratic thinking in the same way as Islam was compatible with the Austrian Monarchy one hundred years ago.

Notes 1

M Khorchide, Der islamische Religionsunterricht zwischen Integration und Parallelgesellschaft: Einstellungen der islamischen ReligionslehrerInnen an öffentlichen Schulen, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2009. 2 Islam in der österreichischen Gesellschaft: Referat zur Historikertagun, 2003, Viewed on 10th December 2009, http://www.derislam.at/islam.php?name=The men&pa=showpage&pid=58. 3 The eleven communities offering religious education are the following: The Roman-Catholic and Protestant Church: A.B. and H.B., the Methodist Church, the Islamic Community, the Israeli Religious Community, the Old-Catholic Church, the Greek-Orthodox Church, the Syrian-Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, the Armenian-Apostolic Church and the Buddhist Religious Community. Information found in, Religionsunterrricht, Elf Lehrangebote, viewed on 7th December 2009, http://www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/politik:innenpolitik/art385102762. 4 In the meantime, other countries have followed, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, and some Federal Lands in Germany, see: Khorchide, op.cit. p. 16. 5 ibid. p. 19. 6 ibid. p. 55. 7 ibid. p. 16. 8 ibid. p. 16. See also: A Strobel, ‘Einzigartiger rechtlicher Status: Die Muslime in Österreich’, Herder Korrespondenz, 2006, pp.200-204. 9 Website of the IGGiÖ, created on 7th May 2005 ‘Islamunterricht in Österreich’, Viewed on 20th December 2009, http://www.derislam.com/islam.php?name= Themen&pa=showpage&pid=154. 10 M Sticker, Sondermodell Österreich? Die Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich (IGGiÖ), Drava Verlag, Klagenfurt, Celovec, 2008, p. 65. 11 A Schakfeh, ‘Religionsunterricht in Österreich, Stellungnahme der Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft’, 29th January 2009, Viewed on 20th December 2009,

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__________________________________________________________________ http://www.derislam.at/haber.php?sid=157&mode=flat&order=1. ‘Festzuhalten ist, dass die Studie mit Zustimmung der Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft erfolgte.’ 12 Khorchide, op.cit. p.20, see the claims of the IGGiÖ on the Website, op.cit. 13 U Weinzierl, ‘Jeder fünfte Islamlehrer lehnt die Demokratie ab’, Die Welt, 6.3.2009, Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/chronik/ Jeder_5_Islamlehrer_lehnt_Demokratie_ab_422989.ece. 14 Khorchide, op.cit. pp.123-125. 15 Ch Ebadi, ‘La démocratie n’est pas un luxe à l’occidentale’, Le Monde, 29/04/2009. 16 O Panagl & P Gerlich (eds), Wörterbuch der politischen Sprache in Österreich, ÖBV, Wien, 2007, pp. 196-197. ‘Insel der Seligen’: Die Insel der Seligen’ was used by Pope Paul VI in 1971, at an audience for the Austrian President Franz Jonas in the Vatican. 17 Panagl, Gerlich ibid. pp.24-25 ‘Alpenrepublik’. 18 Panagl, Gerlich, ibid. pp.196-197. 19 ‘Das österreichische Volk liebt die Demokratie.’ Mediathek 10/11/2009, Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.mediathek.at/staatsvertrag/index_flash.php? flash=1. 20 ‘Als demokratische Länder werden jene Staaten bezeichnet, die einerseits Grundrechte sowie Menschenrechte schützen und vertreten und die andererseits dafür sorgen, dass alle in einem Staat lebenden Menschen die gleichen Rechte und Pflichten, aber auch die gleichen Möglichkeiten haben, dass also Chancengleichheit herrscht.’ Politiklexikon für junge Leute‚ Demokratie’, Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.politik-lexikon.at/demokratie/. 21 ibid. ‘So darf die Mehrheit nicht über Minderheitenrechte […] entscheiden, sie darf auch Menschenrechte nicht abschaffen.’ 22 WA Perger, ‘EU Sanktionen gegen Österreich. Erfolgreich gescheitert’, ZeitOnline 29/1/2010, Viewed on 30th January 2010, http://www.zeit.de/2010/05/ EU-Sanktionen-Haider?page=all. 23 Ch Friesl, R Polak & U Hamachers-Zuba (eds), Die Österreicher innen: Wertewandel 1990-2008, Czernin Verlag, Vienna, 2009. ‘The Austrians seen from the inside –change of values between 1990 and 2008’ 24 ibid. p.39. 25 ibid. p.18 ‘Die Politik-und PolitikerInnenverdrossenheit ist groβ, die Zufried enheit mit der Demokratie gering, demokratische Einstellungen brüchig, politische Partizipation keine Selbstverständlichkeit.’ 26 ibid. p.18. 27 H Hösele, ‘Baustelle Demokratie’. Wiener Zeitung, 3/10/2009. 28 Hösele, ibid. ‘Die Bürger verachten die eigenen Politiker, die vieles versprechen, aber ohne Perspektive sind und nichts mehr bewegen (können).’

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__________________________________________________________________ 29

Hösele, ibid. Allusion to Colin Crouch, Postdemokratie. Aus dem Englischen von Nikolaus Gramm. Edition suhrkamp 2540. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt/ Main 2008. 30 Friesl, Polak, Hamachers-Zuba, op. cit. p. 262, ‘So korreliert die Unzufriedenheit mit der Demokratie, rechte politische Ausrichtung, das Desinteresse an Politik sowie eine eher negative Beurteilung des österreichischen politischen Systems mit der Forderung nach einer strikteren Migrationspolitik.’ 31 There are two in Austria: the FPÖ (= Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) and the BZÖ= Bündnis Zukunft Österreich, founded by the former FPÖ leader Jörg Haider in 2005. 32 eko. Kirchen, ‘Österreich ist ein Zuwanderungsland’. Die Presse, 19/1/2008. 33 J Bunzl & F Hafez (eds), Islamophobie in Österreich, Studien Verlag, Innsbruck 2009, p.107. 34 ibid, p.106. 35 see also Friesl/Polak/Hamachers-Zuba, op. cit. p. 19. ‘Kontinuierliche Desensibilisierung in der Frage, wie Österreich mit Zuwanderern politisch, ökonomisch und gesellschaftlich umgeht, hat die xenophobe Migrationspolitik eines Jörg Haider auch auβerhalb des FPÖ/BZÖ-Klientels sozial akzeptabel werden lassen.’ 36 Perger, op.cit. ‘Desensibilisierung’. 37 M Kraske, ‘Österreich gewöhnt sich an das Prinzip Negerwitz’, ZeitOnline, 3/3/2010, Viewed on 4th March 2010, http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/201003/Europarat-Ruege-Oesterreich-Rassismus?page=all. 38 The FPÖ received 18 % of the votes at the last Parliamentary elections in 2008, and the other right wing party BZÖ, 11 %. 39 A Strobl, ‘Der österreichische Islam. Entwicklung, Tendenzen, Möglichkeiten’. SWS-Rundschau (45. Jg.) Heft 4/ 2005,Graz, pp.520-543. 40 L Lambrecht, in H.J.Sandkühler (eds), Enzyklopädie Philosophie, Bd. 1, Hamburg 1999. ‘Andersheit’einzubeziehen , Differenz und Pluralismus zu akzeptieren und in der Perspektive ‚Natalität’ zu denken, sowie Identität aus der Differenz zu gewinnen’ (Arendt, Lévinas, Waldenfels, Habermas). 41 Khorchide, op.cit. p.43. 42 Sticker, op.cit. p.34 ‘[…] dass nur jene Lehren, Einrichtungen und Gebräuche, die mit dem Staatsgesetz nicht in Widerspruch stehen, unter rechtlichen Schutz gestellt würden.’ 43 Archet, C. ‘Islam-Lehrer in Salzburg verunsichert’. Salzburger Fenster, May 2009, Viewed on 20th December 2009, http://www.salzburger-fenster.at/ rubrik/lokales/0509/islam-lehrer-in-salzburg-verunsichert_11598.html. Interview with the school inspector Tilman Schaible of Salzburg, ‘Denn Salzburger und Tiroler Lehrer lehnten die Beantwortung der Fragebögen ab, weil die Fragestellungen oft suggestiv gewesen seien […].’

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__________________________________________________________________ 44

B Ghessas, Pressemitteilung der ‘Initiative liberaler Muslime ÖsterreichsILMÖ’, 30th January 2009, Viewed on 31st January 2010, http://www.iidz. at/ilmoe.html. ‘Die islamischen Religionslehrer müssen direkt unter die Verantwortung der Unterrichtsministeriums und Landesschulrates wie alle anderen Lehrer gestellt werden.’ 45 M Zimmermann, ‘Kritik schadet Muslimen nicht’. Interview with Ednan Aslan. Salzburger Nachrichten, 29/1/ 2009. ‘Viele Kollegen, die in den 80er Jahren aus der Türkei, Ägypten oder anderen Ländern geholt wurden, haben Einstellungen, die nicht europa- und demokratiekonform sind. Zweitens sollte die Theologie, die an der Islamischen Religionspädagogischen Akademie gelehrt wir, reflektiert werden. Entspricht die Theologie des 8 und 9. Jahrhunderts den Herausforderungen der Gegenwart?’ 46 Interview with Ednan Aslan, ‘Islamische Erziehung in Europa’, Viewed on 9th January 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr6Mg3ZSCU&NR=1. ‘Manchmal tut Wissenschaft eben weh. […] Kritik schadet uns Muslimen nicht.’ 47 Islam-Lehrer in Salzburg verunsichert. Interview with Tilman Schaible, op.cit. 48 Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur- Stand der Umsetzung des Fünf-Punkte-Programms für den islamischen Unterricht, 5/5/2009, viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.bmukk.gv.at/ministerium/vp/pm/20090505.xml. 49 Aslan, op. cit.

Bibliography Aslan, E., ‘Islamische Erziehung in Europa’. Viewed on 9th January 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr6Mg3ZSCU&NR=1. Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur, ‘Stand der Umsetzung des Fünf-Punkte-Programms für den islamischen Unterricht’. 5/5/2009, Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.bmukk.gv.at/ministerium/vp/pm/20090505.xml. Bunzl, J. & Hafez, F. (eds), Innsbruck, 2009.

Islamophobie in Österreich. Studien Verlag,

Crouch, C., Postdemokratie. Aus dem Englischen von Nikolaus Gramm. Edition suhrkamp 2540. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt/ Main 2008. Ebadi, Ch., ‘La démocratie n’est pas un luxe à l’occidentale’. Le Monde. 29/4/2009. eko. Kirchen: ‘Österreich ist ein Zuwanderungsland’. Die Presse, 19/1/2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Freiheitlicher Parlamentsklub, Wir und der Islam. Freiheitliche Positionen zur Religionsfreiheit, zur islamischen Welt und zur Problematik des ZuwanderungsIslam in Europa.Wien, 22/1/2008. Friesl, C., Polak, R. & Hamachers-Zuba, U. (eds), Die Österreicher innen. Wertewandel 1990-2008. Czernin Verlag, Vienna, 2009. Ghessas, B., Pressemitteilung der Initiative liberaler Muslime Österreichs-ILMÖ. 30th January 2009, Viewed on 31st January 2010, http://www.iidz.at/ilmoe.html. Hösele, H., ‘Baustelle Demokratie’. Wiener Zeitung. 3/10/2009. IGGiÖ, Website, created on 7th May 2005 ‘Islamunterricht in Österreich’. Viewed on 20th December 2009. http://www.der islam.com/islam.php?name=Themen& pa=showpage&pid=154. Khorchide, M., Der islamische Religionsunterricht zwischen Integration und Parallelgesellschaft. Einstellungen der islamischen ReligionslehrerInnen an öffentlichen Schulen. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2009. Kraske, M., ‘Österreich gewöhnt sich an das Prinzip Negerwitz’. ZeitOnline. 3/3/2010, Viewed on 4th March 2010, http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/201003/Europarat-Ruege-Oesterreich-Rassismus?page=all. Lambrecht, L., in H.J.Sandkühler (ed.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie. Bd. 1, Hamburg, 1999. Panagl, O. & Gerlich, P. (eds), Wörterbuch der politischen Sprache in Österreich. ÖBV, Wien, 2007. Perger, W.A., ‘EU Sanktionen gegen Österreich. Erfolgreich gescheitert’. ZeitOnline. 29/1/2010, Viewed on 30th January 2010, http://www.zeit.de/2010/ 05/EU-Sanktionen-Haider?page=all. Politiklexikon für junge Leute: ‘Demokratie’. Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.politik-lexikon.at/demokratie/. Schakfeh, A., ‘Religionsunterricht in Österreich, Stellungnahme der Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft’. 29th January 2009, Viewed on 20th December 2009, http://www.derislam.at/haber.php?sid=157&mode=flat&order=1.

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__________________________________________________________________ Schmidinger, T. & Larise, D. (eds), Zwischen Gottesstaat und Demokratie. Handbuch des politischen Islam. Deuticke im Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Wien, 2008. Schmied, M., Islam in Österreich. Kapitel 11. Viewed on 7th December 2009, http://www.bmlv.gv.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/12_iie_islam_aut.pdf. Sticker, M., Sondermodell Österreich? Die Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich. (IGGiÖ). Drava Verlag, Klagenfurt, Celovec, 2008. Strobl, A., ‘Der österreichische Islam. Entwicklung, Tendenzen, Möglichkeiten’. SWS-Rundschau. (45. Jg.) Heft 4/ 2005,Graz, pp.520-543. Weinzierl, U., ‘Jeder fünfte Islamlehrer lehnt die Demokratie ab’. Die Welt. 6/3/2009, Viewed on 9th December 2009, http://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/ chronik/Jeder_5_Islamlehrer_lehnt_Demokratie_ab_422989.ece. Wg. ‘Von Österreich Demokratie lernen’. Die Presse. 18/10/2009. Zimmermann, M., ‘Kritik schadet Muslimen nicht’. Interview with Ednan Aslan, Salzburger Nachrichten, 29/1/2009. Cornelia Caseau is the Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures at the Burgundy School of Business (Groupe ESC Dijon/France) where she teaches German, and a German teacher at the Institute of Political Sciences of Paris (Dijoncampus, specialization Eastern Europe). Currently her research work is devoted to Austrian geopolitical issues.

Section V: Reassessing Decision-Making and Participation

Let the Dice Decide! A Qualified Argument for Sortitionist Democracy Paul Lucardie Abstract In a democracy, political power should be shared by all citizens, or distributed by lot. Rule by representatives elected by the people is aristocratic rather than democratic. Yet a sortitionist democracy is not necessarily superior to an elective aristocracy: both have pros and cons. Key Words: Sortition, elections, democracy. ***** 1. Introduction Democracy was defined by Aristotle rather succinctly as ‘the system of all ruling over each, and each, in his turn, over all’.1 Power should be shared by all citizens, as the principle of political equality entails. As a consequence, political decisions should be taken either by all citizens assembled, or, if that seems impossible, by a regular random selection from all citizens. Plato used a similar definition, albeit with more cynical connotations: ‘democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile their opponents, and give the rest equal rights and opportunities of office, appointment to office being as a rule by lot’.2 Both Greek thinkers were obviously familiar with the Athenian political system, where most decisions were taken by the assembly, but prepared and executed by a council of 500 citizens selected annually by lot.3 What today is called democracy – rule by representatives elected by the people – would probably qualify as aristocracy in the eyes of Aristotle: ‘an arrangement which fits an aristocracy is one under which a section appoints from all, or all appoint from a section, by the method of election’.4 Aristocracy, after all, means rule by the best (aristoi), and presumably the elected officials are considered the best in their field. Selection of representatives by lot would prevent the emergence of an elective aristocracy. It was very common in the democratic Greek city-states and later in some Italian city-states as well, but had lost any appeal to democrats by the end of the eighteenth century.5 It may have survived only in criminal and civil juries in the United Kingdom and its former colonies. Yet in recent years, various experiments with citizen assemblies and citizen juries have restored sortitionist democracy, albeit in a modest and usually only consultative form. These experiments seem to be inspired by a growing concern in many countries about the quality of the political system, as indicated by declining public participation and the rise of populist parties criticizing the established system.

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__________________________________________________________________ In this paper, I will compare sortitionist democracy, where most decisions are made by randomly selected citizens, with the elective aristocracy which we are accustomed to in Europe and many other parts of the world. Of course, it would be unfair to contrast an idealized utopian model with the muddy reality of an operating system. Therefore, I will also emphasize the potential disadvantages and shortcomings of sortition, as well as its advantages. 2. Elective Aristocracy In an elective aristocracy all important decisions are taken by elected officials, members of the legislature as well as members of the executive branch. If all citizens, i.e. the demos, are allowed to vote, one might regard the system as a mixture of democracy and aristocracy, or an aristo-democracy. However, I will avoid cumbersome hyphenated terms here, and refer to elective aristocracies even if some (but not most) important decisions are taken by the demos. Aristocracy means, of course, rule by the best. Elected officials are considered the best candidates for the office, at least in some respect, by the parties that nominate them, and by the voters who help them win a seat in the legislature or executive office. The legitimacy of the elective aristocracy depends mainly on the free and fair nature of the elections. In an open election campaign, the candidates can show their abilities, explain their ambitions and justify their past performance. It may be naïve to expect that citizens will approve a political programme by voting for party A or candidate X. Probably few voters are fully informed about the platforms of various parties and able to express a clear preference for any of them. Moreover, no party can guarantee that its programme will be faithfully implemented, given the uncertainty of politics in a globalized society. Therefore, I tend to agree with the more cynical view of William Riker who argued that ‘All elections can do or have to do is to permit people to get rid of rulers’.6 Free elections do prevent tyranny and generate freedom, even if they have very little to do with democracy – here I part company with Riker. Though he claimed to defend liberal democracy against populist democracy, in fact he presented an eloquent and sophisticated argument for liberal aristocracy. Liberal or elective aristocracy has indeed many advantages. Not only does it guarantee freedom, it provides also a certain stability and coherence in political decision-making. Almost everywhere, elections are dominated by political parties, which not only recruit and select candidates but also try to ‘discipline’ them in order to implement the party platform. Some parties provide their candidates with media training, ideological education and other training programmes. Given the qualities of the candidates, they should be able to take reasonable and wellinformed decisions, after thorough deliberation. Yet there are disadvantages, too. Party ideology might blind elected officials to reality and narrow their minds. Party discipline and polarisation might prevent an open-minded deliberation. Instead of serving the general interest, the party

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__________________________________________________________________ politicians might give priority to party interests or even personal interests. Or they might cater to rich and powerful pressure groups, like corporations that may have financed their campaign and ensured their re-election.7 In recent years, political parties, parliaments and professional politicians seem to have lost the confidence and respect of growing sections of the population in several countries. Participation in political parties and in elections has declined. Cynicism and alienation from established parties has contributed to the rise of populist movements that focus on the gap between democratic rhetoric and aristocratic practice.8 Russell Dalton and Steven Weldon concluded from several sets of survey data that declining trust in political parties, declining turnout and growing sympathy for ‘anti-party parties’ are all part of a ‘general syndrome involving the public’s growing doubts about representative democracy’.9 Populists point out that the political elite does not represent the people, neither demographically nor ideologically – the elite is neither ‘standing for’ nor ‘acting for’ the people, in the terms of Hanna Pitkin.10 Most members of parliament are university graduates – at least in most developed countries – with different ideas about salient issues like immigration and European integration than their less educated electorate.11 And even if all these criticisms could be refuted, the fact remains that elective aristocracy is hard to reconcile with the basic principle of political equality. Without higher education, rhetorical skills and support from a political party, the average citizen has hardly any chance of winning a seat in parliament in any so-called democratic country. These disadvantages may justify the exploration of alternatives. 3. Sortitionist Democracy In a sortitionist democracy, all important decisions are taken by a body of randomly selected citizens, like the Council of 500 in ancient Athens, or the ‘House of Lots’ in Aleatoria – the utopia described by the British philosopher Barbara Goodwin.12 The demographic background as well as the opinions of this legislative body should mirror those of the citizenry at large, as perfectly as possible. In ancient Athens, only a minority of the native population were citizens, but in a modern society usually all native adults without a criminal record are citizens, and even immigrants can apply for citizenship in many cases. Most countries have registered citizens somehow – either as voters or as social security numbers or taxpayers. Modern statistics provide simple techniques to draw a random sample from such a register. The selected candidates should be discouraged from refusing their allotted position except in dire circumstances like serious illness or mental disorder, in order to prevent over- or under-representation of significant groups in the sample. The representatives would receive a generous allowance from the state, as well as facilities like secretarial and research assistance, private transport, lodgings in the nation’s capital and so on. Before being sworn in, they would be given a crash course in constitutional law, political theory and public administration as well as

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__________________________________________________________________ practical training in public debate and collective decision-making. In exchange, they would have to be present at meetings of the House, participate in committees and listen to complaining citizens. Like the Athenian councillors, they would be examined before and after their term, in order to prevent (or punish) corruption, abuse of power and other public misdemeanors.13 To most modern and rational minds, this House of Lots might look like a madhouse: imagine, a motley bunch of ignorant amateurs deciding the fate of our nation! They would lack political competence, experience and party discipline. They would not be accountable to a party congress or to an electorate, as reelection is not possible anyway. Because of their ignorance and lack of experience, they would depend even more than elected representatives on the advice from experts and would be manipulated more easily by smart lobbyists and sophisticated pressure groups. Goodwin and other advocates of sortition like John Burnheim, Hubertus Buchstein or Yves Sintomer do not ignore or deny these weaknesses of sortitionist democracy.14 Yet its advantages carry more weight, in their opinion. The most important philosophical argument in favour of sortition can be summed up in two words: political equality. Every citizen has an equal chance of being selected for the legislature, with very few exceptions (like convicted criminals and the mentally or physically very ill). No professional political elite will dominate the population. Ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals, women and other groups that are usually under-represented in elected bodies will have equal chances of being selected. By definition, all statistically significant social groups and opinions will be (roughly) represented in the House of Lots. There are other benefits, too. In view of the rising costs of election campaigns in the USA, Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips argued that sortition will be a much cheaper and less corruptible mechanism than election.15 They as well as Goodwin also expect more open-mindedness and common-sense, and less polarized ideological debates from the lotreps (her term for the randomly selected representatives) than from professional politicians. The lack of party discipline might enhance rather than reduce the quality of decision-making, in their opinion.16 Ad-hoc factions or caucusses might emerge and disappear again. Common sense, personal knowledge and empathy might play a larger role and lead to better decisions, as Sintomer argued.17 Experience with randomly selected trial juries would confirm this. Furthermore, participation in the House of Lots (or similar bodies at a regional or municipal level) would socialize citizens in a spirit of equality and commitment. This effect would be rather modest if these bodies are small, but might be significant if the proposal of John Burnheim would be tried. The Australian philosopher called for a variety of randomly selected boards representing consumers of different services, such as public transport, health care, welfare, libraries and sports facilities, schools and parks.18 Every board should consist of a statistical sample drawn from the people who (regularly) use those services and have expressed some interest in them. Thus practically every citizen

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__________________________________________________________________ might have an opportunity to sit on a board at some point – unless he or she wants to avoid any public involvement at all. In Burnheims rather libertarian utopia, the various boards would co-ordinate their activities through negotiation and arbitration, doing away with a territorial state altogether.19 The list of arguments in favour of sortitionist democracy seems impressive enough. Yet two problems are insufficiently addressed by the advocates, it seems to me. In the first place, its legitimation. Elective aristocracy may be losing legitimacy in the eyes of increasing numbers of citizens, but would sortitionist democracy do much better? Buchstein admits the problem, yet offers only a vague solution: a change of mentality in society (gesellschaftlicher Mentalitätswechsel).20 At present, the dominant mentality may be hostile to sortition. True, increasing sums of money are redistributed through lotteries – sometimes sponsored by the state – but redistribution of power seems a different matter. The main reason why sortition has hardly been advocated by modern democrats may be the irreconcileable tension between consent and coincidence, or between the belief in individual autonomy and reason on the one hand and the acceptance of arational fate on the other hand.21 The problem of legitimation may be confounded by another problem. If the lotreps take their public duties seriously, they will gather more information and political insight during their term than they possessed initially. Listening to the advice from experts and the different opinions of their colleagues in the House, they will probably change some of their opinions and become more sophisticated and perhaps more moderate in many ways. Several experiments with citizen juries and citizen panels trying to solve problems – designing a new electoral system or environmental planning – showed how participants improved their knowledge and changed their opinions.22 This has been perceived as an advantage of sortitionist democracy, yet it has a shadow side, too. Quite often the solutions the selected citizens had worked out after long hours and weekends of intense deliberation failed to gain acceptance from the government as well as the electorate at large. The process of deliberation might have created a gap between the randomly selected citizens and the population at large, which could not be bridged by a nationwide information campaign. Alienation between lotreps and the population they represent seems a serious problem. It has been acknowledged by the Swedish political scientist Torbjörn Tännsjö already in 1992, but received scant attention from other authors in the field, it seems to me.23 If taken seriously, it would require at the very least short terms of office for the lotreps: one year rather than five.24 4. Practical Conclusions Are the flaws we have discovered fatal to sortitionist democracy? They might be, if we would try to replace the prevailing elective aristocracy lock, stock and barrel by the new system. Goodwin and Burnheim seem willing to go this far, but

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__________________________________________________________________ other sortitionists have set more modest aims. Callenbach and Phillips, Sintomer, Schmidt, Buchstein, as well as Harry Brighouse and Erik Olin Wright, proposed to supplement existing parliamentary institutions with a House of Lots.25 The latter should perform the functions of a second chamber: it should approve or reject legislation passed by the first chamber – or vice versa. The first chambers would continue to be elected. The fact that the two chambers would follow different logics in their selection and legitimation could be seen as a strength rather than a weakness. Of course, radical critics of the prevailing system would not be satisfied with this half-hearted reform. Barring a revolution, however, we have to make compromises and accept piece-meal reforms. Perhaps even smaller reforms might prepare the way for more radical change. Burnheims design of public service boards consisting of random samples from users of the service might be tried out at a local level, without abolishing the state. Elected municipal councils could continue to coordinate the services, while allowing the randomly selected boards of users substantial autonomy and control over a (limited) budget. Possibly local neighbourhood councils could be selected from inhabitants as well. In this modest way, people could experiment with sortition and participate more in decisions about their daily environment. Perfect democracy may be beyond our reach for quite a while (if not forever), but we might take a few steps in its direction anyway.

Notes 1

Aristotle, The Politics, Oxford University Press, London & Oxford, 1958, p. 258. Plato, The Republic, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972, p. 329. 3 See for example: MI Finley, Democracy, Ancient and Modern, Chatto & Windus, London, 1973; MH Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991. 4 Aristotle, The Politics, p. 199. 5 B Manin, The Principles of Representative Government, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 42-93; see also O Dowlen, The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office, Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2008. 6 WH Riker, Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982, p. 244. 7 In a detailed analysis of major political issues in Belgium Wilfried Dewachter has shown that many of them were decided not in parliament, but in the government, in consultations with pressure groups, party leaders, technocrats and informal networks; see W Dewachter, De mythe van de parlementaire democratie. Een Belgische analyse, Acco, Leuven, 2001. From a similar study of three issues in Dutch politics, Klaartje Peters concluded that most influence was exercised by 2

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__________________________________________________________________ (senior) civil servants, even if parliament was far from powerless; see K Peters, Verdeelde macht. Een onderzoek naar invloed op rijksbesluitvorming in Nederland, Amsterdam, Boom, 1999, pp. 261-277. 8 Y Papadopoulos, ‘Populism, the Democratic Question, and Contemporary Governance’, Democracies and the Populist Challenge, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002, pp. 45-61. 9 RJ Dalton & SA Weldon, ‘Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?’, West European Politics, Vol. 28, 2005, pp. 931-951. 10 HF Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967, pp. 60-91, 112-143. 11 M Bovens & A Wille, Diploma Democracy. On the Tensions between Meritocracy and Democracy, Leiden University/Utrecht University, Leiden/Utrecht, 2009, pp. 47-80; see also: D Gaxie & L Godmer, ‘Cultural Capital and Political Selection: Educational Backgrounds of Parliamentarians’, Democratic Representation in Europe: Diversity, Change and Convergence, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, pp. 106-135. 12 B Goodwin, Justice by Lottery, Harvester/Wheatsheaf, New York, 1992, pp. 323. 13 See Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, pp. 225-265. 14 J Burnheim, Is Democracy Possible? The Alternative to Electoral Democracy, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2006 (second edition), pp. 127-137; H Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie. Das Los als politisches Entscheidungsinstrument von der Antike bis zur EU, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/ New York, 2009, pp. 450-451; Y Sintomer, Le pouvoir au peuple. Jurys citoyens, tirage au sort et démocratie participative, La Découverte, Paris, 2007, pp. 133168; Goodwin, Justice by lottery, pp. 46-47. 15 E Callenbach & M Phillips, A Citizen Legislature, Banyan Tree Books / Clear Glass, Berkeley / Bodega CA, 1985, pp. 33-36. 16 Callenbach & Phillips, A Citizen Legislature, pp. 24-25; Goodwin, Justice by Lottery, p. 5. 17 Sintomer, Le pouvoir au peuple, pp. 139-144. 18 Burnheim, Is democracy possible?, 78-86. 19 The proposal of the Danish political scientist Marcus Schmidt might have a similar effect; his ‘electronic chamber’ of 70,000 Danish citizens which would adopt or veto all legislation passed by the elected Danish parliament (Folketing), would provide every Dane with a reasonable chance to be selected by lot for the chamber once in his or her life – provided he or she would not die long before the age of 75. See: Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie, pp. 415-416. 20 Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie, pp. 455. 21 Manin hinted at this, as did Dowlen, see The Political Potential of Sortition, p. 234; see also Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie, pp. 220-226.

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__________________________________________________________________ 22

Sintomer, Le pouvoir au peuple, pp. 113-132; A Röcke, Losverfahren und Demokratie. Historische und demokratietheoretische Perspektiven, LIT Verlag, Münster, 2005, pp. 93-131; see also D Huitema, M van de Kerkhof & U Pesch, ‘The Nature of the Beast: Are Citizens’ Juries Deliberative or Pluralist?’, Policy Sci, Vol. 40, 2007, pp. 287-311; J Font & I Blanco, ‘Procedural Legitimacy and Political Trust: The Case of Citizen Juries in Spain’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 46, 2007, pp. 557-589; A Lang, ‘But Is It for Real? The British Columbia Citizens’Assembly as a Model of State-Sponsored Citizen Empowerment’, Politics & Society, Vol. 35, 2007, 35-69. 23 T Tännsjö, Populist Democracy: A Defence, Routledge, London/ New York, 1992, p. 91. 24 This may also make a return to their former jobs and a normal family life easier! After five years, that might be rather difficult for many lotreps – unless they live in Aleatoria, where everyone changes jobs and positions regularly in a Total Social Lottery (Goodwin, Justice by lottery, 3-23). 25 Callenbach & Phillips, A Citizen Legislature, pp. 55-56; Sintomer, Le pouvoir au peuple, pp. 163-164; Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie, pp. 415-416, 445-453; H Brighouse & EO Wright, A Proposal to Transform the House of Lords into a Citizens’ Assembly, on-line: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/published%20writ ing/Democratizing- House-of-Lords.pdf, (18 September 2008).

Bibliography Aristotle, The Politics. Oxford University Press, London and Oxford, 1958. Bovens, M. & Wille, A., Diploma Democracy: On the Tensions between Meritocracy and Democracy. Leiden University / Utrecht University, Leiden / Utrecht, 2009. Brighouse, H. & Wright, E.O., A Proposal to Transform the House of Lords into a Citizens’ Assembly, on-line: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/published%20writ ing/Democratizing-House-of-Lords.pdf, (18 September 2008). Buchstein, H. Demokratie und Lotterie. Das Los als politisches Entscheidungsinstrument von der Antike bis zur EU. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/ New York, 2009. Burnheim, J., Is Democracy Possible? The Alternative to Electoral Democracy. Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2006 (second edition).

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__________________________________________________________________ Callenbach, E. & Phillips, M., A Citizen Legislature. Banyan Tree Books / Clear Glass, Berkeley/ Bodega CA, 1985. Dalton, R.J. & Weldon, S.A., ‘Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?’.West European Politics. Vol. 28, 2005, pp. 931-951. Dewachter, W., De mythe van de parlementaire democratie: Een Belgische analyse. Acco, Leuven, 2001. Dowlen, O., The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office. Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2008. Finley, M.I., Democracy, Ancient and Modern. Chatto & Windus, London, 1973. Font, J. & Blanco, I. ‘Procedural Legitimacy and Political Trust: The Case of Citizen Juries in Spain’. European Journal of Political Research. Vol. 46, 2007, pp. 557-589. Gaxie, D. & Godmer, L., ‘Cultural Capital and Political Selection: Educational Backgrounds of Parliamentarians’. Democratic Representation in Europe: Diversity, Change and Convergence. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. Goodwin, B., Justice by Lottery. Harvester / Wheatsheaf, New York, 1992. Hansen, M.H., The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology. Blackwell, Oxford, 1991. Huitema, D., Van de Kerkhof, M. & Pesch, U., ‘The Nature of the Beast: Are Citizens’ Juries Deliberative or Pluralist?’. Policy Sci. Vol. 40, 2007, pp. 287-311. Lang, A., ‘But Is It for Real? The British Columbia Citizens’Assembly as a Model of State-Sponsored Citizen Empowerment’, Politics & Society. Vol. 35, 2007, 3569. Manin, B., The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. Papadopoulos, Y., ‘Populism, the Democratic Question, and Contemporary Governance’. Democracies and the Populist Challenge. Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ Peters, K., Verdeelde macht: Een onderzoek naar invloed op rijksbesluitvorming in Nederland. Amsterdam, Boom, 1999. Pitkin, H.F., The Concept of Representation. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967. Plato, The Republic. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972. Riker, W.H., Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982. Röcke, A., Losverfahren und Demokratie: Historische und demokratietheoretische Perspektiven. LIT Verlag, Münster, 2005. Sintomer, Y., Le pouvoir au people: Jurys citoyens, tirage au sort et démocratie participative. La Découverte, Paris, 2007. Tännsjö, T., Populist Democracy: A Defence. Routledge, London & New York, 1992. Paul Lucardie is Researcher at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

The Deliberative Case against the Secret Ballot and why It Fails Bart Engelen & Thomas Nys Abstract Instead of shying away from voting procedures, we believe proponents of deliberative democracy should aim to reform them in order to boost the deliberative character of votes and voters. More concretely, they seriously ought to consider opening up the vote, because this can induce people to publicly discuss and justify their political views and to form a discursively defensible judgment on how to vote. Those who really want votes and voters to be more deliberative thus have a case against the secret ballot. As with deliberative democracy, however, this defense of open voting is provisional. Only if people have the knowledge, the competence and the confidence to express and discuss their political views in public should the secret ballot be abolished. In our view, these conditions are not (yet) met. The problems that can arise with open voting reveal that the deliberative model of democracy typically poses high demands on citizens and thus inevitably faces certain limits. Key Words: Open voting, secret ballot, deliberative democracy. ***** The secret vote is something to be viewed with regret rather than complacency. It makes for a devaluation of the vote and a diminution of democracy.1 1. Introduction Among theorists of democracy, consensus seems to be growing that the deliberative model best captures what democracy is all about. In this paper, however, we want to show that the difficulties it faces in terms of implementation point to fundamental problems inherent to the model itself. After defining what the deliberative model of democracy is (section 2) and why it is more desirable than other models (section 3), we argue why proponents of deliberative democracy ought to favor a system of open voting and should consider abolishing the secret ballot (section 4). Next, we show why most of them refuse to go that way (section 5) and how this illustrates the difficulties of deliberative democracy. Any defense of the deliberative model of democracy - and of open voting - turns out to be a highly provisional one (section 6). 2. What Is Deliberative Democracy? The most basic but perhaps also the best definition of democracy is captured in a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: ‘Democracy is the government of the

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__________________________________________________________________ people, by the people, for the people’. The core principle of democracy is that of popular sovereignty: if people are affected by some decision, they should be able to agree on it or at least participate in the process which brings it about. Democratic power must arise from the collective decisions of the equal members of a group who are governed by that power.2 In line with Jon Elster, we distinguish between the aggregative and deliberative model of democracy, each of which specifies what genuine democracies (should) look like.3 In the aggregative model, democracy primarily consists of voting procedures that aggregate given interests and preferences. This model focuses on voting as the primary political act, which is said to provide an uncontroversial way of yielding definite decisions. The aggregative model views democratic politics as both private and instrumental in nature.4 Voting typically takes place in the secluded confines of booths where citizens use secret ballots to express in complete anonymity their private interests. According to the deliberative model, however, democracy consists of ‘fair procedures within which political actors engage in reasoned argument for the purpose of resolving political conflict’. Here, people engage in mutual discussions in which all participants are equal and free to speak their mind. Because it is about the force of the better argument - not about mere power relations – participants have to provide reasons for their views and be willing to change their views when faced with new information, arguments and reasons. The deliberative model differs from the aggregative model in that it views politics as public in nature.5 Citizens and politicians alike have to publicly justify their views in ongoing deliberations on the basis of ‘reasons that should be accepted by free and equal persons’.6 3. Why Deliberative Democracy? One way of defending deliberative democracy focuses on the shortcomings of aggregative democracy. A first difficulty is that aggregative democracy could result in a tyranny of the majority. A quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin aptly points out that such a democracy can threaten and even suppress and undermine the liberties and rights of minority groups: ‘democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch’. The simple fact that there is a majority outweighs the issue whether its views are just or reasonable. Second, the aggregative model fails to capture the difference between the private nature of the market (in which actions typically affect only the consumer) and the public nature of the forum.7 Since political actions typically affect all other citizens, people have to justify their decisions to each other. The deliberative model better grasps that what matters - or should matter - in politics are not sheer numbers but people’s reasons and arguments.

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__________________________________________________________________ Citizens treat one another as equals not by giving equal consideration to interests (…) but by offering them justifications for the exercise of collective power.8 There are two additional positive arguments in favor of deliberative democracy. First, deliberation can be said to increase the level of agreement among participants, which is generally deemed a good thing. Because ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised’,9 participants in genuine deliberation listen to and are persuaded by each other and ideally achieve consensus. Even if consensus does not arise, deliberation can be said to increase the legitimacy of collective decisions among citizens who do not get what they want. If people come to understand why other people favor the policies they do, they will more easily abide when these policies are implemented. Deliberation can thus ‘help participants recognize the moral merit in their opponents’ claims’.10 Second, deliberation can be said to have desirable side-effects for its many participants. It informs and educates them as they come to learn both about and from each other. In addition, it is said to improve people’s characters. The fact that participants can be held accountable forces them to provide reasons that are acceptable to others. Since it is inappropriate to refer to private interests in public, they are more likely to refer to the public interest. In the end, this way of civilizing their speech can lead to civilizing their minds so that they actually become motivated by the public interest.11 This desirable side-effect of deliberation has been labelled ‘the civilizing force of hypocrisy’.12 4. The Deliberative Case against the Secret Ballot As long as deliberation does not produce consensus - and empirical research shows that it often does not - people still have to resort to non-deliberative procedures like voting. Deliberation is not so much an alternative to voting but a way of improving the input into voting procedures. In light of the goal of improving the deliberative character of voting, we purport to show why proponents of deliberative democracy should in principle favor abolishing the secret ballot, which shields voters from public scrutiny and criticism. This would encourage people to vote in ways that they can reasonably justify towards their fellow citizens, which follows naturally from the primary focus of deliberative democracy. Basically, the deliberative model requires people to vote on the basis of their judgment of which candidate would best suit the general interest. While citizens may vote according to their discursively defensible judgment of the public good even if the ballot is secret, this desirable practice is further encouraged if voting is no longer secret.

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__________________________________________________________________ If the vote is unveiled the desire for social acceptance will play a larger role in your decision as to how to vote; and in a pluralistic society the surest way of winning social acceptance will be to vote in a way you can discursively support.13 If people can be asked why they vote such-and-such, they will be more likely to refer to reasons that are relevant to others as well. Since self-interested considerations are not acceptable in reasonable deliberations, open voting provides incentives to vote in more public-spirited ways. In short, open voting can be said to lead to a more deliberative stance inside the voting booth, which will, in turn, prompt more impartial and public-spirited votes. This enables one to develop an explicitly normative argument in favor of open voting. When applied to voting, the arguments in favor of deliberative democracy automatically turn into arguments against the secret ballot. While such proposals are completely absent from the literature on deliberative democracy, the basic thought is simple. Since no representative democracy can do without voting, it seems sensible to turn the polling station into a more deliberative environment. Open voting can thus be seen as a simple way of promoting deliberation in largescaled electorates, providing stimuli for citizens to vote in more discursive ways. The hope is that it ‘can force electors to restrict themselves in public to positions that they would be able to justify to other fellow citizens’.14 The introduction of the secret ballot has turned voting into an essentially private act and has produced a culture antithetical to public discussions of voting behavior. The seclusion of the voting booth invites citizens to hide their vote from the outside world, which suggests that the activity at hand is obscure and suspicious, turning voters into possible traitors. Because of the public nature of democratic politics, however, it seems reasonable to expect from voters to take into account the interests of their fellow citizens. Interestingly, open voting is already in place in parliaments and congresses all over the world. The proposal to abolish the secret ballot simply suggests bringing it from parliaments to polling stations, from politicians to citizens. After all, citizens - much like politicians - should be held accountable for their public acts as well. Historically, this formed the main argument against the secret ballot: ‘The voter is responsible to the public (...); he has a public trust to discharge’.15 In this respect, open voting is an incentive to stimulate people to vote according to their sense of duty towards the general public.16 It motivates voters to think twice before checking a box or pushing a button on the basis of self-interested or even malignant considerations. Whereas the secret ballot cuts off citizens from each other and can thus be said to lead to isolation and individualization, open voting can induce more collective cohesiveness, group identity and loyalty.17

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. Why the Deliberative Case against the Secret Ballot Fails The fact that not even the staunchest deliberative democrat believes that we should implement open voting suggests that the deliberative case against the secret ballot fails. We think that the problem lies in the high demands that the deliberative model itself imposes on citizens. In contrast with the aggregative model (in which people simply vote as they choose to), people in a deliberative democracy have to account for their political views, which requires skills similar to those we expect from politicians. Among these belong the capacities to gather and process information, to reason and communicate with others, and to express and defend their views in public. Moreover, they need to have enough self-confidence and self-respect to take a public stance. If open voting poses such high demands on citizens, a number of conditions have to be fulfilled before it can be expected to help realize the abovementioned desiderata of deliberative democracy. Public deliberation, like open voting, increases social pressure, which generates a desire for social acceptance. We believe that this does not necessarily induce a more deliberative and public-spirited stance. Instead, it may lead to a number of less desirable attitudinal changes, each of which clearly detracts from the normative ideal of democracy. First, increased social pressure may lead to conformism. Rather than forming their own reasonable and well-argued judgments, voters may simply choose to adopt or at least express whatever is deemed politically correct. The public gaze that can lead them to socially acceptable behavior may thus not spawn the desired deliberative reflex but a tendency to succumb to conformism. Brennan and Pettit believe that the bracing atmosphere induced by open voting will help people deal with this: ‘where pressures are multiple and manifold, people’s best defence is the habit of forming and arguing their own judgment’.18 This reply puts the cart before the horse. In our view, those who do not have this habit are most likely to give in to the pressure. One should at least grant that it could go either way: while it may stimulate deliberation, open voting may also induce people to just go with the flow. Second, social pressure may lead not so much to deliberation as to a principled stand-off (in which people refuse to budge) or even to polarization (in which conflicts increase). Often, what is praised as ‘deliberation’ is nothing more than people trying to win the argument rather than actually listening and yielding to the better argument. The fact that before the secret ballot was introduced elections were characterized by polarization suggests that publicity is not necessarily conducive to deliberation. Third, open voting may reintroduce those malpractices that were once the primary reasons to introduce the secret ballot: i.e., manipulation, bribery, corruption and intimidation of potential voters. The fact that others can know my vote provides both an opportunity and a motive to influence my vote. This is clearly undemocratic, also in a deliberative sense, because votes ought to be based on people’s own autonomous judgments.

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__________________________________________________________________ The fourth problem is the most significant one. Abolishing the secret ballot can lead to decreased participation, since only those citizens that are sufficiently wellinformed and self-confident will go out to vote. After all, they alone are able to face the pressure when others solicit their political preferences. The upshot is that the deliberative model can be at odds with the democratic principle of inclusive participation, because it is biased against those who are less well-off in terms of money and education. An empirical study on Denmark’s transition to the secret ballot shows that the least well-off abstained most when the ballot was no longer secret.19 In this sense, the secret ballot is certainly conducive to the democratic ideal of universal participation. 6. A Provisional Defense of Deliberative Democracy and Open Voting The publicity of open voting generates potentially shameful situations. This may be a good thing (when it motivates voters to think twice before voting selfishly or malignantly) or a bad thing (when it scares reasonable but insecure people away from elections). Some citizens will no doubt feel ashamed when asked to come forward at elections and publicly express and defend their political views. If we want to implement open voting, we therefore first have to foster the required competences so that citizens can actually cope with all this. Because open voting is desirable only if all citizens are competent enough to deal with public exposure and criticism, any defense of it is provisional in nature. If this condition is not fulfilled (and currently it is not), existing inequalities in political participation less well-educated citizens abstain in disproportionally greater numbers even now will increase even further as soon as the secret ballot is abolished. Crucially, the secret ballot prohibits social influences on voters. While this clearly has advantages (ruling out intimidation, manipulation, bribery and corruption), it also has disadvantages (ruling out bonds with their peers and discouraging public deliberation). The seclusion of the voting booth has an isolating effect that can be unfortunate, because it motivates citizens to cast their vote purely on the basis of their own conscience (which is a good thing) without much consideration for others (which is a bad thing). Brennan and Pettit want to abolish the secret ballot if ‘open voting does not bring unforeseen evils with it’.20 They believe that these evils will be quite limited, because well-developed democracies are characterized by large electorates (in which a single vote is of almost no value), strong laws (anti-discrimination regulations) and ‘an ethos under which bribery, blackmail and intimidation create a great scandal’.21 We are less optimistic and consider open voting good in principle but problematic in practice. While open voting better fits the democratic ideals and values than the secret ballot, one should be cautious and indeed extremely reluctant to put it into practice. In our view, democracies do not (yet) satisfy the conditions required to avoid the potentially undesirable side-effects, since citizens are not (yet) confident and capable enough to take a public stance on political issues. If

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__________________________________________________________________ democracies are to hold on to political equality and universal participation, they have to strengthen the deliberative capacities of the electorate as a whole so that all citizens can take part in the most basic of all political decision-making processes.

Notes 1

G Brennan & P Pettit, ‘Unveiling the Vote’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 20, 1990, p. 333. 2 J Cohen, ‘Democracy and Liberty’, Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 185. 3 J Elster, ‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory’, Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 3-33. 4 J Elster, Deliberative Democracy, pp. 4-5. 5 J Elster, Deliberative Democracy, pp. 11-13. 6 A Gutmann & D Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2004, p. 3. 7 J Elster, Deliberative Democracy, pp. 11-13. 8 J Cohen, ‘Democracy and Liberty’, p. 186. 9 J Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, Beacon Press, Boston, 1975, p. 108. 10 A Gutmann & D Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy, p. 11. 11 A Grosseries, ‘Publicity’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://www. plato.stanford.edu/entries/publicity, 2005. 12 J Elster, Deliberative Democracy, p. 12. 13 G Brennan & P Pettit, ‘Unveiling the Vote’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 20, 1990, p. 326. 14 A Gosseries, ‘Publicity’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www. plato.stanford.edu/entries/publicity, 2005. 15 H Brougham, ‘The History of Parliament With a View to Constitutional Reform’, Edinburgh Review, Vol. 56, 1832-1833, p. 560. 16 JS Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, Prometheus Books, New York, 1862 [1991], p. 217. 17 J Barbalet, ‘Secret Voting and Political Emotions’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, Vol. 7 (2), 2002, p. 130. 18 G Brennan & P Pettit, ‘Unveiling the Vote’, p. 332. 19 J Elklit, ‘Mobilization and Partisan Division: Open Voting in Fredericia, Denmark’, Social Science History, Vol. 7 (3), 1983, p. 260. 20 G Brennan & P Pettit, ‘Unveiling the Vote’, p. 328. 21 Ibidem, p. 332.

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Bibliography Barbalet, J., ‘Secret Voting and Political Emotions’. Mobilization: An International Quarterly. Vol. 7 (2), 2002, pp. 129-140. Brougham, H., ‘The History of Parliament With a View to Constitutional Reform’. Edinburgh Review. Vol. 56, 1832-1833, pp. 543-564. Brennan, G. & Pettit, P., ‘Unveiling the Vote’. British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 20, 1990, pp. 311-333. Cohen, J., ‘Democracy and Liberty’. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998. Elklit, J., ‘Mobilization and Partisan Division: Open Voting in Fredericia, Denmark’. Social Science History. Vol. 7 (3), 1983, pp. 235-266. Elster, J., ‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory’. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997. Elster, J., Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. Gosseries, A., ‘Publicity’, in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www. plato.stanford.edu/entries/publicity, 2005. Gutmann, A. & Thompson, D., Why Deliberative Democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2004. Habermas, J., Legitimation Crisis. Beacon Press, Boston, 1975. Mill, J.S., Considerations on Representative Government. Prometheus Books, New York, 1862 [1991]. Bart Engelen is a postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation, Flanders, and currently affiliated with the Centre for Economics and Ethics of the K.U. Leuven (Belgium). Thomas Nys is a postdoctoral researcher of the Philosophy and Public Affairs group at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics of the K.U. Leuven.

Universal Choice or Democracy Mary-Ann Crumplin Abstract In this paper, I argue that our idea of democracy is unthinkable because our ideal of democratic freedom, that is freedom to choose, contains the fundamental paradox which destabilises the very idea of democracy. Political disillusionment is the necessary result of our fidelity to the concept of free choice. By reference to Heidegger and to Descartes, I indicate where the root of the philosophical problem of democracy lies. Key Words: Freedom, choice, being, democracy, onto-theo-logy, judgment, Descartes, ontology, epistemology. ***** 1. Introduction What are the ‘problems of democracy’? The question is ambiguous. Are we to think of these problems as something to be solved? Or is it that there is a problem with the very idea of democracy? If we think about the problem of democracy from within democracy itself, the ‘problems of democracy’ must be something like ‘why can we not get democracy to work perfectly?’ or ‘why are there still excluded ones?’ or ‘how could we re-organise the structures of democracy so as to optimise the greatest good?’ Others here have provided excellent discussions from this perspective; I want to approach the question from another perspective. When we, in modern Western society, discuss the political we tend to display an uncanny prejudice in favour of democracy, in fact in favour of deliberative and participatory democracy. It seems that democracy has become part of our existence, an essential part of who we consider ourselves to be. I am interested in this. It seems that questioning individual freedom – questioning the right to act as we choose without being subjected - is the great taboo for us. The great modern ‘impiety’ is to ask about the place of this idea of individual freedom. Can we say then that although we do not identify ourselves now as bound to God or to Caesar, we do still see ourselves as bound to this idea of individual freedom? Why do we not spend more time thinking about this onto-theo-logical order? I want to engage specifically with the matrix in which the concept of individual political freedom meets our understanding of western being. The important moment then, is when the European enlightenment adopted the idea of man as ‘thinking or deliberating thing’. My thesis acknowledges that insofar as a democracy requires a people it excludes the idea of difference but also that we now exist as a plurality of different and discrete beings rather than as a discrete unity. This means that democracy is

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__________________________________________________________________ essentially unable to function in the context of a truly universal suffrage because a plurality of discrete individuals + freedom of spontaneity (the kind of freedom of choice that we prefer), does not produce democracy, it produces a kind of anarchy. My argument has two elements. First, despite representing a cultural and epistemological dialogue with the logos of ancient Greece, modern being inverts the ancient dynamic between the one and the many. So that, as others here have also said, the modern, postCartesian state is made up of many, equal ‘ones’ instead of the ancient ‘unified many’: we emphasise the many; the ancients emphasised the one. Secondly, and I think that this is the seminal point of my essay, there are two contrasting ways to think about freedom but we tend to overlook this and we choose choosing. That is to say we choose what Descartes called ‘freedom of indifference’, deliberating between lots of equally viable options in an attempt to find justice1. We identify ourselves as ‘deliberating subjects … choosing’. But Descartes himself preferred freedom of spontaneity: a freedom which, to modern eyes, does not look like freedom at all, because it is effectively freedom from choice; an idea which Descartes articulates in terms of knowing-exactly-what-todo-in-this-situation. Ultimately, I suggest, it is not other forms of government that are unthinkable but democracy itself. Democracy is unthinkable because the ideal of democratic freedom that we take such pains to preserve, that is freedom to choose anything at all, destabilises the very idea of democracy. We have chosen the wrong kind of choosing. Mass disenfranchisement and disillusionment is the necessary result of this fundamental ‘wrong choice’. The opening line of my original paper was polemical, I wrote, ‘Western liberal democracy rests on an epistemological and existential fiction because it considers each human being to be a free, equal, fraternal individual.’ Operating within the framework of post-Enlightenment philosophy, our modern idea of constitutional democracy is social contract liberal democracy: our pluralist societies adhere to the ideology of political liberalism and champion constitutional protection of individual rights. The idea is for society to be constructed by means of deliberative particulation by a group of unique individuals so unity is to be constructed out of diversity. But we recognise that this is an insecure unity. The fundamental question is what, apart from the doctrine of political liberalism itself, can function as an epistemological boundary to the polis?2 Pluralism necessarily entails the danger that there simply is no polis. If the model of indivudual freedom is applied democratically, the individual political subject is required continually to reconsider his connection to the constitution; to participate in deliberative political engagement. But the idea of individual freedom becomes an absolute burden on all those occasions when citizens do not have a natural position with regard to a question. In this case, the citizen remains legally bound to the constitution whilst not being existentially

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__________________________________________________________________ bound to it. The ‘thinking thing’ hasn’t thought it through: he is bound to something without choosing. Is this what we want to call ‘freedom’? In fact, the concept of freedom upon which modern ontology is grounded is incompatible with the concept of democracy. 2. Ancient Being and Modern Being In his Politics, Aristotle contrasts democracy with tyranny and oligarchy3 and the contrast has survived into our modern age. We count ourselves lucky to be democratic precisely because this means that we are free from tyranny and oligarchy. Furthermore, we reckon that universal suffrage provides a basis for good constitutional government precisely because we count our status as ‘modern’ from the moment when Descartes declared that the human being is a thinking subject. We are proud of the fact that man is required to think for himself, but now it seems our ontological and epistemological framework leaves us only two political options: either universal suffrage or tyranny; either choosing to be a political subject or existing as a tyrant’s political object. If we are truly rationally determined then the third alternative - just finding ourselves as part of a group without making a deliberate choice to be there - has fallen out of the frame completely. According to our thinking, Descartes has rendered us free individuals by defining us as thinking deliberating beings and in so doing he has given us no choice but to choose. But of course the reality is that for many people this third way, just being, not choosing, is exactly how they experience life. Heidegger’s philosophy of being provides a useful illustration of what is at stake here. Heidegger criticises ‘Cartesianism’4 precisely because this idea that human beings are primarily deliberative is existentially untrue for most people most of the time. This is, quite simply, not how we live. Being part of the world is not a deliberate choice which human beings make. Heidegger’s argument is sound. There is a paradox between how we modern subjects live and how we think we live: we exist as bound whilst still thinking that we are free rational agents. Put in political terms, the problem is that although each human being just is, already, part of society we conceive of society as a deliberate collective, something that we have made. Because the question of deliberation is allowed to intrude, we mis-place ourselves as somehow essentially before or outside of the world. The political ‘task’ which we imagine we have, is to establish society by choosing what society is; to delineate its structure, deciding who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. So there is a rupture in the ontological and epistemological framework in which modern man finds himself. In order to make a dispassionate consideration of this problem, it may be helpful to look at the problem from an ancient perspective. In his essay, ‘Gnosticism and modern nihilism’,5 Jonas argues that a similar displacement between how people lived and how they articulated their way of life occurred when the Hellenic world was absorbed into the Roman Empire. The polis

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__________________________________________________________________ had manifested the ontological or ‘living’ example of a primary whole. Being and thinking about being were coherent because they were identified so that ancient Greek citizens lived lives which had a secure epistemological grounding.6 But once Greece ceded to Rome this was no longer true.7 The solution? The ancients attempted to shore up their epistemology despite the fact that it had lost its social basis: they substituted the coherence of the polis with ‘the relation between the individual and the cosmos’ so that man now became ‘a citizen of the universe, a cosmopolites’.8 The parallel with our modern situation now becomes clear: then, as now, ‘no case can be made out for my relevance in the cosmic scheme’. 9 Heidegger and Jonas show that in order to make sense of the idea of a collective, the collective must precede the parts or individuals which constitute it. The alternative sequence, where individuals deliberately construct a society is synthetic, which means it is ontologically untrue and epistemologically unjustifiable. 3. Freedom Democracy begins with a demos, a people. The people are the polis but as the polis, the people are ‘already there’: they neither choose to be part of the state nor deliberate on what the ontological limits of the state are. Certain epistemological conditions are already in place so that, for example, a citizen of Athens knew what it meant to be a citizen of Athens; he knew how an Athenian was to be. This meant that the ethical, social or political choices open to him were such that he had only to decide whether to behave as an Athenian or not. But of course this situation is not unique to ancient Athens, it is the basis of ethics or etiquette as ethos where ethos is understood as ‘being at home’ or being according to conventional customs and habits. Heidegger’s critique of Descartes, that is the critique which characterises the Cartesian subject as endlessly deliberating, shows the problem to be that the modern, post-Cartesian subject is never ‘at home’. His freedom is a curse. He is always alone, always out and about roaming the world and always responsible for evaluating what he finds. The romantic notion of a rational subject as citizen of the world, a citizen of nowhere and everywhere is someone we recognise from art and literature: he is Turgenev’s archetypal nihilist; he is a twentieth century rock hero. This anarchic citizen of the cosmos is a hero to us, we tend to think of him with affection - but is he real? And if he is Descartes’ child, how does his anarchic freedom chime with Descartes’ idea of freedom? In fact, in the Meditations, the whole romantic notion of a rational subject as free and infinite citizen of the world encounters a fatal textual blow. Descartes sets out his discussion of human judgment in his Fourth Meditation. He begins by noting ‘there is in me a certain faculty of judgment … with which I could never make a mistake when I use it properly’.10 But immediately he worries this cannot be right because, he notes, ‘it seems to follow from this fact that I am never

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__________________________________________________________________ capable of making a mistake…but once I turn my attention back on myself, I nevertheless experience that I am subject to countless errors’.11 Descartes’ solution is that errors of judgment are the result of ‘the simultaneous concurrence of two causes: the faculty of knowing that is in me and the faculty of choosing’.12 The problem is that ‘if I consider the faculty of understanding, I immediately recognise that in my case it is very small and quite limited’.13 So, he says, choosing is: merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun … [so that] the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny … we are moved in such a way that we sense we are determined to it by no external force.14 Descartes sees freedom not as endless choices, ‘freedom of indifference’, but as ‘freedom of spontaneity’, that is freedom from choice. He writes ‘the more I am inclined toward one direction … because I clearly understand that there is in it an aspect of the good and the true … the more freely do I choose.’15 Descartes is free when he is free from the task of evaluating and adjudicating the evidence of his own limited intellect, when he is free to just be. But this is not what we Western liberal democrats think freedom is. We have convinced ourselves that because we have been defined as thinking subjects by Descartes, true freedom is endless deliberating. 4. Conclusion The problem with our modern, Western democracy is that our conception of it as deliberative and participatory valorises the deliberative aspect of thinking at the expense of the participatory character of democracy. Since deliberative thinking is essentially uncertain it cannot ground democracy. The idea of democracy demands a different approach to thinking, one that fits both with the idea of democracy as the political identity of a demos; a political and ontological unity and with Descartes’ idea of true freedom as freedom from doubt. For if we do not know what citizens do, how to behave as citizens or what it means to be a citizen, that is, if the terms of citizenship itself are still being negotiated, we can not have democracy. But what we do have is dialogue: a way of being which appreciates negotiation, multicultural intercourse and dynamic uncertainty. It would be not only be ontologically untruthful of us to deny this, it would be an ethical travesty. Perhaps it is time to own up to the truth and think beyond the fiction of ‘modern democracy’.

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Notes 1

P Ricoeur explores the idea of ‘finding a just distance’ in his book, Sur la traduction, Bayard, 2004. ET: On Translation, E Brennan (trans), Routledge, London, 2006. 2 On this basis then, the doctrine of political liberalism functions as a totem or idol in our society. It is this totemic status of the idea of freedom which legitimises the question addressed in this essay, that is ‘what is the epistemic and ontological justification for securing modern political thinking against the particular idea of freedom in which we believe?’ 3 In his introductory essay to Aristotle’s Politics, Stalley spells out Aristotle’s conception of democracy, writing: ‘Aristotle believes that it is impossible for the whole population to have the virtuous character needed to govern well. So the right form of government by the many is one in which political participation is restricted to those who can afford the armour of a hoplite soldier (1239a37-b4). The wrong or perverted form of government by the many is democracy, which Aristotle sees as a government by the masses in their own interest.’ RF Stalley, ‘Introduction’, Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p. xxi. 4 M Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 2001, pp. 89-101. ET: Being and Time, Blackwell, Oxford, 1962, pp. 123-135. Also M Heidegger, Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1994, pp. 109-246. ET: Introduction to Phenomenological Research, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2005, pp. 79-186. Also M Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding, Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1984, pp. 65-107. 5 H Jonas, ‘Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism’, The Allure of Gnosticism, Open Court, Chicago, 1995. Originally published in Social Research, Vol. 19 1952, pp. 430-452. 6 Jonas describes how ancient Greek citizens were able to articulate their political life in terms of their metaphysics when he writes: ‘The classical ontological doctrine of the whole and parts … [is that] the whole is prior to the parts and is that for the sake of which the parts are and wherein they find the meaning of their existence.’ Jonas, op. cit., p. 124. 7 Jonas describes how things changed once the Greek city-states had ceded to Rome, writing, ‘This time honoured axiom had lost the social basis of its validity. The living example of such a whole had been the classical polis whose citizens had a stake in the whole and could affirm its superior status in the knowledge that they, the parts, however passing and exchangeable, maintained it with their own being. The ontological principle survived the conditions of its conception. With the absorption of the city states into the monarchies of the Diadochs and finally into the Roman empire…the relation no longer held politically.’ Jonas, op. cit., p. 124. 8 Ibid., p. 124.

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Jonas describes the cosmopolites writing, ‘Estranged from the community of being in one whole, his consciousness only makes him a foreigner in the world and every act of true reflection tells of this stark foreignness. This is the human condition. There is no longer the cosmos with whose immanent logos my own can feel kinship, no longer the order of the whole which gives meaning to man’s part in it and therefore to his place in it.’ (Jonas, 1995, p. 125). 10 R Descartes, Oeuvres, 12 Vols. Adam & Tannery, Paris, 1910, Vol. VII, p. 54. ET: Meditations on First Philosophy, Hackett, Cambridge, 2000, p. 123. 11 Descartes, op. cit., p. 54. ET, p. 123. 12 Descartes, op. cit., p. 56. ET, p. 124. 13 Descartes, op. cit., p. 57. ET, p. 124. 14 Descartes, op. cit., p. 57. ET, p. 125. 15 Descartes, op. cit., pp. 57-8. ET, p. 125.

Bibliography Aristotle, Politics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. Descartes, R., Meditations on First Philosophy. Hackett, Cambridge, 2000. Descartes, R., Oeuvres Completes. Vols. 1- 12, J Vrin, Paris, 1910. Heidegger, M., Sein und Zeit. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, (1927) 2001. —, Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung. Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1994. —, Die Frage nach dem Ding. Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1984. Jonas, H., ‘Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism’. The Allure of Gnosticism. Open Court, Chicago, 1995. Levinas, E., Totalité et infini: Essai sur l’extériorité, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1961. —, Difficile Liberté Essais sur le judaïsme, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1983. —, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée. J Vrin, Paris, 1982.

—, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1978.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ricoeur, P., Sur la traduction. Bayard, 2004. Mary-Ann Crumplin has degrees in modern languages and philosophy and a PhD in modern European philosophy. She teaches at University of London and Oxford University and has published on Levinas and Descartes.

Democracy and Intimacy: Contrasting Views on a Controversial Connection Joaquim Negreiros Abstract When interpreting the connections between the wider social world and the realm of private life, social scientists tend to focus upon the effects of the macro social fabric upon personal relationships. In this paper, we take the opposite and less usual perspective, so as to discuss how contemporary practices and values if intimacy might affect, either positively or negatively, levels of civic engagement. Empirical data on this potential connection is limited and the various available approaches to the matter are mainly theoretical and speculative. I am currently involved in a research which aims precisely to contribute to provide some empirical grounding for the debate. However, since the research is still in its very early stages, I do not have any findings to present. Rather that offering answers, thus, the purpose of this paper is to present different and often conflicting conceptual frameworks for a question: does the exclusive character of contemporary intimacy encapsulates intimates in a protective boundary that hinders the individual’s disposition to act upon the wider social realm? Or, on the contrary, does individual autonomy strengthened by a construction of the self based upon the dialogical character of contemporary intimacy actually favours meaningful and transformative forms of civic engagement? The fact that both contrasting perspectives can be identified in the current theoretical landscape might strike us as disturbing and confusing, but it can also be fruitfully regarded as a stimulating departure point for more empirically oriented research on this subject. Key Words: Intimacy, civic engagement, boundaries, ideology, individual autonomy, private and public spheres, consumption. ***** 1. Introduction It has become commonplace to claim that democracy does not exhaust itself in the exercise of the right to vote. A healthy democratic system is rather seen as relying upon the active and regular participation of the people (before, after and beyond elections) in the formation of decisions which affects the community they are part of. Despite isolated phenomena of enthusiastic citizenship, such as the recent Obama campaign and election in the USA, such active engagement in the public sphere is the exception rather than the rule, feeding the perception of a ‘crisis’ affecting democracy in so called western developed societies. Growing abstention rates are pointed out to argue that even the most basic manifestation of

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__________________________________________________________________ citizenship – let alone more demanding forms of civic engagement – is dangerously declining. A plethora of reasons have been offered as to explain this perceived ‘crisis’ of democracy. The aim of this paper is to address a seldom referred explanation, namely by exploring the hypothetical connection between the decreasing disposition to engage in the civic realm and the spreading of contemporary forms of ‘self-disclosing’ or ‘self-expressing’ intimacy. So as to conceptualize this possible connection, a set of contrasting views will be presented, offering distinct perspectives stressing either an antithetical or a sympathetic relation between an allegedly prevailing ideology of intimacy and the disposition for social agency in the democratic public sphere. Empirical data on such possible connection is limited, which explains the overall speculative character of the different theoretical views that will be addressed in this paper. Actually, I am currently involved in a research project aiming precisely to contribute to fill in such empirical vacuum. Since the research is still in its very early stages, however, I do not have any actual findings to present at this point. Rather that offering answers, my aim is to share with you conceptual framework for a question: does the exclusive character of contemporary intimacy encapsulates intimates in a protective boundary that hinders their disposition to act upon the wider social fabric? Or, on the contrary, does the construction of the self based upon the dialogical character of contemporary intimacy actually favour meaningful and transformative forms of civic engagement? 2. The Democratized Personal Sphere Before addressing these two possibilities, a brief description of the features of contemporary intimacy should be presented. The association between intimacy and private personal relationships, which we tend to take for granted, is historically rooted in the emergence of modernity and in the correspondent configuration of the private and public spheres as separates dimensions of social life. The modern divide between the public and the private realms framed and allowed for a new emphasis upon the individual, regarded as a unique inner self. According to the very influential sociologist Anthony Giddens, whose name will probably emerge in other presentations during this conference, the modern emphasis on individual uniqueness has only increased in what he refers to as late modernity societies, deeply affected by the growing erosion of tradition. Late modernity, Giddens argues, is characterized by a radical democratization of the personal sphere, increasingly associated with a new kind of intimacy1. Within such democratized personal sphere, liberated from the constraints of tradition, the late modernity individual builds his or her personal narrative of the self through the engagement in an open and reflexive dialog of self expression with his or her intimate partner. That is what Giddens refers to as the ‘pure relationship’, in which

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__________________________________________________________________ the reflexive project of the self is fulfilled in the framework of the self disclosure intimacy that defines the pure relationship. The account of self disclosure intimacy developed by Giddens in the beginning of the 1990’s is still broadly accepted as an adequate description of contemporary intimate relationships. Actually, such description - namely in what concerns its emphasis upon the negotiated character of the pure relationship and the notion that the personal narrative of the unique self is jointly constructed with a partner in an interaction open to continuous negotiation - does not only prevail in research literature, but has also spread to various forms of popular culture, to such an extent that it is frequently regarded as common sense knowledge. It is not surprising that films, soap operas, songs and novels tend to portray the ideal lover as someone ‘I can talk to’ or ‘someone who understands me’. The idea that self disclosure is the privileged generator of closeness, trust and affect is linked to the notion of exclusiveness associated with contemporary perspectives on intimacy. The link between intimacy and exclusivity is not new: standard sociology of the family has highlighted the circumstance that intimacy relies on keeping ‘others’ (those external to the intimate relationship) at a distance. Defining intimacy as feeding upon self disclosure only stresses its exclusive character, suggesting that intimacy implies the lowering of the boundaries among intimate individuals and tends to heighten the barriers regarding those who are external to the relationship. Taking the notion of reinforced exclusivity into account, one would tend to answer to question that guides this paper (do contemporary perceptions and practices of intimacy contribute to explain the deficit of civic engagement which affects political democracy?) with a simple ‘yes’. An overview of theoretical approaches to the subject, however, reveals a more complicated panorama. The connection between the protective exclusivity boundaries of contemporary intimacy and low levels of civic engagement is far from being perceived as a simple cause-effect phenomenon and the answer can be ‘yes’ or ‘no, on the contrary’. 3. An Optimistic View: Autonomy on both Sides of the Boundary Among those who identify with an optimistic view – those who do not regard the character of late modernity intimacy as an obstacle for civic engagement – we can find Giddens himself. It might sound surprising, given Giddens’ acknowledgement of some degree of protective exclusivity required for the performance of self-disclosure intimacy. Acknowledging the need of such boundaries, however, does not lead Giddens to see pure relationship intimate interaction as an inhibiting factor regarding an active and creative individual engagement in the public realm. The key concepts in his argument concerning this matter are the perception of cross-fertilization affecting democratization processes taking place in the public and the private realms, as well as the emphasis on the idea of autonomy.

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__________________________________________________________________ Giddens claims that ‘structural conditions in the wider society penetrate pure relationships’, immediately adding that ‘Conversely, such relationships have effects upon the wider social order’.2 Stressing that pure relationships are manifestations of a democratization of personal life’, Giddens elaborates on the symmetry between the process taking place within the intimate realm and democratic possibilities in the political order, placing the notion of autonomy in the centre of his claim: Democratization in the public domain (...) supplies essential conditions for the democratization of personal relationships. But the reverse applies also. The advancement of self autonomy in the context of pure relationships is rich with implications for democratic practice in the larger community’3 The above mentioned implications are clearly defined as positive ones. Giddens claims that contemporary intimacy implies that individuals have sufficient resources to participate autonomously in a pure relationship. So as to sustain the argument that ‘the same applies to the political process’4, he underlines the circumstance that late modern intimacy and contemporary civic engagement are both regulated by reflexive negotiation, which in both cases depends upon an effective mobilization of self autonomy resources. In this sense, contemporary forms of self-disclosure intimacy that sustain pure relationships should not be regarded as hindering civic engagement. On the contrary, this perspective sees such performance of intimacy as a structural element favouring active and critical individual agency in the public sphere. The explanation for low levels of civic engagement should, accordingly, be searched for elsewhere. 4. Has the Public become Intimate? Giddens’ optimistic emphasis upon a fruitful compatibility between contemporary intimacy and civic engagement has a counter intuitive flavour, in that it refuses the common sense notion that the heightening of protective boundaries required by self-disclosure intimacy would translate into an increased indifference concerning the public sphere. The contrasting pessimistic approaches we bring to this discussion, which link contemporary intimacy to low levels of civic engagement, may also look somehow surprising. In their case, common sense expectations are reversed in that the connection between contemporary intimacy and low levels of individual agency in the public realm is not sustained by references to the boundary work supposedly needed to maintain intimate relationships. Actually, their central claim goes in the opposite direction. Authors such as Bauman5, Sennet6 and Berlant7 broadly share the argument that the negative effects of contemporary intimacy upon civic engagement does not derive from an heightening of barriers between the private and the public realms

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__________________________________________________________________ but, quite oppositely, stem from the increasing erosion (the collapse, in more extreme versions of this thesis) of such boundaries. We will look more closely into the claims presented by Richard Sennet in his meaningfully entitled book ‘The Fall of the Public Man’, first published in 1974. According to Sennet, the emptiness of contemporary public life should be attributed to a lethal contamination of the public realm by an expanding ideology of intimacy, which is defined in these terms: ‘Social relationships of all kinds are real believable, and authentic the closer they approach the inner psychological concerns of each person’8. In other words, the private sphere has become the focus of human energies and the social ‘place’ where belief and commitment are possible. Conversely, public life has turned into a dry landscape where individuals passively fulfil their formal obligations. In a society ideologically regulated by the search for a unique selfhood – the principle behind the performance of contemporary intimacy – there is no room for the degree of formal and impersonal ritualized activities that, in Sennet’s view, are indispensable for the expression of meanings and the assumption of commitments he takes as essential for a functional secular public culture. The same approach can be identified in much more recent work. Berlant and Warner echo Sennet’s perspective of a ‘tyranny of intimacy’ when they claim that Ideologies and institutions of intimacy are increasingly offered as the vision of a good life (...) the only (fantasy) zone in which a future might be thought and willed, the only (imaginary) place where good citizens might be produced away from the confusing and unsettling distractions of capitalism and politics.9 Zygmunt Bauman also stresses what he regards as the devastating effects of the (postmodern) destruction of the (modern) divide between the private and the public realms of social life. His concerns, however, are mainly directed to the effects of such loss of boundaries in the intimate sphere of personal relationships. In Bauman’s perspective, the consumer market forces, described as powerful enough to create what he designates as a ‘consumerist life mode’, are to blame for the destruction of boundaries between the private and the public. Every as aspect of the social fabric is contaminated by the ‘consumerist life mode’ - Bauman acknowledges the negative effects of the colonization of the communitas by consumer market forces – but he seems particularly concerned with the fate of personal and intimate partnerships in a world where the boundaries that used to provide such relations have been wiped out by the overwhelming values of consumption. Personal relationships, Bauman claims, have lost their distinctive traces (that can only survive in a protected environment provided by boundaries which shelter

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__________________________________________________________________ the intimate sphere from the logic prevailing in the public realm) and simply become another form of investment. The commodification of personal relationships has turned them into disposable, just like any other consumer good. As in investment, they are supposed to generate a profit. The expected profit is security, something that the radically provisional character of postmodern relationships can hardly provide. The overall dictatorship of consumption related values that has destroyed the boundaries between the public and private spheres of social life has, in this perspective, a double negative impact upon the levels of civic engagement. Firstly, the ‘consumerist mode of life’ has subverted the very functioning of the public sphere, introducing values and practices which are not consistent with its original purpose. Secondly, but not less importantly, it has hindered the construction of a meaningful personal life, which Bauman regards as a pre-requisite for the performance of an active and creative individual role in the public sphere. Either Sennet’s perspective (the tyranny of intimacy) or Bauman’s view (the dictatorship of consumption), could not be further away from Giddens optimistic emphasis upon the potential benefit of intimately generated autonomy for a functional public sphere. As stated in the beginning of this paper, the contrasting views on the (perverse? fruitful?) connections between contemporary intimacy and individual civic engagement are the product of essentially speculative exercises. I hope we can also express our speculative points of view during the debate following this presentation. Although the need to test these theoretical hypotheses on the ground seems obvious, it should not overshadow their value as excellent departure points for a more empirically oriented research on the topic.

Notes 1

A Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1992. 2 Ibid., p.195. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Z Bauman, Liquid Love, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003. 6 R Sennet, The Fall of the Public Man, Norton, New York, London, 1992. 7 L Berlant & M Warren, ‘Sex in Public’, Intimacy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1998. 8 Sennet, op. cit., p.259 9 Berlant & Warren, op. cit., p. 317.

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Bibliography Bauman, Z., Liquid Love. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003. Berlant, L. & Warren, M., ‘Sex in Public’. Intimacy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1998. Giddens, A., The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1992. Jamieson, L., ‘Boundaries of Intimacy’. Families in Society. The Policy Press, Bristol , 2005. —, Intimacy – Personal Relationships in Modern Societies.  Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988. Sennet, R., The Fall of the Public Man. Norton, New York, London, 1992. Joaquim Negreiros completed a PhD at King’s College in London and is currently working as a researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology in Lisbon on ‘Intimacy and Citizenship.’