Digging deeper into our understanding of democracy 

One of the biggest concerns of political thought today is the fact that democracy is in crisis. But which democracy, exactly, is in crisis? The Science of Democracy 2.0 aims to challenge us, and encourage us to reconsider the frame of our problematisation around democratic politics in the anthropocene: think climate change, pandemics, and (geo)political turbulence. 

The discussion reminds us of the multiple ways democracy has been experienced, understood and practised across time, space, cultural tradition, ideology, institutional framework, architecture, art – and even species. Discussants remain, for instance, steadfast on the premise that democracy never meant one thing and it will never do. And that is a good thing. 

What kind of democracy would that be if it could not reflect and embody the cultural particularities, spatio-temporal specificities, power relations and ontological understandings (that is, fundamental ways of understanding reality and existence) of the people that forge their democratic institutions? 

From the ways Indigenous communities envisaged and practised democratic governance, to forms of deliberation and representation, democracy synthesises a pluriverse of place-based politics. Every locality has had, and will have, its own modes of democratic governance of some kind. From Asia, to Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas, people exercised some form of democratic governance in their own accounts.

The more you know about democracies, the more you can improve your democratic ability

In contrast to the one-size-fits-all McDonaldsisation of democracy, this series’ approach offers us an oasis amid intellectual stagnation surrounding the noble concept of democracy. 

This series' curator, Jean-Paul Gagnon, took inspiration from Arne Næss’s proposition that we should dig deeper into the different understandings of democracy to build new ideas that may fit the needs of our times. Put simply: the more you know about democracies, the more you can improve your democratic ability. 

Crisis in the corpus 

So, which kind of democracy is in crisis nowadays? Liberal democracy is indeed in crisis. And why have we reached this reductionist point where we consider democracy synonymous with a liberal and minimalistic representative form of it?  

Historically speaking, today’s liberal structure of politics does not have roots in the plural understandings of the democratic imaginary. It is foregrounded in the Roman legal system and the adaptation of monarchies to a complex system of reconfiguration of power between the church, kings and the rise of the merchant class. That brings us to the idea of hegemony. 

Hegemony is based on two things: the hegemon and the one who is under the rule of the hegemon. When defining democracy, we can see that the dominant vision of democracy followed the influence of those who managed to impose their vision over others. That does not mean that every other form of democracy was eliminated, but that they were marginalised, operating under the radar of the dominant system, and have often been seen as being in opposition to it.

When defining democracy, we can see that the dominant vision of democracy followed the influence of those who managed to impose their vision over others

The marginalisation and the power asymmetry between the hegemonic and the marginal forms of democracy eventually destabilised the hegemonic position. They also destabilised the ecosystems that sustained them in the first place. Political systems, including democratic ones, are inextricable from the ecological systems that feed and sustain their operational domain. 

In this regard, the hegemonic hubris of the liberal political order is accompanied by the collapse of the ecosystems that supported its domination. In other words, the institutional instability of our political systems affects the vulnerability of our planetary ecologies.

Democratic experimentation 

But this collapsing hegemony also brings to light a plurality of democratic experimentation with alternative ways of seeing, understanding and practising politics. The promise of our times is that the pluralisation of democracy can rejuvenate liberal democracies. In that sense, we should not understand the pluriverse of democratic experimentation as a threat to the hegemonic understanding of democracy.

If we consider that the climate emergency is the result of anthropogenic industrial activity, our democratic experimentation should take forms that invite all of us to think in plural and more-than-human terms

More than that, if we consider that the climate emergency is the result of anthropogenic industrial activity, our democratic experimentation should take forms that invite all of us to think in plural and more-than-human terms. 

In a period of multiple and overlapping crises, thinking in plural and more-than-human terms provides a hopeful terrain for politics. The authors of the book based on this series believe that we can collectively invest energy, material infrastructures and institutional resources into advancing our efforts to improve the ways we envisage and practice democracy. 

Reimagining democracy to sustain it 

I’ll end here with a reminder. Historically, democracy as a form of governance has not been held in high esteem. Indeed, it wasn't until the twentieth century that the democratic rule of law gained significant traction in political ideas. 

This alone should warn us that the energy we put into exploring the plurality of meanings of democracy is still incipient. And while many scholars still seek ways for democratic theory and practices to evolve in approaching the challenges of our times, others think differently. Some believe the problems of our times require a firm steering that surpasses long and often ineffective political procedures. 

This point stands in contrast to the Science of Democracy 2.0’s new thesis about the need to highlight the plural and more-than-human character of democratic politics in a period of multiple and overlapping crises. We do, indeed, need to reimagine democracy if we want to sustain it. 

But as Tomasi Di Lampedusa once quipped: for things to remain the same, everything has to change.

🦋 No.122 in a Loop series on the Science of Democracy

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