Michał Biedowicz outlines a tripartite caveat for this new phase of the Science of Democracy discussion by considering a concept well known but rarely engaged in the study of politics: ideology. Here, he opens up normative considerations that education needs to guide
This latest phase of Jean-Paul Gagnon's democratic theory series – Science of Democracy 2.0 – proposes to develop a global cartography of understandings of ‘democracy’. This is an ambitious, bold, and timely endeavour, getting us closer to Arne Naess’s terminus technicus, a technical definition of a global, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic nature. I offer three areas of consideration for scholars interested in collating those understandings.
This applies to Jean-Paul's new book, The Sciences of the Democracies, but also for democracy research in general. In democracy research, ideology tends to be quickly dismissed. In our endeavour to garner as many understandings of democracy as possible, one cannot deny that ideologies produce different, often contrasting, understandings of ‘democracy’.
One function of ideologies is to de-contest essentially contested concepts and affix them with a particular meaning. This is a biased endeavour, yet democracy’s open texture means we should account for such meanings.
As Marius S. Ostrowski reminds us in his reading of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, ideologies are a means of understanding reality. We use sight, sound, touch, to understand the social reality that surrounds us. Yet understanding it in toto is impossible for our limited senses.
Therefore, we need ideology to give us meaning so that reality does not overwhelm us with uncertainty. Indeed, existential philosophy tells us that death is the only certainty. We internalise ideologies subconsciously from an early age – we gather ideas about the world from media, place of worship, peers, family members – ideas with particular meanings that we combine and arrange to make sense of our reality.
We need ideology to give us meaning so that reality does not overwhelm us with uncertainty
This is ideology in simple terms as personal psychology. Through a lifetime, new ideas might rearrange our understanding of the world, but ideology does not disappear. New simply replaced the old; we need ideology to prevent gigantic reality from squashing us.
Ideology is, therefore, inescapable. It is impossible for an individual not to have some combination of ideas about how the world functions. Researchers need to consider this if they want to collect all understandings of ‘democracy’.
Dogma is one thing; the key is to remain open-minded. Still, the question of normativity remains. How to address latent normativity is the next point.
The ambitious attempt to gather all understandings of ‘democracy’ under the sun is an inductively universalist and descriptive endeavour. This undertaking will clarify the field, but it will not eliminate normative theorising. Indeed, it is imperative!
Once we have collated them, it will not be too long before democracy theorists will begin to categorise these understandings into more minimalist and maximalist types. That impulse will be inevitable, not only because of the role of ideology described, but because the discussion itself, as much as it claims to want the project to be neutral and descriptive, is clear about how participatory and deliberative strands are implicitly favoured, especially towards the end when the main idea of democracy is ‘emancipatory self-rule’. (Not to mention the welcome latent anarchism!)
In aiding this categorisation, I offer a rudimentary distinction of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ ‘democracies’. This approach may resonate with those familiar with Isaiah Berlin’s ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberties, ‘minimalist’ and ‘maximalist’ ‘democracy’ conceptions, ‘thick’ versus ‘thin’, ‘procedural’ versus ‘substantive’, etc.
I define 'positive democracies' as those which strive to maintain equality and liberty for all. 'Negative democracies', by contrast, require only bare electoral participation and over time may become 'democides'
Positive democracies would be those which, roughly, through collective decision-making, endeavour to maintain achieved equality and liberty of all people, ideally in moral, political, and economic spheres. Regression in these areas should not take place. Participatory, grassroots, radical, bottom-up, and certain strands of deliberative democracy would fit this category.
Gradual regression of these would make the achieved democracy fall into the ‘negative’ category, which covers democracy types that require only bare electoral participation, support only one or two of the above (e.g. only moral and political equality and liberty), or which, over time, may prove to be a chosen ‘democide’ by participants. Liberal, illiberal, electoral, top-down, and plutocratic democracies would, arguably, fit this category.
In the history of political thought, scholars have widely believed that more direct and participatory forms of democracy are unfeasible and impractical. They require a strong element of knowhow. Studying the Zapatistas, Mariana Mora reveals that there exists a pedagogy attached to the art of governing. The Zapatista communities are known for their principle 'governing by obeying'. Mora calls this mandar obedeciendo – an idea that, if you are an officeholder, you hold authority rather than embody it.
The Zapatistas teach that there are no authorities without people, and it is them that grant authority to anyone. For Mora, this ethos is enhanced by a concept 'governing by learning to govern'.
People learn how to govern themselves by participating. The more they participate, the better they will manage their own affairs
The wider argument is that people learn how to govern themselves by participating. The more they participate, the better they will manage their own affairs. Then, once others see the effectiveness of this, it encourages more participation.
This means that participation and self-government effectiveness have a positive and an endogenous relationship via education/pedagogy. Many democracy scholars fear power de-concentration for ordinary people. Despite them seeing in this a noble endeavour, they fear that ordinary people will not get everything right first time. But since when does rule by ‘representatives’ get everything ‘right’ first time?
When seeking alternatives, we often search for immediate cure-alls. Education can help us fight back. Among other methods, it will help us recognise the open-ended character in all potential solutions. It is, therefore, important above all to understand ‘democracy’ as an open-ended process.
No.120 in a Loop thread on the Science of Democracy. Look out for the 🦋 to read more
