Fragments of Power: What Will Democracy Do with Its Victory?

”Fragments of power: What will democracy do with its victory?”

Tampere Lecture 16.9. 2013

Matti Apunen

Introduction

Democracy is in crisis. It is not a sudden crisis, caused by authoritarian pressure, strong political leaders and the power of large global corporations. We have more faith than ever in democracy, and in the last 50 years democracy has become the normative political choice. But at the same time, democracy is in difficulty, because it seems it does not know what to do with its victory. Democracy has won in Europe, but at the same time its subjects are unsatisfied with democracy and are seeking new forms for it.

Shortcuts to democracy are sought intensely as a solution to the lack of credibility that representative democracy has for its citizens.By this lack of credibility I mean that citizens are passive, not inclined to vote, thus weakening the legitimacy of political decisions. At the same time, people consider politicians to be untrustworthy; Finnish polls on the respectability of particular vocations repeatedly rank politicians at the bottom. Similar results are probably easy to find elsewhere as well.

These shortcuts are single issue tickets and various demands for ”direct democracy”. I claim neither is a solution to the original problem. Direct democracy is rarely constructive and conciliatory. The demand for direct democracy is more concerned with the idea of increasing the chances to say “no”, in a sense the expansion of an individual’s veto.

A real solution is possible, and you will have to wait for it until the end of this presentation. The real solution is the emphasis of virtue, the strengthening of citizenship, better freedom of choice, and the active possibility of participating in making decisions which concern one’s own life.

Symptoms of paralysis

We demanded more democracy and have received more democracy. The amount of political elections has grown in the last 50 years, but at the same time ever more democracies suffer from deficient implementation.

The United States is politically paralyzed. Europe cannot resolve its core problems. Even progressive solutions that benefit everyone cannot proceed. We know well that, for example, the creation of a digital European single market would considerably ease the life of citizens and companies. In addition it would provide GDP growth of the same level of magnitude as the creation of the single market in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the digital internal market does not progress, the project has not even properly begun.

Finland is paralyzed.Decisions that are unavoidable, and ultimately known to be inevitable, on the extension of working careers are postponed, and the government will not reveal the methods and details, only some ambiguous ”intent”. These declarations of intent are like the alcoholic’s renewed promises of abstinence- maybe not today, but by 2017 I will be in much better shape. My problem is under control!

The most serious situation is of course in the United States, where the only appropriate expression to describe the situation between the democrats and the republicans is a dead end, but some European states are not much better. In Italy, the formation of a government is notoriously difficult, which is not simply a passing disorder (and I fear this disorder will affect Finland in April 2013, when the next parliamentary election will be held. In 2010-11, Belgium survived - a questionable world record of - 541 days without a government, and government was ultimately formed not the result of a coming to senses but the fear that the country’s credit rating would be dropped.

Incidentally, this is the same reason which ultimately drove the Finnish government to promise its economic diet a few weeks ago.

Democracy has completely new tools. Social media made us all content-producers and created further pressure on those in power. “There is no democracy without Twitter”, Turkish demonstrators enthused in June 2013. The mainstream media was seen to be so corrupted that it could not be entrusted with the transmission of information. The insurrections during the so-called Arab Spring were also attributed as achievements of social media, even though for example research indicates that in Egypt social media was ultimately used by a relatively small group of Egyptians.

But the change is undisputed.Citizens demand to be directly involved in decision-making, and this is not a friendly request but an unconditional demand. This demand also concerns the media, as everyone who has worked there in recent years knows.People consider that they own the media, even if they do not own shares or even pay a subscription fee, and they ask where the company’s general meetings are held so that they might express themselves directly.

We have received more democracy, but power is more fragile. Incumbent governments have lost elections in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, The Netherlands, Denmark, Latvia and of course in Finland (2011). They retained their power only in Poland, Estonia and Sweden.

The people also want their say about companies. Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements have so far had few effects, but their signal is hard to bypass. And as unusual as it sounds, power is thinner even in large corporations. In 2011 14,1% of the CEOs of global corporations were forced to leave as Moisés Naímdemonstrates in his book The End of Power.

Shortcuts to power

Politics is increasingly led by opinion polls. Citizens’ initiatives and various forms of direct and “easy” democracy are sought to correct the defects of democracy. We believe that if the campaign bus came to the people, we could remedy the low voting rate. And if we had more forms of direct democracy, we would fix the quality of politics and the cynicism and dissatisfaction of citizens.

The campaign bus will not resolve passivity. Direct popular elections are unfortunately not the solution to the quality conundrum in politics.

Look at California. The wealthy state of California has been governed by direct referenda for decades. The outcome has often been absurd: the same group of voters can simultaneously demand better public services and substantially lower taxes. The paradox is not impossible, if it is premised on increasing public sector productivity, but I seriously doubt that this was foremost in the mind of the Californian electorate when it made its choices on the ticket.

The idea of the citizen initiative is popular in Finland. 50000 names are enough to register the initiative on the parliamentary agenda. So what is the problem, if this will provide a parallel route for proposing legislative changes?

The problem is that the citizen initiative raises strong expectations of a positive reaction among the activists. They usually overestimate the political appeal of their proposal, because they share the values of the other signatories, or extrapolate a group of likes on Facebook to be a majority of the people. If a citizens’ initiative is rebuffed in parliament, the consequence is a strong political frustration and dissatisfaction. Politics is considered dirtier than before, a fixed match rather than the art of compromises for which it was created.

Behind the citizen initiative there lies an understanding that democracy in its present form is too slow, and good intentions are entitled to use a fast lane. It is a kind of societalcar pool lane,where a group of citizens travelling in the same direction may overtake others who wait in the adjacent lane with their own, individual woes.

Another popular shortcut is civil disobedience.

This concerns a “just” purpose after which refusal or even active resistance can become acceptable or even ideal. Civil disobedience is a special exception for political activity in the otherwise very strict requirement of legality. We consider that a “strong moral reason” justifies ignoring the law, but even in this requirement we are not consistent.

We understand, for example, civil disobedience in the name of environmental protection, but we condemn civil disobedience for religious reasons – for example in the case where a nurse refuses to perform an abortion on the basis of his own ethics.

The Finnish Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen, who represents the Christian Democrats and is a practicing Christian, stated in a speech this summer that in some circumstances morals can be above the law. She meant this abortion issue in particular. Räsänen received a ferocious torrent of objections that demanded her apology, resignation, or various combinations including these.

The discussion was striking, in that the same people who most intensely criticized Minister Räsänen for bypassing the law, nevertheless accept civil disobedience in another context without question. Inconsistent? Not according to Räsänen’s critics.

What about the representatives of the majority, groups in a good economic position – for example people like me – are we entitled to civil disobedience? Or is civil disobedience reserved only for a mechanism to distribute power, like progressive taxation,where marginal groups can balance the uneven scales of power? If we accept this principle, it would be reasonable to know the baseline of this equalizing mechanism, below which civil disobedience is acceptable.

The ultimate, in itself reasonable basic question concerning participation is: why participate in a slow and difficult process, if a faster alternative exists?The political and preparatory process subjects one to unpleasant counterarguments and, occasionally, even plausible arguments. Why go through the trouble, if there is the possibility of a last-minute objection, the possibility of an appeal or a veto?

Finnish society has constructed a great number of entrenched opportunities to say no, and very few opportunities to say yes. Therefore single-issue movements have received a disproportionate amount of power under the Finnish doctrine on the separation of powers, where Montesquieu’s traditional elements have been strengthened by further branches of government (the parties to the so-called tripartite labor negotiating system, activism).

Single issue movements are not heroic resistance, they are often political luxuries. Single issue movements can be concerned with only one thing at a time. They are easy to join, and when the time comes, easy to leave.

They gain easy publicity, because the media is directed by sentimentalism, thought according to which the view of the person who has suffered the most is the most sincere. This is why the media prefers to seek suffering rather than the overall picture. This is why the victim of a crime momentarily becomes an expert on criminal policy, whose opinion is not seen in a critical light. Do not misunderstand me: these people must of course have their say. I appreciate the achievements of the environmental movement in raising environmental awareness, but technology deserves equal recognition for improving the quality of the environment.

In the present political discourse the burden of proof is always on he who is in charge of the whole. The dire lack of accommodation in the city is not at all as significant a matter from the sentimental perspective as the view from one resident’s home which is ruined by the building erected on the adjacent property.

The equivalent of single issue movements in officialdom are sector officials.

A typical example of a sector official is the data protection supervisor, whose function is primarily to be concerned about the maximal data protection of citizens. The human or economic externalities of a data protection decision are secondary questions from the perspective of the sector official. The transfer of patient data from the attending physician to another health organization is not possible without the patient’s consent, even if the patient is incapable of granting consent, and the transfer of data would save her own life.

Many seem to believe that the last knights in shining armor in today’s ”spoiled” politics are NGOs (non-governmental organizations), independent lobbying and aid organizations. NGOs are not seen to have ties to state politics and can therefore work without political baggage.

But note that NGOs also have target results. The NGO seeks direct funding from people, or as often is the case, institutional helpers. An NGO must demonstrate to its funders that the activity has outcomes. It must therefore demonstrate that the problem exists and even that it is growing or worsening, and the NGO assures that only it can provide a humane solution.A humane solution is quite apart from a cost-effective or the best solution in terms of effectiveness. A humane solution is, hmm, humane, in other words, full of good intentions. In addition it is natural that when engaging in direct fundraising the NGO leans towards those currents, which are the most popular and politically correct.

All in all, customized organizations with low hierarchies succeed in a fragmented political culture.This is why populist parties are successful in Europe, or so-called antithetical political parties, such as the pirate parties. In some places they can achieve significant proportions of the vote, among others in Germany and Sweden, with an agenda that is a combination of the broad ideal of e-democracy and cliquish concerns. According to the latest information the German Pirate Party is nevertheless on the brink of disintegrating into internal disagreements. The party with the lowest hierarchy sunk into internal chaos, name-calling and personal disputes in record time.

”Patronize me!”

Political passiveness is not a consequence of the difficulty of voting. The reasons are much broader and they run much deeper.

We will gladly subject our case to norms and officials. To offset high taxes we transfer responsibility for our life to society. Ever smaller matters and more subjective rights are dealt with by laws, and the sphere of decisions concerning natural life shrinks. We do not trust the ability of people or communities to make decisions which concern them. Instead we believe, incredibly, that people can find and elect those superhuman individuals who can also decide for others.

Our civitas shrinks, and with the proliferation of norms we are more administrative subjects, and less independent, critical, cooperative citizens.

Well-intentioned norms make us passive and introverted. Whatever happens within sight or earshot, we do not grapple with it but speed up and leave the police, fire department, or social services to deal with the problem.

If we want laws to limit bad behavior butthe norm contained in legislation is unsuccessful, we soon have on our hands three problems instead of one.The pre-existing, undesirable activity continues somewhat like before. In addition, we must monitor the new norm, which people clearly have no wish to obey. And as the sum of these we become less law-abiding.

”If you make ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law”,as Winston Churchill expertly summarized the matter.

After the war Finns have issued not ten thousand, but 75000 laws and regulations. 1600 are created annually. We replace ordinary social relations with norms.

The flood of norms creates an institutional pressure for passivity. It is finally legitimated by research and publicity.

A watered down decision, or indecision, is easy to justify with research and reports. There is no worldwide shortage of research data, mixed material, and at the worst the same data can dexterously be used for two diametrically opposed purposes. If we demand nearly perfect certainty of the lack of risk involved in an uncertain decision or a precise date when an economic solution will repay itself, it is very difficult to find a decision-maker, who would take responsibility for the risks demonstrated by research- but the same also concerns corporate decision-making.

Part of the picture is that we are surprisingly incapable of estimating the probability of risk, cannot adequately perceive the proportion of a harmful substance contained in food or chemicals; the difference between a million and a billion is hard for even the experienced and numerate.

In addition we avoid risks very asymmetrically, that is, in an inconsistent way and one which emphasizes the uncertainty and theweakness of decision-making.

We grossly overestimate new risks and underestimate old risks, as Kevin Kelley writes in his excellent book What Technology Wants(2010). Our tolerance for known, “old” risks, such as alcohol, is great. We do not consider picking mushrooms or berries so risky that it should be regulated, even though the risk of injury, getting lost, or picking the wrong mushroom is considerable when walking in the forest. Almost everyone has personal experience of one of these.

Another form of asymmetry are approaches which I will call aversion of type one and two risk.

Type one risk means that we carefully look for the possible risks of a new food, medicine or technology – health risks, security risks, and economic risks. We emphasize these, so the default is rejecting and prohibiting a new approach.

Type two risk refers to those detriments, that are the consequence of prohibiting a new technology or that we cannot enjoy its benefits.

The current political climate overemphasizes type one risk to near impossibility. If there is the smallest chance of some detriment, a total ban is always the politically safer option. We fear the political consequences when the risk is realized more than the unachieved benefits that result from the ban.