Is more democracy the answer?

It's time to talk part 2 of 2

The picture at the beginning of this article is from the popular show Squid Games. The premise is that participants fight for a prize inevitably absolving them from their debts and letting them live their lives in a renewed state of peace. You play a game at each round and with each game more people ‘exit’ the tournament. The participants choose to enter, have choices to exit at every round, and gain rewards whatever they decide. The downside is people die if they lose the game.

The democratic vote therefore possesses extremely high stakes. Those who are choosing to remain in the games feel their debt is so overwhelming they have no choice but to stake their life on it. Those who vote the opposite way tend to feel their lives are worth living whatever the cost. The decision could not be bigger. It makes Brexit look like a cakewalk in comparison.

Of course, rarely are democratic votes a matter of life and death. Indeed even when they perhaps happen to be it is not that we know it. This is only one of the reasons why squid games despite its popularity are not a perfect example of democracy at the precipice. The ‘runners’ of the game deliberately pump up the contestants who are leaning towards violence and do not ensure a fair voting process despite their proclamations.

Yet is this so different from our current situation? For sure we are not under threat of violence for whom we vote for and the stakes are not nearly so high. However, we suffer from social pressure (note the decades-long ‘shy tory’ vote) which influences how we are willing to say we will vote even if we differ in private. Even though we can hide our vote we find it ever more difficult to hide our true intentions from others.

So we may say that Squid Games is not a representative or a fair description of any true democratic system. However, we may say that some of the issues that arise in Squid Games emerge in contemporary democracy. The fear of what will occur if we do not vote a certain way. The pressure to vote the correct way and the mutual distrust amongst citizens and those in charge. Perhaps it has more in common than we may like to imagine.

But the fundamental challenges to our safety and security remain. These are the fundamental questions which guide any democratic arrangement. Who counts and who does not is the guide to what constitutes a democratic arrangement. More importantly than this though whose voice do we hear in the process?

The vision Thomas Hobbes had in Leviathan was not for a totalitarian regime as so many of my students in the past have posited. As argued in Limiting Leviathan Hobbes possesses a much more limited framework for sovereign authority than is commonly assumed. As Hobbes argued for himself in his Dialogues the sovereign is not free to do as they please as is often argued. Instead, the sovereign’s role was to maintain order which required understanding the citizen’s demands of the sovereign.

Of course today people look at this with at best curiosity and worse disdain. Rather than seeing Hobbes as the foundation stone of our modern order for freedom, democracy, and liberty, they see him as a proto-fascist. Some even compare China to the modern Hobbesian state. But this is an error. As John Gray highlighted in his uneven book China is far closer to the fascist Carl Schmitt than the proto-liberal Thomas Hobbes.

What Hobbes believed in was the maintenance of order. Without order we cannot have anything else. Hobbes in this sense is the antithesis of the Squid Games where a lack of order and safety is the definition of its function. We need to feel safe and saved before we take our course and act on our own to the detriment of others. Not unlike in any disaster drama when the government melts away, we see people acting on their base instincts as norms collapse in on themselves.

The citizens bound to a contract were equal in a strict sense as long as they stuck to said contract. Hobbes’ belief in the broad equality of people led him to devise a strategy for the ultimate ruler. Even if they did not interfere they should cast a shadow over all of us. The birth of the modern state was supposed to grant us the requisite conditions for man to live together and exercise our political function.

“The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone” (Thomas Hobbes Leviathan)

Today the state with all its extravagances and powers is well equipped to protect its citizens. But we are not so brilliant at living together. Ballot democracy does not create the conditions for us to live together even if the state can secure our safety. Toleration is a low bar to reach but increasingly we are falling below it.

This is not simply a political problem but a broader societal one. Lacking friendship limits our ability to emphasise and understand others deeply and meaningfully. Instead, we find caricatures of our political opponents whom we scowl at across the street when they catch our eye. Everything about them rubs us up the wrong way- their clothes, their accent, their mannerisms. Their politics is a reflection of them as people.

This leads us to surround ourselves with those who share our ideals. Even in the most personal relationships, such as dating, we are letting politics get in the way. It turns out a good shag is only one where the other passes our political high bar. In these conditions, we forget what the ‘other’ looks like. We homogenise, caricature, and lose sight of the flesh and blood which make up politics. We forget politics is about how we live together.

Ballot democracy alone says nothing about this arrangement. Procedurally we can maintain our democratic rights even if they are exercised poorly and ineffectively. The right to vote and participate is unaffected by our living arrangements, even when such arrangements lead to societal decay and undermining of the very values necessary for ballot democracy to thrive in the long run. But our current situation across America and wider Europe surely tells us ballot democracy is necessary but insufficient. We need more!

What does more look like? Is it more votes and responsibility to legislate? On the face of it that may appear to be a reasonable solution. The more we vote, the more interactive we become with the political process. Scholars such as Helene Landemore find this model convincing arguing for the development of citizens assemblies. Make us all either extreme voters or deciders and we will pick up the mantel of democracy. Out with the ballot and in with the citizen decider.

But we may think that the background features of the problems with our democracy will fundamentally remain. Merely getting more people involved more regularly may not alter the current problems. Instead, we could even see the doubling down of them. The mass democratization of American political parties has hardly witnessed a decrease of loneliness and extreme levels of partisanship.

There are those who would see this as a positive rather than a negative. Chantal Mouffe argues greater citizen engagement breeds greater conflict and this is no bad thing. Indeed, classical liberals such as J.S.Mill believe argument, conflict, and debate are necessities for progression. Without it we merely end up accepting our lot. Perhaps we need virality to reinvigorate our democracies.

“What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?” (J.S. Mill On Liberty)

But Mill’s hopeful treatise and Mouffe’s conflictual agonism feels wildly out of touch with our present moment. The West’s constitutional and political crises are not replicable of the rise of Nazism whatever Timothy Snyder may argue but it is a specific crisis of political heat. Doubling down on heat as a method of resolution feels akin to ordering another drink when you feel nauseous. It may not tip you over the edge and lead you to the gutter but it surely is no real solution.

“Freedom is not an absence but a presence, a life in which we choose multiple commitments and realize combinations of them in the world.” (Timothy Snyder)

Rather than merely acting in the democratic process and engaging conflictually we need to talk more. The process of deliberation moves beyond simply more democracy but demands better quality. Deliberation demands interaction with the other in a non-conflictual environment. After-all, we cannot deliberate when shouting obscenities at one another!

This does not have to be done in person. As Chris Bail has shown in his book even a chat roulette-style deliberative platform engages citizens in productive ways reducing tensions between one another and encouraging mutual understanding. Deliberation therefore can provide a framework for ingratiating stronger democratic values and norms than mere ballot democracy or even sortition. A stronger normative framework for democracy challenges mere institutionalization of values which can exist on a ‘higher plane’ giving protection from potential threats to democracy.

Habermas’ focus on rationality was mistaken as were other early pilots of deliberative democracy. Rationality is not necessary for deliberation to work. Rather, engaging in good faith with each other’s irrationality is just as if not more important. By talking to one another we may not agree but find valuable space for good-faith disagreement.

This does not diminish argument or difference but encases it within the specific practice of deliberation encouraging greater empathy with one another. In modern democratic politics, deliberation has been increasingly limited with citizen participation lessening in politics. The decline of citizen participation coincides with the rise of authoritarian populist movements which paradoxically arrive from popular support. By engaging more deeply and more often with one another we can drain the swamp of misunderstanding, homogenising and disliking one another.