Publications /
Opinion

Back
Navigating Democracy’s Structural Uncertainty
Authors
Camila Crescimbeni
January 30, 2024

Camila Crescimbeni is a 2023 alumna of Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program. Learn more about her here.

Following a fruitful and broad debate at the 2023 Atlantic Dialogues, Alec Russell, foreign editor of the Financial Times, asked a deep and globally-relevant question: Can democracy survive 2024? With 70 states having elections this year, it is a fundamental question. After some decades of continuous expansion of democracy worldwide, as shown by the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index, there now seems to be a downturn. Is this a surprising trend or is there an underlying risk in all democratic societies?

PCNS

 

V-Dem electoral democracy index as portrayed in Alec Russell’s article ‘Can Democracy survive 2024?’ https://www.ft.com/content/077e28d8-3e3b-4aa7-a155-2205c11e826f

A visionary on the uncertain path of democracy, French philosopher Claude Lefort argued that inherent to democracy’s design      is its own antidemocratic demon: uncertainty. After the fall of absolute regimes in the West and, with them, the belief in a transcendent fundament[1] of the political order, societies began looking for a new foundation. With the rise of liberal democracies, the foundation of society became immanent instead of transcendent: God was no longer the reason and end behind everything, it was common people who had to bear the responsibility of everything that went right or wrong. It was the dawn of Illuminism and Modernity, with much hope in anthropocentrism.

But the nature of democracy itself has its Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Lefort reflected, since the lack of an absolute foundation can make people scared of uncertainty and instability, and lure them into cherishing a stronger and more predictable way of things. Lefort called this “the phantom of People-One”  (in French, le people-Un), a concept he took from Etienne de la Boétie, whereby he referred to the desire he identified within human beings to have an ultimate and irrefutable foundation on which to blame all wrongs and where to find all rights. Living in a democratic society, for Lefort, entails developing a joy, or at least a tolerance, for uncertainty, dynamism, and instability. No one is the owner of the place of power, no one is the State à la Louis XIV, no one can claim to hold together the fabric of society. We only have temporary occupants of power who always represent part of it, but those occupants are not society. Absolute representation is just an oxymoron.

In this sense, we have to be able to train our people for the kind of system we all chose as the best available. For democracies to work and prosper, open societies are needed rather than closed societies; people should enjoy and celebrate diversity and not resent it; children and young people must be able to believe they can prosper despite, or rather through, dynamism. However, the wave seems to be going the opposite way, and this harms democracies and people’s expectations of how democracy can bring about development, not generally speaking, but for them. We are growing scared of each other, seeing our fellow citizens as potential competitors or rivals, and not finding a significantly happy reason to live together. We are looking for institutions or leaders or devices that promise fast and easy and absolute truths, relieving our fear of constant change. Many don’t find their place in society now, not even as an expectation that after a certain pathway of hard work and effort they will belong, and this has placed an underlying strain on the way we thought democracies would continue to spread.

Hopefully 2024 will bring about discussions in the 70 states holding elections and elsewhere, through which we can focus not so much on being right but on being helpful, to move towards a happier, more tolerant, and fairer world order.

PCNS

[1] According to Lefort (and many post foundationalists), a transcendent fundament is the opposite of an immanent fundament. A transcendent fundament of society is outside society itself (e.g., God), and no one can challenge it. On the contrary, an immanent fundament refers to the origin and basis of society as coming from within society itself.

 

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    Camila Crescimbeni
    January 30, 2024
    Camila Crescimbeni is a 2023 alumna of Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program. Learn more about her here. Following a fruitful and broad debate at the 2023 Atlantic Dialogues, Alec Russell, foreign editor of the Financial Times, asked a deep and globally-relevant question: Can democracy survive 2024? With 70 states having elections this year, it is a fundamental question. After some decades of continuous expansion of democracy worldwide, as shown by the V-Dem Electoral Democra ...
  • September 28, 2022
    Despite the United States' disastrous record in both Iraq and Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is right in asserting that the world faces a confrontation between autocracy and freedom. And that a choice will ultimately have to be made. This makes people cringe, particularly in Europe, which remains polarized on the subject. ...
  • September 7, 2022
    Le président des États-Unis, Joe Biden, malgré les états de service catastrophiques de son pays en Irak ou en Afghanistan, n’a pas tort d’affirmer que le monde va vers un affrontement entre l’autocratie et la liberté. Et, qu’en fin de compte, il va falloir choisir. Cela fait grincer des dents, surtout en Europe qui est divisée sur le sujet. ...
  • May 11, 2022
    Cet atelier a servi de plateforme pour présenter les ouvrages suivants :  - L'édition 2022 du Rapport Annuel sur la Géopolitique de l'Afrique : Ce rapport est publié annuellement par le PCNS et a pour objet de relater, étudier et analyser les faits géopolitiques majeurs qui ont jalonné...
  • April 25, 2022
    Retrouvez en exclusivité l’interview de Abdelhak Bassou, Senior Fellow au Policy Center for the New South, qui se livre à Helmut Sorge, Columnist au Policy Center for the New South, au sujet des multi-disparités présentes en Afrique. Abdelhak Bassou est l’auteur du Chapitre 5 du rapport...
  • Authors
    Abdelmounaim Fanidi
    April 19, 2022
    Suivant une analyse réaliste des relations internationales, des ‘facteurs objectifs’ ont été longtemps mis en avant pour expliquer le blocage de l’intégration régionale au Maghreb (e.g. le conflit du Sahara). Par une approche constructiviste, cet article a pour vocation d’analyser un facteur subjectif susceptible de freiner ou favoriser l’intégration maghrébine, en l’occurrence les identités nationales. Il se focalisera sur « les discours primordialistes ». Autrement dit, les discou ...
  • Authors
    Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo
    Bernardo Sorj
    Frannie Léautier
    Iskander Erzini Vernoit
    Kassie Freeman
    Nathalie Delapalme
    J. Peter Pham
    March 7, 2022
    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the global economy and has challenged the best minds to rethink how to design and implement an effective recovery. Countries in the wider Atlantic region have exhibited differential trajectories in traversing the pandemic. A number of countries in Europe succeeded in vaccinating most of their eligible populations, enabling life to return somewhat to normal. A smaller group of countries in Europe could manage infection rates even more ti ...
  • Authors
    February 17, 2022
    Their boat-if you name a large rubber pumped up like a giant tire, was rocked by waves, and the engine halted its movements. On November 24, all the 29 passengers tried to reach coastguard stations in France and England via their cell phones few minutes between life and death. No one answered, and when finally contact was established by another, still floating migrant boat, witnessing the tragedy in the making (New York Times December 14, 2021), they were asked to pinpoint their l ...
  • Authors
    February 3, 2022
    His message was one of reassurance, just as a great leader has to react in a crisis. The concerns about Covid 19 was nothing but “a frenzy and psychosis”. The President knew the secret to defeat the virus: vodka, sauna, tractor. Didn’t a US president named Donald Trump suggest  that toilet cleaning disinfectants chase the virus out of infected lungs on national television? (New York Times, April 24, 2020) That was Trump-speak, sure, but the man who uttered the tractor/vodka/nonsense ...