Remember, democracy
never lasts long, it soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself; there never was a democracy that did not commit
suicide. John Adams, 1814 evoked the Aristotelian notion that democracy
will inevitably lapse into anarchy
Elective Necropolises
of Western Liberal Democracy
Third Wave under threat; social
democratic backsliding: the perils of populism & polarization & Liberal
democracy ‘docile in defense of itself’
Public Lecture Res Publica Litereria - Vol.
X No. VI, CXXI, MMXVII
Costantinos
Berhutesfa Costantinos,
Abstract
The original
experiments with democracy in ancient Europe disappeared and meaningfully returned
only two millennia later with the birth of the republic. The
championing of pluralism, diversity, and basic liberties and the long
traditions of encouraging and protecting public debates on political, social,
and cultural matters in, say, Eurasia, Middle East and many parts of Africa,
demand much fuller recognition in the history of democratic ideas. This global
heritage is ground enough to question the frequently reiterated view that
democracy is just a Western idea, whose recognition has direct relevance in
contemporary politics in pointing to the global legacy of social deliberation
and pluralist interactions, which cannot be any less important today (Sen, 2003).
In the 20th
century, Communism, Nazism and Fascism presented powerful challenges
only on the battlefield but also in the realm of ideas. With the downfall of
the Soviet Union, Fukuyama decreed The
End of History, while Huntington underpinned in The Third Wave, democracy did not roll steadily forward, but rose and
fell in waves (). Today,
populism is the harbinger of democratic de-consolidation. Right-wing populists ascend when toxic forces converge: a failing economy and high unemployment, the
political system legitimacy with regular people and finally some foreign menace
causes people to seek shelter in a strongman (Kuttner, 2017).
Beyond the sphere of unemployment, racism, xenophobia and
immigration, populist surge can be grasped in terms of the related domain
of ideology, whose elements and
constructs might be seen as the very constitutive structure of political
openness or closure. Populism will commonly be characterized by a number of distinctive and shared elements, including cultural
values, traditions of political discourse and arguments, and modes of
depiction of specific interests, needs and issues. These complexes of
elements will tend to assume varying forms and to enter into shifting relations
of competition, co-operation and hegemony during elections.
Key words: populism, elections,
democracy, legitimacy, economy, employment, racism,
