Does Democracy Really Exist?

One of the most invoked, yet least questioned, political ideals of the modern world is democracy. It comes in the form of a kind of moral charm created to legitimize wars, sanctions, regime changes, and domestic policies, yet existing alongside the mass surveillance, economic inequality, ethnic exclusion, and the states of emergency that are here to stay. Such a contradiction raises one of the major questions: is democracy truly there or is it a hollow term to disguise power struggle? This essay will establish that modern democracies, whether in a liberal, neoliberal, electoral, or national form, are not functioning to produce popular sovereignty but rather as ideological technologies of power.

Classical concept of democracy that was based on the practice in Athens, which was postulated later by other philosophers including Aristotle, Rousseau, and Mill, is based on the idea of government by the citizens. The concept of the general will that was advanced by Rousseau assumed the existence of a political community that was able to engage in self-legislation as a group, whereas Mill focused more on participation and deliberation as educative moral force. Even the contemporary critics like John Rawls envisioned democracy as a just system of mutual co-operation between the free and equal citizens.

However, critics themselves right at the start showed the conflicting nature of democracy. Plato saw democracy as a government of the unbridled desire and it would inevitably lead to tyranny. Marx claimed that political equality in the name of democracy hides the material inequality and makes the illusion of democracy a mere superstructure in the background of capitalistic exploitation. Liberal democracy is subsequently alleged by Carl Schmitt to disintegrate political decision-making into endless proceduralism that hides the sovereign decision which in fact controls political life.

These criticisms are particularly apparent when democracy is considered not as a theory but as a place of struggle.

In conflicted countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Ukraine, and in Africa, democracy is not manifested as popular rule, but as a geopolitical tool. The invasion of Iraq by the U.S was presented as a democratization project but it led to sectarian violence, breakdown of state institutions and entrenchment of elite power structures to suit the interests of foreign powers. Elections were held, yet there was no unity of sovereignty,--an example of what Giorgio Agamben would call a state of exception, in which the norms of democracy are suspended in its honor.

Equally, Afghanistan did not fail in its democratic experiment since there were not enough elections, but that political legitimacy was imposed externally as opposed to being internally built. In this case, democracy was a technology of government and not the will of many. Hannah Arendt is proven almost right: when there is no common political world, the democratic institutions are nothing but a sham.

Democratic choice has even been penalized in Palestine. Sanctions and political isolation that resulted after the electoral victory of Hamas in 2006 only showed a more underlying truth that democracy can only be tolerated when it yields the right results. This instrumentalization proves Jacques Ranciere’s point whereby, democracy is only tolerated so long as it does not upset the status quo of power distribution.

Nationalism has been added to modern democracy more and more. Whereas in the early period of democracies, national identity was used to support the mobilization of political participation, modern day nationalism has pushed democracy away to popular sovereignty towards the exclusive identity politics. In Europe, the far-right parties purport to have democratic right but weaken the minority rights, the independence of the judiciary and the press freedom. Democracy is turned into majoritarianism without egalitarian material.

This twist is indicative of what Alexis de Tocqueville predicted to be the tyranny of the majority. Nationalism transforms democracy into a civilizational claim, who belongs, who speaks, and who is not. The democratic people turns into a solid identity difficult to alter instead of a political subject.

Europe has got its own paradox: in boasting of being the birthplace of liberal democracy, it is losing its way by slowly ruling through technocratic organizations that are no longer tied to popular opinion. The manner that the European Union has dealt with economic crises, particularly in Greece, has been a revelation of how the democratic choice is subjugated to the market needs. The utopian ideal of deliberative democracy, as proposed by Jurgen Habermas, does not sit well with the post-democratic rule as it is characterized by critics.

Inverted totalitarianism, in which the democratic forms are maintained but the real power is held by the corporate and military elite, is the example of the United States. Democratic participation is emptied by voter suppression, lobbying and commodifying political speech. Democracy lives or breathes as a spectacle and not a substance.

India which is commonly said to be the largest democracy in the world, proves that authoritarian nationalism can co-exist with electoral democracy. The emergence of Hindu majoritarianism reveals how democracy can be mobilized to prevent pluralism, dissent and minority protection, and all that, with procedural legitimacy. In this case, democracy is an instrument of cultural homogenization, and not emancipation.

China criticizes the West on its monopoly of the discourse of democracy by denying that liberal democracy is limited at all; rather, it favors the principle of performance legitimacy, economic growth, and social stability. Although it is evidently authoritarian, China reveals a discomfiting fact: the moral authority of democracy is not, so much, a matter of participation as of results. This compels the theorists of democracy to address the question of whether legitimacy is a result of consent or a result of effectiveness.

The Middle East also makes democratic theory complicated. This is the coexistence of monarchies, armed regimes, and theocratic states along with the electoral experiments and revolution. The Arab Spring in the short run rekindled the promise of democracy, but in the process of doing so exposed the extent to which the power structures military, sectarian and international restrict democratic change. In this case, democracy faces the imperial legacies and resources geopolitics, which distort the very definition of political possibility.

The multiplication of words, liberal democracy, neoliberal democracy, illiberal democracy, are an indication of not a conceptual but a semantic exhaustion. The concept of the empty signifier formulated by Ernesto Laclau comes in handy in this case: democracy has become an amorphous word that can incorporate any conflicting meaning and hide the actual mechanisms of power. Its righteousness justifies control as opposed to questioning it.

According to Foucault, the analysis of power implies that domination is not eradicated by democracy but it is restructured. The institutions, discourses and norms disseminate power, creating submissive subjects who feel free. In neoliberalism, democracy is turned into an entrepreneurial form: the citizens are turned into voters-consumers, political choice into a market preference.

In that sense, democracy is not a failure, it has achieved what it has turned out to be a system which is conscripting consent, counteracting dissent, and normalizing power. Whether democracy exists is not the question, rather to whom it serves.

To question the existence of democracy would be to question the chasm between the emancipatory promise and historical practice of democracy. In the world and the conflict areas, democracy is not presented as a popular rule but as a veil over the struggles of power involving national, economic, and geopolitical power. Plato, Marx and other philosophical critics, Schmitt and Rancière assist us in understanding that democracy is not a steady form but a battlefield.

In order that democracy should be something other than a ritualized act of power it will have to be decoupled with its fetishized forms and reconsidered as a radical exercise of equality and disruption. Democracy until that point is what it is increasingly becoming to be; it is not a reality, but a language wherein power speaks on behalf of the people, yet in governing without them.