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Post-democracy on English Wikipedia

The term Post-democracy was coined by LSE political scientist Colin Crouch in 2000 in his book Coping with Post-Democracy. It designates states that are conducted by fully operating democratic systems (elections are being held, governments fall and there is freedom of speech), but whose application is progressively limited. A small elite is taking the tough decisions and (ab)uses the democratic institutions. Crouch further developed the idea in an article called Is there a liberalism beyond social democracy? for the think tank Policy Network and in his subsequent book The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism.

This term appeared to define a running evolution within democracies during the 21st century. It is a polemical term because it calls attention to recognized democracies that are losing some of their foundations and evolving towards an Aristocratic regime.

Henry J. Farrell (2014), "A brilliant little book on the shape of modern politics". Amazon Customer Review, 10/2/2013, נדלה ב27/8/2014

But what we have seen is not an expansion of free markets, but instead increased oligopolistic concentration, combined with an ever-larger set of ambiguous relationships in which government and business interests are impossible to distinguish from each other. Crouch argues that Hayek never solved the problem of politics - a Hayekian order is unsustainable because businesses can do better from playing with the rules of the game than from engaging in competition. An implication of Crouch's arguments is that the only way that neo-liberalism will work is in a confined system, where there are clear demarcations between politics and markets, and specifically an emphatic recognition of an inviolable realm of politics where the public good, rather than the pursuit of private benefits dominates. How to get there from where we are is less obvious. The old system worked because we had a class which recognized its common interests and was prepared to act on them. We do not have any equivalent today.

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Bruno Kreisky Forum for international Dialog COLIN CROUCH Institute of Governance and Public Management, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. "POST‐DEMOCRACY" 5/3/2009. pp 8-10

the spread of globalization, the spread of enormous

corporations operating on the global level who are autonomous of governments, who are not committed to any particular national polity. And increasingly we see issues like the environment, over the exploitation of labor in supply chains that go all the way back from countries like ours towards China. In all of those issues one finds more and more a reliance of the political world, a reliance of society on corporations being willing to behave themselves, corporations being willing to say: all right, we accept there are certain moral obligations on us. And this is the debate about corporate social responsibility. It can be simply a public relations exercise, extremely trivial and of no importance. But it can also be politically extremely important. If an issue moves from the normal political arena into the arena of corporate social responsibility it moves out of the public democratic sphere into the private sphere of the corporation. And with global firms that cannot be reached by any individual national political system frequently this is what is happening. The only way an issue can be dealt with is if firms take it on themselves. And firms are not part of the democratic polity. In real neoclassical economic theory firms are not in the polity at all, they are in the economy, and they have to be kept there. We often see that neoliberal ideology interpreted to mean the state should not interfere in the market. But it also means that firms should not interfere with politics. If you go back to the originators of economic theory, people like Adam Smith, a problem of their period, the 18th century, was not just that government was inside the economy but also that firms were controlling politics. And that was seen as interfering with markets. We've lost that part of the dialogue. So it's not seen as problematic. The United States like to see the polity and the economy is very separate. They say we have a market economy. And they mean by that that government doesn't interfere very much. It does, but they believe it doesn't.

But they don't notice the enormous corporate lobbying of politicians. That's not seen as a problem for the market. But it is a problem for the market. And so there is a real problem for the market economy. There is a problem for both democracy and the market economy. If political issues, major questions are increasingly treated within corporation it is a privatization of politics. It's not just privatized Keynesianism, it is privatized politics which is a return to the Middle Ages. This is a tendency already there over issues like the environment and global supply chains.

What I predicted will happen with the financial system strengthen this tendency very considerably, reinforces it, and makes it much, much bigger. So that's the future polity, is a reinforcement of post‐democratic trends because we've remained dependent on this sector. It's going to stay there. It's going to be big and powerful. Governments don't know how to regulate it. They are frightened to regulate it. They let it regulate itself through informal understandings, pessimistic story. Optimistic story, when firms enter politics in this way, when quite clearly issues are being tackled within corporations and not within the true public space then those firms become political objects as well as political subjects. But you can't become a political subject without also becoming a political object. And so there becomes a politics around individual global corporations. And we see this already with these developments I mentioned, environment and global supply chains. There are other issues, for example the role of pharmaceutical companies in providing medicines to the Third World. There is a whole range of issues where these firms have taken these issues up and around them is a little group of social movements, activists, troublesome people criticizing them, running websites about what they are up to, monitoring whether what they claim in their corporate social responsibility statements are true. In other words, if politics move into the corporation then so does democratic debate. The corporate world starts to become politicized. In a way it's very dangerous really for the market economy. But in terms of if we are thinking of the health of democracy my pessimistic scenario that says these issues just disappear is unlikely to be true because in lively countries with people who care about things that simply won't happen. And you will get a politics of global business, an opposition of politics. So, corporate social responsibility becomes a debate about corporate accountability. These trends are already there over issues like the environment. They will now increasingly also be about financial issues which take you into the heart of the whole thing.

As I say there is a pessimistic scenario and an optimistic scenario. Because in some countries this activist model that I have just defined is likely to develop very strongly, for example in the Scandinavian countries. If one of the Scandinavian multinational gets involved in some nasty labor practices in China this becomes news very quickly, and consumers get angry and they stop buying the products. The market is working here, the consumer market. Whether they really do anything about what's happening in China is another question. But they certainly give the impression that they can act about what's happening. There are other countries where people will be less concerned. So there'll be some countries where there will be a lively politics around corporate behavior. There'll be other countries where they get away with it. So the optimistic scenario will be in some places, the pessimistic scenario will be in other places.

But then there is something more complex and that is this whole movement I'm talking about can be looked at simultaneously in a negative and a positive light. Negatively one has the fact that even if there is a lively politics and all sorts of active civil groups chasing issues, finding things out, shaming firms, making them change their behavior it's not actually formal democracy as we know it. There still needs to be the process whereby voters acquire political identities which means they choose to vote for some people instead of other people, which leads to parliaments with a certain composition, which leads to a government being formed, which constantly has to be worried about public opinion because it's going to have to trace the electorate again and because people are watching what it's doing. That's why we need formal politics. If this starts to get weak, if the party conflict begins to be about nothing very serious, which is beginning to be the case everywhere, that is very worrying. What I talked about as a lively civil society politics around global corporations doesn't really solve that problem. It leaves it there. If all the people with political energy, innovation, and political morality go off into campaigns then they leave politics to a political class and to the business class that is still going to be there. That's worrying and it remains worrying.

Looking at issues in another way though these campaigns around corporations and this increasing political role, contested political role of a corporation, manages to develop a politics, not purely democratic, but certainly lively, pluralistic politics above the level of the nation‐state. This is based on global corporations and what they are doing around the world in a way that our formal politics that we all know and understand really fails to do. And the European Parliament is the nearest thing in the world to a transnational democratic polity, but it's extremely weak. Although the nation‐states are very irrational, strange creations and ranging in size from Estonia to China with no particular reason for why they exist as they do except for long forgotten battles and patterns of rivers and mountains, they are strange, irrational things. Nevertheless they are the only level or the most powerful level on which we had been able to organize political mobilization, whether for the left, or the right, or the center. As soon as an issue requires something above the level of the nation‐state democratic politics can't reach it, can't get it in it grips. So this new politics based on the contesting global corporations although it lacks formal democratic quality and although it leaves indeed in trouble the states of party democracy, electoral democracy, nevertheless it's able to

reach parts that democratic politics and proper national politics can't reach. So that's the kind of good side to this move that is taking place in politics. It has to be balanced against the worrying and the negative side.

I don't have a resolution. I think that these things that had been going on with the financial markets as I tried to explain have reinforced very, very strongly some tendencies already there. And these are tendencies that in some ways are very encouraging, in some ways deeply troubling. For people active in politics this is deeply worrying. Someone like me mainly studies it. It's just extremely fascinating and interesting. Thank you very much.

[..]

Question

Erhard Stackl. How do you analyze the Obama phenomenon in the context of what you have been telling us? It seems there has been a very strong mobilization amongst young people, amongst poorer people in the United States, of people that were only loosely connected to the Democratic Party if at all. Given this strong popular support isn't there a possibility for the new administration to shape new stronger politics in the direction of Roosevelt's New Deal?

Crouch

A few months ago, just after the American election I had an email from a student somewhere in the United States. She said she has been given an essay with the title did Obama refute my post‐democracy thesis, and she had to write an essay on this and could I help. And I said I think it probably does. I hope it does. It's early yet. We have to see how this movement develops. But it does seem to me that the Obama phenomenon so far has managed to bring together what I said were these two kinds of politics that were apart, one the one hand the world of activists, mainly young, motivated people, and on the other the world of official parties. It does seem to be an example for something that is bringing those two worlds together. Yes. If it really does manage to succeed and sustain itself and start to be imitated in other countries, other people get the confidence to follow it then I'd be very, very happy to say my thesis has been proved wrong.

[..]

Question

In your analysis you mentioned three reasons for the move to a kind of what you are calling post‐democracy. First, a rising and uncontrolled power of global acting companies. You mentioned correctly that Adam Smith would have criticized this sharply. The second point is the rising power of media companies, especially in the yellow press field, Berlusconi, Murdoch. And the third point is the acting of the traditional political parties in a way of sound bites and spin doctoring. What are the forces or the institutions which can remove this development? Do you think that a kind of re‐nationalization is a way in this field? You summed up a kind of solution or way how we can deal with this development to a kind of post‐democracy. You pointed out that a combination of NGOs activities and positive lobbying as well as the activity of traditional political parties could be a solution in this area. Do you think that traditional political parties can fulfill their tasks and activities in the future?

Crouch

[..]

I think there are various ways in which old politics and new politics can work together. And the Obama phenomenon may be an example of that. There are certainly interesting examples of where trade unions, especially the international trade union federations, normally very weak bodies, but they are beginning to find the strength acting alongside social campaigns over issues like the starvation wages of clothing workers in Bangladesh. There is a number of points where unions in the rich countries are getting together with the weak unions in the poor countries and the civil society organizations or social movements and creating a kind of international labor politics of a good kind. So I think there are ways in which it can be done. The problem always is for a social, a civil society group the problem of moving into a relationship with a party. It's the relationship with the big monster. Come here social movement, we'll give you a place, we'll give you some money, now obey. And of course the corporations do it as well. Though I talked about the civil society groups as being people who are causing trouble all the time for corporations there are also some tame groups who pretend to be activists about environmental issues, but can very easily be bought by a large firm. They are so poor; they need so much money that you can buy them very cheaply. There is always a danger when social movements groups come into contact with either big parties or big corporations. How do they keep their autonomy because we want them to keep their autonomy? I know people who are managing political parties. In the society at large we need debate, we need conflict. I'd be good to see more working together between unions and parties with the new groups. But I don't want the groups to be swallowed by the parties.

[..]

If you look at the history of the state back for 2.000, 3.000 years there has always been socialism for the rich. The early function of the state is to provide a privileged class with the means to live without doing any work. In a way it's only really with the development of the modern welfare state that governments start to do anything for ordinary people. Adam Smith has a very interesting discussion about why people should pay taxes. And he says, the people who pay taxes are the wealthy, because in those days only the wealthy really were taxed, and they should pay tax because the government does most for them. Because what governments does is to protect private property. And a rich man has more property than a poor man. So a rich man should pay more tax than a poor man. He is living in a world where you assume that government works for the rich. It's only really with the modern welfare state that one got governments using money in a large way to provide something for everybody else. So this return to a kind of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor is another symptom of post‐democracy. It's the state going back to its original form of behavior.

[..]

Globalization is very, very difficult for ordinary people to understand. They know it's giving trouble to their lives. They cannot see the very long term by which we all gain from globalization. What they understand as globalization is foreigners and ethnic minorities in their own country. And that's the form it takes. And the only way they can kick globalization is to kick local foreigners. It's very, very difficult once that has become settled to change the dialogue. Say to people, it's global capitalism that's your problem. Ordinary people have no idea how to do anything about global capitalism. And no political parties at the moment are able to tell them this. But they can identify local foreign people as a problem even if it isn't a problem. And there is a real, real problem there. And the tragedy is for all these years the left has not been able to construct an autonomous dialogue about how the global economy should develop. It became neoliberal, followed the neoliberal and it has left the field open to the far right.

[..]

We can't say what we got to do is stop having any production in China, we got to stop buying goods from India, and we got to make the East Europeans go back to being farmers or maybe building tractors. We can't do that because that means condemning these people to continuing poverty. Now, obviously, even though they remain much poorer than we do their lives could be much better with different political regimes. There is a long difficult time we have to go through when there is a surplus of global labor. And that's why I start to look at these groups who are working with trade unions to build links by shaming firms in their home markets because of labor conditions in the Third World. People who are involved in that activity at the moment, people who are involved in trying to act on these huge inequalities are probably doing the most important political things in the world at the moment. But it remains long, and hard, and difficult.