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| The
Democratic Deficit |
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The latest
Human Development Report (HDR) from the UNDP raises
some important questions about true democracy and voice,
but does not go far enough in identifying some of the
major obstacles to democracy in the world today, or
the means to achieve it.
The Human Development Reports annually published by
the UNDP, over the years, have tended to provide at
least some kind of counterbalancing analysis to the
oppressively neoliberal and often misleading publications
of the World Bank and the IMF. They have also managed,
each year, to identify a theme that is not just topical
and relevant, but quite crucial to the interests of
a significant majority of the world’s population.
This year’s Report, which is entitled 'Deepening
democracy in a fragmented world', deals with an issue
that is ever more important because, even as formal
democracy has extended in many parts of the world over
the recent period, substantive democracy -- in terms
of more equal opportunities and the power of the people’s
will -- currently seems under greater threat. The HDR
makes a similar observation: "Economically, politically
and technologically, the world has never seemed more
free -- or more unjust."
The HDR elucidates this statement at three levels. First,
while there is more formal democracy than ever before,
in terms of the majority of the world’s regimes
now being electoral democracies, this is still a long
way from comprehensive civil and political freedom for
the citizens or accountability of the governments. Second,
there are many more economic opportunities across the
world, but a huge share of the world’s population
is still denied access to them. In fact, in the developing
world, the seemingly intractable problems of persistent
income poverty and high rates of child mortality point
to the absence of international economic democracy.
Third, while wars between nations are less frequent,
civil conflicts of various kinds are on the increase.
The HDR also makes the point that the link between democracy
and human development of the citizens is not automatic:
in fact, when a small elite dominates economic and political
decisions, the link with democracy can be broken. Most
significant of all, the Report recognizes what is probably
the greatest symptom of 'democratic deficit' in the
world today: "Citizens often feel powerless to
influence national policies … subject to international
forces that they have little capacity to control."
This, indeed, is the real rub -- the absence of genuine
political voice and the inability to control especially
economic policies on the part of the majority of the
people, which has become such a standard feature of
almost all democracies, old and new, across the world.
But while the HDR identifies this problem, it does not
take the further step of asking what has caused this,
or addressing the issue of what can be done about it.
It must be accepted that the perception of lack of genuine
people’s power is not new. Some would argue that
the distinction between formal and substantive democracy
itself indicates that we are living in more luxurious
times, politically speaking, than before through most
of history. Yet, there is an important sense in which
people across the world feel -- and actually are --
less genuinely empowered than they were, say, at the
middle of the last century, or even two decades ago.
This greater sense of powerlessness is not an accident.
It is the result of a large process whereby it is truly
the case that democratic processes have much less control
over the policy decisions that are so critical in shaping
people’s social and material lives. The most important
shift that has taken place in practically all the countries
of the world over the last two decades, is that the
balance of social, political and economic power has
shifted comprehensively in favour of large capital vis-à-vis
all other groups.
This shift in power is both assisted by and reflected
in the various forms of liberalization and deregulation
that have fed into the current process of globalization.
This has contributed greatly to the enhanced mobility
of large capital and also to its bargaining power, and
has been associated with the greater fragility and vulnerability
that other sections of societies -- and particularly
workers -- feel. And this process is not confined only
to poor and developing countries; rather, it is widespread
across the developed industrial world, where the common
people increasingly feel alienated from the governing
political classes and unable to influence policies in
ways that they desire.
More and more empirical studies (except for those blatantly
funded by and subservient to the interests of large
multinational capital) argue quite convincingly that
global deregulation of trade and capital markets have
increased inequality and reduced economic democracy.
This is because they have reduced the power of national
governments to meet the social and economic needs of
people in terms of basic physical and social infrastructure
spending, limited serious efforts at poverty reduction
and universal provision of basic services, and increased
the vulnerability of ordinary people to sharp income
shocks and other such fluctuations.
And yet, no one seems to be able to do anything to persuade,
force, or otherwise influence governments into changing
these policies and the associated international structures
and institutions that push them. The problem is now
an intense one, at both national and international levels
-- how do people in general gain influence over major
policies which affect them dramatically, but seem designed
to dominantly cater to large and often multinational
capital?
In India, for example, it is quite clear to anyone who
cares to see it, that the strategy of neoliberal economic
reform has not found favour with most of the electorate,
for the simple reason that they have not gained -- and
many have even lost -- because of it. Yet successive
governments that have replaced those thrown out by the
electorate have come in and done more of the same, disregarding
all the signals that voters send out. The causes are
obviously complex and depend on the specific political
economy context. But it could be argued that in India
(as indeed in several other developing countries), a
substantial section of the elites and middles classes
now see their interests as more closely tied to those
of international capital, than with the rest of their
own country’s population.
The problem is probably evident in its starkest form
in Latin America today. Across the region, people have
done everything they possibly can to indicate their
distress at the effects of neoliberal economic policies
and their rejection of these policies. They have demonstrated
peacefully (if noisily) night after day on the streets
in Argentina; gone on massive nationwide strikes in
Peru; voted for the man blacklisted by the US for his
support for cocaine growers in Bolivia; rioted in Paraguay;
indicated their intention of voting in alternative government
in Brazil; and so on. Nevertheless, the chronicle of
even further neoliberal reform, of budget surpluses
to add to the woes of depression, of further cuts in
workers' wages and pensions, of more job losses as part
of 'necessary' belt-tightening, continues.
Sometimes the blatant disregard of popular will, often
due to external pressure, assumes obscene proportions.
In Argentina, a law which allowed foreign banks to be
charged for illegally transferring large amounts of
money out of the country in the midst of the crisis,
had to be repealed after the IMF insisted on it. In
Bolivia, the dissident native candidate who came second
in the election, receiving more than one-third of the
vote despite the open displeasure of the US government,
has been denied any voice in the government and in important
policy matters. In Uruguay, the government has frozen
bank deposits of local residents for three years and
allowed foreign financiers to take their money out.
In Brazil, the popular leftwing candidate Luis da Silva
(Lula) -- the frontrunner in the presidential elections
to be held in September -- was forced to declare his
acceptance of a largely IMF-determined policy stance
after persistent speculative attacks and capital flight
demolished the value of the real and even threatened
his candidature. Now the IMF has come up with a carrot
after the stick has played its role. It has just promised
the next government $30 billion over fifteen months,
so long as the new government promises to continue the
economic policies of the current one, which have absolutely
no popular support.
But again, the problem is not confined to developing
countries. Across Europe, supposedly left-of-centre
governments that found themselves following rightwing
economic policies because of supposed economic or financial
compulsions, have already been thrown out of power or
are on the verge of it. Even so, the chances are that
the new government will not offer relief to the people
in terms of changed economic strategy; if anything,
they are likely to enforce even harsher conditions on
the economic security of most of the citizens. In the
United States, the popular legitimacy of both the political
and economic institutions of capitalism has never been
weaker; yet, the US administration continues to pursue
policies that strengthen large capital at the expense
of others.
So, if we really are concerned about genuine democracy,
clearly, the most important item on the agenda must
be to restore to ordinary people some degree of control
over the economic policies that are causing great instability
and potentially wreaking havoc over most of their lives.
The other issues pertaining to democracy, as highlighted
by the HDR, are critical, of course, and much in need
of attention. But the real democratic deficit at present
is reflected in the greater power, nationally and internationally,
of large capital in various forms. It is curbing that
power which must the primary goal of all true democrats
today.
August 14, 2002. |
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