Celebrating democracy
There is little left to determine Pakistan’s place on the vulnerability index of its contemporary democratic culture
The writer is a political and security analyst who retired as an air vice-marshal in the Pakistan Air Force
I quote Harvard University’s Robert Foa, who is a principal investigator of the World Values Survey, and Yascha Mounk, a lecturer at Harvard and a Carnegie Fellow at the think tank New America: “Some citizens of democracies have become so unhappy with their institutions that they may be tempted to dispense with partisan politics … Would it not be better to let the presidents make decisions without having to worry about Congress — or to entrust key decisions to unelected experts like the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?”
This is right from the home of democracy — America, where they are never shy of questioning convention, and make it their lifelong occupation to continually revisit what has always been considered established and entrenched; even something as ‘sacred’ as democracy.
The world evolves continually, as do societies and their needs. So must the systems that serve them. Democracy is a system that is meant to serve the ends of society. It is not an end itself. As the world celebrated democracy this September 15, it was a moment of considerable introspection. Especially in Pakistan, where social and institutional forces are on the verge of a collision in terms of defining the gains that democracy has been able to serve to society, or more appropriately, the absence thereof.
With a military that stands at its highest ratings in popularity and public support among the people, and a chief who commands adulation worthy of a messiah, the political establishment and those invested in securing the interests of politicians, are at a loss to negotiate this extraordinary challenge to their unquestioned domination of a system that under their exclusive tutelage had been designed to be manipulated to the advantage of the few; elites, at that; with nil advantage in any form seeping down the social order. Such has been the crass exploitation of a deliberately deformed construct called democracy — by the people, of the people, for the people!
Clearly, this nexus of the few, power elites, has come under excessive strain. It shouts, it howls and clamours for its unchallenged place atop the social pyramid in the name of democracy, even as the people and their overwhelming sentiment urges the military to take on the exclusive bastion of the power elites that has scavenged away every bit of the nation’s fundamental share of subsistence.
Here is more from the duo: “Back in 1995, the World Values Survey asked Americans for the first time, whether they approved the idea of ‘having the army rule’. One in 15 (0.66 per cent) agreed. Since then that number has grown to one in six (16.66 per cent).” The two think that despite such indicators, supporting a coup would be almost impossible, but they indicate that “countenancing alternative forms of government reveals a deep disillusionment with democracy”; and must concern all claimants of the primacy of this system of rule.
This, the authors discern, is a repetitive sentiment in most of the democratic world, including Europe. What is being increasingly challenged are long-held ethos that counted: a) democracy being the only “game in town” — meaning there wasn't ever even a possibility of considering another system; b) “the mainstream political actors refrained from subverting the rules of the democratic game to their advantage”, avoiding bringing the system into disrepute and impinging its credibility; and c) “political forces that seek to dismantle the … democratic system, like an independent judiciary, are weak and nonexistent”, founding the position of a “consolidated” and assured democracy as the only viable system of governance.
Pakistan has known more in terms of the alternative governing systems; the mainstream political class subverts and manipulates the rules of the game with abandon for its personal motives; and both the judiciary and the military can become assertive beyond what is healthy. I guess there is little left to determine Pakistan’s place on the vulnerability index of its contemporary democratic culture. It may be in its infancy, but it has been terribly defaced by the doings of those who practice it. A lot remains to be learnt on this count against the hard-headedness of those who champion its cause in a competitive reflux.
The cumulative argument of this well regarded research through the World Value Survey of at least 100 ‘consolidated’ democracies is that democracies are now increasingly brittle, and a process of democratic deconsolidation is in place — a kind of reverse democratisation. Perhaps, the reason for democracies to become dysfunctional and vulnerable is unique to each democratic experience, yet the common strain that runs through the argument has all to do with the quality and manipulation of the process.
Here is what the two authors surmise as the underlying reasons for such tenuousness in what was given as the only surviving system of government and socio-political culture: In the American context, “… long periods of stagnating incomes for average citizens has led to a shift in the perspective”. Two centuries of prosperity had left the Americans believing their children would be better off still. “That optimism is gone”.
Their second premise is paradoxical when the authors find that in the American experience, the rich are more radically willing to disregard the system of government. This may well be based on the entrenched interests of the American economic elite with those of the political establishment, as the two feed off of each other. They find Congress obstructive, and twice as many of those who form the economic elite now favour a president having to do little with Congress. This, too, weakens democracy.
The elite, however, impact democracies adversely in other ways as well. “In egalitarian societies, elites identify with the middle class” and trust the uncorrupted democratic institutions far more in benefiting their economic interests and thus are a helpful influence. In oligarchies, “economic elites share few material interests with ordinary people, and have much to lose from policies (that will improve the lot of the common man)”.
The thread that runs common in all such studies has one shared determinant: the citizens of a state are invested in democracy as long as ‘material’ benefits flow out to them. Where the rich, instead, are institutionally invested as donors to maximise their benefit, it is the common man who will remain neglected, weakening the base of trust and belief in democracy. The study acknowledges that “economic elites and narrow interest groups were far more influential, while the views of ordinary citizens had virtually no impact”. As a consequence, a third of Americans now tend to describe their state as “not democratic at all”!
What is it that our perennially infant democracy must learn? Simply what has been the return to the common man? Have the elites thrived at his cost? Is society divided between the dispossessed and those who own all; and is there any meaningful contact left between the power elites and the common man beyond the act of elections? And yet, we wonder why Raheel Sharif is the most popular man in Pakistan. It is time to learn from consolidated democracies.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2015.
This is right from the home of democracy — America, where they are never shy of questioning convention, and make it their lifelong occupation to continually revisit what has always been considered established and entrenched; even something as ‘sacred’ as democracy.
The world evolves continually, as do societies and their needs. So must the systems that serve them. Democracy is a system that is meant to serve the ends of society. It is not an end itself. As the world celebrated democracy this September 15, it was a moment of considerable introspection. Especially in Pakistan, where social and institutional forces are on the verge of a collision in terms of defining the gains that democracy has been able to serve to society, or more appropriately, the absence thereof.
With a military that stands at its highest ratings in popularity and public support among the people, and a chief who commands adulation worthy of a messiah, the political establishment and those invested in securing the interests of politicians, are at a loss to negotiate this extraordinary challenge to their unquestioned domination of a system that under their exclusive tutelage had been designed to be manipulated to the advantage of the few; elites, at that; with nil advantage in any form seeping down the social order. Such has been the crass exploitation of a deliberately deformed construct called democracy — by the people, of the people, for the people!
Clearly, this nexus of the few, power elites, has come under excessive strain. It shouts, it howls and clamours for its unchallenged place atop the social pyramid in the name of democracy, even as the people and their overwhelming sentiment urges the military to take on the exclusive bastion of the power elites that has scavenged away every bit of the nation’s fundamental share of subsistence.
Here is more from the duo: “Back in 1995, the World Values Survey asked Americans for the first time, whether they approved the idea of ‘having the army rule’. One in 15 (0.66 per cent) agreed. Since then that number has grown to one in six (16.66 per cent).” The two think that despite such indicators, supporting a coup would be almost impossible, but they indicate that “countenancing alternative forms of government reveals a deep disillusionment with democracy”; and must concern all claimants of the primacy of this system of rule.
This, the authors discern, is a repetitive sentiment in most of the democratic world, including Europe. What is being increasingly challenged are long-held ethos that counted: a) democracy being the only “game in town” — meaning there wasn't ever even a possibility of considering another system; b) “the mainstream political actors refrained from subverting the rules of the democratic game to their advantage”, avoiding bringing the system into disrepute and impinging its credibility; and c) “political forces that seek to dismantle the … democratic system, like an independent judiciary, are weak and nonexistent”, founding the position of a “consolidated” and assured democracy as the only viable system of governance.
Pakistan has known more in terms of the alternative governing systems; the mainstream political class subverts and manipulates the rules of the game with abandon for its personal motives; and both the judiciary and the military can become assertive beyond what is healthy. I guess there is little left to determine Pakistan’s place on the vulnerability index of its contemporary democratic culture. It may be in its infancy, but it has been terribly defaced by the doings of those who practice it. A lot remains to be learnt on this count against the hard-headedness of those who champion its cause in a competitive reflux.
The cumulative argument of this well regarded research through the World Value Survey of at least 100 ‘consolidated’ democracies is that democracies are now increasingly brittle, and a process of democratic deconsolidation is in place — a kind of reverse democratisation. Perhaps, the reason for democracies to become dysfunctional and vulnerable is unique to each democratic experience, yet the common strain that runs through the argument has all to do with the quality and manipulation of the process.
Here is what the two authors surmise as the underlying reasons for such tenuousness in what was given as the only surviving system of government and socio-political culture: In the American context, “… long periods of stagnating incomes for average citizens has led to a shift in the perspective”. Two centuries of prosperity had left the Americans believing their children would be better off still. “That optimism is gone”.
Their second premise is paradoxical when the authors find that in the American experience, the rich are more radically willing to disregard the system of government. This may well be based on the entrenched interests of the American economic elite with those of the political establishment, as the two feed off of each other. They find Congress obstructive, and twice as many of those who form the economic elite now favour a president having to do little with Congress. This, too, weakens democracy.
The elite, however, impact democracies adversely in other ways as well. “In egalitarian societies, elites identify with the middle class” and trust the uncorrupted democratic institutions far more in benefiting their economic interests and thus are a helpful influence. In oligarchies, “economic elites share few material interests with ordinary people, and have much to lose from policies (that will improve the lot of the common man)”.
The thread that runs common in all such studies has one shared determinant: the citizens of a state are invested in democracy as long as ‘material’ benefits flow out to them. Where the rich, instead, are institutionally invested as donors to maximise their benefit, it is the common man who will remain neglected, weakening the base of trust and belief in democracy. The study acknowledges that “economic elites and narrow interest groups were far more influential, while the views of ordinary citizens had virtually no impact”. As a consequence, a third of Americans now tend to describe their state as “not democratic at all”!
What is it that our perennially infant democracy must learn? Simply what has been the return to the common man? Have the elites thrived at his cost? Is society divided between the dispossessed and those who own all; and is there any meaningful contact left between the power elites and the common man beyond the act of elections? And yet, we wonder why Raheel Sharif is the most popular man in Pakistan. It is time to learn from consolidated democracies.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2015.