‘Autocracies versus Democracies’
In the Global Polity there is a discourse enforcing polarization between 'The West' and 'The Rest,' namely the opposition between 'autocracy' and 'democracy'. But what does it mean?
Disposition
We start out by 1) investigating the opposition, 2) look closer at what is called ‘democracy’, and 3) suggest that there is rather a continuum stretching from ‘autocracy’ to ‘democracy.’ The opposition between ‘autocracies’ and ‘democracies’ works well as foundation for the narrative as an element in legitimizing dominance of the elite states in Gobal Polity.
Intro
This post is about a perspective, a way of thinking, a ‘discourse.’ That is why the heading is in quotation marks. It is a quote. Something the president of the USA says regularly and it seems to be spreading amongst western leaders like rings in the water. The phrase ‘autocracy versus democracy’ establishes in public discourse an opposition between two different ways of organizing political systems. But as we shall see it is not so easy to make sense of what is meant by these words, let alone define them consistently in opposition to each other. We shall investigate the meaning of this phrase on different levels.
Dividing the world
‘Autocracies vs. democracies’ denotes an opposition, and the meaning of its use in public discourse is to state a difference between democracy, as a good political system and autocracy as a bad political system. We in The West believe ourselves to be ‘democratic’ and to live in ‘democracies’ and by invoking the opposition between ‘autocracies’ and ‘democracies’, we can orientate ourselves by what we are and what we are not, and in this way the world can be divided into two camps: Those who are ‘democratic,’ i.e., us, and those who herald ‘autocracy,’ i.e., them. This leads to very easy conclusions that are ideal for propaganda: that ‘autocracies’ are opposed to ‘democracies’, because their leaders are evil, hence the opposition between ‘autocracy’ and ‘democracy’ can work as a motor in enemy construction: Russia and China are evil; USA and NATO are good. An enemy is the political opposite of a friend, and our enemy threatens us and our friendship. That the enemy is evil is very functional. By being evil, the threat is perpetual and fundamental, and by being evil, the enemy can be destroyed, since if the enemy is evil, then destroying the enemy is inherently good. This use of the opposition is so simple, that we easily see through it and realize, that here we are being deluded into accepting an enemy construction. Let us dig a little deeper into the meaning of ‘autocracy’ and ‘democracy.’
About ‘autocracy’
Autocracy from Greek auto = ‘self’ + kratos = ‘rule’ in terms of wielding power of government through one office. The term autocracy has thus denoted power invested in one person, the downside of which was the propensity for tyranny. Here it is important to note that to grasp the workings of any regime, is to realize that decision-making revolves around a locus of decision, generated by the necessity to decide for the well-being and at times, the survival, of the collective. In this way a viable state must sustain sovereignty, i.e., the ability to decide. Note that in Hobbes, the foundation and prerequisite for the distribution of power and thus the distribution of rights to citizens, is a firm consolidation of a sovereign entity. In this line of thinking, the ruling entity, be it an individual or an assembly of individuals, wield power autocratically, directing force from a place inside the regime. For instance, parliament appoints a chancellor or prime minister; the senate in The Roman Republic (509 - 27BC) appoints two consuls, shifting the right to decide on a monthly basis, but in times of crisis the senate appointed a dictator, as when today a prime minister or president can invoke emergency powers to rule directly by decree unmediated by the constitution, by calling a state of exception. In this perspective, autocratic distribution of power is an integrated part of any regime, and the centralization of decision-making takes place as a dynamic in any regime under pressure to decide, no matter how it calls itself. The broader argument here, is that the ability of a state to do something about its own situation, i.e., state autonomy, rests on the ability to wield autocratic power, i.e., decide on the behalf of the collective to do what must be done, no matter what the constitution prescribes. This autocratic power can be sought balanced by organizing the political system in different ways, but it remains there as a potential way to decide and can be invoked in times of crisis.
About ‘democracy’
Democracy from Greek demos = ‘people’ + kratos = ‘rule’. The term democracy has often been denoted ‘rule of the people’ or ‘rule by the people.’ Taken at face value one quickly realizes that this is not possible: The elite rules society. In the final case, ‘the people’ as an actual gathering of individuals will not be able to rule, since they will starve to death during debate. What is meant by the term in political philosophy is that the ultimate power rests with the people to dismiss the elite due to the power of being many. Here, technically, the armed forces come in between, since if some of the people would dismiss a constitutionally elected leader, then the decision is with the armed forces which side to choose. ‘Demos’ as the people in its capacity to decide is to be understood as the deciding entity, for instance, in modern constitutional theory, the paradoxical co-constitutor, as the people subject to the constitution and becomes ‘demos’ while subjecting. Ideally, ‘demos’ sustains the power to transform the constitution, but for the sake of stability, this is mediated through decisions of the elite who decides on when to call for a constitutional referendum or embark on revolution.
From autocracy to democracy
A central point in this conceptual gymnastic is the evolution of regimes. Take for instance the modern state. Arguably, the most successful one until date is Denmark, due to low levels of corruption and disorder, and high levels of social development and happiness. Denmark embarked on a Hobbesian absolutist monarchy in 1660 and developed slowly into a parliamentarian constitutional monarchy during the following 350 years. The ideological account of the state of Denmark is that it became democratic in 1849. Technically, parliamentarianism was reached in the 50 years after WW II when several pitfalls where avoided, but basically the success of parliamentarianism in Denmark came from the firmly founded state with its well-functioning central administration, that was developed under absolutist monarchy, and after 15 years of internal conflict and wars (1849 – 1864), under the dictatorship of Estrup (1860ies to 1894): It took 250 years of absolutism before parliament began to choose and dismiss government, and another 50-100 years before that principle was fully institutionalized. Our second example here, shall be USA, a polity that embarked on a journey towards presidential constitutional republic after independence, where the centralization of the state took shape very late, during the reign of F. D. Roosevelt (1933 – 1945) and the rise of bureaucracy in the following decades, where public spending increased tenfold. The superpower is still struggling with government functionality and monopolization of violations, but the USA is in many ways exceptional and still functional as a polity, despite the challenges appointed in the following. A major point here, is that the ability to rule firmly and thus make changes for the benefit of the collective, flows from the political constitution and the institutions it facilitates. Concretely, this means that it stems from the ability of the state to wield and distribute ‘autocratic power.’
Two examples - Denmark and USA
Our two examples here, are both quite successful polities, but what is interesting to us is how they have developed by getting to autocracy and beyond: Denmark developed parliamentarianism on top of an established functional bureaucratic apparatus forged under absolutism and is today a soundly driven polity; USA developed a stable presidential system out of civil war and rampant corruption by steering free of plutocracy through the autocratic moment around WWII, but as we shall see, since then, the USA has landed in the oligarchy trap of political stalemate. We can call these polities ‘democratic’, but the question is whether that adjective adds anything meaningful in describing their actual composition. Led me briefly go into the implied idea of polity development and the notion of traps, where polity gets caught in a situation from where it cannot develop further without wielding autocratic power, i.e., by centralizing exceptional decisional competences around government to battle corruption and other forms of state exploitation by elites.
The Plutocracy Trap
An outright sceptic approach to the notion of ‘democracy’ could question whether ‘demos’ really is able to dismiss the elites in power. In our context, what should be clear, is the need for wielding autocratic power in developing parliamentarian and presidential political systems whether we choose to call them ‘democratic’ or not. The argument is not that autocracy is always good and from there polities can always develop into parliamentarianism and presidential systems based on the representativity of elected elites, thus merely adding public election of representatives by universal suffrage as ‘icing on the cake.’ No. The road from wielding primitive ‘autocratic’ state autonomy to more advanced political systems is a difficult path with pitfalls and traps. Hence, the point is rather, that one must make a state that can rule to sustain autonomy hence the state must display ‘autocratic’ abilities, and preferably display very low levels of corruption in the central administration before embarking on implementing a political system where competing elites fight for office at public elections. In Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama shows how the USA had embarked on elite competition at elections very early and was challenged by the tendency of local elites in the states to merge its interests with law enforcement, what he calls ‘clientilism’, until the federal level of government penetrated with bureaucratic reforms of the central administration (1888 – 1960ies). Concerning the accumulation of state capacities, USA is a special case, but note that the state was unable to monopolize violations and was prone to descend into an anarcho-liberal condition ruled by local clans after the intra-polity conflict (1861 –1865) until the consolidation of state power through the first half of 20th century and the subsequent magnification of central government. In our vocabulary, USA enters a plutocratic state after the civil war, but avoids descending into plutocracy, i.e., rule by clans and gangs, due to the centralization of power and seriously fight corruption in the state bureaucracies.
Development of state capacities
If polity cannot establish autocratic rule, i.e., obtain the capacities necessary to mend its political condition, then it will be stuck in plutocracy, where polity is ruled through traversed local monopolizations of violations, i.e., by gangs. This happens a lot to polities around the globe and shall be referred to as ‘being stuck in plutocracy.’ The Ukraine (1991 - 2014) got stuck there. A state gets stuck, since it cannot perform the necessary centralization of power to alter its situation; when the state is unable to renew or improve on its institutions, polity is prone to decay. A state must pull out of plutocracy, embark on wielding autocratic powers that can sustain government autonomy and avoid descend into oligarchy, i.e., rule of the few for the benefit of the few, if it is to ‘get to Denmark.’ All polities must of course find their own path, and there are many different ways to go as well as many endpoints, Denmark is Denmark, but note that in Global Polity Theory, we see two major traps, that states may fall into, if they are unable to obtain sufficient autonomy of government in their development.
The Oligarchy Trap
Escaping plutocracy by sustaining an effective police force distributing power on the territory does not mean that polity is ‘out of the woods’ in terms of its development of state capacities. Police only heals the enforcement side of law enforcement. How laws are made and implemented is very important as well. Without strong state capacities, polity cannot distribute rights, and without distribution of rights there remains a radical inequality between those who enjoy privileges and those who do not. In the second part of the 20th century, USA managed to formerly distribute rights throughout the polity, but when it comes to the materialization of these rights, parts of the population are still disenfranchised and vulnerable vis a vis law enforcement. During the 1990ies crime rates dropped significantly in the major cities in the USA, but soon polity showed signs of decline with stalling real wages and general discontent amongst middle class voters. The strengthening of state capacities had stalled following the political developments of 1970ies and at the turn of the century it became a mantra in political science to simply say ‘Washington is dysfunctional’, when explanations were needed to why the middle class does not experience improvements while the elite become exorbitantly rich.
Questions arise in oligarchy
Who does the laws benefit? Is the level of social equality sustainable with heightening health care cost and galloping state debts? The inability of government to solve this conundrum while being unable to curb school shootings and gun fights in the streets of major cities, society is stuck in trouble no matter how wealthy it is. A situation where the higher echelons of society controls legislation, yet unable or even unwilling to support a sustainable development of the social order, that could bring a sense of prosperity and improved opportunities to the majority, such situation we shall refer to as the oligarchy trap. Elite competition is very expensive in USA and the exorbitantly rich have a disproportionate advantage. Oligarchy is the traditional term for such a system. The challenges of internal coherence of the superpower and of course, its structural issues, for instance, its inability to tackle the debt to GDP ratio, is of course of major interest to us, but note the simple conclusion, that making autocracy something alien to democracy in order to sustain a friend vs. enemy distinction, contains a blind spot in the perspective of those calling themselves ‘democracy’, both to their own history of societal development and to their means of dominating the polities they understand to be ‘autocracies,’ but also to what it would take for themselves to solve their own problems.
In conclusio
By this tour de force through the theory of polity development we have come to see why the discourse ‘autocracies vs. democracies’ is so efficient: It displaces our perspective and that is beneficial for the elites in the The West. Instead of managing rising public spending, debt issues, and polarization at home, The West subscribe to a discourse that undermines the rise of The Rest by disallowing them the accumulation of efficient state capacities, making them prone to political instability, and undermining their potential to rise in their own way, by making them the enemy, simply because they try to centralize power in the same way that the polities of The West did themselves, when they got on their feet: The West discredits The Rest for wielding ‘autocratic power,’ through the discourse of ‘Autocracies versus democracies.’ A prime feature in The West is weak government without consensus on how to establish internal cohesion, yet clinging to consensus on foreign policy, often reaching a consensus of a very narrow scope, like today, where the only thing elites in Washington really agree about is antagonism towards China and Russia, labelling them ‘autocracies’ thus enemies, in a situation where the main issue of USA is its own lack of state capacities and the means to transcend oligarchy, what we here call ‘wielding autocratic power.’ In this light, the discourse on ‘autocracies vs. democracies’ sustains the dominance of the elites over the mass in Global Polity, without addressing the real geopolitical issues. This will invoke further destabilization of polities. Ukraine is only a case in point.