It’s 8 May 2020 as I write this, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is giving a speech at the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny (Neue Wache) to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Germany from National Socialism, and the end of the Second World War in Europe. ‘In 1945 we were liberated,’ he says. ‘Today, we must liberate ourselves from the temptations of a new brand of nationalism. From a fascination with authoritarianism. From distrust, isolationism and hostility between nations. From hatred and hate speech, from xenophobia and contempt for democracy – for they are but the old evil in a new guise.’
To understand the story of humanity is to bear witness to the story of its greatest paradox: power. This phenomenon creates the constraints in which we operate, yet is responsible for the structures that bind our society together. The exercise and accumulation of power is endemic to humanity. In the twentieth century alone, this phenomenon has been responsible for over 200 million deaths through war and oppression, and has concentrated over 50 per cent of the world’s wealth into the hands of just 1 per cent of the world’s population, meaning that billions of our global family have been subjected to hunger, thirst and disease. Power has also enabled social movements that have brought rights, freedoms and opportunity to many billions more.
For those of us living in occidental civilization, the deeper questions of how our society functions are largely delegated up the chain to (usually) elected leaders; the safety valve being that if we don’t like them, we will (again, usually) vote in someone else who better suits our collective interests. In reality, whether we look at the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Kenya or India, today’s democratic experiments often still cede control to the best-funded, most vocal, or emotive groups, and often leave out vast swathes of the population who may have suffrage, but no material benefit from it. The blasé relationship of the majority of Western citizens to democratic processes is perhaps because we’ve lived so long at peace, we’ve forgotten the price of it. And because we’ve forgotten the cost, we ignore the value – allowing political systems to emerge that give us a sense of participation optically, yet where power is still substantively concentrated out of the hands of the many, into the few.
In this chapter are excerpts of the conversations I’ve had with some of the most respected thinkers in the field to explore the very essence of democracy, and citizen participation in politics, such as Noam Chomsky, A. C. Grayling and Garry Kasparov, as well as those at the frontline of the fight for democracy, such as former Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis. For many of us, particularly in Europe and the USA, criticizing our leaders is almost a national pastime, yet of course the reality is that being in those positions of power is complex and challenging – especially when trying to balance the interests of an entire population. To learn more, I also spoke to the former prime minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt, the former president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and Vicente Fox Quesada, former president of Mexico.
What is democracy?
A. C. Grayling: The most general characterization of democracy is that suitably enfranchised people of voting age have the final say to confer authority on the government a state has. The way that franchised will is expressed differs from one system to another. Democracy allows an expression of popular will on the policies and parties that might form a government. We have a very unsatisfactory electoral system in the UK, but there is broad consensus to accept how it works. A referendum on proportional representation was rejected by the country a few years ago, so we stick with the ‘first-past-the-post’ system. For most of history, people have been worried that democracy too readily degenerates into ochlocracy (mob rule), and as a result, almost all democratic systems have structures and institutions in place to filter out the danger of a collapse into mob sentiment. There is a saying, generally attributed to Churchill, which is that ‘the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter’. People tend to be incompletely informed, too self-interested and too short-termist. The ideal democracy is one where people are very well informed and think of the good of all, not just themselves, and that’s simply not what happens. In the UK, we have a representative democracy. The people sent to parliament are not merely messengers or delegates; they are sent in order to get the information, to do some thinking, to discuss, debate, make judgements and act on behalf of their constituents and the country as a whole. If we don’t like what they do, we can chuck them out at the next election. While they are in parliament, these individuals are supposed to be acting on our behalf. We have what you might call a constitutional arrangement, a constitutional democracy, which is the right kind of compromise between mob rule at one extreme and autocracy and tyranny at the other.
Ted Lieu: Democracy, at a fundamental level, means that the people in a country decide the direction they want the country to go. It means following the rule of law and making sure that individuals have their rights protected. Those are the core principles of any democracy.
Bassem Youssef: Different people have different interpretations of democracy and most people who come to power through ‘democratic’ means think democracy is just the tyranny of a majority, and that’s a problem. In the Middle East we see this tyrannical democracy with political and military leaders who feel they can do what they want if they have sufficient votes. I believe that democracy first and foremost is about the protection of minorities and those people in society who need help. For those who are already powerful or wealthy, democracy is meaningless. Democracy matters to those who need protection, and who may not otherwise be vindicated through the democratic process. With enough votes, you can change a country’s constitution, you can put people in jail, you can start passing laws that would impact human rights. If you have a democracy that protects everyone, in all situations, that is a true democracy.
Why does democracy matter?
Garry Kasparov: If we look at human history, we can see a simple answer to the question of democracy. This system provides the best conditions for individuals and society to flourish. Most of the world’s wealth has been produced by democratic countries, and while people may point to China and other countries where living standards are growing, the driving engine of innovation, which is the foundation of human progress, still sits in the heart of the free world. Free people are far more capable of realizing their potential.
To what extent are our societies free and democratic?
Noam Chomsky: These societies are quite free by historical standards. They are democratic in the sense that they have formal elections that aren’t stolen, and so on. They’re undemocratic to the extent that forces other than popular will have an overwhelming effect on who can participate in electoral outcomes. The United States is the most extreme in this respect. Right now in the United States, elections are essentially bought. You can’t run an election unless you have a huge amount of capital, which means overwhelmingly, although not 100 per cent, that capital is sought from strong corporate backing. For example, in the 2008 election, what carried Obama across the finish line first was a very substantial amount of support from financial institutions which are now the core of the economy. The coming elections are supposed to be a 2-billion-dollar election, and there’s only one place to go for that kind of money. There used to be a system of chairs of committees in Congress, who were there through seniority and so on. By now, it is generally required that funding go to the party committee, which means those are also, in large part, bought. This means that popular opinion is very much marginalized. You can see this very clearly on issue after issue. So, the huge issue right now, domestically, is the deficit. Well, people have ideas about how to get rid of the deficit. For example, most of the deficit is the result of a highly dysfunctional healthcare system which has about twice the per-capita cost of other countries and by no means better outcomes – in fact, rather poorer outcomes. The population has long favoured moving towards some kind of national healthcare system, which would be much less expensive and (judging by the outcomes) no worse – maybe better. That would, in fact, eliminate the deficit. That’s not even considered.
Do citizens understand how government should relate to them?
Michael Lewis: In the United States, citizens have stopped thinking of themselves as citizens but have started thinking of themselves as customers, thus relieving themselves of any obligations whatsoever when it comes to understanding how government functions. Civics used to be part of the curriculum in American primary education, but vanished, and so you have a generation of people who simply don’t know the nuances of how the process of government works and therefore will believe any lie, any slander about government. Without civics education, people simply will not have the knowledge or information they need to defend themselves from politicians who say X, Y or Z about government. For example, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, wanted to eliminate three whole departments of government. Why? Because it’s a guaranteed applause line. Guess what, he’s now in charge of one of the departments he wanted to eliminate! The energy department which, among other things, tends to our nuclear arsenal. A lot of what I’m saying about Americans and their relationship to government will surely apply elsewhere in the world, and fundamentally we have a problem where people get all sorts of things from government but have little understanding or appreciation of where those things come from and rarely do they participate and give anything back.
Why are we seeing a surge in right-wing and populist movements?
Ece Temelkuran: The Second World War taught us a specific aesthetic of fascism. We always imagine that Nazi uniform, and the kind of futuristic authoritarian settings we see on Netflix and HBO. In our culture, we see the uniform and the militaristic as the representations of authoritarianism and fascism. Today, right-wing populism, authoritarianism and neo-fascism are coming from different places. Reality TV stars, strange men, and people who otherwise would be considered national jokes. Many of today’s right-wing populist leaders are political figures that nobody really took seriously from the beginning. Nobody expected that neo-fascism could take hold with swagger, in such a laid-back manner.
To understand why these phenomena are creeping back into our world, you have to look for the roots. Neoliberalism has, since the 1970s, imposed this idea that the free-market economy is the best and most ethical system humanity can come up with to organize itself. Neoliberalism changed the definition of what human fundamental morals are, and what justice means – and it’s created a new kind of being. The neoliberalist model has been put forward as a solution to which there is no alternative; we’ve crippled the political spectrum, cut the left away, and shifted everything to the right. Politics has become a competition – who can be further right and who can further deliver numbing of the mind through consumerism. After all, people are only allowed to be free when they consume, and thus we are political objects, not political subjects. Politics has become entertainment and people feel like their opinions do not matter any more.
Vicente Fox: Politics is a pendulum; it swings from the left, to the right, to the left, to the right. You get into government and you see the liberals, the extreme left, populism, demagoguery. They don’t work or convince, they mess up things, and then people look towards the right – the conservatives. There is no ‘left or right’ in this sense, it’s just the way things develop. There are times you need conservatism to keep the fundamentals of the economy in line with disciplined approaches to growth and debt. And guess what, this creates jobs and wealth. At the same time this limits the budget and limits the possibilities for new ideas and new social programmes. People then go to the other side where you distribute income, come up with social programmes, and have social innovation. This is exactly what happened with Obama who, with the Democrats and liberals, went strongly towards the social responsibility side. But now, the conservatives are saying, ‘No! No! It’s too much! The debt is too high! We need to stop this nonsense and go back the other way!’ – I think this is normal. We’re never going to have a world with only one path and one philosophy. People change, economies change, the distribution of income changes, wealth changes, and then you have to adapt your political model and philosophy in the right direction.
Alastair Campbell: The right wing have always been better disciplined and better organized. You can look at UKIP and the Tories and argue they’re a shambles, but they have better links into think tanks, the media and the business community. The right always has these in-built advantages. The left, the social democracies of Britain and America, seem to be ploughing a tough uphill furrow.
After the financial crisis of 2007/08, the assumption was that people would think capitalism didn’t work, and thus would move more to the left. In fact, people decided the crisis was such a catastrophe that they had to look after themselves instead and they turned inwards. Just look at the extraordinarily toxic campaigns in the Daily Mail, such as their most recent one against foreign aid. They’re saying to governments, ‘Sod all these foreigners, sod foreign aid, sod community, just look after me.’ People can appeal to the basic feelings of fear within us. We’ve seen it through history with Hitler and in the modern day with Farage, Le Pen, Trump and their peers. It’s easy to play to fear, and not so easy to play to hope. In Europe, we’ve had twenty-five years of systematic misrepresentation by the right-wing media and politicians, and the public have been misled by it. As a result of this, people feel alienated from politics, and see the government as ‘the establishment’. Don’t forget though, it’s not always the right wing who become the anti-establishment voice. Just look at Greece and Spain, and more recently here in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn. This is not about right and left wing, but rather anti-establishment versus establishment, populism versus elites.
A. C. Grayling: Today’s politics show the first-past-the-post system’s imperfections. When we had a coalition government before 2015, the coalition partners were able to restrain the major parties and so policies tended to be more sensible and centre road. With our first-past-the-post system, a one-person majority in the Commons can completely override all our constitutional provisions, and that’s bad. At the moment, we have a government which has been hijacked by its own right wing, and we’re seeing things go off course. The system we now have of party ‘whips’ and loyalty is a challenge. If we had MPs who were not under the control of a party ‘machine’, it is unlikely we would see the more extreme measures that a far-left or far-right party would create should they have a majority. If you look at our history since the Second World War, we haven’t seen the choice of more extreme leaders that we are seeing now. Characters like Trump, Farage and Le Pen have always been there, occupying an extreme, minority position on the fringe of the political spectrum.
A combination of recent factors has given them the opportunity to come to the forefront. The 2007 financial meltdown caused many middle- and low-class working people to get ‘stuck’ economically; their position hasn’t improved greatly since 2008 and, in fact, for many, things have got worse. People at the top end of the scale, however, have continued to get richer. This toxic increasing inequality is an extremely dangerous political beast. In the European and American context, immigration has become a problem word. In too many ways, the word immigration has become a way to conceal xenophobia and even racism. I’m afraid we’ve seen expressions of that in the UK, USA and in Europe throughout recent political campaigns. The implosion of the Middle East has created floods of refugees who are escaping places of conflict and strife, placing great pressure on the EU. Just look at the boat people going to Italy and migrants travelling to Greece and the Balkans. This has inflamed the anti-immigration sentiment. Immigration and the stagnation of economic possibilities for those a little lower down the economic scale have given populism its moment. People like Farage, Trump and Le Pen have captured this and run with it.
Guy Verhofstadt: There has been an increase of populist and nationalist movements recently, but that does not mean it cannot be stopped. In order to stop this movement, we need to understand what caused it. Populist politicians are quick to promise solutions to everyone’s problems, with so-called ‘simple solutions’. People who have not seen the benefits of globalization, and who feel disenfranchised and ignored, see these populists offering a quick fix and place their faith in them. However, these populist politicians rarely deliver. Just look at the Brexit vote in the UK. In the weeks after the vote, the politicians who campaigned for leave started going back on their promises, such as the infamous £350 million a week for the NHS. Trump is the same. He has already started reneging on the promises he made in the election campaign when he realized he cannot deliver them. With the rise of populist politicians and the growth of nationalism, politics in Europe is no longer a fight between the left and the right. It is increasingly a conflict between those who fight for open societies and those who want to see closed societies. Yet this increased support for authoritarian and Eurosceptic far-right parties, combined with dramatic falls in democratic engagement, should worry all of us.
Defeating nationalism and populism means addressing the concerns of those left behind by globalization and dispelling the myths of a quick fix. For me, the solution is to manage globalization in a fairer way, not to build walls and retreat to nationalism in the hope that this will deliver prosperity, improve security or deliver fairer societies – it won’t. We also need to streamline our political institutions and increase transparency in public institutions. We must listen to people’s concerns about globalization, but the response should not be protectionism, but rather to shape globalization so that it works for us. The European Union has the power to shape globalization and we should harness it. We need to listen to people’s concerns, not sneer at them, and offer a radical new vision for effective governance. Otherwise, nationalism will spread further.
Ted Lieu: In the United States, even before the 2016 election, it was clear we had two economies in our nation. If you have a college degree or higher, you’re probably doing OK or quite well; you might be in the technology, healthcare, aerospace or financial sectors. If you have a high-school degree or less, the last two decades will have been a disaster for you. You will be angry, you will want to make things better, but in your mind the system is failing you. So then, come the election, and Bernie Sanders, who is not even a Democrat, almost won the Democratic primary. How does that happen? Because he tapped into a lot of that anger and directed it at the billionaires on Wall Street. He almost won. Donald Trump happened to tap into even more anger, and he decided to direct it at immigrants and minorities, and he did win. Donald Trump has not actually been able to address their concerns. He has not been able to bring back jobs – in fact, companies are shedding workers in many sectors relevant to his base. These are very hard issues, and a lot of it is connected with automation and a changing economy. But it’s hard to blame robots, so Donald blamed minorities and immigrants; even though people know it’s not true, they needed someone to blame. It was very clear to me, for a pretty long time, that for a large part of America this system was not working – and people were angry. They wanted to make changes and blow up the system.
Ece Temelkuran: People sometimes look to the Middle East to see where things are going wrong, but I must say, in Turkey, perhaps our democracy was stronger – it took decades for Erdoğan to achieve what Boris Johnson did in a few weeks. Maybe we had a better resistance. I have to say though, it’s difficult to find something positive to say about the fight against authoritarianism in the Middle East, but I am incredibly inspired by the fight of young women in Turkey and the Middle East – fighting for democracy with their lives. They are unstoppable. When it comes to Europe and the Western democracies, we have to take to the streets and make ourselves heard – end of story. We have to organize, mobilize and politicize. We have to use those good old-fashioned tools of politics – they’re the ones that count. We have to show up! We have to fight, we have to get out onto the streets and change things. Since the 1970s it’s almost become a taboo to talk of conflict. We’ve become a society geared around consensus and co-existence – and this has domesticated politics in a dangerous way. The media have been too busy finding consensus with the Brexiteers and Trumpeteers to fight them; this is a political struggle and there is no politeness or kindness in it. It is very clear what one has to do if one has to defend their rights – you have to fight back when there is oppression.
The philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye posited that rather than being opposite and opposing ends of the political continuum, the far-left and far-right resemble one another as manifestations of populism. Over the past decade, I have travelled around the world with In Place of War, a charity that works in places of conflict. The sheer magnitude of economic and social injustice around the world, combined with the forces of climate change, corruption and foreign policy, are creating environments where people have lost hope. This manifests in anger, in a pushback against the system, and often creates the conditions for populism to flourish. It is not a fallacy to describe our world as zero-sum. The gains of occidental civilization have come at a huge cost to the rest of humanity, and the mechanisms of this approach are deeply embedded in our foreign policy.
What really drives our foreign policy and how does that impact us as citizens?
Noam Chomsky: Foreign policy in the UK and Europe tends to follow the United States – not entirely, but the US does remain the prime driver in foreign policy. It’s not a secret what foreign policy is driven by. For example, Bill Clinton was quite explicit about it. His position, expressed clearly in Congress, was that the US has the right to carry out a unilateral military action, sometimes supported by a so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ in order to secure resources and markets, and it must have military forces forward deployed, meaning foreign bases in Europe and elsewhere, in order to shape events in our interest. Our interest does not mean the American people, but rather the interests of those who design policy, primarily the corporate sector.
Foreign policy can be undertaken in ways which are expected to harm security. In fact, that’s not at all uncommon. If you follow the Chilcot inquiry, the head of MI5 testified, merely extending what was already known, but she testified that both the United States and Britain recognized that Saddam Hussein was not a threat and that the invasion would very likely increase the threat of terror. And, in fact, it did! About seven-fold in the first year according to quasi-governmental statistics. So an invasion was undertaken that would harm the citizens of the invading countries, as indeed it did. At first, of course, the reasons were presented with the usual boilerplate informative presentation that goes along with every act of force, citing democracy and all sorts of wonderful things.
When it was becoming clear that the war’s end could not be easily achieved, towards the end of the invasion certain policies were stated clearly. In November 2007, the Bush administration issued a declaration of principles stating that any agreement with Iraq would have to ensure the unlimited ability of US forces to operate there – essentially permanent military bases – and such an agreement would also secure the privileging of US investors in the energy systems. In 2008, Bush reiterated and, in fact, strengthened this in a message to Congress where he said that he would ignore any legislation that limits US capacity to use force in Iraq or that interferes with US control over Iraqi oil. That was stated very clearly and explicitly. In fact, the US had to back down from this goal as a result of Iraqi resistance, but the goals themselves were clear and explicit and had nothing to do with the security of Americans. The same is true elsewhere; so, one leading specialist on Pakistan recently reviewed US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, revealing once again that these policies are significantly increasing the threat of terror and in fact possibly nuclear terror. He concluded that American and British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan in order to make the world less secure for Americans and British. That’s not so unusual. Security is not, typically, a very top priority of states. There are other interests.
Why is anti-European sentiment growing?
Toomas Hendrik Ilves: People are always dissatisfied with the status quo. It’s kind of a gut reaction, but I think if you were rationally trying to think about going it alone, those who are anti-European would have considerable difficulty in rationally making a case for doing it. Smaller countries would struggle to do well economically or even from a security perspective outside Europe in these times. They would be subject to all kinds of bullying. One reason why Russia particularly despises the European Union is their preference for bilateral relationships. However, the bilateral relationships they could and would build would be completely domineering, even with Europe’s largest member state, Germany – and that doesn’t even take into account smaller countries on the periphery where Russia may even have had an interest. We are seeing lots of strong atavistic emotional responses in Europe – we certainly saw it during the French election – but I don’t know how atavistic the people of France would continue to be if their economy went south and they needed visas to travel to their neighbouring countries like Spain and Germany.
Are referendums an essential part of democracy?
Alastair Campbell: You have to see things in a historical context. If you live in Switzerland, for example, there is a commitment to public consultation and decision by referendum. This seems to work for them. One of our strengths, and one of the things often admired about Britain, is that we’re a parliamentary democracy. There are faults in any political system, but ours has done pretty well, partly because of constituency representation that gives people a local representative in government, and partly because we choose the government who make decisions on our behalf. The weakness of Cameron’s referendum strategy was that he wasn’t doing it as a means of taking forward his strategy for the UK in Europe, but rather that he was using it as a tactic to shut up UKIP and the Tory right. The populists and right-wing press would jump on any attempt to not permit a vote on such topics as being tantamount to saying, ‘You don’t trust the public.’ This is not about trusting or not trusting the public; it’s about the fact that we, as a population, make a decision about choosing the people who govern us, and we also reserve the right to get rid of those people if they don’t do their job. I think referendums are very dangerous.
It is thought that Charles de Gaulle once said, ‘Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’ Of course, politics is not only a serious business, but also a complex one. The gravity of governance is such that the level of information required to make decisions is practically impossible for any single individual or small group to fathom. While referenda may work for small, relatively predictable groups, for countries and continents in a globalized world they will give you nothing more than an emotional temperature reading, rather than a strategic output. This is arguably why the absence of any real civics education in Western curricula is so dangerous.
Do we need to get more involved in political discourse?
Vicente Fox: We need to have much more citizen involvement in politics; much more educated involvement. I am very disappointed with Brexit, for instance, where people who went to vote did not represent the whole constituency of citizens, and did not represent specifically the future. The young were not there. The Brexit campaign was run by populists who did not know what Brexit meant, and who were not informing citizens about the losses that Britain’s economy would face. They were only siding with nationalism, and misinforming voters about what the country needed from this referendum. Trump, this crazy guy, campaigned around a referendum. He asked people, ‘What do you want to have? A strong successful America? Or an America that has failed under the Obama administration?’ That’s a false debate; it was a trap. Trump is a false prophet who has the capacity to speak and convince people around the wrong ideas. Electors have to prepare themselves much better. They have to read and get the information they need to make the right decisions. Today’s democracies are not delivering. Today’s democracies are presenting false alternatives. These messianic leaders, these false prophets, are taking people to the land of nowhere, taking people to the desert. It’s very dangerous.
What are the consequences of a lack of public engagement and public knowledge around their own democracy?
Guy Verhofstadt: A lack of public engagement and the public feeling disenfranchised is a key issue facing the European Union. We need to make our democratic institutions more transparent and accountable in order to make citizens more invested and interested in these institutions. Public knowledge is very important too, and more transparency can make it easier for the public to have more knowledge about their democratic institutions. It has been evident from the Brexit vote and following discussions since the vote in the UK that there was a lack of understanding about the European Union and how it works. Phrases like sovereignty were used a lot throughout the campaign, but when the case was taken to court as to whether the UK parliament should have a vote on triggering Article 50, there was outrage among some leave voters. Ostensibly, this was what they supposedly wanted back: parliamentary sovereignty. So it is very important that the citizens feel involved in politics and that they have a good knowledge of their democracy, because otherwise people can feel cheated by decisions made, or feel disenfranchised, and therefore don’t participate in their democracy.
What will it take to re-engage society with government?
Michael Lewis: I think it’s going to take people being genuinely terrified before they really respond to the crisis of lack of political engagement. I fear we’re going to have to experience a national disaster – maybe a virus, maybe a war, or maybe something like a financial crisis or depression. It may take something that severe to stimulate civic re-engagement.
People often don’t care about how their car or computer works until it breaks; those with a working knowledge of mechanics or electronics can get their toolkit out and get to work. But for the majority, they are opening a black box – the access to which is controlled by mechanics and technicians as expensive gatekeepers. Politics is no different. The majority of people don’t care about it, until it breaks. The Brexit referendum in Britain spurred a whole generation, dismayed at the result, into political action, and the Covid-19 pandemic showed the real value of global political cooperation, and the downsides to isolationism in a hyperconnected world.
Moisés Naím: The classical definition of power, commonly used by political scientists and others, is that power is the capacity to get others to do or stop doing something now, or in the future. Power is also a source of order, and a source of comfort for some people. Remember that the extreme situation, where nobody has power, is anarchy, and anarchy is an inferior Hobbesian society, which leads to inferior social outcomes to societies where structures and entities that impose power, limits and rules create stability and prosperity. Some neuroscientists have even argued that power is hard wired into our brains, and evolutionary psychologists have similarly argued that power and the quest for it is an evolutionary trait, an instinct.
Admiral James Stavridis: There are several centres of power that drive society in a broad sense. First and foremost, we see demographics – human capital, the people and population – tied to which we see their education levels and productivity. Traditionally, we also talk of military power, albeit I think this is suffering from the law of diminishing terms as, in our current global society, huge force-on-force confrontations are less likely, though not impossible. Increasingly, cyber or information power is also extremely significant, and I would tie this to the concept of ‘idea’ or ‘message’ power, which is society’s ability to influence other parts of the world in the power of its messages. I would argue that Western society, over the past several centuries, has been able to move the ideas of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of education, freedom of assembly, gender rights, racial equality and more. Given that the centre of power can be seen as your ability to produce or convey influential ideas, this is certainly important. Cultural power is also significant, the degree to which your society’s popular culture – films, books, art, theatre, music and sports – is received nationally and internationally. Separate from this is political power, which, in many ways, derives from all the other things I’ve spoken about. Geographic and resource power are also fundamentally important, and are derived from not just the size of your country, but from how much water and energy you have access to. Innovation power is also very important – the creative spark your society has. All these factors taken together will determine how influential a nation is at influencing the behaviours of other nations and organizations.
Do citizens understand the influence of power in their lives?
Moisés Naím: Increasingly, broader populations are aware of the impact power plays in their lives. There is so much to applaud in the trends we are seeing. This is a world with more opportunity, and where those who have been excluded and disempowered can shape their own futures and change their conditions. This is a world where authoritarians have a hard time holding on to power, and where those who want to create a political movement, a company, a religion or NGO have a chance to do so. I’m not saying that power concentrations do not exist. There are countries, companies and individuals who continue to possess immense power. From Vladimir Putin to the Head of Goldman Sachs, and from the editor of the New York Times to the head of Google, and even China’s leader or Pope Francis, the Vatican, Pentagon, Kremlin and even Mountain View (the headquarters of Google) – these are all immense centres of global power. All of these centres do, however, have a harder time wielding and retaining their power. Their ability to perpetuate power is significantly less than in the past.
Admiral James Stavridis: The vast majority of our citizens enjoy their lives, face the challenges of the world, struggle or are entertained by what happens, are occasionally threatened by it or, if they’re unfortunate to live somewhere like Syria, they will feel it very extremely and tragically. Most people, however, do not spend time focused on these larger questions. Leadership matters. In a democracy, we select somebody to worry about the big problems for us. We criticize them, support them and maybe tire of them and throw them out of office. We, as a people, do not spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about big problems; we outsource that to our leaders and use tools to shape the outcomes for our country.
Democracy has a better chance overall of being the long-term solution; it creates a safety valve. If you don’t have democracy, if you don’t elect a leader and put some of your skin in the game, the pressures build up, and this is what we’re seeing in China right now. People there do not have a say in the election of their leaders, and while they were content when growth was in double-digits, when that growth slows and leaves debt, environmental damage, inequality and corruption, they are found without a safety valve. This can play out very broadly in a society where there is no buy-in with a system like democracy. While the Chinese may argue the counter and say that democracy is messy and cannot be used to make decisions, I would point them to Winston Churchill, who said, ‘Democracy is the worst system of government, except for everything else.’ Power is more diffused in democracy, and that allows those at the centre to let go a little bit and allow power to be more equally shared through the population.
What influence do large corporations exert in society?
Noam Chomsky: Corporations play an overwhelming role in society. I don’t think that fact is even contentious. Similar observations have been made as far back as Adam Smith, who pointed out that in Britain the principal architects of policy were merchants and manufacturers, the people who own society, and they ensure that their interests are served however grievous the impact on the people of England. This is far more true today – with much higher concentrations of power, we are not just manufacturers, we have financial institutions and multinational corporations. They have an enormous influence, and the influence can not only be harmful, but in many cases lethal.
Taking the United States as an example, the corporate sector has been carrying out major propaganda campaigns to try to convince the population that there is no threat from global warming. This, in effect, has led to the majority of people now agreeing it is not a real issue. Business funding has also been the primary instrument in bringing a new group of cadres to Congress, figures who are virtually all climate-change deniers. These individuals are about to enact legislation to cut back funding for the international organization (the IPCC) and the capacity of the Environmental Protection Agency, who may not even be able to monitor the effect of greenhouse gases or carry out any other actions that could reduce the impact of global warming, which is a very serious threat. This has been done by the corporate executives who are carrying out these propaganda campaigns and fund political figures who undermine such efforts. They understand as well as anyone else that global warming is a very serious threat, but there is an institutional role that enters here. If you are the CEO of a corporation, your task is to maximize short-term profit. That’s much more true now than it ever has been in the past. We are in a new stage of state capitalism in which the future just doesn’t matter very much, even the survival of the firm doesn’t matter very much. What matters increasingly is short-term profit and if a CEO doesn’t pursue that, he will be replaced with someone who will do it. This is institutional effect, not individual effect, and has extraordinary implications for society. It may, in fact, destroy our very existence.
What is the role of law in the concept of democracy?
Lord Woolf: The law also provides the framework in which a democracy works. Democracy is, to those who are elected by the vote, an opportunity to make laws, subject to certain safeguards. Laws are essential for democracy to work effectively as much as the concept of democracy itself is committed to the rule of law. To this extent, I would say that there are some societies that work quite well even when their democratic processes are quite weak, as long as there are well-established processes for upholding the rule of law. I don’t think democracy works at all well without even superficially recognizing the rule of law. For me, a terrorist organization that is democratically elected, for example, is just as flawed as a terrorist organization that is not elected. There are many examples of that. I see part of democracy as involving the values which are reflected by the rule of law.
Susan Herman: A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be visiting the Gettysburg battlefield and one thing which rings in my head are the words of Abraham Lincoln, who stated that government should be ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. That, to me, is the central idea of law in the concept of democracy. First, that laws should be by the people and of the people and for the people, and when you overlay on that the concept of justice (which paradoxically is a separate concept, though it should be inseparable), that the laws are going to be fairly executed and implemented. That is the role of law in a constitutional democracy and it is a step beyond the purpose of law in society.
I find that when I speak about the constitution, and some of the things the ACLU is working on, particularly in the United States, people are surprised when I tell them that we don’t really live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional democracy. It’s not true that what the majority of people want to do can be put into law because the constitution defines and sets aside certain principles (priori agreements) of who we want to be as a society. The rule of law then means that if a majority of people can get a law passed, that law is nevertheless invalid if it infringes on those fundamental principles. I think that is a very important element of justice, and I think it’s very important in terms of law, not just in democracy, but in constitutional democracy. You can have a democracy that is not just, you can have laws that are not just, so the point of justice in this context requires something like a constitution, or something else that can take certain values or principles and states that no matter what the majority wants to do, these principles come first and trump everything else. That, to me, distinguishes between the rule of law and the rule of a mob.
When faced by threats such as terrorism, how can a nation balance the need for freedom with the need for security?
Lord Woolf: Lines have to be drawn. We have institutions who can authoritatively draw those lines and indicate where you must not go. We have a combination of values which are paramount – for example, the value which forbids torture in any circumstances. There are no grey areas, you just don’t torture! At the same time, you have to have the protection of citizens. This is, arguably, the first role of government: to protect its citizens. So far as you can only keep that value to a limited extent, you must, using your resources, make up for any weakness in those very resources. Looking at increased government powers in monitoring of communications, I believe that has to be the position. We live in a society where we need to curtail rights so as to be able to protect the rights of our members of society. This is another area where drawing lines is important, but very difficult.
Susan Herman: I think the first answer is: with difficulty! Right after 9/11, people were very panicky about what had happened, and the temptation was to surrender some of our fundamental principles in the hope of becoming safer. There were a number of different things which happened in the United States. People talk of Guantanamo, a headline incursion on our principles of due process. The idea that you could just lock people up indefinitely with no hearing to determine whether or not they were really enemy combatants? I think that was a tremendous deviation from due process. And in that area, the Supreme Court was somewhat helpful, and we have had, at least, some hearings. I don’t think they are, perhaps, as careful as they should be, but it’s a start. We also gave up on a lot of liberties because of the temptation of Congress and the president to set up all sorts of dragnets; the idea that you have to do extensive surveillance and have all sorts of information in data banks because maybe you will be able to catch a terrorist that you would not otherwise be able to catch. And you have to therefore have criminal laws that have few defences, without much burden of proof required for the government because maybe then you will be able to catch a terrorist you wouldn’t otherwise be able to catch.
We all know, however, that when you lay out dragnets, you also catch the unintended, and the First Amendment freedoms of speech, association and religion have all suffered because of the criminal laws and surveillance that we have been tempted into allowing. Post 9/11, the government also became much less transparent. They developed the ‘mosaic theory’ that any little piece of information about how we were combating terrorism, about what kind of surveillance we were doing, and how it was operating, was dangerous because, if the enemy were to combine that little piece of information with other little pieces of information, that might be helpful to them. They could adapt, and therefore the presumption was to not tell anyone anything, to keep it all secret. That lack of transparency became an enormous problem.
For a democratic society to work it requires a political system, a rule of law, human rights and the participation of people. Since the advent of modern democracy, which has been traced back to seventeenth-century England and the Petition of Right in 1628, there has been a natural tug of war between ‘power’ and ‘people’ over the extent to which a political system intervenes in civic society, the nature of law and its application, and to what extent those human rights are respected and defended. Phenomena like terrorism, and even the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, create a struggle for power between these pillars, but the participation element is critical as, without civic participation, there is no pushback against the mechanisms of power.
What would be your advice to the next generation?
Bassem Youssef: You have to question everything and bring everything out in the open. You cannot let anyone tell you what to think. Questioning is the one thing that scares everyone and scares power. Whether you ask your questions through debate, through comedy or through satire, question everything. Questioning is the prequel of the revolution.
Garry Kasparov: More and more young people are getting interested in politics, and we should praise Trump for waking them up. Democracy is not something that is granted for ever. Ronald Reagan once said, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,’ and our democratic instruments have got rusty, as people assumed they would always work automatically. The Trump victory demonstrated that many traditional pillars of democracy, such as avoiding conflict of interest and separating power, are in danger. The only solution to stopping this decline is to engage in politics. Look at the chaos being spread around the world by Trump’s total incompetence, just in the first few months of his presidency. It is perhaps this chaos that has woken voters up to fight back against the rise of populism. Trump isn’t intelligent enough to drive populism, but his inner circle, people like Steve Bannon, point out existing problems. Whether you talk about Farage, Le Pen or Bannon, they point out existing problems, saying the current government cannot run the country. Their solutions, however, will only ever make the situation much worse. It’s very important to have an educated debate around democracy.
Yanis Varoufakis: I don’t believe in giving advice – our generation did really badly! There can be no technical solution to working out what is in our common interests. We do not lack the technology to understand our society. Democracy is not an aggregation, it’s dialectical – it’s a dialogue. Every time a conversation takes place, you emerge as a different person. Part of the other person has become part of you, and part of you has become part of the other person. Democracy is not just about voting and aggregating, it’s about reflecting into each other’s thoughts, passions and ideas. We need to make that something we enjoy for its own sake. As Lenin used to say, in the end what matters is who does what to whom. It’s all about power, and about overcoming. Politics is the overcoming of power relations.
Vicente Fox: You need to get involved in politics, profoundly involved. You need to commit with your nation and country to create a government that works. You need to be innovative. We need Einsteins, Newtons – we need people who don’t believe in the established ideas but who create new things. Right now, the future of democracy is like an embryo. We are going to see the birth of new democratic structures, new ways of forming governments, new ways of forming parliaments and congresses. What we have today is not working and we need to invent new political parties. We need truth in our democracies and leaders who speak the truth. There is a lot of misleading, cheating and lies in public life today. You have to be frank, committed and inventive. Let’s create a new world of truth, a world of institutions that are not corrupt, and a world of democratic institutions that work.
Guy Verhofstadt: It is important to remember that the crises of our time cannot be solved by a state on its own. The economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the fight against terrorism. Only by working together will we be able to tackle these problems and create a better world. Nationalism cannot be the answer, and if the trend towards nationalism continues, I would urge the younger generation to study the history of nationalism in Europe. It is not something we want to go back to. Having said that, I believe that, ultimately, nationalism will be rejected by future generations because its politicians are incapable of resolving the challenges we face, since they are global challenges. So my message to the next generation would be: learn about different cultures and build upon the values you share to work towards global solutions to global problems.
Democracy is not new; our world has been experimenting with it for over two and a half thousand years – but the current iteration of human civilization is the first where democracy has acquired a majority status when looking at how power is managed and distributed. The crises of democracy in our world are rather more about the quality of the democracy that is applied, as opposed to the quantity of democracy that exists. Examples of this are numerous, ranging from the dubious judicial legitimacy of elections to the manipulation of evidence that takes nations into war. From Trump to Modi, our world seems to feature an increasing number of pseudo-democratic authoritarians who repress those who challenge them, while giving everyone else just enough freedom to believe they are indeed free.
Bassem Youssef experienced first-hand the consequences of this, having to flee his country, Egypt, for criticizing government through his comedy and satire. In his view, democracy is first and foremost about protecting minorities and those who need help, and this makes sense. Democracy connects us to the notion of it being a pillar of equality. As Bassem told me, you simply cannot claim to have a democracy in any meaningful sense unless it protects everyone, in all situations. Even in our liberal Western democracy, we cannot be blind to this reality. In the ostensibly ‘free’ world, democratic overstep, including mass surveillance, shows that the extent to which our society is free and democratic is relative – we may have the appearance of freedom and democracy through our ability to vote and choose our leaders, but it isn’t true democracy.
This view of being sufficiently free brings us back to the view of democracy being a compromise designed to balance interests among members of a community, although rather than balancing interests in a true sense, democracy as we see it becomes a pseudo-negotiation between a ruling elite – be they political or corporate – and their peoples as to what freedoms they are prepared to cede in exchange for perceived comforts. This moral equilibrium point is further provoked into volatility by the huge inequality we see between societies, with the population of one wishing for the freedoms – be they economic, social, or political – in another. In Western civilization, consumerism has provided a unique substrate for this pact. People in all countries have found a way to disengage from the political process while living in comfort. Consumerism has provided the ultimate anaesthetic for the brain.
Unlike in true dictatorships, citizens in the West have a sense of debate, control and participation in the issues affecting their lives. This sense of participation is supported by the level of information citizens receive about their democracy and the opportunities they have to interact with it through voting rights, panels, protest and many other means. If, therefore, they feel sufficiently engaged in the democratic process, why should they even question the democracy of it? The fact is we are encountering what can only be described as a participation fallacy. Yes, citizens have the right to elect leaders – albeit ones who have sufficient capital to run for election – and vote on a wide variety of issues, but if we consider the most important issues that have had the most profound influence on Western society in the past decade, including wars, bank bailouts, climate change and more, aside from the right to show public opinion through protest, have citizens really had the opportunity to exercise public opinion? I believe the answer is no, and even the most cursory glance at public opinion polls and outlets will show the widespread displeasure at many decisions that, while ostensibly taken in citizens’ best interests, rarely were.
This is not a problem we can solve overnight. The status quo has become embedded and systemic in every part of our society. For our world to truly become democratic, the process has to begin with education and end with culture, meaning that citizens are not only more aware of the opportunities and processes of democracy, but are also driven towards a culture that values tolerance, peace, prosperity and human dignity rather than one that prizes ignorance and dogma. Guy Verhofstadt was the forty-seventh prime minister of Belgium, and has been the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator since 2016, placing him at the centre of the largest crisis faced by Europe in peacetime. He told me how states cannot solve the crises we face on their own, and whether we consider the economic crises of our time our refugee crisis, or even the fight against terrorism, both will require all of us to work together. And he made clear how important it is that today’s young people read history and understand that the return to nationalism we are seeing in Europe has potentially grave consequences.
‘People, in the long run’, stated David Eisenhower, ‘are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.’ For that to happen, though, we need to understand that we are in this together and that the notions of society and self-interest are, for the most part, incompatible. By understanding that in exchange for a few notional comforts we actively give up our own freedom and the freedoms of billions of citizens around the world, we lose any perceived moral high ground we have and any assertion of the freedom of our society.
Biographies
Alastair Campbell is a British journalist, broadcaster, political aide and author. He held several positions in Downing Street, including Downing Street Director of Communications and spokesman for the Labour Party.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian and political activist. He is both Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. He has written over a hundred books and received many honours, including the US Peace Prize.
Vicente Fox Quesada is a Mexican politician and businessman, and was the fifty-fifth President of Mexico. Since the end of his presidency he has been involved in the development of the Vicente Fox Centre of Studies, Library and Museum.
Professor A. C. Grayling is a British philosopher and author, and Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford.
Susan Herman is an American law scholar. She is the president of the American Civil Liberties Union and has taught at Brooklyn Law School since 1980.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves is a politician who served as the fourth President of Estonia from 2006 until 2016. Before that he worked as a diplomat and journalist, and leader of the Social Democratic Party.
Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, writer and political activist. Since retiring from chess, he has focused on writing and political activism, opposing the policies of Vladimir Putin.
Michael Lewis is the bestselling author of The Undoing Project, Liar’s Poker, Flash Boys, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works.
Ted Lieu is an American politician serving as the US Representative for California’s thirty-third congressional district since 2015. He served in the US Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps and since 2000 has served in the Air Force Reserve Command.
Moisés Naím is a Venezuelan journalist and writer. He was the former Minister of Trade and Industry for Venezuela, and Executive Director of the World Bank. Since 2012, he has directed and hosted a weekly televised news programme, Efecto Naím. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Admiral James Stavridis is a retired United States Navy admiral. He currently holds many positions, including Operating Executive with The Carlyle Group and Chair of the Board of Counsellors at McLarty Associates.
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish journalist, author and presenter. She is a former columnist for the widely read Turkish newspapers Milliyet and Habertürk. She was fired from Habertürk for writing articles that criticized the Turkish government.
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist, academic, philosopher and politician. He is a former finance minister for the Greek government and is the founder and Secretary General of the left-wing political party MeRA25. He is the author of several books and in 2018 he launched Progressive International with US senator Bernie Sanders.
Guy Verhofstadt is a Belgian politician and was the forty-seventh Prime Minister of Belgium from 1998 to 2008. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget from 1985 to 1992 and has been an MEP for Belgium since 2009.
Lord Woolf (Harry Kenneth Woolf) is a British life peer and retired barrister and judge. He previously held roles including Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and President of the Courts of England and Wales. He is a cross-bencher in the House of Lords.
Bassem Youssef is an Egyptian comedian, writer, producer, surgeon and television host. He hosted a satirical news programme inspired by The Daily Show, El-Benameg, from 2011 to 2014. In 2013, Time magazine named him as one of their 100 most influential people in the world.
