Democracy & Alternate forms of Governance

I have on two prior occassions, written on the concept of democracy and its various shortcomings as the ideal model of governance it is often perceived as today, these may be viewed over here and here. My present posts is a different take on the concept, and is a direct result of something rather interesting I happened to read today, about the substantive content of the early works of the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt.

Carl Schmitt’s works, at least the ones I am presently referring to, were written in the context of pre-World War II Germany, that was undergoing a rough phase in the functioning of democratic institutions. Other European countries like Italy too, around this period, experienced an acute disillusionment with the concept of democratic governance, since the entire process of election, cobbling a majority and maintaining a government that enjoyed the support of the majority had proved rather cumbersome, with several shaky coalition governments coming to power in an extremely short span of time. This was considerably worsened by the fact that in the run up to World War II, there were serious issues of unemployment and poverty plaguing the by-then linked European economies.

Schmitt stressed on the concept of  ”efficiency” to drive home the point that democratic systems of governance are simply inferior to absolutist systems of government in terms of ensuring both efficient as well as effective governance. The following represents an effort by him to remove the stugma attached to the conception of a dictatorship or an absolute political ruler:

“If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”

Consequent to this, he further asserted that the concept of  ”dictatorship” was not alien to “regular” forms of government, pointing to the notion of Emergency Powers as an absolutist element in other forms of government as well (On a different note, students of Administrative Law might point out that the very notion of discretion being essential to governance might be seen as this absolutist element, if it were not to be guided by our judicially created safeguards). He in fact, made the further argument that any government to be really effective must contain this absolutist element, positing this assertion on the previous statement that most forms of government possess a dictatorial component anyway.  To quote from the Wikipedia entry on Carl Schmitt:

“Schmitt criticized the institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by a faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual parliamentary party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in smoke-filled rooms by party leaders. Schmitt also posits an essential division between the liberal doctrine of separation of powers and what he holds to be the nature of democracy itself, the identity of the rulers and the ruled. Although many critics of Schmitt today, such as Stephen Holmes in his The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism, take exception to his fundamentally authoritarian outlook, the idea of incompatibility between liberalism and democracy is one reason for the continued interest in his political philosophy.”

This is a rather commonly-heard basis of attack on the democratic ideal, that of, for whatever reason, democracy simply not operating as per the way it theoretically should, the typical “proof of cake is in the eating” critique. Be that as it may, it is equally true that in recent years, the operation of democracies in Western countries have proven to be decisive, sustainable as well as vibrant, thus dispelling the notion of democracy as necessarily impractical or unworkable, in the manner Schmitt would have us believe. A critique of democracy, I believe, would have to be directed at a deeper level, to the notion of a majority governing the rest, rather than a simplistic critique of illiteracy or malafide politics playing themselves out regularly.

Other thoughts, though not along the lines of counter-majoritarian movement being restricted by democracy as I have mentioned previously, include those of Nietzsche who, in his notions of “master morality” and “slave morality” seeks to provide a justification of systemic advantage to a few, in an argument that could be linked to the foundations of libertarianism. It, along with notions of “individualism” a-la-Ayn Rand could be seen to repel the concept of democracy as we know it today, especially democracies that have a foundation on liberal ideas. Democracy, being the incumbent form of governance in most states today, therefore stands to be criticised as both anti-minority as well as overly reductionist in dealing with “individual achievement”. Perhaps, theorisation in the alternate could provide answers to these mixed questions…