Democracy and Authoritarianism: Liberal-Democratic Rules of Discernment
Politics as a stream within philosophy and the philosophical life being best understood as “the way one lives” or the endeavor toward “eudaemonia” means that reflection on what is allowed to occur in political communities and political attitudes is forever important. The ancient Greeks conceived of political ethics and philosophy to be a serious matter of discernment for the honest participant in politics. In a very different context the Spanish founder of the Jesuits Ignatius de Loyola escaped into a mountain cave for many weeks to discern what was wrong in his view of life and actions and to discern what would lead to greater virtue and awareness of the most important principals[i]. Democracy is a kind of political exercise that requires much the same discernment. Like the spiritual life of virtue Ignatius tried to understand and cultivate democracy requires not only the trappings and institutions which characterize its exterior form but interior awareness of dangers which would disrupt it both from opposition and lethargy. And as Ignatius proposed, once these dangers are made clear it is the job of the responsible actor to rebuke and act against them. Authoritarianism, right-wing nationalism and forgetfulness about the values which underpin democracy are all dangers which confront contemporary society and merit discussion.
The rise of authoritarianism has in the 20th century often gone hand in hand with populism. Indeed the tropes of classical political narratives are filled with the characters of the “king mob” which ends up crowning a king. When discussing democracy in the world of a 21st century global economy, one which exerts pressures on various nations to exchange elements of national or assumed national agency in economic trade with global processes or transnational institutions, there is perhaps no greater immediate concern than that of the possibility of a destructive authoritarian politics. The authors Kitschelt and Shibuichi both discuss occasions of militant nationalism and the latent authoritarian threat to democratic values either surrounding locales and events or as movements which have been appearing with frequency over the last 30 or so years. The aim of this paper is to understand and analyze the threat posed to democracy at the global level by populism and authoritarianism especially in the strengthening of right-wing/far-right wing movements in Europe and abroad which appropriate capitalism. This paper also seeks to discuss “extreme authoritarian populism[ii]” as it appears in potency regardless of rightist affiliations, in the attitudes and enabling foregoing of a consciously liberal and social democratic political practice.
In Kitschelt’s work, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, popular movements of the European right in there emergence between the late post war era and the 1990’s are discussed. The characteristics of these movements are shown to be similar in many respects to the previous European rightist movements of the Second World War, Kitschelt marks them as “anti-democratic”, anti-immigrant, nationalist and traditionalist in many ways. However he also points out that these movements are not-anti capitalist and this is a marked difference with previous far-right legacies. The rise of rightist-movements in the west and increasingly across other parts of the world is thus not merely a matter of the resurgence or re-awakening of a political movement in its old old form. The rise of the right is shown by the author here to be a response and opportunistic use to the dissolution of social-democratic values which cared for the community via a liberal-common good framework.
Current incarnations of the right are instead nationalist-capitalist and as the author shows, they use identity politics strategically in an arena which only has ethno-identities to hold it together as a force because of radical-capitalism. The ethno-nationalist and the radical capitalist thus benefit from each other as the more economy and political community are separated the more there is economic desperation and despair in regular democracy and nationalism can fill the void. The opposition to immigrants is also well understood through this reasoning as the need for the de-regulating state to provide welfare is unnecessary when the right can oppose immigration on nationalist grounds and visa-versa[iii].
In Shibuichi’s piece, Daiki Shibuichi, “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan: Why All the Fuss?”, he discusses the epicenter of the contemporary Japanese right wing movement. Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo is a shinto shrine dedicated to Japanese war dead. However unlike regular places of worship, the author points out that various political interests play into the meaning of the Shrine. Originally serving a purpose of early Meiji Japanese nationalism[iv], the Shrine is now, similar to the European Social Traditionalism and ethno identities utilized by European-Rightist movements, part of a strategy of the right-wing political movement in Japan for battling non-rightists on both economic and identity based issues[v]. One of the reasons this has come to be as noted by Shibuichi, is that conservative Japanese Prime ministers have returned to the practice of making obsequies at the shrine first in private ways but increasingly in ways which are tied to the Japanese right’s agenda of “over-coming of “vested-interest-groups within” the nation. In a particular way the author speaks about the term of office and policies of the Liberal Democratic Party under Koizumi in the early 2000’s. The prime minister was introducing policies which sought after a more capitalist economics free of some previous regulatory pressures and opposite to the direction of welfare social democracy advocated by opposition groups. Here again the transformation of the economic sphere is shown to co-opt and coordinate with more ethno-nationalist or identitarian causes in a move to mobilize support an direct negative pressures and characterizations of its enemies as “non-patriotic”[vi].
The politics and maneuvering of the rightist parties which are emerging and in the conservative movements which have historically operated within liberal-democracies throughout the developed world is a worrying one precisely because the politics it mobilizes seems rooted in popular feelings of inadequacy or encumbrance by government. Other authors have pointed out that this kind of politics essentially adopts a “business-model” to government policies which doesn’t differentiate between what is truly in keeping with democratic values and what enhances profit or mobilizes more political resources.[vii]
Ultimately these efforts denote a situation in which the vices of populism have replaced the virtues of awareness and discernment required for democracy to be a lived political practice as much as a structure of government. Whether it be the American political electorate in the United States or those mobilized by economic deregulation and nationalism in Japan, when people regard the task of government as efficiency more than they regard their own task to contribute to the formation of just and truly liberal societies, then there is the risk of the demos becoming merely “king-mob”, and as mentioned previously, King mob is want to crown a king.
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Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (updated ed.), Introduction.
Herbert Kitschelt with Anthony J. McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, chapters 1 and 3.
Pippa Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance, chapter 10 (Arthur Miller and Ola Listhaug).
Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam (eds.), Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries?, chapters 8 (Pharr) and 10 (Norris).
Daiki Shibuichi, “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan” in Asian Survey, vol. 45, no. 2 (2005).
Ivens, Michael, and Ignatius. Understanding the Spiritual Exercises: text and commentary ; a handbook for retreat directors. Leominster: Gracewing, 1998.
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Footnotes:
Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann, The radical right in Western Europe: a comparative analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
Pippa Norris, Critical citizens: global support for democratic governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam, Disaffected democracies: what’s troubling the trilateral countries? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Daiki Shibuichi, “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan: Why All the Fuss?,” Asian Survey 45, no. 2 (2005): , doi:10.1525/as.2005.45.2.197.
Bellah, Robert N. Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Kitschelt, Herbert, and Anthony J. McGann. The radical right in Western Europe: a comparative analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Chapters 1&3
Norris, Pippa. Critical citizens: global support for democratic governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Chapter 10
Pharr, Susan J., and Robert D. Putnam. Disaffected democracies: what’s troubling the trilateral countries? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Shibuichi, Daiki. “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan: Why All the Fuss?” Asian Survey 45, no. 2 (2005): 197–215. doi:10.1525/as.2005.45.2.197.
[i] Michael Ivens and Ignatius, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises: text and commentary ; a handbook for retreat directors (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998).
[ii] Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann, The radical right in Western Europe: a comparative analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).p45
[iii] Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann, The radical right in Western Europe: a comparative analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).36&43
[iv] Daiki Shibuichi, “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan: Why All the Fuss?,” Asian Survey 45, no. 2 (2005): , doi:10.1525/as.2005.45.2.197.199
[v]ibid. 210
[vi] ibid. 213
[vii] cf. Pippa Norris, Critical citizens: global support for democratic governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). and Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
