The problem

IT is time we took an unambiguous stand on the practice of global ranking of democracies. To classify a country that is attempting to work a democracy in terms of whether it is democratic or non-democratic, full or flawed, mature or developing, based on a list of core attributes (usually a biased list), is to ignore the complexities involved in its working. Such an exercise is insufficiently appreciative of the challenges involved in building a new political community, the difficulties in making routine the new political interactions that such building entails, and of constraints faced in ensuring acceptance of the new set of rules that regulate such interaction. It suffers from both historical myopia and a superficial understanding of what is involved when societies undergo multiple transitions.

To signal our difference with this dominant practice of ranking democracies we have deliberately chosen to title this symposium ‘experiments with democracy’. This suggests that there can be many institutional forms and processes consistent with the key principles of ‘popular control’ and ‘political equality’ which mark a democracy. This plurality of forms is what makes democracy so dynamic and amenable to domestication in new lands. In Asia, currently, there are several experiments with democracy underway. Studying them will add rich detail to the global stock of ideas and thinking about democracy. This issue of Seminar has three objectives: one, to foreground Asia’s experiments with democracy; two, to raise certain issues for consideration by the global discourse; and three, to bury once and for all the validity of the exercise of ranking democracies.

The first pair of questions that this symposium attempts to address is: What is democracy doing to Asia and what is Asia doing to democracy? Although they travel together, these are independent questions which need to be answered separately since they turn the spotlight on different issues. The first focuses on the transformations that democracy brings to the societies and polities of Asia. It seeks to map the new power relations that democracy produces, the consequences of these relations on traditional institutions and social norms, and the aspirations it releases among the people, especially those who have been hitherto marginal to the political process, a marginality seen both in terms of ‘voice’ and in the changing understandings of ‘the self’ and ‘the other’. This first question recognizes in democracy a major force for social change.

The second question, in contrast, acknowledges the possibility that the process of domesticating democracy in any country produces puzzles and perhaps even paradoxes that require customized tools to disentangle. In recognizing that the existing inventory of concepts may be inadequate to the task of explaining these situations, it foregrounds the need to forge new concepts. For example, the idea of a ‘twice born civil society’, an amendment to the idea of civil society, has considerable potential to explain the persistent domination of caste society even after 60 years of democracy in South Asia. While the first question works with the package of institutions and procedures that democracy brings to a society, and explores the dynamics of change that this introduction produces, the second opens up the space for new readings, an example of which would be the insistence that discussions of democracy in Asia must almost always be conducted alongside discussions of state formation. The dialectics of this relation, between democracy and state formation, just cannot be ignored.

A second set of issues that emerge from the ‘experiments’ is the concern with the adequacy of existing perspectives and concepts, in the discourse of democracy, to explain the political processes that are underway. This issue of adequacy is a difficult one since it requires us to take a call on whether the political situation falls short of the standards that we would accept as democratic or whether the key concepts in use are themselves deficient since they are culturally embedded and, therefore, not up to the task of explaining this new Asian world of politics.

At least three interesting new themes can be probed here. The first engages with the issue of an ‘adequate perspective’. In the discussion on Iranian democracy we discover a robust internal debate, with appropriate scriptural references, on the question of the compatibility between Islam and democracy. Concepts such as secularism, development and equality, all come under the scanner. The suggestion that democracy is both a political system and a social movement encourages us to not just identify the attributes of the system but equally to probe the dynamics of the movement and explore its consequences.

The second theme looks at ‘adequate concepts’. In the discussion on Pakistan, for example, the difficulties in using the concept of ‘civil society’ are set out. In addition to showing the tension between a modernizing General, whose initial coming to power by overthrowing an elected government was welcomed by several civil society groups, and Islamic groups opposed to him, the discussion reveals the partnership that exists between the state and what conventionally would be called civil society groups. Similarly, a concept such as ‘people power’ which was successfully used to depose at least two elected presidents in the Philippines, and is a nodal category to describe the democratic struggles in several countries such as Thailand, Ukraine, Nepal and Venezuela or ‘ethnic outbidding’ which describes the politics of mobilization in plural societies such as Sri Lanka and Nepal (not used, for example, in the vocabulary of politics in France or the United States although it is a part of their armoury of political practices) are concepts that call for greater analytical attention.

The third theme relates to ‘conceptual overloading’. Can the concept of democracy carry a heavy moral load of people’s expectations and aspirations for a more just world, or should it be limited only to government formation and accountability? Is social justice an attribute of democracy, or must it be treated as a separate independent concept. These are questions that democracies in Asia have to regularly confront?

The third set of issues that democrats need to think about when studying these experiments relate to the processes that maintain and strengthen the legitimacy of political institutions. In many of the sketches, for example from Bangladesh, Philippines and Indonesia, we can uncover a common story of institutions being unable to control and regulate political behaviour, especially of the elite, in particular when the logic of the institution goes against the interests of the elite. It is unclear whether this is because extant political culture, which provides the behavioural norms for the institutions, has not developed the required strength or whether the institutions themselves are poorly designed.

Discussions on democracy in Asia also need to engage, more intensively than they have so far, with the connected issue of the relation between institutions and political culture. To what extent do institutions produce the political culture of a democracy, the ‘rules of the game’ so to speak, and to what extent are they supported by such a culture? What is the status of the constitution as a founding, guiding and trumping document? These questions are central to any reflections about the working of a democracy. Asia is a rich field from which to draw lessons.

The fourth theme that Asia brings to the discussion on democracy relates to the role of elites, especially political elites, in the polity and economy. While ‘the people’ do, and must have, pride of place in our deliberations, there is insufficient attention on the role of political elites in the global debates. Examinations of all the democracies in Asia show the central role played by these elites. This is not exceptional. It is just that this role has been underplayed in our discussions and hence needs to be brought back in to the debate. We should ask several questions concerning elites. Who are they? How did they get where they are? How do they function? And what are their impacts? In fact, we need to position ourselves intellectually with respect to Pareto’s proposition that ‘history is a graveyard of aristocracies’.

There are two aspects of elite rule that need further exploration. The first is the predatory nature of elite control of the state, as is illustrated by the discussion on Indonesia and Pakistan. Across Asia, and not just at the national level but also at the sub-state level, this predatory character of the elite is very much in evidence. Elite capture of institutions is a pervasive phenomenon. This is more so under conditions of globalization when a global class of citizens is emerging, or has emerged, who dictate state economic policy and who, by using the state as an instrument of rule, convert public resources into private assets. From the preliminary evidence even non-Marxists would be compelled to accept Marx’s dictum that the state is an instrument of the ruling class. The relation between democracy, and a predatory elite, needs more discussion not just in the context of Asia but also worldwide, since it has been obscured by all the triumphalism that marks the rhetoric of democracy today.

The second is on the leadership role of the elite in society, a quintessential Weberian concern. Weber saw the Junkers as being unable to play the historic role required by Germany in the early decades of the 20th century as it sought its place among the comity of nations. Elites need to steer the nation, if not be one step ahead of the social and political process. But elites in Asia appear to be like the Junkers, intent more on pursuing their self-interest than the public or the national interest (cf. the accounts from Sri Lanka and Nepal).

Of interest here, for our discussion of the consolidation of democracy in any country, is the capacity of the elite to transcend their sectarian or parochial location and work for the larger interest. When seen in the context of state formation, such abdication on the part of the elite results in state drift, possibly resulting in the polity having to pay a higher price than otherwise necessary had they accepted their historic responsibility. This theme of the place of elite leadership, in terms of the acceptance or abdication of responsibility of the larger public interest, or the national interest (both need to be discussed independently) requires more academic discussion.

The fifth theme that merits attention is the surging aspiration among common citizens for democracy and its public goods. Democracy is seen by many as the magic potion for the problems faced by society. In spite of the hiccups that mark its expansion, democracy seems to have taken root in the public imagination across many of the countries of Asia. It is seen as a way of solving all disputes – in the classroom, the village assembly, or in the workplace. It has entered the public imagination, as the data on citizen’s political attitudes in India indicates. The people have adopted the vocabulary of democracy.

It is currently difficult to say how far they have done so in the other countries of Asia, since we have little data. In Nepal such people’s imagination has been driving the process of restructuring of the polity from being a Monarchy to becoming a Republic. The extent to which such people’s aspiration for democracy will grow in China is an open question, although the odds are in its favour. The argument that democracy is the only way, although there are many pathways within democracy for large societies such as China to follow, is an argument that has been largely won by scholars of comparative history. The issue is not whether but when.

Such confidence on the necessity of democracy is based on the belief that it is not possible to manage a complex society and economy only by efficient administration, the route followed by some Asian polities. This reliance on an administrative response stems from the naive belief that outcomes alone are important and that process is inconsequential. The limited validity of this argument is demonstrated by the rising political restlessness in countries across Asia such as Pakistan, Thailand, Nepal, Philippines, India and Bangladesh. Plural societies, through multiple and simultaneous processes, are becoming plural polities and the consequence of such plurality is the demand for increasing ‘voice’.

Politics has to become central to societal management. The best form of such politics is democracy. In many ways India’s experiment with democracy has proved this point. Over the last six decades it has regularly created many institutions required to deal with increasing voice. Despite many problems and tensions there is recognition that the way forward is more democracy, that continuous experience of democracy constitutes the best resource to deal with future challenges. This is because democracy is not just a political system but also a political movement. It is a force for stability and a force for change. China needs to listen to these lessons from the other parts of Asia.

PETER RONALD deSOUZA