Download Lecture Powerpoint: Democracies (29/01/2015)

DEMOCRACIES
Alexander Watson
Ideas and Identities
29 January 2015
THE END OF HISTORY(?)
The Berlin Wall on the morning after it was
opened, 10 November 1989.
“What we may be witnessing is not just
the end of the Cold War, or the passing of
a particular period of post-war history, but
the end of history as such: that is, the end
point of mankind’s ideological evolution
and the universalization of western liberal
democracy as the final form of human
government.”
U.S. Political Scientist Francis
Fukuyama in ‘The End of History’, The
National
Interest, 1989
DEMOCRACY THROUGH HISTORY
• By 2013, according to the US think tank Freedom House, there were 120
countries, 63% of the world’s total, that could be classified as democracies.
These countries contained about 40% of the world’s population.
• BUT this proliferation of democracies is extremely recent. The ideology is
over two and a half thousand years old, and representative institutions
developed in Europe over centuries BUT universal male suffrage was first
tried (once) in 1792 by the French First Republic, and only spread more
widely from the late nineteenth century. Women had to wait even longer –
Finland in 1906 and Norway in 1913 were first to concede female suffrage.
• Powerful resistance against democracy.
Source: Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 8.
ANTI-DEMOCRATS
• ‘Democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile
their opponents, and give the rest equal civil rights and
opportunities for office, appointment to office being as a
rule by lot’.
• ‘There is liberty and freedom of speech in plenty, and
every individual is free to do as he likes’.
• ‘“Then in a democracy”, I went on, “there’s no compulsion
either to exercise authority if you are capable of it, or to
submit to authority if you don’t want to; you needn’t fight
if there’s a war, or you can wage a private war in
peacetime if you don’t like peace”’.
• ‘“We said that no one who had not exceptional gifts could
grow into a good man unless he were brought up from
childhood in a good environment and trained in good
habits. Democracy with a grandiose gesture sweeps all
this away and doesn’t mind what the habits and
background of its politicians are; provided they profess
themselves the people’s friends, they are duly honoured”’.
• [Plato, Republic, 557a, 557e, 558b]
Plato (427-347 B.C.)
ANTI-DEMOCRATS
Aristotle classified democracy as one of
three deviant constitutions:
Correct
One Ruler Kingship
Few Rulers Aristocracy
Many Rulers Polity
Deviant
Tyranny
Oligarchy
Democracy
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
INTRODUCTION
• Some definitions…
• Ancient Athens
• Representative Institutions –
Parliament in Medieval and Early
Modern England
• The Rise of Liberal Democracy in the
Modern Era
• Conclusion
The ‘mother of all parliaments’ - at Westminster
DEFINITIONS
• i) democracy [noun]
• – Government by the people; that form of government in which the
sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either
directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers
elected by them. In modern use often more vaguely denoting a social
state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary
differences of rank or privilege.
The English word ‘democracy’ entered the language from the French in
the sixteenth century. The word originally comes from Greek:
• demos
• kratos
-
the people
rule
• Direct / Participatory Democracy
System of decision-making about public affairs in which citizens are
directly involved.
• Liberal / Representative Democracy
System of rule using elected ‘officers’ who undertake to ‘represent’
the interests and / or views of citizens within the framework of the
rule of law
In the modern age liberal democracy is generally associated with
three sets of institutions (i) national parliaments with (ii) elected
representatives and (iii) popularly chosen local government
• ii) Parliament [noun]
• – 1. A formal conference or council, especially an assembly of magnates
summoned (usually by a monarch) for the discussion of some matter or
matters of general importance. Now historical except as an earlier stage
of sense 2, into which, in later use, it merged.
• – 2. The supreme executive legislature of the United Kingdom, consisting
of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, composed of peers and bishops,
and the House of Commons, composed of the elected members.
ATHENS
“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in
the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it
is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal
before the law; when it is a question of putting one person
before another in positions of public responsibility, what
counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual
ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it
in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity
because of poverty. And, just as our political life is free and
open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other.
… We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public
affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our
deep respect.”
Pericles, the prominent Athenian citizen, general and
politician who dominated Athenian public life for the three
decades after 460 B.C.
ATHENS
The Institutions of Athenian Democracy
(end of 6th – end of 4th cent. B.C.)
• Assembly
- Composed of all citizens. It met more than
40x annually, and had a quorum of 6,000
citizens. All issues discussed and decided.
Majority voting, but unanimity was ideal.
• Council of 500
- Steered the Assembly. Members over 30
yrs-old. Drafted legislation.
• Magistrates
- Officials; typically served for one year only
• Courts
The Parthenon Temple in Athens
ATHENS
The Limits of Athenian Democracy
• Who could be a citizen?
- Only free Athenian men aged over 20 years.
• A majority was excluded from citizenship
- All women.
- Immigrants.
- Slaves. The ratio of slaves to free citizens in
Athens in late 5th century B.C. was about 3:2.
Total slaves numbered around 80,000 to
100,000 people.
• Rule by impulsive crowd
• Stability rested on military success
A dancing girl in Athens.
Excluded from the Polis on 2 grounds – as a
woman and as a slave
REPRESENTATIVE
INSTITUTIONS
The English parliament in
front of the King
(c.1300)
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
• Parliament (evolution of the meaning of the term)
- late 11th century: the word parlament in the Chanson de Roland the word meant ‘parley’ or ‘conversation’.
- early 12th century:
-the English parliament was being used to describe a general
meeting of the citizens.
-In some Italian cities there was also parlamento, with some
real functions which represented the interests of some citizens
- by mid-12th century the word was being used for other assemblies,
for meetings of an emperor’s or king’s court
- from the 13th century the word parliament slowly made its way into
formal and official documents
- by the 14th century parliament came naturally and usually to mean
special sessions of the court of a king or some great lord (though the
term was not used exclusively in this sense)
• ii) Parliament (evolution of the institution)
- 13th century: transition from the occasional plenary sessions of the
king’s court held at no regular intervals to regular and ordered
meetings held at set times on the calendar
• in France: middle of the 13th century
• in England: 1258 at Oxford
- in England, parliament was during this period envisaged as something
that existed to redress evils which the ordinary courts could not
redress
- as it developed, the English parliament added the periodic redressing
of wrongs not righted by the ordinary process of law to certain of the
ancient functions of the curia regis; this added a formal role to the
process, including full attendance and solemn rituals
- 14th century: English and French parliaments begin developing in
different directions (procedure and organisation)
- Consequently, the parlament of Paris became increasingly a
professional body of lawyers, while in England the judicial work of
parliament receded more and more into the background
THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER
THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER
• Principal residence of the kings of England from the middle of the 11th
century until 1512.
• By the end of the 14th century the court in all its aspects - administrative,
judicial and parliamentary - had its headquarters at Westminster.
• Although the Lords were accommodated in the Palace, the Commons
originally had no permanent meeting place of their own, meeting either in
the chapter house or the refectory of Westminster Abbey.
• After the Chantries Act 1547 abolished all private chapels, the Royal Chapel
of St Stephen within the Palace of Westminster was handed over to the
Commons.
• The Commons assembled in St Stephen's until 1834 when the Palace was
burned down .
• The present Houses of Parliament were built over the next 30 years:
- architect Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) and his assistant Augustus Welby Pugin
(1812-52). The design incorporated Westminster Hall and the remains of St
Stephen's Chapel.
THE RISE OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
“The Bill of Rights” forced
by the English onto Dutch
King William and Queen
Mary (1689)
“Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen”
(1789)
John Locke (1632-1704)
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)
THE 1848 REVOLUTIONS
Revolutionaries defend a barricade in Berlin, March 1848
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
President Woodrow
Wilson of the United
States (1856-1924)
Female munitions
workers in the First
World War
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Nazism / Fascism nearly
destroyed democracy in
continental Europe by
1941
Communism offered a
longer term threat
The Treaty of Paris (1951)
which established the
European Coal and Steel
Community – the forerunner
to today’s European Union
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last
General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the
Soviet Union
CONCLUSION
What is Democracy?
• The Ancient Greek City State (Polis)
• The Slow Rise of Liberal Democracy in
Europe
The Future of Democracy
• Democracy in Decline?
• Challenges and New Ideas
“Political transparency instead of
Citizens under the watch of Big
Brother”. Pirate Party poster, 2013