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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