WHAT THE ELECTORAL DEBATE HAS TAUGHT US
ABOUT OURSELVES
 
By Loïc Blondiaux
and Séverine Bellina Behind populism and abstentionism, the big winner of the French elections of 2017 is the rejection of political life and its elites. The gap between the population and elected officials, growing wider daily, is moving towards our institutions and democracy itself, whose sacred value is seriously crumbling. Let’s look beyond the funeral oration of our democracy pronounced in many analyses, expressed by the loss of self confidence and growing pessimism of the French people. Let’s seriously evaluate the cognitive revolution that we are going through. Behind the apparent fall of our democracy, concrete and clandestine advances can be noted in many aspects. Democracy signifies the equality of possibilities for each citizen to influence decisions and collective life. This equality translates both to institutions and to society. Democracy is a regime, a system of institutions but also a way to be together where we recognise others as similar. Democracy is a principle of equality affirmed philosophically and legally, but also inscribed in daily reality. The paradox is then that we can have democratic institutions with societies that are not equal. In this point of view, our democracy rests on an original double denial : • in terms of society, French society is one of the societies with democratic institutions, that is the least democratic. We have only to observe the hierarchical and non democratic principles of the functioning of its structural institutions (schools, hospitals, companies, etc.). In the same way it is extremely brutal towards its weakest members (children, migrants, the poor, the insane, etc.). It does not consider them equal to others. • in terms of institutions, French society was founded in the 18th century by those contemptuous of the people and who hated democracy… For them, the people could not actively, and in the long term, participate in the decision making process because they didn’t have the capacity. Furthermore, direct democracy is materially impossible in a large country like France. Our democracy was constructed from a refusal of popular active sovereignty which led to a definition of representation by opposition to democracy itself. Representation aims simply at regularly designating an aristocracy through election. From the beginning, and up until today, all mecanisms of active sovereignty have been repressed. To these atavistic origins, specific to the French democratic crisis, can be added causes linked to the world supremacy of the neo-liberal model which produces : infantilisation of citizens through their transformation into consumers and the submission of political power into economic power. This translates as privatization of power by a national and international oligarchy which leads to an obliteration of the political. In practice, it is non-elected actors (multinationals, banks, etc.) who shape our lives and destinies, and install the powerlessness of democratic sovereignty (linked to representation) which is no longer a sovereignty. Thus today we are in a context of acute democratic disenchantment. This presents itself through two tendencies : indifference, withdrawal and authoritarian temptation (abstentionism, the rise of populism and the removal of citizenship) on the one hand. And a demand for democratic radicalness, on the other. But in both cases, the dissatisfaction in regard to politics opens spaces for democratic innovation. In this way, French society, in its diversity, is becoming more democratic. And in so doing, it leaves the model of exercice of power (democratic governance) founded on domination, for other ways of exercicing power-in-common, founded on the aptitude of Man to react in his diversity and in a united way (Hannah Arendt). This evolution (can) allow for the reappropriation of popular sovereignty by the people and thus the refounding of our democratic institutions. Municipalities, Happy Days, Not Without Us, Primary, My Voice, etc, this popular effervescence is breathing strong democratic dynamics into the social field. Today democratic principles infuse all citizen activities (collective gardens, shared consumption, shared accomodation, etc.). These measures use extremely democratic rules of governance even if they do not think they are demonstrating participatory democracy. We can note both a rise in democratic demands and a return to democratic imagination. There thus exists a demand for more democracy, and a representative democracy more demanding in relation to its founding principles. This is a form of revenge on the symbolic attachment to the people. It’s a question of challenging the preconceptions weighing on it (apathy, incompetence, violence). And to show that political life as it presently exists is not inevitable (Stand Up at Night, the Indignant) if we use new forms of organisation and a new engineering of democracy (taking the time to come up with collective speech, refusal of the presumption of majority and leadership, etc.) We are living with permanent democratic innovation. This is expressed by numerous theoretical, practical, technical-digital propositions… All of these serve to renew from top to bottom the present democratic institutions around citizen contributions to governance. The propositions can even allow for the resurgence of tools such as random drawings, imperative mandates, and authentic constituant processes in which the people elaborate the principles imposed on rulers, propositions of assemblies and citizen senates. Is French society becoming democratic ? Are the people reappropriating their stolen sovereignty ? Can French democracy leave its original democratic double denial ? Who are the actors behind these movements ? Does their quality and quantity suffice for the legitimacy of these dynamics ? Above all, what is the weight of these dynamics faced with the tendency to withdraw into populism ? All of these questions interrogate the durability and especially the direct and real capacity to transform the present political system. We need to verify if these initiatives effectively structure, or not, the French political system. What is certain and important, is less to resolve this intellectual enigma than to accompany this mutation because it sets into motion and re-animates our political space, a space for common words and actions (H. Arendt) which give body to polis and civitas. Above all, it opens the possibility to respond to the global challenges that all democracies are faced with : the exponential rise in inequalities, the digital revolution and artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis. In fact, what denotes these dynamics of democratic innovation is that people are ready to take their responsibilities both : at the local level, movements around the managing of public goods (such as water) ; at the national level, the participatory writing of the Icelandic constitution and citizen conferences ; and at the international level, the adoption of Objectives for Sustainable Development to change the model of power. The desire to actively contribute to a new model of development supporting the emancipation of human beings (participation in choices which engage the quality of life and fundamental rights), anchored in the political paradigm (the economy thought out in service to a democratic collective management, for societies that are egalitarian and inclusive in their diversities) and turned towards preservation of the environment (sustainability) is effectively at the heart of these initiatives. From this point of view at the international level, the local level is experiencing a flood of initiatives which re-enchant our democracies. |
IRG will participate in the RID organised in Kingersheim by the municipality. From the 2nd to the 7th of October 2017, local innovative experiences in response to the crisis of democratic representation and construction of an effective and active popular sovereignty will be shared and questioned. The goal is to define clear methodological tools. It is through practical experience that we will change our democracy.