Other Democracies: Democracy Beyond the Nation State

Democracy promises rule by all rather than the few. Yet national electoral democracies limit decision-making to small groups of representatives and policy experts, and have always had a weakness for inequality. Those who believe in equality may ask how the poor and the Indigenous, migrants and minorities, women and the underemployed, the rural and the subaltern can all come to take charge of their lives through democratic governance. Where does democracy serve all of society rather than only the few?

Equality in practice is limited in electoral democracies to formal political equality, such as equal rights, like the right to vote, and other general principles. The failure to produce equality outcomes in other parts of life, such as economic equality and social or cultural equality, has often been hidden in the past half century by this emphasis on formal political equality.

By forcing voters to limit their participation to leverage over delegated representation, the modern electoral state weakens their ability to produce equality in their economic, social, cultural, and even political lives. By reducing their equal democratic practice to participation through abstract political rights and principles, modern electoral states prevent direct participation for those who wish to produce economic, social, and cultural equality. Equal outcomes may be electoral democracy’s weakest point.

These days, most national democracy tells us not about equality but about how we must accept inequality: how we must vote for those who can only talk inequality, must live in places where inequality seems normal and natural, must complain about inequality but not practice equality. Electoral democracies often reinforce or deepen the inequalities between political elites and ordinary citizens, rich and poor, urban and rural, men and women, colonizers and the colonized, workers and employers, educated and uneducated, and other social divisions. 
Yet many communities and organizations from all over the world practice forms of democracy that give equal power to all members in sites beyond the modern nation. A recent book has described many examples of these communities and social movements, Democracy Beyond the State: Practicing Equality. Many have built egalitarian democratic structures to claim their power as equals to govern their own lives. Many of them use councils and assemblies as broad-based decision-making bodies, structures used widely in history and in the present. Multiple communities use consensus or other practices instead of voting for representatives. Both these practices reduce the centralization of power in the hands of the few.

They may do so as part of state governments, or as parallel to or even in competition with the state in small communities or in large territories and transnational networks. They do so not only in the past but also in the present. They do so in rural settings and the largest urban areas of the world, in families and towns, in farms and in everyday affairs. They often do so in difficult and even impossible conditions, yet they have succeeded for decades or centuries. Above all, they do so in order to govern their own affairs in ways that actively and carefully avoid reinforcing established inequalities in politics, economics, and other parts of daily life. These communities and organizations show that there are many avenues to democratic equality, that difference is central to democracy.

            Over the next months and years more posts will introduce multiple sites for democratic practice beyond national electoral systems that are not found in the book, Democracy Beyond the State: Practicing Equality. These sites ask us to reconsider the meaning of democracy. Democratic practices are commonplace in ordinary society, and the more they spread through social relations the weaker national monopoly claims on democracy will become.

Defend Democracy: Oligarchy or Democracy?

Recognizing when democracy deteriorates into oligarchy, or rule by the few, is an important skill for defending democracy. Oligarchies are not always dominated by a small group of families; sometimes they simply benefit the same small social sector, such as the super wealthy or a small gendered racial or ethnic group. Persistent wealth or racial and ethnic inequality may be a warning sign of oligarchic rule.

Asking about oligarchy is very important in democratic systems where elections are central, since elected representatives are elites and often have been able to manage policy development to serve their narrow interests. So the border between democracy and oligarchy may be surprisingly easy to cross not just for small organizations but for large ones as well.

Many indigenous communities have not traditionally used electoral practices to choose leaders, instead preferring selection by consensus or through various careful vetting practices to ensure leaders advocate for the common interest. In the views of some, this is because electoral systems themselves are a form of oligarchy, centralizing power in the hands of the few.

The question of oligarchy is also important in organizations where the founding members were not fully committed to democracy, or the rule by all. Many nation-states were founded by wealthy merchants and their land-owning allies in struggles with queens and kings, aristocrats and church leaders, colonial governments and neighboring nations, so many of their founders compromised democracy with other interests.

One quantitative study from 2014 compared the impacts on national policy in the United States of ordinary citizens and elite groups, such as business elites. The study found that economic elites consistently had a determining impact for over 20 years on more than 1,500 different policy issues. This suggests that those who see the United States as a democracy may be confusing oligarchy with democracy. Similar problems may be found in those electoral democracies where a small part of the general population, such as property owners or the wealthiest 1% or 10%, has consistently benefited most from government policies and practices.

There are many strategies to defend democracy from attempts by small groups to impose their interests on the entire organization. Aristotle suggested one very long-established method: draw lots to select representatives, rather than use elections. This view requires that all citizens be prepared to hold office, and rejects the commonplace view in some circles that only experts are qualified to rule. It also requires that all citizens be educated sufficiently to prepare them to govern their own affairs, rather than leaving government to small social minorities. By decentralizing the right to rule the people, this practice certainly democratizes governance.

Another effective strategy for combating oligarchy is the assembly: large gatherings where not only decisions are made but also policies are drafted together. By allowing everybody into the policy development process, those with narrow interests may be challenged before they can restrict policies to those that benefit their narrow interests. Instead, discussions will encompass a wider range of ideas.  And policies will emerge that benefit all.

Assemblies are widely used in rural communities and indigenous nations that have proved impervious to the influence of European models of democracy, and even at global scales. Though this practice is not well-known among urban residents in democratic nations, it still may be useful for rejecting oligarchy.

There are many other practices that prevent narrow interests from dominating democratic bodies. Which ones do you practice?