Early in 2024 the UK magazine, The Economist, often considered the cultural and intellectual bellwether of sophisticated Western opinion, reported that around half the world’s population of around 4 billion living in 70 countries was going to experience elections during 2024. One might conclude from that bald factoid that the idea of democracy - if not its exact Western form - has become the global norm of governance. But the magazine also asked the question about democracy’s current health. Here, it concluded that it was not doing particularly well and its future well-being could not be assured even in some developed countries given the levels of polarisation as in America for example. In this context, in South Asia generally, where atavistic populism has recently gained ground, Pakistan’s particular downward slide encapsulates the problem of democracy in poorer societies. Pakistan, nominally democratic but with an uneasy relationship between its politicians and the military, faces multifarious political, economic, and social challenges. Since 1980, Pakistan’s ruling elite have singularly failed to make any progress in basics such as in establishing even a rough and ready consensus in priority-setting, arm’s length decision-making, and effective administrative capacity to create sustainable prosperity for its citizens. Democracy has been reduced to a juvenile farce resembling the game of musical chairs except in East and Southeast Asia. Here, a robust social contract rather than a Western-style democracy has driven the development process forward.
The word ‘democracy’ goes back to the ancient Greece of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. The word is derived from ‘demos’ meaning people which indicates that the State does not consist only of the ruler and his/her feudal acolytes but also of ordinary people who should also have rights. In other words, rulers should command the broad consent of the people under their charge. For close to two Millennia, as empires rose and fell, European civilisation emerged from the brutalities of the Inquisition and the Renaissance ushered in the Enlightenment, the word disappeared from view. It reappeared in its conceptual form in Britain in the 18th and 19thcenturies in the writings of Bright (1811-89), Cobbet (1763-1835), Cobden (1804-65) and Paine (1737-1809), political thinkers and reformers who began to talk of representative government embodied in the idea of a parliament or assembly chosen by the people to restrain the power of the monarch or, following the establishment of the United States, of a republic, as opposed to a dynastic monarchy, principality or dukedom, as was the norm in Europe. They also spoke of rights and suffrage for ordinary people – an idea that horrified the rich - to participate in the affairs of their communities but such rights were initially available only to those with property.
There are many models/systems of democratic governance in the world today. Some divide governance between a President and a Prime Minister, while others have eliminated the need for the latter. Elections and terms vary from every 2 to every 7 years and from a single term to an unlimited number
Today, more than two hundred years later, even in societies where dynastic monarchies exist, the idea of democracy in the abstract has become de rigueur. Moreover, it is not restricted to the choosing of government through periodic elections. It has been extended, in theory at least, to freedom of expression, the right to form parties and organisations to contest elections in which all citizens are entitled to vote, and for laws and programs of action to be undertaken by the State to be ratified by assemblies chosen by the people. But sadly, the reality is that with time, even this outwardly noble idea of democracy has been largely subverted, as we will see in the following paragraphs. To take the bull by the horns, as it were, it would be appropriate to examine the idea of democracy in the abstract.
There are many models/systems of democratic governance in the world today. Some divide governance between a President and a Prime Minister, while others have eliminated the need for the latter. Elections and terms vary from every 2 to every 7 years and from a single term to an unlimited number. In some, there is a strict separation of roles/powers in the sense that executive, legislative, and judicial powers are, on paper, exercised by different institutions. Systems of elections also vary substantially, from party list systems to individual constituencies and from ‘first past the post’ to multi-member constituencies, proportional representation, and a single transferable listing in order of preference for different candidates. There is, however, some overlap between the judiciary and the legislature as while law-making is the exclusive responsibility of the latter, the judiciary can strike down some laws as being illegal. This can happen when a legislature goes against the country’s constitution, written or unwritten, that guarantees certain fundamental rights that cannot be diluted or negated in terms of the country’s obligations under international law. This applies in particular to international human rights laws and conventions and the treaties governing the treatment of refugees and stateless persons. Parliaments/assemblies are unis- or bicameral and judiciaries, in general, though effectively appointed by the executive are supposed to act ‘independently’. But, regardless of the variability of the systems prevailing in different countries the bottom line is the holding of ‘free and fair’ elections to parliaments/assemblies and the passing of laws and rules in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner; i.e. that governments should be freely chosen by that country’s citizens in as transparent a manner as possible. And it is at this fundamental, and ostensibly non-controversial, level that the problems begin.
The meaning of democracy ultimately rests on the elected majority exercising its power as a majority over a minority in an untrammeled fashion, which the latter has to accept without demur. The latter may be followers of a religion or members of a religious sect, an ethnic or linguistic group, or simply a group of non-conformist individuals
It has to be stressed that all systems of elections are not equal in their claimed fairness. For example, unless some minimum threshold of voter turnout is incorporated in the electoral system governments will come to power not only with minority support from the electorate but with minority support even from the proportion of the electorate voting in the election. The worst system, by far, is the first-past-the-post method. Here, in an imaginary constituency, say, with five equally popular candidates – not an impossible scenario in real life - you could have a candidate winning representation with a mere 21 percent of the votes cast, let alone of the voters entitled to vote. Who would this winning candidate represent? The US, UK, and South Asia are followers of this system and are so completely convinced of its fairness that any change in it is essentially out of the question. In France, a second round of voting between the top vote-getters is required so that the winning candidate can at least claim majority support from the voting public if not from the electorate as a whole. In the US the electoral college used for the election of the President has, of late, elected a President on more than one occasion who has not managed to secure a majority of the popular vote. The US provides another blatant anomaly. The three most populous states within the US, California, Florida, and Texas, with a total population of 100 million elect six senators to the Senate, the three smallest states, Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska, with a population of 2 million also provide six. As the US Senate and its lower house, the House of Representatives, are virtually equal in their constitutional authority, it would appear that the electors in the three most populous states have been hard done by. In Europe, most countries follow some variant of the PR system and governments tend to be coalitions between different parties which often take many months to assemble. And some have done away with an upper house. It must be said that bizarre outcomes, as in the US, or coalitions between diametrically opposed, say, left and right-wing political parties, cannot be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders as if they were accidents of nature. Dysfunction is nearly always the result but its significance is downplayed in these countries.
The second set of doubts emanates from the phenomenon of ‘majoritarianism’. The meaning of democracy ultimately rests on the elected majority exercising its power as a majority over a minority in an untrammeled fashion, which the latter has to accept without demur. The latter may be followers of a religion or members of a religious sect, an ethnic or linguistic group, or simply a group of non-conformist individuals. If this group who are also citizens of a country is treated in this manner by the majority it signifies that there are classes of citizenship within that nation – a negation of the principle of non-discrimination. A subsidiary doubt arises as to the need for restraints in the exercise of power by the majority over the minority. In both theory and practice, the majority could pass laws that reduced the rights of the minority. There are constitutional checks on the power exercised by governments but these are subject to interpretation by the judiciary and could therefore be abused and/or manipulated by collusion between sections of the executive and the judiciary. How would a democracy rectify such a situation? Leaving it all to the judiciary to ensure fair play brings us to yet another set of doubts.
Most democracies run on 4- or 5-year terms after which governments have to seek re-election. A period of such brevity does not even allow, far less encourage, long-term decision-making. Take infrastructure investments. Projects such as roads, dams, ports, water management schemes, etc. have tenors lasting decades
In those countries where societies are divided into social classes based on wealth, education, and influence – the West falls in this category - decisions are ultimately in the hands of those with the most wealth, education, and influence. The result is that a small clique is able to take control of the apparatus of the state and its many diverse functions. ‘State capture’ can then counter and negate the entire process of fair elections and representative government so that they become no more than power games between rival political groups, rather like sporting contests. Electioneering then gets reduced to a quasi-rational political competition between these groups devoid of any ethical norms, such as truthfulness, and wild promises become the norm with slogans and platitudes ruling the roost. The lack of truthfulness then gets compounded by the manipulation of the media, in which so-called ‘spin doctors’ excel, to which can be added dangers of voter apathy and ignorance. Taking all this together it cannot be claimed with credibility that democracy, even in the abstract, can be relied upon to deliver outcomes that are fair in terms of the interests of society as a whole.
Another, equally cogent, set of doubts arises from the nature of the political process that democracies have to subsume within its metrics. Most democracies run on 4- or 5-year terms after which governments have to seek re-election. A period of such brevity does not even allow, far less encourage, long-term decision-making. Take infrastructure investments. Projects such as roads, dams, ports, water management schemes, etc. have tenors lasting decades. If you add to that the new, more severe, challenges arising from climate change, the protection of biodiversity, and the overall environment – all requiring the commitment of huge resources, democracy, as currently organised, provides a highly unsatisfactory framework to meet such challenges. Instead, the dynamics of democracy operate self-evidently towards the preservation of the short-term status quo and towards intellectual stasis in tackling long-term challenges. Narrow class or corporate interests nearly always prevail to the detriment of the collective good. Governments of national unity which would be far better at reflecting national priorities in the allocation of public resources and in delivering the public good are a rarity. As in stock markets, the phenomenon of ‘winner takes all’ is also reflected in elections, and rivalries between factions based on the ‘narcissism of small differences’ within the elite become the political norm.
Added to these theoretical doubts, consideration needs to be given to the shortcomings of democracy as seen in actual practice with specific examples. It would be apposite here, to begin with, the symbiotic relationship between capitalism and Western democracy, especially in its two initial and most prominent centers, the US and Britain. Other than capitalism itself, the political, economic, and social evolution of the countries was also the outcome of the value systems and culture that preceded the emergence of capitalism. In the US, for instance, the first influence on overall social attitudes was the brutal treatment meted out to the natives of North America by the white settlers, primarily from Britain. Indeed, westward expansion based on the seizure of native lands gave Americans an irrational, wildly exaggerated, and, thanks to Hollywood, over-romanticised, belief in individual valour and enterprise and the right to bear arms, enshrined in the Constitution, that has wreaked untold devastation in American society over the years. This was followed by the importation of slave labour from Africa to work on the tobacco and cotton plantations. Notwithstanding the abolition of slavery in 1865 and Roosevelt’s New Deal, the philosophies of Jefferson and Hamilton, two prominent founding fathers of the US after independence from Britain in 1776, dominated American life right up to the 1930s. Democracy in the US has thus evolved within rigid, conservative attitudes in which violence has not only been tolerated but equated with heroism and valour, and the supposedly fundamental belief in the equality of men applies only to white settlers from Europe. That underlying lack of universal humanity in social attitudes is visible in the US even today.
The media play a central role in the electoral process but the media are not only owned by corporations or wealthy individuals, they rarely step out of line in their analyses and opinions which have both a strong pro-capitalist and a pro-US capitalist bias
Today, the US, the world’s largest economy, is effectively what might be called a plutocracy, a society dominated by the wealthy as the more egalitarian US capitalism of the 1960s has metamorphosed into the highly unequal neoliberal capitalism of the 1980s. It has democratic trappings in the form of elections but political, economic, and social life is controlled by the power of money. Election to any kind of office, including the ability to even be a candidate requires massive resources. Persons of modest means can fight elections but raising the resources required to do so inevitably puts them in hock to interest groups of one kind or another. Minority interests are largely ignored and their ability to participate in the political process is blatantly suppressed. The media play a central role in the electoral process but the media are not only owned by corporations or wealthy individuals, they rarely step out of line in their analyses and opinions which have both a strong pro-capitalist and a pro-US capitalist bias. In the US, alternative ways of organising and/or doing things are given short shrift. An unqualified belief in the superiority of capitalism, in the institution of private property, and individual enterprise is the collective Zeitgeist in America.
The US model is of course not the only model of democracy. Attempts to balance its skewed historical structure have been made from time to time, such as voting rights to the black population and the institution of positive discrimination programs for the poor but the power of the wealthy remains largely unchecked. Like the US, Britain, historically speaking, also retains many features of days gone by. In the 19th century, the country was dominated by the Industrial Revolution and the acquisition of colonies in far-flung lands. Wealth was no longer the exclusive preserve of the landed classes but they continued to exercise control over the political process through membership of the House of Lords in which representation was restricted to the land- or property-owning class, including ownership of slave-run plantations in the Caribbean. This organ of the British State whose origins go back to the 13th century ended the monarchy briefly in 1620 and abolished the divine right of kings in 1689. But in the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution created a poverty-stricken, industrial working class, side-by-side with the landed aristocracy and an enormously rich capitalist class, which began to demand participation in the political process. The travails of this class were eloquently described by Charles Dickens in his writings. Today, although the UK portrays itself as an egalitarian, meritocratic, non-deferential society, the class system pervades the country and blights the prospects of many who do not have the ‘right’ credentials, such as connections, accents, and education.
The constitution and legal conventions merely lay down the parameters of the social contract in terms of governance; they cannot ensure its implementation
In the context of the sub-continent, Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate philosopher-economist, pointed out in 2011 that ‘an increase in inanimate objects of convenience is not what development is about’. What is of real value is the enhancement of human functioning. But these wise words have fallen on deaf ears. Despite Western-style democracy, although interrupted regularly by populist demagoguery or by the military in the region, mass poverty persists in the region. This is because the sub-continent is characterised by hierarchical societies whose leaders operate behind the scenes, without safeguards for the participation of minorities in both the economy and in the wider society. Hence, the region has struggled to achieve the pre-eminence of elected civil authorities over subsidiary centers of power. More fundamentally, despite regular elections, the multiplicity of ethnic, religious, and other identities in the region continues to override a collective endeavor toward shared prosperity.
From the above synoptic over-view, two conclusions arise. One, that forms of governance are the product of historical evolution and are rooted in the culture, experience, and traditions of that society, and two, while individual countries/societies can claim that their system of governance is ‘ideal’ it is the case that it's functioning, especially, in how power is exercised is largely, if not entirely, subject to the interests of the class or group with the most power in that society. The only restraint on that power is the ‘social contract’ and not in grand documents called constitutions or in ancient legal traditions. Even societies that believe in laissez-faire economics cannot do without the State and without the provision of some minimal public goods, such as law and order, the judiciary, and schools. Whether it is the US, the UK, or Pakistan, fair play and social justice can only emerge from their social contracts. The constitution and legal conventions merely lay down the parameters of the social contract in terms of governance; they cannot ensure its implementation.
In reality, there is no single ideal system of governance either in theory or in practice that can, or will, meet the collective needs of society and remain valid for all time. All have their good and bad points. The question that needs to be answered is whether they have the intrinsic capacity to minister to the evolving needs of society, given that resources are always limited about needs. Simply copying a system that has been developed in a different society, as has been the case with several ex-colonies, and reflects in its language and temper a different historical period is thus not going to work, except in some bizarrely convoluted form. All systems need to be able to evolve over time and to reflect the constantly evolving priorities and needs of society. When countries give quasi-religious sanctity to their legal arrangements that are the man-made products of their history, problems are bound to arise. In the context of the challenges facing societies today, a fairer, more flexible, and, above all, an effective system of government appropriate to the 21st century is the overwhelming need of the hour.