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TWO DEMOCRATIC VISTAS:   From Aristotle to Haiti

7/16/2021

5 Comments

 
I’ve been thinking a lot about Haiti these days, as, I suppose, most of us have.  I have no insight into its present situation, , still less about its future, but reading ad thinking about it have led me to  two strands of thought about democracy, both  Greek in origin  They in turn have led me to some unexpected and perhaps unwelcome inferences, presented here in hope of provoking discussion
                                             --
 
       Why is democracy so difficult? Haiti is a good test case for answers to this question.  If your goal is to establish a lasting, democratic government there, , you have two ways to proceed, as best I can tell.  Both are rooted in ancient Greek patterns of thought but they lead to very different ways of looking at the situation and responding to it.
       The first of the two is a familiar one. It’s based on a widely used taxonomy in which government are classified by the extent of franchise within them: monarchy, oligarchy, democracy. Or if you prefer more emotional language: tyranny, plutocracy and ochlocracy. We get all these words from the Greeks and with them a convenient way of classifying governments.
       This taxonomy may seem purely academic but it has real world consequences.  It focuses attention on eligibility to vote and on free and fair elections. Want a democracy? Make sur everyone can vote and that their votes get properly counted and weighted.   Americans know -or most of us do- how important this is for a democracy. If we want it for our country, surely we should want it for others, too.  So, focus on elections and whatever it takes to ensure they are free and fair, observers, technical support, equipment, maybe even troops.  Then when a duly elected government is in place funnel food, medicine and other aid through it to help the citizenry and build support for the government.
That’s one way of looking at the situation and responding to it.  The second approach derives from a long tradition of political theory, going back to an idea in Aristotle’s Politics reformulated in the Enlightenment, and put to work whenever citizens break away from dictatorships and try to create  a society run by and for  its citizens.  Democracies  seen from this vantage point derive from and depend on the efforts of citizens to take charge of things and make government respond to them, rather than the other way around.
The building blocks of a well-functioning state, then, are all the organizations and structures through which people act for teir  mutual benefit.  That’s why Aristotle started not with a candy shop of different forms of government. but with the household, the neighborhood and other forms of sharing or collaboration (koinonia). 
If he and  political thinkers of a similar cast of mind are right, then a stable democracy begins not with elections but with  strengthening civil society, including a wide range of  neighborhood and social organizations, business and professional associations,  trade unions, religious and philanthropic organizations, even athletic teams and their supporters
People recognize a need, share an objective, band together to do something about it.  No central authority tells them what to do or when to do it.  They probably argue about  the best course of action, take a lot of time to reach a decision, but then roll up their sleeves to do what they can  
Slavery, colonialism, foreign interventions, dictatorships all take a continuing toll.  Drugs, gangs and corruption do further damage.  Haiti has had more than its share of all of these Yet,  there are, as the New York Times has reported,  hundreds of such organizations in Haiti. They face, to be sure, great difficulties – more than I can imagine.  Even in the best of times such  organizations, as we all know, run into difficulties   Their members probably often disagree, get angry with one another, squabble, get discouraged, because of lack of resources, recognition and support.
But they provide an often unrecognized by-product:  Participants in such efforts  develops habits of shared decision making and that in turn is the foundation on which democracy can be built.
They deserve support.
       This way of looking at democracy does not deny the importance of electoral politics, but its priority is clear: Build Civil Society. 
5 Comments
Burke Rogers
7/17/2021 10:35:29 am

Just read your very engaging piece. I am no expert on Haiti, but your observations about the need to build up community organically as the foundation for a functioning democracy strike me as very much in accord with some recent pieces by David Brooks. I find myself agreeing more and more with Brooks, as he moves toward the center from the right and I do so from the left – I see the effort for our very divided nation to find some common ground as one of the few hopes we have left. I see Biden embodying this desire (unrequited though it appears to be) at the national level, but we all need to try to do so at the local level as well.

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Michael Gillespie
7/18/2021 07:38:40 pm

Democracy like all governments requires that the government be able to maintain peace and order. Democratic governance requires the recognition of the population that the will of the majority confers legitimacy on the government. Liberal democratic governance requires that the majority respect the rights of the minority. Effective liberal democratic governance requires a professional bureaucracy and the absence of corruption. Almost all of these were missing in Haiti. Many of them were missing in Athens. There is an erosition of all of them in developed countries today, in large part I believe because we lack a recognized existential threat that compels us to work together. Trump is a symptom and not a cause.

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Jim O'Donnell
7/19/2021 09:16:01 am

Very timely: I've had comparable thoughts in response to the crisis in South Africa, a place I'd paid a little more attention to, but in the current moment one could as easily look at North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon as sites of full-on state failure, then look beyond to the different but related puzzles of India, Hungary, Russia, Venezuela -- not quite state failure, but certainly collapse of at least some essential checks and balances of governance. I pass over without mention any comments on recent or prospective disturbances in the American political system.

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Jim O'Donnell
7/19/2021 09:27:14 am

I should have mentioned Myanmar.

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Paul B Woodruff
7/21/2021 10:41:07 am

Democracy is hard because so many things have to fall into place to make it work. Yes, as Dr, Connor says, we need to build and maintain civil society from family on up, and, yes, we need to extend the franchise, but neither of these is nearly enough. Haiti does both, and democracy is failing there. Why? One of the elements missing in Dr. Connor’s blog entry is the rule of law. He lists three classical forms of constitution under two names each, but in fact each member of each pairing is different, so that there are six in ancient theory. The difference between monarchy and tyranny is the same as the difference between democracy and mob-rule: it is the rule of law. This is failing in Haiti and is in danger of failing in the US, now that one of our parties would ride over the rule of law to put its man in power. Any decent form of government requires the rule of law. The rule of law, in turn, requires a widely shared respect for national institutions, and this, in turn, requires both education and a strong sense of national identity. All of that is hard.

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