No one represents us

Europe is dissatisfied with its politicians and parties. Because of this, some people stop trusting familiar names and refuse to go to the polls. Others go, but only to vote for new radical forces - the extreme right, the extreme left, parties calling for secession from a bloc or country, proposing to expel someone or do something drastic. The noise of the media circus is becoming more and more audible, but politics is perceived as less and less meaningful. “They have turned into a separate caste, they protect big business, they don’t listen to us, they are only interested in elections. These people are no good. This system is no good, it’s an election without choice.”

When such complaints come from Europe, it may seem to a Russian person that their neighbors are being picky. In Russia there seem to be many more problems with representation. But it is possible that both old democracies and new electoral-authoritarian regimes are affected by the same crisis - only to different degrees. The practice of the last 200 years has left no alternatives to representation - someone represents us all, or rather, does not represent us. Representation in its current form drew a boundary (or a moat, as in the Russian case) between the people and their deputies. Meanwhile, one of the foundations of democracy is that those who govern and those who are governed must be the same people. The book “ Against Elections ” by the Flemish publicist David van Reybroeck is about this.

The expression of will procedure, which became standard since the end of the 18th century, was a reaction of the progressive citizens of that time to the excesses of the absolutism of the old regime. At one time both procedure and the limitations of the franchise may have been consistent. But today, says Raybrook, it is time to think about the adequacy of the existing system, because since the advent of electoral democracy there have been at least five structural changes that have changed the relationship between the individual and the state beyond recognition. Half a century after the advent of the electoral procedure, mass political parties emerged; about a hundred years later universal suffrage began to spread rapidly; by the mid-twentieth century, an organized civil society had formed; in the 1980s, public space was taken over by commercial media; and finally, in our time, social networks have become the most important feature of social reality. “How many inventions from the late 18th century are still in use today? Stagecoach, hot air balloon, snuff box? Raybrook asks.

Elective aristocracy

The idea of ​​democracy as an ancient method of government that existed in Antiquity and in some city-republics of Europe was still alive in the 18th century, but the founders of the United States and Republican France did not seek to adopt that system. Studies of the use of the word “democracy” demonstrate that the founding fathers of the new republics avoided this word as best they could. Bernard Manin showed that the purpose of establishing an electoral-representative system immediately after the victory of the revolutions in the USA and France was to limit the chaos of democracy. “Representative government was established in the full knowledge that the elected representatives would and should be distinguished, socially distinct from those who elected them , ” Manen writes.

The American system began to be called democracy with the light hand of Alexis de Tocqueville - his book “Democracy in America” was incredibly influential (despite the fact that it was Tocqueville who wrote one of the earliest critical reviews of electoral democracy with its election fever). The founding fathers were ready to serve the interests of the nation, but did not want to mix with it.

The peculiarity of Athenian democracy was precisely the inseparability of the rulers and the governed - within the class of male citizens, of course. A citizen could become a judge for one day, then an employee for one year, and then an ordinary citizen. Between 50 and 70% of citizens over the age of 30 have at one time or another served in one of the magistrates, such as the college of apodectes (auditors), gendeks (policemen), strategoi (military leaders) or exegetes, responsible for the interpretation of sacred law and predictions oracles. Up to six hundred of the seven hundred magistrates were chosen by lot.

Citizens of the polis knew from their own experience all the mechanics of government - this knowledge was neither secret nor “expert”. The virtue of a citizen lay in the ability to be both a subordinate and a commander. As Aristotle wrote, you cannot rule well without learning to obey. The meaning of democratic freedom was not to follow only your own will, but to obey the one whose place you will take tomorrow. “A citizen pursuing his private interests in the service cannot exclude the possibility that his successor will not do the same and will not deprive him of all his acquisitions,” writes researcher Evgeniy Roshchin. “Such a system prevented the formation of an administrative elite or nomenklatura, that is, a layer of managers who actually pursue their own interests in power.”

It was precisely the fact that state management was not a special knowledge that served as one of the insurances against the incompetence of employees chosen by chance. The limitation of powers to one year and the mandatory examination procedure also helped, which, however, was not so much about the citizen’s knowledge (as, for example, in China), but about his civic integrity: did he pay taxes, did he treat his parents well, fulfilled his duties? whether military duty. Society controlled civil servants and demanded reports.

The lot was not only used in Athens. There are more such systems in the political history of Europe than one might think. Election by lot, which had disappeared in Rome under the emperors, was revived in the city-states of Italy. Early examples can be found in Bologna, Vicenza and Pisa, but the best documented examples are Venice and Florence. The Venetian Republic was not a democracy, but an oligarchy. Governance was in the hands of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nobles belonging to a few powerful families, representing about 1% of the republic's population. To prevent discord between families, the system for choosing a lifelong but non-hereditary leader was extremely complex and combined an election mechanism with lots.

The only surviving institution in modern political societies that involves random selection is the jury. Randomly assigned people are quite capable of understanding complex criminal cases and making responsible decisions about guilt. There are complaints about jury trials, but few doubt the very ability of ordinary citizens to judge the fact of a crime and the guilt or innocence of the accused. Questions of law are decided by a professional judge.

Democracy as deliberation

So, the idea of ​​dissatisfied Europeans is understandable. The mechanism invented during the Enlightenment, which initially rejected random selection and was therefore elitist, by the beginning of the 21st century had completely degenerated and led to the formation of castes of bureaucrats and politicians independent from society. Commercial media and masters of political technology have learned to manipulate mass consciousness in such a way that it is extremely difficult to protect the public interest and even simply understand what society really thinks. “Does it even make sense to force people to line up once every four or five years, take a piece of paper, go into a cubicle and put a cross not next to some idea, but next to the name of a person whose every step for several months previously covered by commercial media in a situation shaped by endless sensationalism?” Raybrook asks.

The answer seems obvious, but it is probably too early to pose the question that way. For now, the question is whether it is even possible to use today, and in large countries, the experience of past methods of democratic governance that existed before the Enlightenment. As often happens, Raybrook's analysis of problems is more interesting than the proposed solutions. Perhaps the reason is that he sees the solution in deliberative democracy, which is a young trend in politics. Successful examples can now be counted on one hand.

Citizens, selected in a manner reminiscent of jury selection, were assembled to debrief and make policy recommendations on changing the electoral system in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario, and the Netherlands in 2003–2004. In Canada, society's proposals were put to a referendum and did not pass. There was no referendum in the Netherlands. The most successful experiences of deliberative democracy to date are the process of developing a new constitution in Iceland in 2013 and the creation of the Constitutional Conference in Ireland on the amendment allowing same-sex marriage in 2014-2015. In both cases, advisory bodies, selected randomly (or almost randomly, supplemented by election), put forward proposals that were then submitted to a plebiscite. In all cases, the deliberations lasted several months and the work of the jury was paid for by the state.

It is possible that randomly selected commissions will begin to appear in democratic practice more and more often. On specific issues, for example in connection with the transition to renewable energy sources at the regional level, such processes are taking place throughout Europe. But so far this does not look like a radical change in the model. The main obstacles are the difficulty of communicating the proposals of deliberative bodies to society and the hostility of the traditional political system and the media.

But perhaps these are growing pains. In political systems where the manipulation of traditional electoral democracy is part of state policy, as in Russia, interest in deliberative practices should, in theory, exist, at least potentially. Where Europeans see an elected aristocracy, we see an unelected state oligarchy. The borrowed election technology in the Russian case has been so obviously brought to the point of absurdity that it is interesting to think about alternatives. There are no old parties in Russia, no political traditions that directly connect us with the Age of Enlightenment. What is missing is faith in the very possibility of discussing peaceful, non-emergency problems leading to at least some consequences in real life.