Talk given to the Annual Conference of the Danish Political Science
Association, October 2002
I have taught and researched about politics
for what I now realise is a long time.
I have never felt as strongly as I do now that our discipline needs a
period of intellectual stocktaking and reflection on the problems and issues it
should study. This does not mean
“political studies” is in crisis, quite the contrary. The discipline remains more relevant than ever, but because that is so, we need to re-direct
ourselves so that we can cope with the reasons why and thpotential dangers that
arise from them.
Two events have prompted me. The first was the 30th
Anniversary of the Birkbeck School of Politics. Second, recently I was
interviewing for a chair at another institution and I asked each of the
candidates a stock question that I often ask to get people to respond outside
their prepared answers—“what do you think the core agenda of political studies
should be over the next decade?” I then reflected that I should answer myself
sometime, and try not merely to
re-state my own research interests as if they were the core goals of the
discipline. So here goes. I shall make
five points about theory and method, and five more about issues on the agenda
for study.
First, I see two
principal dangers at the moment, either
of which would be fatal to the discipline if the tendency it represents were to
prevail. The first is the re-ideologisation
of political studies—that is, the domination of the issues we study by external
political agendas. This seriously
damaged us, particularly in Europe, during the 1970s, when so much energy was
consumed in infighting between Marxist sects.
In the 1980s most of the ideology came from the right—advocating
Monetarism, de-regulation and privatization—and from economics, preaching the
superior allocative efficiency of free markets. Now the main danger comes from those who advocate solutions to
the problem of the relation between national and international economics and
politics. I use this somewhat
convoluted formula deliberately to avoid the fatuity of “globalization”. Both the advocates of “globalization”,
conceived as the extension of free market doctrine to the international scale,
and the spokespeople for the “anti-globalization” movement are excessively
ideological. Both offer excellent
polemical critiques of the opposing position: free markets will not solve the
central world economic problem of inequality within and between nations; but
the “alternatives” of the anti-globalizers are either economically unviable,
or, whilst useful reforms, hardly real solutions to the main problems of global
development. To try to stand between
the two, as I have done, is tough.
Ideologisation breeds the “if you are not for us, you are against us”
mentality—this is fatal to the scepticism and objective study needed both for
scientific work and credible political action.
This is not only an issue about the global
economy but about the direction of international politics. Ideology is on the rise. In the respect to the issue of international
governance we have the opposition between cosmopolitan democracy and
international legalism on the left and the renaissance of political realism and
the discourse of “empire” on the right.
This more or less exactly mirrors the conflict in the 1920s and 1930s
between the international idealists, who supported the League of Nations, and
the nationalists and realists. On the
left we see the success of neo-Marxist tracts like Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri’s Empire, and on the right the neo-imperialist tracts by Robert D.
Kaplan The Coming Anarchy and Warrior Politics: Why Leadership
Demands a Pagan Ethos. Neither of those
books is bad and both have something to say; they would not be so popular were
that so, but they feed polemic in an area where we need above all to find out
“what works”. Cosmopolitan idealism,
neo imperialism and revived revolutionary leftism are hardly good news—all
three are 20th century solutions that failed dressed up in new ideological
clothing.
The second danger is the exact opposite of
the first—the hegemony of American style “political science” in the
discipline. US universities have so much
more money and US journals are the most prestigious in an increasingly
careerist “profession”. As an aside I say that we should avoid the word like
the plague—scientists cannot be “professionals”. We cannot behave as if we had
some delimited and certified domain of competence, like lawyers. New problems
make amateurs of us all, and those committed to the notion of the pursuit of
knowledge as a “profession” are most likely to miss them. There is no “normal
science” in politics; anyone who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union can
see that. I am not against US style
political science per se. It is good
at sorting out patterns in the data it chooses to construct, and it can
undermine bogus generalizations. My
real problem is with the style of
work, the “we just study politics, we don’t do it” mentality. Mixing-up studying and doing is fatal, but
not doing means one really doesn’t understand the activity—and I don’t just mean running for office. The excessive objectivity and the preference
for narrowly statistical methods affect the problems
one can focus on. This is not
objectivity, it is depoliticization. It is not even the blind leading the
blind, it is like the blind trying to study voyeurs.
Political studies needs to attempt to offer
solutions to real political questions based on its knowledge and to push the
new questions that it identifies onto the political agenda; questions of which
publics and politicians alike are either ignorant or fearful and thus eager to
avoid. Political science in its
depoliticized forms gives rise to its matching political practice, policy
“wonks”. The wonk is the master of
narrowly-focussed policy studies, where knowledge is technical and the
political scientist a purveyor of supposedly neutral advice to professional
politicians. This inevitably ignores key issues, they are off the current
agenda. In the end though these issues force themselves upon us. Ideology
inflicts the opposite deformation.
Ideologized political ideas generally promote utopian solutions—and they
divert political and popular movements from the attainable. We need an engaged political knowledge that
is somewhere between the policy wonks and the utopians. This is hard to achieve—to be engaged and to
try to be objective is tough, but it is the only serious stance. One may disagree with the theoretical form
of Max Weber’s defenses of both objectivity and engagement, but in trying to
hold the two together creatively he was surely right.
Second, political
studies is not in “crisis”, but most of the other disciplines in the social
sciences are. The weakness of the other
key social sciences gives political analysis not merely a clear role as a
specialist discipline, concerned with “the political” however it is conceived,
but with the need to provide an element of integration, to act as a generalist
discipline of “the social”. How to
define “the political”? Don’t try too hard—my suggestion would be to remain
simultaneously aware of the definitions offered by Aristotle, Bernard Crick and
Carl Schmitt, centering on community, the negotiation of differences, and
friend-enemy relations respectively. If
you ignore any one you are in trouble; if you try to synthesise them, in worse
trouble.
Sociology has degenerated
into an unholy mixture of shallow cultural studies, victimology, narrow
specialisms, and irrelevant grand theory—it has abandoned its role as an
explanatory science of the nature and foundations of social solidarity as
provided by its “founding fathers”: Comte, Durkheim, and Weber.
Anthropology has lost its raison d’etre and has struggled to
replace it with every possible alternative and fashion from community studies
to postmodernist theory.
Economics. Economics has
been the hegemonic discipline of the social sciences for the last fifty years. It has promoted the concept of the economic
actor as rational interest-maximizing agent with a clear schedule of
preferences as the model for all social action. It has thus treated all social action as if it were strategic, as
the pursuit of interest, rather than as deriving from affect, from belief or
from morality. The latter motivations are treated as irrational residuals, to
be explained away. It has dissolved
institutions into the actions of individuals, not only because of its
commitment to methodological individualism, but because it has no extended
account of such things as institutions except as necessary to the pursuit of
utility. This is to ignore solidarity,
community, loyalty and belief. It has
promoted “transparency” and “accountability”: the one conceived with the mind
of a bond dealer interested only in the risk of default, and the other with
that of an accountant. Institutions
must be externally accessible to inspection by investors and political
agencies, and thus decomposed into cost units and individual performances. Linked with the new managerialism, this
generates what Charles Sabel has called a “science of suspicion”, one that is
slowly destroying our public institutions and many firms too. This obsession
with transparency and accountablity has proved effective in devaluing the
relationships that matter and that make institutions work, and useless at
catching the rogues and charlatans that plague modern management, both public
and private.
Economics lacks models of action that are
broad enough for accounting for social life—even for markets. It lacks a coherent account of economic
institutions because it tends to dissolve them into markets and into individual
action. Economic theory and
econometrics have their place—even if economics can no longer claim to be predictive science able to direct policy.
Economics is not a monolith, but the mechanisms of economics in the academy
work toward closure and to the exclusion of all but a narrow range of concern.
The pretensions of mainstream academic economics remain sovereign even as its
core models become increasingly remote from actual economic life and as its
forecasting becomes no more than a domain of debate. To the extent that economics does describe the world it is not as
a science but as an ideology and as a programme of political action. Economics
has become folklore and Economics 101 the recipe for much of our public policy
and management practice.
A dead sociology and economics as dogma leave
political studies with the broader job of re-building our account of social
solidarity, social action and the institutional foundations for community.
Third, it is here that
we too face a difficulty, that we need to develop a more credible theory of
action. To the extent that US-style political
science has become dominant in political studies, so in consequence the
discipline has modelled itself on economics and taken its core ideas and
practices from the latter’s account of social action. Rational choice theory and public choice theory have their place,
but reducing individuals to strategic actors and institutions to means of
realising and accommodating interests is not enough. The ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel is believed to have once
asked his students for a summer project to treat living at home as if it were a
hotel, that is what rational choice theory does to us as actors. We need to treat values as more than
preferences, and social relationships as more than the means to realize preferences. Otherwise only the individual’s intimate
private world remains fully social—state, nation and the associations of civil
society are all hollowed out. Perhaps
we need a crash course that involves reading Durkheim and Hegel at the same
time.
Fourth, to achieve this
broader conception of action and explanation we need to re-integrate the three
components into which the study of politics has divided:
Political
Theory: normative discourse divorced from institutions;
Political
Science: institutions and political practice studied independent of
political goals;
International
Relations: the continued divorce domestic and international politics in world
where this makes no sense, there is just politics at different levels.
How to study the division of labour in governance is now the crucial problem for both democratic theory and the rigorous study of institutions. We need to integrate the investigation of norms, institutional analysis and different levels of institutional analysis into one programme of study. Political theory and institutional analysis need to go together, as they did in the classical discourses on politics, because solving problems of governance through institutional innovation is once again the key problem we face. The great innovations in classical political thought, the theory of the city-state, of the sovereign territorial state, and of representative government, were driven by urgent political questions. We need equal innovations today and they cannot be achieved by shunning norms. Most worthwhile political advocacy must involve fact-values, that is, conditional objectives dependent on circumstances, motivations and institutional capacities. Politics as a discipline involves the centrality of judgement - values related to facts.
Fifth, the need to
re-integrate history, but not as grand schemes of causality and social
development. History is central to
politics, because it provides standards of measure and forms of otherness
against which we can assess our current judgements and pre-occupations. In 1975 Barry Hindess and I denounced
history as a master science and as a causal analysis of the present in Pre-Capitalist
Modes of Production. However,
whilst I would not repudiate the substance of that polemic, in its context,
history has real uses for political studies.
Historical institutions and political problems can be valuable for
thinking through contemporary situations where either we have no current
discourse to guide us or where claims that we have entered a wholly new era in
some domain or other are made. Here are
some examples that I think show the central role of history as a means of
comparison that have become salient in the last ten years. They are also key themes we should have at
the core of research in the discipline.
A. How are we to
think of overarching political structures that are not states, where the
attributes of “sovereignty” are shared by different political entities of
different scale and scope of authority, and where these entities co-govern
across the same territory? The obvious
example is the EU. It is not a state in
a post 17th century sense, it is not just intergovernmental politics, and it is
not a supra-national institution with a specific function. The best examples we have of such phenomena
are from the period just prior to the rise of the modern state: the Holy Roman
Empire and the Hanseatic League. Both
political entities show the very real pitfalls of such forms of authority: weak
legitimacy of the highest level body, conflicting loyalties, joint decision
problems and cumbersome decision procedures, and dangers of free-riding. Whilst neither is an exact match for the EU,
both help us see the problems to avoid.
B. It is often
claimed that the international economy is at unprecedented levels of
integration; this was a central proposition of the “globalization” discourse
that began in the late 1980s. Yet
merchandise trade to GDP ratios, capital flows and labour migration were
arguably greater in the period immediately before 1914. The backlash against globalization was also
then far advanced – with rising levels of protectionism and bans on
immigration. Far from being on the
verge of a vast expansion of internationalization, we may find cross-border
trade and investment close to their limits and public policy lagging behind
events. The world may on the edge of a
major depression; if it does happen, then nations and trade blocs will start to
retreat from the Washington consensus, even if they do not exactly repeat the
futile “beggar thy neighbour” policies of the 1930s. Even if there is no great
crash, there mat be a period of relative stagnation in which borders become
more salient because of the combined forces of protectionist backlash, fear of
migration and anti-terrorist measures. Thus, the periods 1850-1914 and
1929-1939 are crucial reference points for current analysis.
C. Until the stock
market crash of 2000, unprecedented claims were made for the “New Economy” and
were widely believed. Central to those
claims was the assumption that the Internet was an unprecedented and
transformational technology. Now there
is no doubt that the Internet is a valuable addition to our means of
communication and that it makes business of new types possible. But a little history would show that the
claims were hype. The really
transformational communications technology was the telegraph and its effects
were felt in the period 1850-1880. Then
it transformed and integrated markets – leading to price convergence and to a
dramatic emergence of long-distance commodity markets. Most e-commerce is an
updated version of the marketing innovations made possible by the telegraph;
Amazon is a smart version of Sears Roebuck.
Moreover, the Internet and digital commodities lack clear business
models. For these technologies to flourish fully requires they be treated as
public goods – without a rigid regime of property rights, that limits demand
and innovation, it is hard to make of profit from selling digital goods.
Paradoxically the distinctive features of digital commodities – low costs of
replication and ease of sharing – make them ill-adapted to capitalism as we
know it. Digital commodities would be better served by common ownership, but
don’t too excited about a virtual road to socialism. We already have digital
plenty in a world of real scarcity, remember that most people in the world have
limited access to electricity and the majority have no telephones.
D. Equally ludicrous
claims were made for the Revolution in Military Affairs, heralded at the same
time as the New Economy and as a result of the same revolution in information
and communication technology. At its
worst the hype over the RMA made ludicrous claims. Such as: that the
constraints of information and distance in war would be wholly abolished, that
wars could be fought by machines alone, remotely controlled from the USA, and
thus made possible a “post heroic” era of painless military dominance for the
USA. That these claims were silly could
be judged by looking at the complex and ambiguous military and political effects
of the Military Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. That these new technologies were capable of
massive development and that this has hardly begun should also lead us to some
caution about the likely radical effects on war. Too much scepticism is a mistake. Equally, one should be aware that technology itself can create
new vulnerabilities and asymmetrical forms of war that arise from them. September 11th showed this
brutally. Complex modern societies are
highly vulnerable to terrorism, and effects are not proportionate to causes:
airlines, tourism, equity markets, etc are all capable of chaotic collapse. It
is possible to imagine economic depression in the wake of repeated and
unpredictable terrorist outrages. The
rich are vulnerable because they have a complex division of labor and heavy
dependence on fragile technology.
E. To consider the
great religious settlement of the mid -17th century that contained and
stabilized the political conflict between the rival Christian confessions. This
made possible the consolidation of state power and, therefore, the creation of
modern sovereignty. With the return of religion as a major political force both
nationally and trans-nationally we need to look again at this period. We need a similar settlement now for the
major world religions; one that stabilizes their relation to state power and
contains “enthusiasm”. The problem is
that the areas in which this settlement is most necessary often have weak
states with low legitimacy and serious problems with either the idea of a
concordat between state and religion, or, the acceptance of religious
toleration. We perhaps also need to
think of treating religion not merely as an object of study, but of recognising
the central role of religion as a discourse of government and of confessional
government as a political problem whose solution requires theoretical and
institutional innovation.
The point is that historical analysis here
does not provide a causal analysis of the present but a means of thinking about
it from somewhere else. It provides an
analogy to think about contemporary problems.
It provides a standard of measure for the scale of charge.
It will be obvious that I have smuggled a
great deal of substance into our discussion already in the guise of methodology. The late 1990s were a period of hype and
imbalance in both society and the social sciences – the chief examples being
the claims for IT and globalization. It
is our job to avoid hype and the boastful vacuities of futurology, but we
should be looking for the key issues that will come to dominate politics,
particularly those that are off the radar of public discussion or that exist
there in a distorted form. Let me take
up five issues where there are key research agendas for political studies and
where the conclusions are vital to political actors.
First, globalization is
an inadequate concept to analyze international economics and politics. We may be close to the limits of the current
phase of international trade and investment – we have overcapacity in many
industries and a huge surplus of risk-averse capital with relatively few
investment opportunities. Nevertheless,
public policy since 1945 has created a complex inter-space of exchange between
the major trading nations and trading blocks.
Multi-national corporations are the primary beneficiaries of this space
and thus they should be regarded as its products, rather than as the drivers of
the international economy. Key states,
supra-national agencies like IMF, WTO and the principal trade blocks, like the
EU and NAFTA are the conjoint governors of this economic-political
inter-space.
This inter-space makes the major states more
relevant as the key actors across borders.
The question now is how to further fashion this division of labor in
governance so that it works better in policy terms. How can the different elements of this division of labour be made
accountable to the world’s diverse publics? How is it possible to transmit
accountability between the different levels of this complex arrangement of
forms of governance? How can the different agencies and entities be coordinated
so as to govern effectively, without excessive overlapping and competition?
These are the crucial political problems of our time. So far they have met with
a poor response from students of politics. I may not agree with the solutions
proposed by David Held and other cosmopolitan democrats, but at least they are
aware that there is a problem of governance that goes beyond institutional
tinkering. There is no prospect of a supra-national democracy – there is no
world demos and hardly the beginnings
of an international “civil society” [for a civil society to exist one really
needs a state]. The major states are
currently the most effective of the nodes tying this complex structure of
governance together and making it accountable. But in most developed states
democratic institutions are in decline and mass publics indifferent to what
they see as irrelevant “foreign affairs”.
These structural issues are as important as
the specific policies of states and
international agencies. The problem is
that too much attention is focussed,
either on bogus solutions like making the UN responsible for such agencies and
itself simultaneously more “democratic” (for that to work it would have to
raise money of its own), or “democratizing” the international agencies
themselves – but again this would leave them penniless [the great powers would
operate the principle “no representation without taxation” and in effect quit]. The key issue is linkage. States are accountable enough for their
policies toward international bodies if
publics and legislators take an interest.
Most of the international organizations could be better controlled if
the leading states on their governing councils cared enough, but they do not.
The IMF works in the interests of international investors because politicians
and policy elites agree with this policy.
We now have a complex international
“quasi-polity” made up of states, blocs, the G8 and international agencies. It
is a
quasi-polity because it has
no demos and no “sovereignty”: its powers and decisions are ad hoc; and its members are political
entities represented for specific purposes, not citizens for all purposes. It makes no sense now to separate domestic
and foreign policy – thus the EU’s common rules are domestic policy for the
member states and what the EU agrees to at the WTO becomes so too. Equally it makes no sense to separate
politics and international relations as if they were different in kind– most
international politics is now “low politics”, not the “high politics” of war
and peace. This combination of sharing of decisions and division of labour in
governance is not unlike some of the Medieval and Early Modern examples I
mentioned before.
Second, democracy and
democratization dominated the discourse on regimes from the 1980s as many
states in Latin America, Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa moved toward democratic rule. The result was that non-democratic regimes have come to be seen
as inherently illegitimate; the products of social fragmentation and economic
backwardness. Yet it should be obvious
that it is hard to build stable and effective democratic regimes in many
countries. For example, the notion of a democratic Iraq is incredible: the
country has only known authoritarian regimes of worsening severity since its
formation at the end of WW1, is deeply divided between different religious and
ethnic groups, and the population has had no political experience whatsoever
since Saddam Hussein. Equally China
could well fall apart if it were to quickly attempt to become a democracy.
We must therefore ask how far is it possible
to build legitimate non-democratic regimes that have the authority to contain
tensions but can also respect a minimum of social and political rights? We do not like such efficient authoritarian
regimes – like Singapore. We may have not merely to live with them but also
support them as the best option in much of Africa, the Middle East and
Asia. This is not to foreclose transitions
from authoritarian rule– S. Korea and Taiwan are obvious successes, as are
Spain and Portugal. In none of these transitions was the meddling of the
“international community” the decisive factor, however. There are few examples
of stable poor democracies – India being the great exception.
We should be cautious about de-legitimizing
other forms of regime, as if democracy were the only standard. It is what regimes do that matters – Morocco is internationally accepted, whereas
Zimbabwe should be under greater external pressure. In this respect we ought to think about the best forms of regime,
this side of full multi-party pluralism: such as constitutional monarchy, with
limited political contestation, or, regimes in which public debate and the rule
of law are maintained, that are a rechtsstaat
but not a democracy. Totalitarian
regimes and brutal autocracies are obviously not options. They should enjoy the
bare minimum of international tolerance, but unless they attack their neighbors
or sponsor terrorism on a large scale they should be left in peace.
Intervention by the powers is usually a disaster – “nation building” and
“regime change” are signs of an arrogance that is likely to fail.
If this seems like an arrogant “democracy is
too good for lesser breeds without the law” stance, then think again. The classic discourses of politics from
Aristotle through Bodin to Montesquieu were always clear that there were
different types of regime and that they were only possible under definite
conditions. True arrogance is to wish away these conditions and to imagine that
the “international community” can build democracy where it chooses. In the
1990s this became the arrogance of much of the human rights left as of the
United States. The results are far from encouraging. Bosnia is not a democracy,
but a UN protectorate holding the rival factions in a fractured society apart
by force of arms. Kosovo is not a democracy, but a NATO partitioned province in
a state of semi-anarchy. We need to think about this carefully or we shall be
unable to deal fairly with the real differences in capacity between states.
Some states are almost notional, like Somalia. Many small and poor states can
hardly afford to be full international players, for example, they have neither the
economic clout nor the skilled personnel to have any real influence in WTO
negotiations.
Also the problem of how to maintain democracy
is not just for non-Western states.
Democracy is under threat in the developed world; because of mass apathy
in the exercise of political rights. Thus the USA at federal level is in danger
of slipping from a genuine mass democracy toward what is in substantive terms a
competitive oligarchy. The pressures of domestic crime, international terrorism
and mass migration are pushing many countries, like the UK, toward
authoritarian policies that are only “democratic” in that they have the mass
support of a frightened populace. Thus
the survival of liberalism is as crucial to the health of genuine democracy as
the issue of democratic legitimation.
How do we retain rights in a security state? How can we prevent the legitimisation of action against
“outsiders” creating a regime in which all citizens are subject to intrusive
surveillance and coerced by an over-powerful and unchecked security apparatus,
from M16 to nervous flight attendants?
Third, this fear of
“outsiders” is in a sense rational.
Economically successful citizens in the OECD countries are a rich
minority who prosper in a world of rising inequality within and between
nations. This does not make the fear
right. Domestic inequality on a gross
scale, in countries like Brazil, and to a lesser degree the USA and UK, not
merely breeds resentment among the poor, it also leads to luxury and corruption
among the rich. Such private vices
become public ills; it is difficult to keep corruption out of politics – as
Enron shows. If we see inequality not
through the lens of classical political discourses, then the consequence is
corruption of the polity – the combination of the buying of influence and the
corruption of civic virtue among a powerless and increasingly politically inert
citizenry. The politics of the Ancients
is not ours, we need only a minimum of virtue, but we do need that minimum. In
some form or another we need to restore the discourse on corruption – social
solidarity and political participation are linked, luxury, inequality and
corruption destroy both. If any body of modern political thought has understood
this fully it is feminism, for example Anne Phillips’ Which Equalities
Matter?
That a certain level of equality is necessary
for the health of democracy needs to be said.
There is a strong economic and welfare case to be made against
inequality. Inequality is a growth
killer – because it stifles broad-based effective demand, which is the real
engine of modern mass consumption economies, not the luxury consumption of tiny
elites. Inadequate welfare also
undermines growth, because it undermines both educational and economic
participation. But there is also a political case to be made, and we need
to make it vigorously. The Ancient
World understood that all regimes tended toward decline and corruption in their
own way, although this could be arrested for a time by vigorous action. We have come to believe the reverse, that
democracy is inherently good and therefore immune to such problems. We also in the 20th century came
to see the issue of equality in terms of economics and socialism, so that the
political critique of luxury fell into disrepute.
International inequality is also a political
and not just an economic problem. Left
unchecked it will tend to promote chaos and undermine governance and thus the
international economy. Terrorism and
mass migratory pressures can wreck markets that depend on confidence and lead
to pressure to close borders. At the
same time current policies for “development” will not even up the world – most
developing countries will remain poor, with at best low-value added export sectors. The world will not even up by normal
processes of trade, investment and growth.
Hence we shall continue to be confronted with the fact of gross
international inequality and this will provide a purported legitimation for
attacks on the rich. We need in
response to promote a welfare ethos that stresses solidarity within and between
nations. This will not happen unless we
understand better the sources of solidarity and thus of community. Hence the concern with a broader concept of
action and the actor is not merely methodological, but vital to politics. In the end it may be a rational choice to
pay taxes and to give aid, but no more than a minority will ever do either for
that reason – both require value and belief systems.
Fourth, up till now most
people have been solidaristic for religious or nationalistic reasons. Highly solidaristic societies are often
exclusive ones – an example is close to home here in Denmark in the relative
success of the DPP and their programme of a welfare state only for Danes, not
for non-European immigrants and asylum seekers. Something similar has happened in the Netherlands. The problem is that the other
non-nationalistic sources of solidarity, through associations in civil society,
have been gravely weakened. In part
this is a consequence of the same general processes leading to a decline in
participation, also affecting party
membership and voting. Active membership of voluntary associations and
charitable giving is in decline in many countries.
The reasons are partly the negative side of
the positive growth in individualism, discretionary consumption and value
pluralism. People have better things to
do than attend dreary meetings and more
money to amuse themselves. People
increasingly choose lifestyles and values, and move between them. Hence association
memberships tend to become more exclusive – we join people like us – and less
all encompassing (these are communities of choice not fate – unlike the old
workers’ associations). But there are
other reasons too. Denmark is something
of an exception – with strong localism and an active associational life. But in many countries, of which the UK is
the clearest example, we have developed an “uncivil” society. Most major institutions have become large
unaccountable hierarchically controlled organizations: from building societies
to large charities to universities.
Bureaucratization, centralization and unaccountable managerial power
have reduced many organizations – schools, hospitals and businesses – to places
where people have no settled place and no say.
Hence they no longer identify with institutions and they loose the
primary experience of their contribution making a difference – this hollows out
democracy and association. The
micro-politics of social life is shut down in favour of targets, guidelines,
reporting to superiors, and filling in forms.
This leads to quietism and to a lack of basic experience of one’s
actions making a difference – voice is for the managerial class, from the ranks
of which are drawn professional politicians.
Democratizing organizations and re-building associations is a central
part of recreating the foundations for participation in both formal democracy
and civil society. It is also crucial
to building wider solidarities; people who feel they have some power and same
say are more likely to be outward looking and inclined to generosity. It is
more important in renewing participation than either networks or deliberative
democracy. New ideas of substitutes for
participation and new forms “softpower” are not real alternatives if the core
of formal mass democracy and much of social action are hollowed out. This is a central area for both research and
institution building – it can also build bridges between political theory and
political science, since it looks at the social capital debate from a different
angle.
Moreover, the links between the rich and poor
worlds need to be built not just by states giving aid, but between people. Solidarity through civil society is
essential – people will aid others if they can see their actions make a
difference and if they come to identify with them. This happens now with organizations like Oxfam and some of the
fair trade bodies to a limited extent, but the scope for it is huge. Such a movement to offer aid from below will
serve to create the ties between rich and poor worlds that may help to mitigate
the fear on the one side and the resentment on the other. In the long run ties of this kind may be
more effective than repressive counter-terrorist and anti-migrant
policies. They may also begin to build
forms of solidarity that can inform more formal institutions. The danger with the concept of the “Global
civil society” now is that too much of it consists of self-appointed,
state-sponsored or international agency-sponsored NGOs, often with little
popular support. These facts are well
known and undermine the credibility of many activist campaigns with the
established institutions.
Five, to finish what
has become a gloomy discourse, let us turn to the biggest and most desperate
problem: climate change. Despite Bjorn
Lomborg, this is happening. In all
probability our actions have accelerated a natural warming cycle and this is
now in danger of running out of control and producing rapid and chaotic
change. The results are difficult to predict,
but they are unlikely to be dealt with by the sort of gradualist and
adaptational policies that politicians are familiar with. Climate change is likely to devastate the
poorer parts of the world with turbulent weather, rising sea levels, flooding and
desertification. It will not spare the
rich countries either, even though they will have more resources with which to
cope. The result will be environmental
refugees, and scarcity of water, food, farmland and raw materials. The potential for conflict is huge. The difficulty is how to prevent it.
Dealing with CFCs was relatively easy. It has been possible to check ozone
depletion by means of an international treaty regime and technical change. Dealing with CO2 emissions is much harder –
it involves serious problems of collective action and mass behaviour. It involves a widespread conversion to
changing basic features of our daily life – not using cars, not taking holidays
by plane, cutting electricity consumption – all of which will be difficult,
especially in the worst polluter the USA.
It also involves helping the poor world to less damaging energy
consumption. Even then we may not
eliminate the trend, merely prevent its acceleration to catastrophe. Here political knowledge needs to combine with
natural science. Together they can
construct possible worlds that force us to think about the political and
technical options before us. We have no
idea whether people can be persuaded en
masse to act on the precautionary principle. When they are scared enough to
respond it will be already too late.
But if we do not attend to some of the political issues in the points I
made earlier then there will be no chance, we shall not be addressing a
democratic citizenry but a demobilized mass who live in and through
consumption. Solidarity is the
foundation of precautionary action: if we don’t care about others now, we shall
hardly think the future of our civilization matters. In a basic way the issues of democracy, solidarity, development
and global warming are linked. We need
to work on proving those links, turning assertions into demonstrable
propositions, and then we may have some credible lessons and some viable
recipes for change to offer to our fellow citizens. That would entirely justify our keep.