I've been reading a lot of glowing commentary over the past few weeks about the beauty of democracy in action. Lately, it seems that democracy has become a very plastic concept. If the writer happens to agree with whatever plan or proposal is being implemented, it's democracy, especially if it's supported by a poll or two. If not, not, and who believes polls, anway? It was getting to the point where I was having trouble keeping the concept of "democracy" in focus.
And then I happened upon this article in the Summer 05 issue of The Middle East Quarterly. It's called "Muslims, Democracy, and the American Experience," and it was written by Salim Mansur, an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Western Ontario. It's one of those pieces that I wish everyone would read. I know I'll be returning to it again and again. But on the subject of democracy, Professor Mansur has this to say:
Democracy is in a cultural sense an expression of the liberal modern world that situates the individual as the moral center of politics and society. The mechanics of democracy rest on an electoral system that provides for contested elections among individuals and parties. It is in the regular functioning of the electoral system, its provisions established in constitutional documents, that a culture of democracy will emerge. When sovereign individuals embrace inalienable rights that no authority may abridge or revoke, non-democracies evaporate. The idea of democracy as a culture is found in the work of Tocqueville and in recent times has been given the most subtle renderings in the writings of the American political philosopher George Kateb.[fn]
It is the idea of the inalienable rights located in the individual, rights that need to be protected, nurtured, and allowed the fullest unhindered expression that makes democracy so morally distinctive from other cultural systems. From this liberal perspective, the common error about democracy is to view it as a majority system of governance. In a democracy based on individual rights, on the contrary, it is the protection of the rights of minorities and dissidents that reflect the different nature of politics within the larger context of democratic culture. Democracy produces a citizenry distinctively different than those in the culture of deference. The cluster of values distinguishing democratic culture from non-democratic culture is qualitative. According to Kateb, "In its distinctive way of forming political authority, representative democracy cultivates distinctive ways of acting in nonpolitical life—of seeking and giving, of making claims for oneself and one's group and acknowledging the claims of others."[fn]
This is a concept of democracy to which I can wholeheartedly subscribe. It's a concept that's the polar opposite, not only of totalitarianism, but also of paternalism. And so it also goes a long way toward explaining why democracy will have such a hard time taking true root in the Middle East. Everywhere in the Middle East.
Shabbat Shalom.
