Democracy

This is my first blog post. Like most ideas that manage to hold my attention for longer than thirty seconds, it was inspired by a conversation with an intelligent friend, and by a question.

Why do we like democracy? By ‘we’, I mean me as well. I’m just as drawn to and moved by the idea of political liberty and participation as I believe most people are. Still, being Lebanese and all too aware of how divided and dysfunctional Lebanon’s politics are, I can’t afford to worship democracy. You grow to be skeptical about that sort of thing.

Lebanon is not, of course, a liberal democracy. It’s a consociational one, which is a fancy way of saying its politics are the outcome of conflict and compromise between religious sects. Unlike voters in France or the United States, for example, I am a Sunni Muslim (or a Maronite, or Druze, or Shia, or member of one of the other fifteen officially-recognised religious sects) first, and a citizen of Lebanon second. Come to think of it, I couldn’t be a citizen of Lebanon without belonging to a sect - nor could anyone else. Where would I fit? How would I vote and for whom? How would I know who to temporarily (always temporarily) fight or befriend?

It’s all terribly confusing, and sometimes I can’t help but yearn to be just a citizen, voting for this-or-that political party based on ideology, or even economic interests. Refreshingly simple. A lot of Lebanese feel this way from time to time, and who can blame them? Yet every time I catch myself longing to be a loyal civic participant in politics, I can’t help but ask: What is it about liberal democracy that makes it so appealing?

Let’s consider the short period of human history in which liberal democracies have existed i.e. since the 20th century, when the vote was extended to all the adult population. Liberal democracies are organised on the principle of majoritarianism: citizens participate in politics by voting for elites who make decisions on their behalf. The outcome is decided by counting how many people favour person X over person Y. Every few years, the process is repeated and then everyone goes back to their lives and lets the politicians do the politicking.

Before anyone calls me a cynic and starts going on about Athens, the golden age of democracy, and the roots of civic participation, I would remind them that in Athens, you only voted and were only a citizen if you were male, a land-owner, and not a slave. In Athens, when the majority of voters decided to go to war, every citizen had to put on their armour, grab their weapon (you had to bring your own armour and weapon) and go kill or be killed. There were no ‘conscientious objectors’. If you wanted the privilege of voting, you had to take the good with the bad. And ‘leaders’ were chosen by a random lottery draw. Elections were seen as thoroughly undemocratic, because Athenians recognised that the richest and/or most manipulative candidates would always win (sound familiar?) And it’s hard to think of anything as blind and fair as the luck of the draw. Now that was a democracy. 

So what’s so special, or legitimate, or appealing, about counting people, comparing counts, then going home? Why is that any better than Lebanon-style democracy? In Lebanon, we don’t bother much with the counting: only Christian politicians face real competition, since we already know who everyone else is going to vote for. The Sunnis will vote for Hariri, the Shia for Hizbullah, the Druze for Jumblatt. Once we get through the boring counting bit, the sectarian horse-trading begins and, ideally, some sort of ugly compromise is reached. Honest, straight-to-the-point, comfortably predictable, wonderfully diverse... and utterly dysfunctional.