In Defence of De-Democratisation

In current mainstream political thinking, a pervasive misconception is prominently featured among some of the most basic political assumptions. At its heart is the confusion between constitutionalisation and democratisation and the closely related conflation of political representation and human rights. By becoming as widespread as it has, this misconception has caused much regression in politics, ironically under the guise of progress.

The perennial problem of politics and society is the power of the state to victimise the society it rules over, and attempts to counter that power in any way possible are as old as states themselves. One of those attempts has been the gradual push towards constitutionalisation over the past centuries. Constitutionalisation is not to be confused with a constitution. The former is a process, a movement, or a tendency towards something. This becomes important when it comes to an analysis of what function ‘finished’ constitutions actually perform in today’s states. Such a function can be twofold - being a ‘founding document’ of a state, and being a ‘list of rights’ carved out by a population against the rulers.

Whereas ‘finished’ constitutions over time become justifications of the very powers they profess to limit, the process of constitutionalisation, by definition, occurs in an already existing, established state and is a force against it. It is a process of attempting to expand the sphere of society which is to be out of reach of the state; outlining actions that are unacceptable for the state to perform. On the other hand, in the same way demands are made that the state cannot do X, there can also be calls that the state must do Y. This is the classic issue of positive vs negative individual rights. On the one hand, the state can refrain from robbing you. On the other, the state can provide you with a free food voucher.

There is a risk involved in amassing ever more such claims against the state. When the state is ‘obliged’ to actively provide for one ‘right’, it can decide to do so by violating another. Specifically for Western-style states at the present, the ‘positive’ claims on the state are typically provided for by severe violations of the ‘negative’ claims.

Theoretically, it is possible to reconcile this potential conflict and alleviate the risk. In order to demand ‘positive rights’ from the state, one needs to think of it as a potential provider of goods instead of a predatory, parasitic institution. In such a view, the state is a kind of contractual partner - that is, after all, how the ‘social contract’ theory sees it. However, to fulfil that role, the state would need to adhere to a set of standards typical in any other contractual relationship. Specifically, there would need to be a real contract, a real obligation on the part of the state, and third-party mediation of one’s disputes with the state.

This is worlds away from the current state of affairs, in which states are not at all in a position of equal contractual partners with their subjects. For now, the state is a predatory institution; so for now, the process of constitutionalisation is the demand on the primary violator of human rights to respect some of them to some extent.

Constiutionalisation, however, is not the only shift that has happened in politics in the last several centuries. Simultaneously, the world has democratised as well. The historical entanglement of these processes has caused them to be unified and almost merged in the public eye. However, this is far from accurate. In fact, not only are the two wholly separate processes; they are deeply contradictory.

Democratisation is the transfer of power from a king or an aristocracy to someone else. It is usually said that ‘the people’ become the source of power when a state is democratised. In a democracy, the actual power of the state is wielded not by the individuals who make up the population, but by the government composed of politicians who proclaim to be their ‘representatives’. However, setting the issue aside of this ‘representation’ being a tragic misnomer, even if we are as charitable as possible, at best the majority becomes the ruler, boasting the same powers that the kings had wielded. If the power of the king was extensive enough to trample on people’s rights, that trampling continues just the same, only carried out by a different violator. Democratisation does not reduce the predation upon individuals by the state. 

Living under monarchical or aristocratic governments, democratic theorists of the past hoped that if the power of the state was transferred to ‘the people’ (embodied in the institution of parliament), the ‘policy’ results of democratisation would reflect the preferences of the individual members of that society more closely. They hoped that any violations of people’s rights the kings had been engaging in would be swiftly overturned. After all, if people ‘rule themselves’, how could they decide to oppress themselves? Alarmed by the more visibly present issue of violations actually happening under the kingly rule, they did not tend to dwell on the possibility of parliaments and other democratic institutions becoming the next oppressors.

Nevertheless, we live in that world now. And in addition to that, democratisation was a brilliant marketing move by the powers that be. In the eyes of the state’s subjects, it blurred the line between the rulers and the ruled. In a democracy, many people feel like they are part of the rulers, even if they are simultaneously victimised by the state. The thought process usually involves an explanation that although politics is ‘messy’ and sometimes things do not work out the way one planned, the procedures are participatory and therefore that is probably the best possible system. By convincing much of the population that they are actually the co-rulers, their potential opposition to state predation is conveniently and very effectively diffused.

The detrimental effect of democracy on freedom and human rights can be well illustrated if we isolate its impact from historical contingencies. Imagine a country where people’s individual rights are guaranteed and generally protected well. Then, imagine that someone proposes to establish a decision-making body with the powers over everyone’s lives and property, which would decide according to the majority vote. The proposal says that such a body is to be established in the absence of clear consent of everyone involved, despite its powers extending over all individuals, regardless of whether they chose to be involved in the decision-making or not. This would be a clear regression to a situation where the respect for, and protection of, individual rights could only be made worse. The introduction of such an institution could only constitute a potential threat to freedom and human rights. 

Some people might object that modern notions of democracy are different from what I have outlined above. For example, the claim could be that ‘minority protections’ are part and parcel of democracy. However, this is just playing semantics. If one redefines ‘democracy’ to include institutions that serve to restrict the reach of what democracy is in the original definition, this has absolutely no bearing on the argument at hand.

In the exposition above, I have described constitutionalisation as the process of carving out human rights against their primary violator, the state, and democratisation as the transfer of state power from kings to (at best) majorities. With this in mind, to better protect human rights, democratisation needs to be reversed and eventually overturned. Democracy provides a convenient cover for the trampling on human rights - usually conducted in the name of ‘the people’. What those democratic theorists of the past had hoped for did not come to pass. Instead, they have contributed to making violations less visible and reality more obscured. 

De-democratisation will not cause human rights to be automatically better protected. Under a king who has the same powers as a democratically-elected government, human rights are under threat to the same extent. However, the dividing line between the rulers and the ruled is much clearer, and the violations much more visible. A hidden enemy is an enemy you cannot fight. When the same violations of human rights are clearly identifiable, it is much easier to put pressure on the rulers and hold their feet to the fire. There are much higher hopes of those violations being alleviated.

In practical terms, then, this leads us to several policy implications. In the name of the protection of individual human rights, popular participation in politics needs to be limited as much as possible, the franchise needs to be curbed, and voting phased out. The government needs to be made explicitly aristocratic or monarchical. It is absolutely certain that these suggestions will sound regressive and even oppressive to those who grew up under democratic institutions engaged in ceaseless self-promotion. That is the power of the historical conflation of human rights and democracy, freedom and democracy, and constitutionalisation and democratisation at work.

Critics have nothing to be afraid of. Neither I nor them will lose any political power in the process. Despite the democratic mythology, the ‘power’ we might think we have in a democracy is only an illusion. My suggestions above will only result in increased pressure on the (now clearly visible) rulers, making their intrusions into the lives of the rest of us that more difficult. 

To further constitutionalise against the state, We the Subjects need to fight back against the state’s attempt to muddy the waters and obscure the reality and the nature of its continued predation. De-democratisation is urgently needed to protect human rights from ever-intensifying democratic oppression.