From the Focal Point

Losing Faith In Democracy?

The magazine IWMpost No. 120, Fall/Winter 2017 of the Austrian Institute for Human Sciences published an interview with eminent Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor under the title Losing Faith in Democracy?. On the occasion of the Institute's 35th anniversary, Professor Taylor reflects on the crisis of democracy and the societal challenges in a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. For Charles Taylor, democracy is never something that we have and can hold onto, but rather something "always in need to be remade". Much of his work has dealt with identity politics and the way liberal democracies cope with cultural pluralism. One of the questions posed in the interview was how it was possible that the concept of democracy had paradoxically become a source of exclusion and discrimination. For Professor Taylor exclusive forms of identity politics have never really gone away, and never will. It is natural for people to react with some anxiety when their society undergoes a process of rapid diversification - be it that the new cultures and identities are arising through immigration or through ethical diversification of the native population. Cultural discomfort, as Professor Taylor stresses, will always arise, but this does not mean that serious movements towards exclusion have to happen. There are other ways of dealing with cultural-ethical discomfort and Taylor gives some examples. Answering the question about the major challenges for the future, he mentions global warming, the crisis of democracy, the growing flood of refugees in the world... and he points out that what we urgently need is more multi-tracked, interdisciplinary thinking, bringing philosophy, history and social science to bear together on these decisive issues. Recently, concerning Donald Trump and the future of democracy, Professor Taylor stated: "This is not the way we were meant to be".

In his new book/essay Trump is not the only problem... Solutions for an unfair world (Starfish Books, 2017), distinguished Dutch professor of political science, and member of the Culturelink Network, Joost Smiers argues that it is still possible to build a civilized, human, just and ecologically sustainable world. Radical proposals are needed and Professor Smiers presents them in this essay. He stresses the fact that the unrestrained economic, social and cultural globalisation of the last decades has yielded relatively few winners, but an enormous amount of losers. "Democratically uncontrollable mega-corporations must be substantially reduced in size, and the intellectual property rights system that gives them so much power and privatizes our jointly-built knowledge and creativity must be torn down". The world is confronted by many challenges and Joost Smiers specifically points out one research question particularly challenging for institutes and universities: how can the transition from a global economy to human-sized economies be made? His analysis reveals how the relationships between people have become harsher, social cohesion and mutual trust are gone. The concept of the citizen in the noble sense has been replaced by the concept of the consumer. The world in which we live exceeds the human scale. One chapter is focused on Donald Trump and Joost Smiers voices his concern that the foundations of democracy could be lost. In his closing words addressed to Europe ("... what a nice part of the world have you become after the two terrible world wars of the 20th century"), Professor Smiers raises the following question: How can this soft power survive in a world in which hard power seems to be all that really counts? And he has an answer: the humanistic values we have cherished over the decades should keep us on track and give us bon courage.

Obviously, disappointment with the current state of democracy is exacerbating fears rather than raising hopes for the future. On the other hand, democracy and human development have been positively associated: more democracy increases the chances for a sustainable development. Today, the demand for reintegration of humanistic values into our visions of the future may, hopefully, contribute to the recovery of the impaired link between democracy and development.

Biserka Cvjeticanin
Culturelink Network Director

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