Definition of Democracy
The current definition of democracy as a system of government is an oversimplification that fails to capture the original meaning and spirit of democracy. The word "democracy" comes from the Greek words "demos" meaning "people", and "kratos" meaning "power". So the true meaning of democracy should be considered as "the power of the people". Some of the earliest democracies were direct participatory democracies where citizens were actively involved in the decision making. In contrast, modern democracies are typically representative democracies, where citizens elect representatives to make decisions and govern on their behalf. But is representative democracy "the power of the people"?
In contrast, participatory democracies are based on the notion that citizens have the capacity and ability to be directly involved in governance and decision making. In ancient Athens, for example, all citizens could attend and vote in the Assembly, and citizens were selected by sortition to occupy administrative and judicial positions. While this system may have worked for smaller city-states, it is difficult to implement in large, complex societies.
Crucially, representative democracies address the scalability challenge, but in the process the participatory principle is lost. Elected representatives often become detached from citizens and pursue their own or their parties' agenda. Hence, many citizens feel disengaged from and disaffected with the political process. Low voter turnouts in elections reflect this apathy and distrust in political processes.
Some governments have tried to adopt a hybrid system with elements of both participatory and representative democracy. For example, some countries have introduced mechanisms for participatory decision making on local issues, such as participatory budgeting or local/regional autonomy. Some political parties also aim for more participatory policy formation using online platforms for members to shape the party's positions and vote on key decisions. However, on the whole, democracies today remain essentially representative with limited opportunities for participatory decision making.
While representative democracy has enabled democratic systems of government at large scale, it has lost the key element of citizens' active participation that was central to the earliest democracies. Overall, the current definition of democracy does not do justice to the complex realities of neither participatory nor representative democracies in practice.
Therefore, participatory democracy and representative democracy are two different forms of democracy, with distinct key differences, and a clearer definition of their mechanisms is long overdue. The following definitions reveal important distinction between them:
Representative democracy
- Citizens elect representatives to make policy proposals and decisions on their behalf.
- Citizens vote periodically (eg. every 2-4 years) in elections to choose their political representatives such as members of parliament, congress or presidency.
- Once elected, the representatives have the authority to make decisions and pass laws for their entire term of office.
- Citizens are excluded or have limited direct participation in decision-making between elections. They rely on representatives to represent their interests.
- Power is centralised to governamental representatives.
Participatory/direct democracy
- Citizens participate directly in decision-making, not just through representatives.
- There are various mechanisms for direct citizen participation such as referendums, citizens' assemblies, town hall meetings, online platforms etc.
- Decisions are made with the involvement of those most affected by the issues.
- Power is decentralized and distributed. Communities and citizens have control over decisions that affect them directly.
The implementation problem of democracy
Democracy is an ideal and system of governance and can be viewed as both as a social construct and a collective agreement, intricately shaped by cultural, historical, and political factors. On one hand, it represents an aspiration for a society where all individuals should have an equal voice in shaping their community's governance, reflecting the values of equality, freedom, and self-determination. On the other hand, the actual implementation of democracy in societies is hindered by various factors, such as cultural norms, power dynamics and structural inequalities, creating tension between the ideal and objective reality. Hence, while the concept of democracy can be seen as a collective idealization of a more inclusive and egalitarian society, its actual realization may require more efforts to address existing challenges and bridge the gap between ideals and practice.
Implementation of democracy is a rather complex task, and it has never been truly achieved since it was first formally articulated in Greece c. 470 BCE, perhaps even earlier. Since its conception, early forms of democracy were implemented in cities across Greek antiquity in many different forms and further formulated by different authors. Historically, the efforts of past couple of thousand years have not produced any truly democratic states besides the contemporary representative democracies. Even the very first direct/participative democracies formed in ancient greek city-states were only partial democracies where, for example, women had inferior voting rights and slavery of non-citizens was still acceptable.
Furthermore, democratic revolutions (eg. french, american, russian revolutions) have merely replaced authoritarian elites with other authoritarian elites, leading to no fundamental changes in the overall governance model. Typically, regimes or elites may suffer changes, but the hierarchical dynamics of an unequal and top-down model of governance still remains and is not significanly impacted by these changes. In other words, the liberators from oppression become the new oppressors.
Objectivity and subjectivity of democracy
Additionally, the implementation of democracy relies on common agreement of its properties, as it implies adopting of a collective belief that democracy objectively exists in same form for everyone. It is no overstatement that most people truly believe they live in democracies and that democracies exist in a certain defined form.
*Objectivity* generally refers to things that are observabable through the senses, and not influenced by personal feelings or opinions. Something that is objective can be verified through observation or measurement independently, regardless individual opinions. Just because something is observable by a group, it does not mean it rises to the level of being objective if it cannot potentially be observed by all people. An objective fact would be the same for everyone regadless their opinion.
*Subjectivity*, on the other hand, refers to personal experiences, opinions, and perspectives that are unique to an individual's point of view. Subjective statements are based on how individuals perceive and feel about things, rather than facts that can be universally proven to exist. What's subjective for one person may be different for another.
But if we look at the concept of democracy using objective criteria, all beliefs about the existence of democracies are fantasies: democracies can not exist in objective reality because they can only be observable subjectively. From the perspective of objectivity, humans in these supposed democracies are simultaneously ignoring the objective reality while believing in a fantasy, pretending to see something (democracy) that does not, can not, exist. Democracy is an ideal, a belief - but objects of beliefs can't exist in objective reality.
The idea that democracy can not exist is unambiguous: if an object of a belief (democracy) *could* objectively exist, it would have to exist in physical reality, not in metaphysical reality. The object of belief is yet to be materialised - it isn't objectively real because it does not exist in physical reality. One may even experience a subjective belief in the present moment, but still, the object of the belief itself can not exist in the present moment nor in objective reality.
Many definitions for democracy have been attempted, but from the perspective of objectivity, the criteria for a fact or phenomena to be considered real is its existence in objective reality. For something to exist, there must be a way to observe it to verify its existence. A fact or phenomena must be objectively observable and thus it must exist in a physical, observable form.
An illusion of representative democracy
In direct/participatory democracy, citizens have a direct say in governmental decision-making:
- Referenda: Citizens vote directly on policy issues instead of representatives.
- Popular assembly: Citizens gather together to discuss and vote on policy issues.
- Popular recall: Citizens can remove elected officials from office before their term is up.
- Initiative: Citizens can propose and vote for new laws or changes to existing laws.
- Sortition: Random selection of citizens to serve in government positions.
- Directly electing or dismissing officials: Citizens can vote directly for officials or remove them from office.
- Conducting trials: Citizens can serve as judges and jurors in legal proceedings.
Taken these criteria into account, is it possible that democracy could be implemented, as in "power of the people", or "one person one vote"? Is there any society where all people would be considered equal and would have equal say over political proposals and decisions?
As per current narratives,"nations" that triumphantly call themselves "democracies" are actually *representative democracies*. But this is a misleading term for "democracy", because representative democracy can not be considered a model of governance where all people would have equal power to make decisions.
In the current model of "democracy", people vote for their representatives, not for policy proposals, which actually removes them from the most fundamental processes of democracy - policy proposals and decision-making. Instead, people must vote for their representatives, who themselves do not have power to make any decisions. To be able to implement policies and decisions favoring their voters will, the lower level representatives still must attempt to push their proposals and votes past higher-level decision-makers and parties, parliaments and presidents.
In very rare ocasions can people vote directly for a proposition, and even in those situations the voting power is not directed to decisions affecting the issues of voters themselves, but often people's vote is used for larger, nation-wide policy issues. In other words, it is not the people who get to make decisions about affairs concerning them directly, but instead these decisions are made by the representatives from afar.
As a result, it becomes rather impossible to find a society that would not be a representative democracy: showing evidence of this would require finding a society that would have implemented direct or participatory democracy.
In representative democracies, citizens elect officials to make decisions on their behalf. However, this indirect form of democracy is often marred by various factors, such as the influence of money, special interests, and elite power structures that undermine the egalitarian ethos of democracy. This can result in governments that are responsive to a narrow slice of society rather than being truly representative of the people.
Hence, while the dream of democracy may be a powerful ideal, the reality of its implementation is far from perfect. It is compelling to argue that contemporary representative democracies are more akin to oligarchies, autocracies or plutocracies than true "democracies" as originally envisioned.
Contemporary "democracies" are promoted as whatever their power structures want to call them - as their objective meaning is beyond their rhetorical and subjective meaning. In today's societies, words and narratives used to define governance structures generally have multiple interchangeable meanings, and as we've seen, none of them carries the original meaning and values of actual democracy. Furthermore, all social constructs, like structures of governance, are perceived subjectively and can not exist in observable reality.
Hence, given that democracies do not objectively exist, it could also be argued that individuals who believe in the existence of democracy are therefore detached from observable/physical reality. Undeniable fact is that these individuals are participating in a collective belief that there exists facts and phenomena (democracies, social constructs) that would be the same for everyone. However, even themselves are observing these facts through their own subjective lens.
Collective cognitive dissonance
I'm not entirely sure what to call the phenomena of collective belief in non-existent entities while in denial of objective reality. Nevertheless, they fundamentally exhibit properties of metacognitive group behavior, including collective imagination and belief in non-existent entities. Or, could it be something scarier or even pathological, such as collective hallucination?
Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the situation as a form of cognitive dissonance - a state of holding contradictory beliefs or ideas, in this case, between the ideal of democracy and its practical implementation.
When individuals encounter information that is inconsistent with their existing beliefs, they experience psychological discomfort and are motivated to reduce this dissonance in order to restore cognitive consistency. People employ various strategies to reduce cognitive dissonance, including changing behavior or beliefs to achieve consistency, justifying, rationalizing or trivializing the inconsistency, seeking out supportive information that reinforces the preferred belief, and avoiding or ignoring dissonant information.
Cognitive dissonance can lead people to engage in selective exposure, where they seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs and avoid information that contradicts them. Dissonance can also motivate people to change their attitudes or behaviors to align with their beliefs, or to change their beliefs to justify their actions.
Individuals may recognize the limitations and imperfections of representative democracy yet still believe in the broader values it claims to represent, such as freedom, equality, and self-governance. This can lead to a kind of pragmatic acceptance of the current system, while still holding on to the hope and aspiration for a better version of democracy. All the while dodging an intrinsic realization about non-existence of democracy and the impossibility of its real implementation.
Hence, collective cognitive dissonance is a precise umbrella term to describe collective belief in metaphysical phenomena - something that can neither objectively exist nor have an observable form in physical reality, but in which groups of people still believe regardless. The ideals of democracy qualify as such phenomena. Similarily to individual beliefs, collective beliefs in non-existent entities like nations, democracy, gods or other social constructs - since their objective existence is an impossibility - qualify as collective cognitive dissonance.
Social constructs are metaphysical ideas, beliefs, or practices that have been created and shaped by human cultures and societies, rather than having an inherent existence in the physical world. Ideas such as democracy, nations, borders, gods, money, power and other social constructs do not - can not - exist in objective, observable reality, yet believing in them can still exert a powerful influence over human group behavior and societies.
Nevertheless, the objective truth is that these ideas can only exist in our minds and our collective agreements.
more reading:
Direct Democracy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
Athenian Democracy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
Eric W. Robinson, Democracy beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ix, 275. ISBN 9780521843317.
Modern direct democracies - https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-four-countries-practise-direct-democracy-today/48308922
Cognitive dissonance - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.
Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203–210.
Social Constructs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966), _The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge https://archive.org/details/socialconstructi0000berg/