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Is American Democracy Headed To Extinction?

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  • Is American Democracy Headed To Extinction?

    IS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY HEADED TO EXTINCTION?

    [ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]

    By Stein Ringen

    April 01, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "Washington Post" --
    Behind dysfunctional government, is democracy itself in decay?

    It took only 250 years for democracy to disintegrate in ancient
    Athens. A wholly new form of government was invented there in which
    the people ruled themselves. That constitution proved marvelously
    effective. Athens grew in wealth and capacity, saw off the Persian
    challenge, established itself as the leading power in the known
    world and produced treasures of architecture, philosophy and art that
    bedazzle to this day. But when privilege, corruption and mismanagement
    took hold, the lights went out.

    It would be 2,000 years before democracy was reinvented in the U.S.

    Constitution, now as representative democracy. Again, government
    by popular consent proved ingenious. The United States grew into
    the world’s leading power - economically, culturally and
    militarily. In Europe, democracies overtook authoritarian monarchies
    and fascist and communist dictatorships. In recent decades,
    democracy’s spread has made the remaining autocracies a minority.

    The second democratic experiment is approaching 250 years. It has
    been as successful as the first. But the lesson from Athens is that
    success does not breed success. Democracy is not the default. It is
    a form of government that must be created with determination and that
    will disintegrate unless nurtured. In the United States and Britain,
    democracy is disintegrating when it should be nurtured by leadership.

    If the lights go out in the model democracies, they will not stay
    on elsewhere.

    It’s not enough for governments to simply be democratic;
    they must deliver or decay. In Britain, government is increasingly
    ineffectual. The constitutional scholar Anthony King has described it
    as declining from “order” to “mess” in less
    than 30 years. During 10 years of New Labor rule, that proposition
    was tested and confirmed. In 1997 a new government was voted in
    with a mandate and determination to turn the tide on Thatcherite
    inequality. It was given all the parliamentary power a democratic
    government could dream of and benefited from 10 years of steady
    economic growth. But a strong government was defeated by a weak
    system of governance. It delivered nothing of what it intended and
    left Britain more unequal than where the previous regime had left off.

    The next government, a center-right coalition, has proved itself
    equally unable. It was supposed to repair damage from the economic
    crisis but has responded with inaction on the causes of crisis, in a
    monopolistic financial-services sector, and with a brand of austerity
    that protects the privileged at the expense of the poor. Again,
    what has transpired is inability rather than ill will. Both these
    governments came up against concentrations of economic power that
    have become politically unmanageable.

    Meanwhile, the health of the U.S. system is even worse than it looks.

    The three branches of government are designed to deliver through
    checks and balances. But balance has become gridlock, and the United
    States is not getting the governance it needs. Here, the link between
    inequality and inability is on sharp display. Power has been sucked
    out of the constitutional system and usurped by actors such as PACs,
    think tanks, media and lobbying organizations.

    In the age of mega-expensive politics, candidates depend on sponsors
    to fund permanent campaigns. When money is allowed to transgress from
    markets, where it belongs, to politics, where it has no business, those
    who control it gain power to decide who the successful candidates will
    be - those they wish to fund - and what they can decide once they are
    in office. Rich supporters get two swings at influencing politics,
    one as voters and one as donors. Others have only the vote, a power
    that diminishes as political inflation deflates its value. It is a
    misunderstanding to think that candidates chase money. It is money
    that chases candidates.

    In Athens, democracy disintegrated when the rich grew super-rich,
    refused to play by the rules and undermined the established system
    of government. That is the point that the United States and Britain
    have reached.

    Nearly a century ago, when capitalist democracy was in a crisis not
    unlike the present one, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned:
    “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in
    the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Democracy
    weathered that storm for two reasons: It is not inequality as such
    that destroys democracy but the more recent combination of inequality
    and transgression. Furthermore, democracy was then able to learn from
    crisis. The New Deal tempered economic free-for-all, primarily through
    the 1933 Banking Act, and gave the smallfolk new social securities.

    The lesson from Athens is that success breeds complacency. People,
    notably those in privilege, stopped caring and democracy was
    neglected. Six years after the global economic crisis, the signs
    from the model democracies are that those in privilege are unable to
    care and that our systems are unable to learn. The crisis started in
    out-of-control financial services industries in the United States and
    Britain, but control has not been reasserted. Economic inequality has
    followed through to political inequality, and democratic government
    is bereft of power and capacity. Brandeis was not wrong; he was ahead
    of his time.

    Stein Ringen is an emeritus professor at Oxford University and the
    author of “Nation of Devils: Democratic Leadership and the
    Problem of Obedience.”

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