I think it would be unwise to go ahead with outmoded systems of governance into an entirely new technological age without even beginning the search for new forms of governance. We should buy the insurance.
And I think we need to start now.
Final Countdown for Democracy
It may not be an exaggeration to claim that we are approaching a final countdown for democracy. The pressures for transnational and regional (like the EU) and global governance are simply mounting with such rapidity and force that we will necessarily see the growth of impenetrably thick layers of top-down governance at a supra-state level in the coming decades. Because all the most pressing issues are global and transnational, they must be dealt with and regulated at the corresponding level.
This will place most real power at a hopelessly long distance from the common citizen of the world. A person goes about her life and casts a vote in India or Brazil, but the decisions governing her life conditions are made in a closed room on the other side of the planet by people she’s never heard about and may not even know exist.
As things stand today, that’s where we’re headed—faster than a cannonball. And how hard will it then not be for democratic forms of governance to maintain their legitimacy under circumstances where all meaningful decision-making is so distant, abstract and foreign?
The clock is ticking. If the pressures for transnational solutions push us into supranational structures of governance without a corresponding rejuvenation of democratic life and participation at all levels of society, supported by—but not limited to—new digital forms of democracy, we will come to a point at which we suddenly live in a global order that is distinctly non-democratic. Global non-democracy.
Democracy will have died the slow heat death. It will not have been killed, simply dispersed under its own entropy, being superseded in all but rhetoric by a global technocratic elite from which we can expect only a very limited amount of accountability. Transparency will be lost, and for all practical purposes, democracy will be lost—globally and, for the foreseeable future, permanently.
Again: the clock is ticking. Either we begin the slow and cumbersome process of continuously reinventing and updating democracy, or it simply drifts away into space. If people are engaged and sufficiently empowered to partake in governance on all levels, and live in a richly democratic culture, and if accountability is expanded and autonomy grows from the bottom up, then perhaps democratic forms of governance can conquer their way to the top, and we can see the emergence of a deeply democratic global order in the 21st century.
Where do we start? We start at the meso-level , the middle level of institutions, organizations and regional clusters of innovation (based around a “triple-helix” of companies, city administrations and universities) so often overlooked. We use the state to spur bottom-up democratic innovation, which then besieges the distant towers of patronizing state technocracy.
From that position we struggle on, non-linearly, to democratically shape the processes of the emergent world order. We start at the meso-level and then we use the increasing organizational and institutional leeway to gradually go back and forth between the micro- and macro-levels. Development starts at the middle and bounces its way up and down in increasing magnitude: from changing people’s ideas and habits, to changing national, transnational and supranational structures of governance. Democratic development oscillates .
Will global governance be a monolith that follows the lowest common denominator, a frail autocratic colossus on clay feet; or will it be a rich, robust and effective ecology of institutional innovations? Beneath our feet the ground is giving way, a silent abyss of tyranny and decay opening. Above us, the skies are calling us to a greater potential, to higher forms of self-organization, to deeper democracy.
Ladies and gentlemen—Democratization Politics.
Aux armes, citoyens ! To arms, citizens. [79]
Chapter 11:
GEMEINSCHAFT POLITICS
“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace”.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an undelivered address for Jefferson Day, intended for April 13 th , 1945.
The quality of ordinary citizens’ relations with one another can make or break a country. Societies characterized by a strong sense of community, high levels of trust and mutual respect and understanding tend to be richer, less corrupt and more peaceful. Countries with weak communal bonds, widespread distrust and little sense of belonging often fall apart, sometimes violently. That’s why Gemeinschaft matters.
If a country fails badly enough at Gemeinschaft you get Yugoslavia or Iraq, if it succeeds, you get Denmark or Japan.
So what is meant by Gemeinschaft ? The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies made the important distinction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft . The former refers to the formal system of rules and regulations of a society, the latter to the more personal and informal bonds between people. Whereas Gesellschaft can be roughly translated into “society”, Gemeinschaft does not have a satisfying equivalent in the English language. It is often translated into “community”, but that sounds more like we’re talking about a local neighborhood or a soccer club. And since we furthermore don’t want to imply it is the same as the political philosophy of “communitarianism”, we will use the original German word which moreover has become accepted in social science among English speakers.
We could also use the Swedish word, gemenskap , which has the same origin and meaning as the German term, better fitting “the Nordic Ideology”. Or the Danish word fællesskab or the Norwegian fellesskap , both of which have the same meaning as Gemeinschaft , but instead share origins with the English word “fellowship”. Over the centuries, however, “fellowship” has come to mean something slightly different than Gemeinschaft —but at least it gets us closer than “community”.
So we’re getting at a “politics of fellowship”, if you will, a strand of politics which actively and deliberately seeks to improve the sense of fellowship among citizens and other aspects of our general relatedness to one another. A politics, perhaps even, of friendship. To cultivate a society based more upon friendship, camaraderie, collaboration. A call to an expansion of personal relationships as well as universal, impersonal love.
A Call to Fellowship
Whereas Democratization Politics is the politics of developing our formal relations, our governance (corresponding to Tönnies’ Gesellschaft ), Gemeinschaft Politics is the politics of developing our informal relations; the many personal and civic relationships so vital to every aspect of a good and sustainable society.
Gemeinschaft Politics is about human relationships, including: those between residents in local communities, cultural and sports activities and other forms of volunteering in civil society, how well community builders and local leaders are treated and supported, how class distinctions play out, relations between different ethnic groups, the integration of immigrants, relations at work, gender relations and sexual and romantic interplays, family relations, domestic conflict and violence, relations in school, how much loneliness there is, how much bullying there is, how much peer pressure there is, cross-generational relations, social safety nets for old age and disability, the quality and prevalence of friendships, acquaintance network relations, distributions of social capital and status, levels of interpersonal trust, levels of average interpersonal care and solidarity, the degree to which people are willing to help strangers, norms for treating one another in public spaces and in general, the level of kindness and understanding people show one another, how judgmental or forgiving we are towards each other, how people
reject one another and handle norm-breakers and delinquents, how many grudges and perceived “enemies” we have, what resources there are for conflict resolution, which taboos we can’t talk about, how good we are at social perspective taking.
Et cetera .
Relations. Relationships. Amen.
In a word: Gemeinschaft .
We need to apply scientific knowledge to improve the quality of human relations, long-term, at all levels of society—just like Franklin D. Roosevelt said it. [80] The value of social bonds and relationships is of course immeasurable. Yet, besides this value-in-itself, the quality of human relationships is a source of unimaginable wealth or poverty.
I have already underscored that there in today’s affluent societies are almost no real material or economic problems left—pretty much none of the fundamental problems of late modern society are due to a de facto lack of economic resources. Once a postindustrial level of affluence has been achieved, with an annual per capita GDP above 25,000 US dollars, the reason people suffer is no longer because of an actual lack of material resources. The main source of society’s ailments is that people’s behaviors, psychologies and social relations don’t function properly. In late modern society, suffering is social rather than economic.
If you look at an issue like unemployment, the challenge isn’t really to feed and shelter the unemployed, but rather to provide them with social status, meaning, dignity, activities and a daily rhythm—to prevent social decay. When it comes to rising housing prices that can burst into market bubbles, the issue is greatly exacerbated by the growth of single households, the need for people to protect their private spaces from intrusions by insensitive others who would disturb their peace. A society in which everyone is nicer to be around—where folks are more socially functional—and where there is greater mutual trust, would be one where people need less distance from one another and thus one of greater living space efficiency, hence with lesser living space competition, and hence with lower housing prices and rents.
If you look at issues like overconsumption and ecological footprints, it is not difficult to see that a society in which people have less reason to feel insecure about their social status would also be one in which a more post-materialist culture could flourish and people could more easily make sustainable choices.
In a society where people communicate better and are less violent, there is less reason for inter-ethnic fear and resentment to grow, and hence lesser reason for discrimination, and hence lesser reason for racism and ethnic populism. It also means security costs become lower across the board, meaning more resources can be pooled into preventive social measures, meaning society becomes less repressive.
When it comes to issues of mental health, psychological development, how personalities develop, the degree of prosocial behavior to be expected from a population, what personal issues people have that steer their motivations, the prevalence of delinquency and crime—it must be obvious that each of them is shaped and defined by people’s relationships.
These are just a few examples of how the nature of people’s everyday relationships shapes society. Point being: it’s social, stupid.
Developing the Demos
Gemeinschaft Politics is closely linked to Democratization Politics. Democracy implies that there is a “demos”, a people that governs society. But for there to be a people, there must be a certain something to bind citizens together; a feeling of communal togetherness, a sense of fellowship, a reason why we should belong to the same society to begin with. In short, if you don’t have Gemeinschaft , you’ll struggle to get a Gesellschaft —i.e. to get sound and sustainable institutions.
In the past, a shared religion and the myth about the ruler’s divinity sufficed to maintain a minimum of social coherence. But with the transition to modernity, it became increasingly urgent that people shared the same culture and language. A sense of fellowship was needed to ensure peaceful and productive relations between different classes and people from culturally distinct provinces who now lived side-by-side in crowded industrial cities. The nation-building projects of the 19th century can thus be seen as an early version of Gemeinschaft Politics.
The modern nation state gave rise to what we commonly refer to as “civil society”; the non-governmental and non-commercial arenas where people can organize and act together in pursuit of shared interests, purposes and values. A strong civil society is in turn required for liberal democracy to function because the arenas of civil society are where citizens can organize themselves in ways to ensure rulers rule in accordance with the will of the “people”, the “demos”. But people won’t necessarily see, or even accept, one another as members of a demos just because the state grants them citizenship and equality before the law. The demos can only exist if its alleged members experience mutual feelings of fellowship with one another, and a democracy can only function if the demos feels their shared destiny is tied to the state. The state can create the legal conditions that define the formal relations between citizens, and between citizens and the state, but the fellowship needed for people to accept one another as equal members of society can only be cultivated within civil society. Democracy thus also needs a civil society because this is where its demos is developed.
The development of a demos can occur within the borders of a state and justify its existence by a shared citizenship as in the case of France or the US, or it can develop from shared cultural ties stretching beyond state borders as in the case with the formation of Germany or Italy. It is, however, within the many arenas of civil society (clubs, newspapers, organizations of all sorts etc.) that discourses develop about who is to be included in the demos and thus be considered entitled to citizenship and equal status, and who is to be excluded from the Gemeinschaft .
This, however, does not mean states did not play a vital role in the formation of national identities and the cultivation of civic and democratic manners. It merely means that states could not develop the demos through the legal instruments of governance alone since the informal relations determining the demos per definition cannot be legislated about. Yet, this did not prevent the state from using other means to further the nation-building project. Since civil society was where the action was, the state put great care into ensuring that civil society enjoyed favorable conditions to blossom and that the clubs and organizations that favored the national agenda received additional funding.
From Public to Domestic to Private
Modern society required informal relations of a more delicate nature than in the past in order to make the wheels of industry and bureaucracy run smoothly. People had to engage in productive relations with strangers from more varied backgrounds and classes than what they had been used to, and they had to follow new intricate codes of conduct in their relations at work and towards authorities. Former peasants had to learn how to avoid bickering and misunderstandings when interacting with the many strangers in the densely populated urban environments, and they had to accustom themselves to the role as factory workers and the instrumental nature of the relationship between workers and factory owners. The state thus took measures to teach its citizens to read and write and speak the same language so that they could better understand one another. Literacy also made it possible to read the national papers. This gave them access to the discourses of civil society that could teach them about their new living conditions in a modern society, and this made them part of a larger public so as to mold them into the national Gemeinschaft .
The elite was also compelled to adapt to the new societal relations by revising their manners when interacting with the lower classes in public. Verbal and physical abuse could not be tolerated in a modern society. First of all because the poor had the same legal status as the rich, at least on paper; formally, workers and employers were equals who freely exchanged labor for wages. The ethos of l
iberalism thus demanded everyone was to be treated with the same amount of politeness and respect. In practice, however, the demand for higher levels of politeness and respect was a societal necessity to prevent daily conflicts from interfering in production and to avoid stirring up tensions that could easily erupt into uprisings among an already embittered working class.
The new ideal of the ruling classes, the “gentleman”, thus became widely promoted in newspapers and magazines and within the salons and clubs where the bourgeoisie gathered. In fact, everyone had to behave nicer and with greater consideration towards others as stress and tensions among thousands of strangers cramped into small spaces made people more susceptible to go off. Consequently, a culture of politeness and strict etiquettes of public behavior emerged within civil society, and people began to address strangers as “mister” and “madam”, poor as rich, and say “please” when asking for something as a way of showing that they acknowledged one another as equals and free citizens who could not be arbitrarily expected to follow an order.
The many new ways the informal relations within the public sphere got adjusted to life and work in an industrial economy would largely develop without direct governmental interference. The state merely made sure that people understood they were equal citizens of the nation state and that public discourse within civil society was sufficiently equipped to develop the demos. This can as mentioned be seen as an early variant of Gemeinschaft Politics. All of these changes remained, however, within the public domain. How you treated your wife wasn’t part of the state’s political project. Domestic and personal issues were left out.
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