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In recent years, with the deterioration of Western internal affairs, more and more documents have appeared in academic and policy research, and discussing how Western democracy is dying.The reason is that people have no responsibility of democratic death to internal populism, as well as authoritative politicians that rise in the populist movement.After Trump accidentally elected the president, people began to worry about the impact and damage of populism on the existing democratic system.
There are also many people pushing their responsibilities to the rise of so -called external autocracy and challenges to the composition of Western democracy.However, external reasons are just a refraction of scholars' deep -rooted ideology. Because of experience, few internal systems died because of external challenges. Almost all politics changed because of internal elements or eventually died.
The authoritativeist populist (Authoritarian Populism) emphasized by the Western academic community is pointing to the real reason why Western traditional democracy is moving towards death.However, people cannot simply bring the rise of Western populism to the rise of some politicians like Trump, because the reason is simple, whether it is populist or the rise of Trump -style politicians, it is right.It is an inevitable product of Western democracy.
Simply put, the challenges faced by Western democracy today are largely like the challenges faced by the planned economy of the Communist camp;The planned economy, the operating logic of the two has many similarities, if it is not exactly the same.In a certain sense, people can also call democracy as planned politics.
The two economic system forms of the planned economy
As seen in history, the Soviet -style planned economy was eventually abandoned due to failure, but it had many lofty original intentions when it was generated.The capitalist economy has continued to occur in a periodic crisis and does not have a mechanism to rescue the crisis. At the same time, this is also a system of exploiting people, leading to high degree of differentiation and high inequality of society.The planned economy is obviously produced by the defects of the capitalist system.Instead, you will work hard; third; it assumes that the state (government) has the ability to obtain sufficient information and make decisions such as production and distribution rationally.
The planned economy in the typical sense has ended up, but some of the factors of the planned economy survive and develop.Different forms of planned economic elements are at least in the form of two economic systems.
First, Developmental State mainly refers to economies such as Japan, and the government has promoted economic development through economic planning.However, although the economic planning and planned economy in developing countries are similar, the planned economy is very different from the original sense, that is, this plan is still based on the market, rather than eliminating the market economy.
Second, in many aspects of economic life, the government and other welfare countries, such as economic regulations and secondary income distribution, have played a key role and have a planned nature.In fact, liberal people who criticize the Soviet Union's planned economy often put welfare countries in the same category of criticism.However, like a developed country, regardless of how important the government plays in the welfare country system, the market is still the main body of the economy, which is distinguished from the original planned economy.To be precise, in today's world, in terms of the relationship between the government and the market, most economies are mixed economies.
Compared with the planned economy, the emergence of democracy is more natural.However, as the planned economy is a reaction to the capitalist market economy, democracy has also experienced different stages of development. Each existing democracy is also a reaction and amendment to the formal democracy in the previous stage.Simply put, democracy has experienced two major historical stages from early elite democracy to today's Volkswagen Democracy.Although Volkswagen democracy is an inevitable product of elite democracy, the operating logic of the two democracy is different.
If the French thinker Viscount de Tocqueville is described by the classical democracy described by Democracy in American in the United States, and the contemporary democracy described by Western scholars today, we can see that elite democracy and public democratic democracy can be seen.The difference is here.
The democracy described by Tocowei also has a wide range of institutional arrangements and socio -economic practice. In contemporary scholars, democratic research has been simplified into an election (voting) analysis.Different democracy described by scholars in different periods just reflects the historical changes of the democratic system.
When Tocowwell described American democracy, it was not so much democracy, but he was equal.He observed in the United States that democracy is conducive to a social trend to equality, not just economic equality, but also the right to equality.More importantly, democracy means a series of institutional arrangements from families to the country, and its core is the autonomy and self -management of civil society and social organizations.
In the Tocowwell era, although the right to election is also expanding, the right to vote is still limited to a few citizens.At that time, political participation mainly refers to the participation of the people they belonged to.At the national level, Tocqueville emphasizes the restrictions on central political power such as central relations such as the separation of three powers and the federal system.
The so -called democracy, that is, the republic between elites, is power sharing.The effective operation of the democratic system depends on the political consensus between elites.The most important reason for political consensus is because the elite circle is small. Most elites have similar family backgrounds, enter the same school, receive the same education, and have similar thinking and behavior.
It is generally believed that democracy defined by economist Joseph Schumpeter is a typical elite democracy.But this view is not accurate to the present.Xiong Peter simplified democracy into politicians to obtain political power through competitive votes.It is said that it is an elite democracy because the author emphasizes the political elite, not the political participation of the people.In other words, in the definition of Xiong Peter, the election is the first order, and participation is the second order.However, from the perspective of the election logic, it is precisely, Xiong Peter's definition of democracy reflects the content of public democracy.
The most important form of public democracy is one person and one vote.This institutional arrangement has two main theoretical assumptions.First, democracy can be simply become a voting behavior of at least two political parties.As described by Tocowei, democracy has extremely wide content, but what does it make a government democracy?In the end, people made democracy and simplicity into a election politics above multi -party competition.
Second, democracy is the perfect implementation of politicians' assumptions.The West has the assumptions of politicians since ancient Greece.The assumption of politicians is that every citizen has the right to participate in politics, and has the ability to make a rational judgment on political affairs. Furthermore, politics can also be the most important stage for realizing people's value. As a result, political participation is also achieved political equality.The only way.
It should be proposed that in the ancient Greek city -state, the political participation of citizens was based on the premise of a large -scale slave class.The existence of the slave class has made citizens liberate from heavy physical labor, have time and ability to think about city -state affairs, and make rational decisions on urban -state affairs.In modern society, with the development of economic development and the progress of societyIn step, people extend the concept of politicians to all citizens.In other words, the one -by -one vote system in the West has a deep cultural foundation.
Deficiency of the planned economy
Therefore, if the goal of the planned economy is to achieve economic equality, the goal of one person and one vote system is to achieve political equality in politics.But there are a few assumptions that are not said here: First, everyone (citizen) is equal in intelligence and rationality;The ability makes rational decisions based on the information collected; 4. The rational decisions they make in line with each person's private interests and the public interests of their society.
Although these assumptions have a high sense of morality, they do not actually exist.No society is equal in all aspects.Even if all aspects such as economy and society are equal, people are intelligent in intelligence.Because of this, the public's democracy and the planned economy have the same shortcomings.
The planned economy eliminates all private economic space, leaving public economic space, that is, public ownership.Similarly, the democracy of one person and one vote actually eliminates what Tocoweville said, from the family to all the civic society of the government.Although the West today also emphasizes civic society, today's civic society and the civic society in the Tocoweville era are very different.
The civic society of the Tockeville era emphasized autonomy and self -management, and today's civic society is completely politicized. Politics and non -autonomy have become their main battlefield.Everything seems to be politically, and it is difficult to find non -political areas.Because of the disappearance of autonomy, today's democracy is easy to guide most people's tyranny.The saying that authoritative populism is to wear is the tyranny of most people.This is the Brexit in Brexit, as is the Trump generalist in the United States.
This ending is an inevitable result of the operation of the Western economic and political system.As far as its essence is concerned, planning politics (or one -person one vote for democracy) is a response to the Western capitalist system.Since modern times, capital has obtained unprecedented freedom, not only incorporating all civic society from families to the government into their running track, but also incorporate everyone into the track of capital, the commodity of Marx's people.
In the era of neo -liberalism, no individual can survive and develop from capital, and no individuals can separate their capital and stipulate their own essence.In the era of industrialization, people (that is, workers) who depend on capital (ie, workers) can form a collective (ie, the working class) to deal with capital; but in the era of post -industrialization, especially in the era of information technology (Internet and social media), increasingThe more people are falling into isolated individuals, they can only exist on capital alone without any ability to resist capital.
The large expansion of capital power will inevitably lead to a large expansion of national power.Theoretically, capital is pursuing private interests, and politics as a public space is pursuing public interests.When capital absorbs many civic society from family to the government to their own track, politics will inevitably respond to this, and strive to absorb the same civic society from families to the government to their own track.Only in this way can a society reach a basic balance or balance between private space and public space and between private interest and public welfare.
Today's Western society, although people continue to declare the existence of civic society, more and more people have been included in these two economic and political tracks, and few people still live under the autonomy of traditional civic society.
It is easy to understand that when capital becomes a winner in the process of globalization and technological progress, more benefits or a salary system of one person or one person will become inevitable.The invasion of capital to individuals and personal power is directly proportional to the increase in political power by individuals.In other words, on the one hand, capital incorporates individuals into its orbit, making it an individual and helpless individual, and on the other hand, individuals are increasingly dependent on political power, because only through this dependence can they survive against capital.The greater the uncertainty brought by capital, the more people need to pursue certainty through politics.This is the situation that most western society is facing today.
It should also be pointed out that the West has regarded its own democracy and simplicity into a election based on multi -party competition, and exports to non -Western countries that have accepted Western democracy in non -Western democracy, which has caused great harm to these countries.As discussed earlier, in Tocoweir, elections are not the essential regulations of democracy, and democracy means autonomy and power checks and balances. In addition, the operation of democracy requires other all aspects of systems to support.
But once the West forcibly promoted this minimalist democracy to non -Western countries that do not have other system support, democracy became a passive water and no wood.This is the situation faced by most developing countries of Western democracy (or passively accepted) today.There have been so many problems in democracy in Western countries with deep culture and system support, let alone non -Western countries with the lack of these cultures and system conditions.
Marx once predicted that capitalism was his own tomb digker, but his predictions were not successful.The main reason is that the capitalism after Marx introduced socialist elements, such as welfare policies and third departments (state -owned enterprises).As far as the nature of the economic system is concerned, most economies in Western capitalist countries are composite economies.Will similar development in politics?No one will predict the death of one person and one vote, because once people have one person and one vote, they will not give up this right.
Although today's West is afraid of the authoritativeism caused by populism, is this authoritativeism inevitable?If it is inevitable, Western democracy will also evolve into a compound government.If so, then the contemporary world has also fulfilled the predictions of ancient philosophers (Aristotle), that is, the best politics is non -autocracy, not democracy, but a hybrid government of authority and democracy.
(The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore)
The article only represents personal point of view
