The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has published “The People Want”: When Democracy is Eroded by Aymen Boughanmi (280 pp.). Populism may be interpreted as the retaliation of revolutionary desires against the democracy that has successfully controlled them. Given the aversion of citizens in democratic countries to elections, the waning popularity of traditional parties, the lack of confidence in elected authority, and the decline in the efficacy of electoral mechanisms for improving the circumstances of increasing segments of the population, demands have surged to deepen democracy in order to end the monopoly of political elites on power by giving the last word back the people and proceeding earnestly toward direct democracy.
Advocates for the democratisation of democracy have worked to impose measures such as primary elections within parties, maintaining proportionality within electoral systems, conducting referenda, popular legislative initiatives, and withdrawing the parliamentary mandate. However, the practical results have been disappointing and caused new problems that are worse than the ones proponents of democratising democracy have claimed they are working to solve.
To address the concept of the separation of powers, the author begins with the premise that, in a presidential system, the president is said to represent the masses. But how is he to do so? Is it not natural that a powerholder would see himself as representative of his constituents? If not, how would he justify promises that serve certain segments of society, such as lowering taxes on corporations to boost production or raising them for wealth distribution? Boughanmi instead argues that the head of state ought to be a symbolic, unelected entity, citing the contrast between the Queen of England and US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in terms of representing the citizenry of their respective countries. A balance between electoral and symbolic authority may be achieved in the manner of states that designate their heads of government by way of indirect elections, such as Italy and Germany, even when this position is largely ceremonial with limited authority, as in Austria, Portugal, and Singapore, so as to avoid the personalisation of authority. The book further addresses the contradiction between a president’s need to be decisive, often leading to decisions that favour the interests of one group at the expense of another, and the ideal of representing the people as a whole.
Shifting to the question of popular sovereignty, the book posits that if Britain is the high authority on the concept of representative democracy, Germany is in turn the definitive source on the rules of political competition. The German regime combines the advantages of proportional electoral systems, such as equitable representation and party plurality, and the virtues of majority systems such as the effective exercise of authority and holding powerholders accountable. In the idiom of Karl Marx, this is due to the strong affinity between the reality of economic and social infrastructure on the one hand and its political and partisan implications on the other. The German economic model has brought together capital and unions by virtue of a mechanism of ongoing negotiations and the potential for agreements that serve various stakeholders.
The author concludes with an investigation of middle-class democracy. Sociologically, the middle class has been the historical pillar for most democracies, as the capitalist economic system’s efficacy has made it possible to move past the demand for total economic equality toward settling for the potential for equity through rising social mobility. That segments of the population have clearly benefitted from the numerical expansion of the middle class is considered an indication that there exists a minimal degree of balance between the various actors constituting the liberal democratic equation in developed countries. Today, however, the components of this equation bemoan a deep unrest which most likely has yet to reach the furthest extent; world capital, compared to other strata, enjoys great priority in the capacity to exploit the possibilities of globalisation. This is the secret to the imbalance that governs not only the relationship of massive capital to the rest of society, but also to states. Globalisation and the opening of markets imposes a zero-sum game that forces states to appease forces of investment, as not to do so could put their economies in danger. Conversely, the liberation of global capital from pressures would imply the decline in possibilities for wealth redistribution, which explains the steady widening of social disparities in most democratic countries.
