Dedicated days and weeks in the calendar sometimes have intriguing neighbours. Australian Citizenship Day, for example, follows two days after the International Day of Democracy. Both days have come under pressure: citizenship by the debates about removing people without citizenship and excluding entry to people from Gaza from Australia. The International Day of Democracy is almost a shelf-company, lacking promotion and theme, despite so many perceived threats to democracy.
In this situation we might well ask what reality lies behind the large claims for democracy and citizenship in Australia and in other nations that consider themselves democratic. The external conditions for a nation to be called a democracy are generally agreed. The Government must be chosen by vote of the people held at regular intervals, with each person’s vote carrying equal weight. In addition, the administration of the law must be at arm’s length from the will of the government administration. Underlying these practices is the ethical understanding that each human being is of equal value and entitled to respect regardless of their wealth, intelligence, race and religion.
These are the tests by which systems and practices of governance are assessed. In classical thought, democracy was one of four systems of government: democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, and aristocracy. Democracy was rule by the people, oligarchy as rule by the powerful, tyranny was rule by one man, and aristocracy was rule by the best qualified. The distinctions between them often reflected interests based on wealth and on class. Plato saw the need for wisdom in governance to handle reasonably and disinterestedly the differences between people with conflicting interests. On that basis he found fault with tyranny, democracy and oligarchy because they represented self-interested groups. He advocated for rule by wise philosophers.
Whatever of Plato’s argument, his reservations about democracy raise pertinent questions about forms of governance in our world. He saw democracy as unstable. It easily gave way to or was captured by oligarchy. Neither the poor nor the wealthy kept in mind the interests and good of the whole community. Nor did they have the wisdom or virtue necessary for negotiating conflicts of interest. The wealthy in particular could narrow the pool of candidates for election, buy votes on policy, or sponsor flashy and self-interested candidates. If it were to endure, any form of rule depended on acceptance of ethical principles about the nature and duties of governance. In times of hardship or of significant social change, the consensus supporting democratic rule could be eroded, particularly if elected representatives proved weak. Alcibiades became the emblematic figure of the populist who could manipulate the system in his own interests.
Plato’s reflections illuminate the anxieties voiced about democracy in our own day. It is customary and right to insist on the virtues of our democratic institutions and structures compared to totalitarian regimes. It is also pertinent, however, to note the vast contemporary differences in wealth between the richest and poorest in our society, and the international reach and economic power of large institutions, including pension funds, managed for the financial benefit to their beneficiaries. It is natural to ask whether governments will be able or courageous enough to resist governing in the interest of the wealthy rather than that of all its citizens, including the most disadvantaged.
Critics of contemporary democratic governance will cite the reluctance to offend fossil fuel and agricultural interests by acting decisively on climate change, the preference given to media owners and betting companies over the impoverished families of problem gamblers in the regulation of advertising, the seeming inability to control the spreading of lies and personal vitriol by tech firms, and the failure to address the problems caused by negative gearing for housing. These hesitations and failures to act may be supported by sound reasons. But to many people, they suggest that the government has been captured by interest groups, and call into question the value of democratic processes. The rise of movements which see relationships between groups within their nation as between winners and losers, and which foster totalitarian rule, is understandable.
'[Plato] saw democracy as unstable. It easily gave way to or was captured by oligarchy. Neither the poor nor the wealthy kept in mind the interests and good of the whole community.'
Most disenchanted people, however, will be more likely to withdraw from concern for the public interest, and will instead focus on narrow individual and sectional interests at the expense of the common good. Governments will change regularly, voted in for criticising their predecessor for failure to act, and voted out for the same failure.
In this world, too, citizenship ceases to be seen as inalienable recognition of the relationships that bind people to place, people, groups and to nation. It will instead be seen as a privilege conferred by the ruling party which may be withdrawn by the government as its interests demand. Democracy and citizenship are bound together. Both need support in difficult times.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.