In the last few years, public discontent grew more and more, producing large-scale protests and surprising electoral results, like Brexit and Donald Trump’s election as the president of the United States. What is wrong with our political system?

Already in 2000, Colin Crouch, British sociologist and political scientist, coined the term „post-democracy” for describing the disfunctionalities of our political system in the age of globalisation. He accepted to explain his perpective on the challenges faced by democracies in the 21st century, to the Romanian public, in an interview given to Vladimir Adrian Costea, for Europunkt.

Colin Crouch is a professor emeritus of the University of Warwick (UK) and external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. He been vice-president for social sciences of the British Academy (2012-16). He has published within the fields of comparative European sociology and industrial relations, economic sociology, and contemporary issues in British and European politics. He is currently working on general social comparisons among European countries, and on problematic relations between democracy and economic inequality in post-modern societies.

Colin Crouch

Citeşte varianta în limba română aici.

Vladimir Adrian Costea: First, please tell me what are the main features of post-democracy?

Colin Crouch: By using the term post-democracy I wanted to describe a political situation in which, although all the forms of democracy – elections, open debate, changes in governments – continue to happen, the choices are increasingly artificial and managed from above. The real debates and decisions take place in closed discussions between business and political elites.

What are the causes for the emergence of post-democracy?

There are two principal causes, and a third that is derivative from those. First is globalization, which removes important politico-economic decisions from national level, which is the main level that democracy can reach, to levels where only business elites can have access. Second, changes in the class structure of post-industrial societies have meant that not many citizens have a clear idea of their political interests and how they can organize to achieve these. This then has a knock-on effect to political leaders, who lost their meaningful contacts with citizens and therefore communicate with them through professional public relations techniques rather than in substantive ways.

To what extent results such as Brexit and Trump’s victory represent the peak of post-democracy in the 21st century?

It would be more accurate to say that they represent an answer to the problem of post-democracy, that is itself an illusion and only furthers post-democracy. They are answers, because they make the same complaints that I make about remote, non-responsive elites. But by using ethnic minorities, refugees and immigrants as the main objects of popular anger, they turn voters’ attention away from the real causes of problems.

As to the campaign of Donald Trump, do you think we are witnessing a change in the profile of the politician in the democratic regimes?

It is too early to say whether a profound change is happening; much depends on whether Trump is perceived as successful or not in the longer term. But the demagogic, charismatic individual who ignores the usual rules is not a new figure in politics. What is new is such a figure becoming so prominent in a mature and well developed political system. We usually associate them with infant, or deeply troubled, political situations – as in Europe between the world wars, or in Africa and Latin America.

To what extent the electoral scenario registered in the UK and the USA can be replicated in other EU countries?

It has already happened in Hungary and Poland. To know more, we must await the French and Dutch elections. Certainly, xenophobic populist parties have established a base as important minority parties in several countries: Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, for example. The question now is whether they can become more important than that.

What are the challenges the democratic regimes have to respond to in order to stop the rise of post-democracy?

We all have to find ways of making politics respond to citizens’ concerns. This has been made more difficult by globalization (as I said) and by the dominance of neoliberal policies that leave people exposed to the market without much security. These problems cannot be solved by retreating into isolated nation states. Democracy has to reach out to transnational levels, like the European Union. And governments, international organizations need to learn that unless they withdraw from extreme neoliberalism, they will only make the situation worse, threatening the globalization project.

How do the citizensaspirations change under the impact of post-democracy?

People of good will have to form organizations, mobilize, argue, campaign. There is no simple top-down solution when the problem is that everything has become too top-down!

 

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