What if the voter is fed up with democracy?
Is there a real danger that voters will want to abolish democracy? Or is it mainly a theoretical problem? The history of democracies that gave themselves up.
This series on political toleration focuses on a classical problem, the so-called paradox of toleration. Democracy is a form of political toleration: any party can participate, even parties that many people strongly dislike. The question is: how much room should opponents of toleration be given in a tolerant system. Characteristic of tolerant systems is that they also give room to unsavory people, opinions and behaviours. But what to do with people and movements that are fundamentally opposed to toleration itself? Should they be given the opportunity to abolish the permissive system themselves? This paradox has occupied minds for centuries. One school of thought says that the tolerant system must arm itself against its own undermining. The other school of thought believes that a tolerant system cannot really call itself tolerant if it is also not tolerant of its opponents:
Let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
— Thomas Jefferson, First inaugural address (1801)
In the previous newsletter, we looked at the rise of Mussolini in the 1920’s, in Italy. Why were the voters fed up with democracy, and how did the fascists manage to take control?
In this newsletter, I will mainly discuss concrete cases that have occurred in history. Is there a real danger that voters will want to abolish democracy? Or is it mainly a theoretical problem?
A dive into history
Athens, 411 BCE
The abolition of Athenian democracy in 411 BCE. That was a long time ago. There are really only two sources about this event, Thucydides and Aristotle, who also contradict each other.
What was going on? The city-state of Athens had been at odds with Sparta for years. The burdens of the war weighed heavily. In 413 BCE the Athenian troops were defeated in an attempt to capture Syracuse (Sicily).
Athens had been a democracy for about a hundred years. All male citizens aged 18 and over met as an assembly. Decisions by majority of the votes. But in the background, the elite was pulling the strings. Democracy itself was contested among the elite. Some oligarchs saw the benefits. Democracy provided support and stability: citizens were proud of their city and its democratic values; the tax morale and the fighting spirit benefited. Other oligarchs had had enough of the endless bickering in the assembly and the peddling for the votes of the hoi polloi.
So there was a crisis in Athens. The coffers were empty; the wealthy elites had to replenish. In 411 BCE the popular assembly approved the appointment of a council of 400 that effectively took control. The 400 were not paid, so those who had to work for their money were not eligible. Later, citizenship was limited to 5,000 wealthy Athenians. These constitutional changes were orchestrated by a number of oligarchs. Financial support from Persia was promised to get the people to agree, and a number of democratic leaders were assassinated. For these reasons, the historian Donald Kagan in his standard work The Fall of the Athenian Empire (1987) called it an oligarchic coup, not a free election.
Rome, 1924
In the previous newsletter, I described the backgrounds of the election of Mussolini, who received 66 percent of the vote in 1924. But mind you, the victor was a multi-party coalition led by Mussolini, not only consisting of fascists. I didn't count it (you may try it here yourself), but the fascist candidates themselves may not have received a majority of the votes. In 1921 the fascists had not progressed beyond 20 percent.
Also, in the run-up to the 1924 elections, Mussolini never promised to send parliament home. He deliberately remained vague about this, so as not to stir up internal divisions about this and not to damage the chance of being elected.
But most importantly, Mussolini came to power through violence and intimidation. Fascist militias spread terror. The socialist Matteotti had already documented that in his book A year of fascist domination (1923). He speaks, among other things, about obscuring signatures, threatening civil-law notaries, and surrounding the house of a left-wing candidate. To illustrate, a few excerpts from Matteotti's speech in Parliament on May 30, 1924.
About Mussolini:
"that in any case - as he has stated repeatedly - he would have remained in power by force, even if…"
Voices on the right: "Yes, yes! We went to war!"
“To support this intention of the government, there is an armed militia…” (Loud and prolonged applause from the right and cries "Long live the militia")
Voices on the right: "The militia will burn you!"
Berlin, 1933
The election of Hitler in 1933. The history is familiar, we don't have to dwell on it for long. Hitler never received a majority of votes. In January 1933 he became chancellor in a coalition government. In the elections two months later, he received 44 percent of the vote. Those elections were accompanied by a lot of violence and intimidation. Nazi thugs disrupted socialist meetings, Red and Catholic newspapers were banned. The Enabling Act, which heralded the end of parliamentary democracy, received 69 percent of the vote in parliament. All parties except the socialists voted in favour.
Vichy, 1940
The unconditional transfer of power to marshal Pétain in Vichy France in 1940. After the enforced armistice with Hitler in 1940, the French parliament met in the Vichy opera house. By a majority vote, parliament decided to give marshal Pétain an unlimited mandate. The end of democracy.
Yet, this situation is an odd one. In Vichy, it was not the voters who abolished democracy: it was parliament. And in parliament, elected in 1936, there were few anti-democrats. The fascist Action Française had already been disbanded in 1936. The communists were strongly represented, but a large part of them had already fled the country. The decision in Vichy to abolish democracy was mainly taken by the parliamentarians of decent democratic parties.
The last three examples come from the Islamist movements.
Ankara, 1995
The Refah party led by Necmettin Erbakan won 21 percent of the vote in Turkey in 1995, and then formed a coalition government with another party. In 1998, the Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the party, citing a violation of Turkey's constitutional principle of secularism. The party appealed against the dissolution at the European Court of Human Rights. The court upheld the dissolution in 2003. The Refah Party was emphatically not anti-democratic: it never intended to abolish parliamentary democracy. The Refah Party was not violent either; it played fair in the elections; there has been no evidence of violence and intimidation surrounding those elections. The main objection concerned ideas within the party to allow sharia courts. In addition, the party had called out that its struggle was inspired by jihad.
Contrary to what you might think, jihad doesn’t mean struggle or holy war, but effort. Effort to deepen and spread Islam and to fight evil. The aim is for the whole world to be inhabited with exemplary Muslims. This can be done with the word or with the pen (by professing or spreading the faith). And it can also be done by the sword, by 'defending' Islam. The scope of jihad is controversial among Muslims. You have very peace-loving Muslims who would not even consider supporting armed ‘effort’, but you have other types as well. What kind of jihad the Refah party had in mind, was unclear.
As for those Sharia courts, formally speaking, they are a form of religious arbitration. The parties to the proceedings both feel bound by Islamic law and submit in advance to the verdict by the cleric. Arbitration occurs in all parts of the world and, as far as I know, is not seen as undermining the independence of the judiciary. If Turkey's constitutional court had found religious arbitration unconstitutional, it might have been able to block the establishment of sharia courts. For that reason, a total ban on the party might not have been necessary.
Whatever you may think of religious parties in a secular democracy, it is quite a stretch to declare constitutional secularism a principle of democratic order. It was Turkish state secularism that was possibly under threat, not democracy itself.
Algiers, 1991 and Cairo, 2012
Finally, the electoral victory of the Islamist FIS in Algeria in 1991 and the 2012 electoral victory of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The FIS received 48 percent of the vote in 1991. The alliance led by the Muslim Brothers received 37.5 percent of the vote in 2011. Their leader Morsi was elected president in the second round in 2012 with 52 percent. In both Algeria and Egypt, the Islamists were pushed aside by the army.
Neither the FIS nor the Muslim Brotherhood were explicitly anti-democratic, but they were firmly Islamist. A properly functioning democracy as we know it should not be expected from either movement. But well, democracy wasn’t functioning properly in Algeria and Egypt anyway.
What do we learn from this?
As different as the historical events are, there are also similarities.
We’ve come close, but there has never been an instance in history in which the majority of the electorate knowingly took a party to power that explicitly promised to abolish democracy.
Major support for undemocratic parties has almost always come about under heavy pressure, violence and manipulation.
In Italy, Germany and France, decent democratic parties were auxiliary in giving dictators a leg up.
The greatest threat today comes from the Islamists, although they are not necessarily anti-democratic.
Does that make the discussion about resilient democracy superfluous? Not necessarily.
In the first place, of course, it remains a theoretically interesting dilemma. Suppose the majority would consciously want to abolish democracy. Just because it has never happened obviously doesn't mean it can never happen in the future.
Secondly, anti-democratic parties can indeed gain a position of power through elections. Even from about twenty percent of the vote they can become an important power factor, and they can do a lot of damage to the rule of law, or they can try to seize power, as Hitler did.
But history can teach us more.
For example, electoral support for authoritarian parties generally increases as the democratic process is in a bigger mess.
Authoritarian parties usually resort to violence, manipulation and intimidation in the run-up to elections. Instead of their anti-democratic program, one might also tackle them for their subversive behaviour.
History is full of creeps who, once democratically elected, thoroughly undermined or even abolished the democratic system. This is much more common than democratic elections of anti-democratic parties.
To be continued…
This is the second episode in a series about political toleration. Here’s an overview of the articles in this series:
How Mussolini had a leader of the opposition assassinated
The assassination of the socialist politician Matteotti in 1924. The Italian elections of 1924 gave a majority to a dictatorship. In hindsight, should Mussolini's party have been banned?
What if the voter is fed up with democracy?
Is there a real danger that voters will want to abolish democracy? Or is it mainly a theoretical problem? The history of democracies that gave themselves up.
Should there be political toleration for intolerance?
Dead philosophers pondering the paradox of toleration. Is there room for anti-democrats in a democracy?
For these reasons, banning anti-democratic parties is a bad idea
In a democracy, the majority decides. If the majority wants someone else to decide from now on, so no longer the majority, then that is a great pity, but so be it.
These are good arguments for banning a political party
Non-violent parties should be banned that demand more room for themselves than for others, or who want to get rid of the system of overlapping consensus.
When should a political party get banned?
Let the voter decide. Except when free and fair periodic elections or unlimited opportunities for public discussion and unlimited provision of information are under threat.
How democracies can become tyrannical
Traits of intolerance in the democratic system. About discord and the common good, the tyranny of the majority, apathy, public choice and pathologic politicians.
Better alternatives for parliamentary democracy
Parliamentary democracy as the least intolerant system. Looking for a system with more legitimacy. About systemic criticism, Habermas' deliberative democracy, digital democracy, and sortition
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