Ivo Mosley (Exeter, imprint academic at the Political Studies Association Swansea ) With the idea that a general decline in ‘democracy’ is on many people’s minds, I search for a panel on the issue. I find one - on the need for popular participation to bring democracy back to life - and after a walk down many corridors I get to a small room inhabited by eight of the conference’s thousand-odd participants. I learn of the heroic efforts of the Scots and their parliament. Gordon Heggie describes his attempts to hold the Scottish Parliament true to its promises of encouraging popular participation in government. To the elected representatives this means being available for a chat, but Heggie’s idea is of citizens’ forums discussing issues and the results being fed into the political process. His attempts meet with failure, he reports: the representatives treat civic forums as competition; electoral representation and popular democracy, it seems, are oil and water. For representatives to encourage popular participation would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Next, Keith Sutherland outlines a way of returning to the original idea of democracy - votes in the legislature by ordinary citizens (selected by lot as juries are selected today) after listening to argument by informed and interested advocates. Even in this tiny and specialised audience, his suggestions are greeted with blank stares and no questions; it is obviously not on the academic agenda to consider the elimination of party politics in which so much research has been invested. Again, a case of turkeys not voting for Christmas, for academia is heavily involved in the transformation of politics, which used to be concerned with the overall rule of law and the management of foreign affairs, but has become the micromanagement of all our lives.
Back to the Imprint Academic stall, where I find we have sold three books; a reminder that these conferences are more about career opportunities than solving the conundrum of why we humans find the management of our common affairs so difficult.
Finally, a keynote address: Andrew Gamble, now a professor at Cambridge, on ‘The Western Ideology’. His topic is the neo-liberalist ascendancy, history of. At pains to be non-judgemental, he annoys some of the more impassioned members of the audience. The promise of the Enlightenment, to ‘strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest’, may have been made good in that we are not actually ruled by monarchs; but the sinful individualisms of priests and kings have been replaced by the corporatist powers of government and big business, headed by smiling malice-tanks called politicians and CEO’s (I use the word malice because their motivation is always power, which in Burckhardt’s words is ‘in itself evil’). The accountability of elections every few years has proved no safeguard for the vulnerable and weak; and the pretence that neo-liberalism operates on anyone’s behalf rather than the hierarchy of global kleptocracy is a lie as great as told before.
Andrew Gamble used none of these emotive words in his historical outline, but he did ask the question, ‘How long will the Western hegemony last?’ Will the Chinese, or the Indians, come up with new political models alongside the economic success that is challenging the North Atlantic ascendancy? Perhaps, but it might be better to make the effort ourselves, to heal the gulf between the ‘democracy and freedom we have promised and the mendacious and de-culturing corporate capitalism we have actually delivered. I'm enjoying this!
