The Modernization Imperative by Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras

Author:Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Democracy, society, hierarchy, government, economy, politics, public administration, law, armed forces, economics, religion, education, health, mass media, modernization, modernisation, social systems, adaptive complexity, efficiency, science, market economy, democratic politics, social cohesion, economism, social progress, morality, environmentalism, systems theory
ISBN: 9781845406738
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2017
Published: 2017-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

IV. The priority of process

Democracy is therefore a system of government in which the democratic process is given priority over specific political programmes. Since democracy depends upon the maintenance of a system for exchanging office holders, in effect the members of a democracy tacitly agree that maintaining this process for exchanging office holders is itself more important than the outcome of the process. Democracy is more important than whether your favoured party becomes office holder. Interestingly, this implies a decision to act as if the democratic process is more likely to be correct than one’s own favoured political programme. There is a practical deference to process.

By contrast, when moral evaluations are prominent in a political system this has a divisive effects on the population of the country which may make exchange of office so difficult as to be accomplished only by coercion (i.e. revolution). Moral politics divides the country into ‘us and them’, where the opposition are not merely mistaken but morally inferior - perhaps even wicked. Since these moral divisions follow party lines they also tend to run in families and vary according to geography and occupation. This leads into a polarized situation in which some individuals, families, regions, jobs, ethnic groups are regarded as evil. The country becomes morally - as well as politically - divided.

Democracy requires a certain coolness or detachment about who holds office. In practice, this necessary detachment can only be exercised when the range of political options are such that individuals or parties who actually are considered immoral are excluded from the democratic process. For example, the existence of an explicitly fascist and racist political party is outwith the moral bounds of acceptability in current British politics, since the election of such a party would probably be regarded as not just politically mistaken, but morally unacceptable in such a way as to lead to action in defiance of the democratic process - and this defiance would threaten democratic processes.

It is a crucial point that democratic politics can only operate among choices that the participating public regard as acceptable. Tolerance is limited to that which is tolerable if elected. Of course, not all views coincide as to what is tolerable, and this will vary in different societies and at different times. In the end, the limits of tolerance are defined by those of interest groups which are powerful enough to subvert the democratic process if groups that they find intolerable are elected. When this is the case, democracy is in danger and the coercion of totalitarianism is made more likely.

One of the main functions served by electoral boundaries (especially the boundaries of nation states) is generating sufficiently homogeneous moral communities such that within them democratic processes can operate. Successful democratic nation states are groups within which the political programmes offered during elections are all within the bounds of the morally-acceptable to all the significant interest groups. Democratic groupings cannot be larger than this, and when the range of tolerance diverges too far within one nation

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.