Conversations with Tocqueville: The Global Democratic Revolution in the Twenty-first Century by Craiutu Aurelian Gellar Sheldon

Author:Craiutu, Aurelian,Gellar, Sheldon [Craiutu, Aurelian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461633242
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2013-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

Three Possible Scenarios

As a conclusion, we wish to discuss the implications of our observation in the form of three possible future scenarios. We call our first scenario managed decadence. The failure to construct a credible and permanent governing coalition will reinforce trends toward citizens’ entrenchment into the private realm rather than increased civic participation. Failing to develop a stable governing coalition might encourage regional or corporatist elites—from local bosses to drug dealers, union leaders, and corporate business— to entrench themselves in the territories or economic segments that they control. This in turn would weaken the accountability of national governments and further deepen social fragmentation and different forms of de facto secession. Many Andean countries, as well as some countries in Central America, could fall into this scenario.

A second possible scenario would be that of a conservative restoration. It may assume either a leftist or a rightist discourse. As Laclau wrote:

It is enough that the empty popular signifiers keep their radicalism—that is, their ability to divide society into two camps... for the political meaning of the whole populist operation to acquire an opposite political sign. The twentieth century provides countless examples of these reversals. In America, the signifiers of popular radicalism, which at the time of the New Deal had a mainly left-wing connotation, are later expropriated by the radical Right, from George Wallace to the ‘Moral Majority.’60

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