Last month, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden convened the Summit for Democracy, a three-day virtual gathering of leaders and representatives from more than one hundred countries, including Canada, who share at least one trait: a concern that democracy itself is under siege.
With democratic norms eroding throughout the West, and greater bellicosity from adversaries like China and Russia, the summit was overdue. A 2019 report from the University of Cambridge found that dissatisfaction with democracy has grown to its highest levels worldwide in over a quarter century. Harvard academic, Yascha Mounk warns that the free world is going through a period of “democratic deconsolidation.” His research suggests that fewer than half of people born after the 1980s in stalwart democracies like New Zealand and the Netherlands “believe it is essential to live in a democracy.”
This underlying fragility is giving rise to what liberal thinker Matthew Taylor has called the three Ps: “populism, polarization and pessimism” — sensibilities which are corrosive to democratic governance and which have only deepened during the pandemic.
Of course, the shortcomings and contradictions within democratic societies are well-known. In an era grappling with the virulence of anti-Black racism and other forms of discrimination, an era that struggles with low political participation, weakened media and pernicious forms of capitalism, the Summit should prompt introspection by democracies themselves.
This is why Yale scholar Hélène Landemore has called for an almost total rethink of how western democracies practice representative government. Writing in the pages of the current edition of Foreign Policy, Landemore demonstrates why she may be the most important democratic theorist working today. Her prescriptions for democratic renewal include a radical expansion in how everyday citizens can play a role in taking decisions and setting political priorities without themselves becoming politicians.
Central to her vision is the enfranchisement of randomly selected citizens to serve on policy juries and assemblies that can advise democratic governments on the fraught and intractable issues they must confront. By empowering and wiring citizen voices into the heart of government, Landemore believes we can demonstrate that the ideals of openness, reason and equality remain central to the democratic project.
Landemore points to countries like France, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, as well as to Canada, where over the past decade almost four hundred deliberative processes have taken place. These processes make up what the OECD has called a growing “deliberative wave.” By making space for more voices, citizens’ assemblies have been able to depolarize debate and create common ground for action on critical issues including climate change, marriage equality, minority rights, health care, electoral reform, urban planning and more.
But while the wave is building, more assemblies alone won’t be sufficient to turn the democratic tide. Deep democratic renewal will require a much more sweeping agenda that starts by reimagining how power is shared throughout society — not only in our parliaments.
Regrettably, the commitments Canada announced at the Summit fall far short of what Landemore proposes or what many others recommend. Rather than respond imaginatively, the Prime Minister announced only modest increases to a number of existing programs and reiterated commitments already underway. A promised centre on good governance is too vague to evaluate. A suggestion that young Canadians express themselves through his youth council is at best tokenistic. Meanwhile the Prime Minister stayed silent on real measures to promote trust and social cohesion, much less to address the role of political parties, and yes, the electoral system, in contributing to this malaise.
In this respect, the Summit on Democracy perhaps echoes the earliest COP Climate Summits where governments proved reluctant to acknowledge either the magnitude of the challenge or to act in a coordinated fashion. Decades would pass before the seminal Paris Agreement helped to secure real traction in the fight against the climate crisis.
Let’s hope that the Democracy Summit marks the start of a similar effort: to elevate the fate of liberal democracy to public attention and align national efforts towards securing its future. Like the climate fight, time is precious and massive change is required.
As both the Summit and Landemore remind us, democracy remains humanity’s most radical idea. For democracy to succeed, it must continually widen the agency, voice and efficacy of its citizens. Doing so requires reinvention and renewal.
Any form of government — democratic or authoritarian — is ultimately judged on its ability to deliver goods: peace, human rights, economic prosperity and increasingly environmental and climatic action.
It’s time to shake off our complacency and show that democracies can both adapt and deliver.
Photo courtesy of iStock
