ONE of the
underlying issues that has troubled democracies from the start is the
relationship between the majority and the minority. If democracy means merely
"rule by the majority" then the minorities can suffer considerably;
as, for example, in Northern Ireland where a Protestant majority discriminated
against a Catholic minority for several decades.
The struggles of European democracies in the
inter-war years were, in part, down to the difficulty of dealing with
minorities within their borders; although Woodrow Wilson had promoted
"self-determination", populations were not neatly divided enough to
make the idea feasible. Indeed, as Margaret MacMillian points out in her
excellent book "The Uses and Abuses of History", most people did not
think of themselves in national terms until recently; as late as the 1950s, it
was possible to find Sicilians who had never heard of Italy. The forced
migrations of the 1940s made national populations more homogenous and may have
made it easier for democracies to succeed (along with prosperity, of course) in
the post-war period. But most countries are grappling with the minority problem
once again.
Here there is the great potential for a
clash between the elite, which has been seen to promote mass immigration, and
the rest. The clash is not just the result of Labour market competition putting
pressure on wages but from a sense that countries have undergone cultural
change without consent (see this report on the views of those who vote for the
populist right). The Swiss referendum vote on immigration reflects some of this
resentment.
But it also illustrates another problem with
democracy; voters can vote as often as they like but they can't always get what
they want. Switzerland has signed agreements with the EU that make it
impossible for it to impose immigration quotas, as the vote requires. So
renegotiate the agreements! But the EU says you can't have it both ways; if you
want free trade, you must have Labour market mobility. So scrap the agreements!
But what if this will cause immense damage to the Swiss economy? Is that really
what voters want?
To go back to the Swiss, the voters may want
a solution that their leaders cannot deliver. There is a parallel with the
British campaign to renegotiate EU membership terms before a referendum in
2017. Politicians can piously state that the EU will offer Britain a better
deal; but in practice, concessions will be minimal. Another example might be
voters in the European periphery who want EU aid without the austerity
conditions that are attached. They suffer a loss of democracy if decisions over
tax and spending measures are taken in Brussels or Frankfurt. But voters in the
core EU countries may not be willing to lend money without those conditions. So
which democracy wins? Or is democracy, in practice, irrelevant; this is an
example of realpolitik in which the creditors get what they want.
Another related issue, between localism and
democracy, can be seen in Britain at the moment. A series of storms is sweeping
over Britain, and the resultant rain is flooding areas of the south-west and
south-east. Such storms may be more common because of the effect of climate
change on the jet stream (at least, that's what the Met office thinks). So that
raises a problem for those parts of the country that are below sea level, or in
the flood plain.
How much do such localities have the right
to demand expensive flood defenses that they cannot afford on their own account
(i.e., can local voters have what they want)? Or since the money comes from the
national coffers, is it the right of the national government to make
hard-headed decisions about cost effectiveness? It is not automatically the
case that the majority interest will win out. This could be an example of
Mancur Olson's logic of collective action; the defenses are worth a lot to
those who live in the affected regions while the cost to the rest of the
country is spread among 60m citizens.
Get ready for more of these conflicts.
Sluggish economic growth in the face of ageing populations is one reason; but
another is that societal problems do not fit neatly into national boundaries.
Some problems - climate change, tax evasion - require international
co-operation, whereas others - where to site a nuclear power plant - pit local
against national interests. The west does not have clear rules over how to
resolve these issues.
(Source: economist.com)
