The G7 along with the outreach countries – the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, the US and the European Union – issued an “Open Societies” statement on June 13, 2021, reiterating their commitment to human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“We are at a critical juncture, facing threats to freedom and democracy from rising authoritarianism, electoral interference, corruption, economic coercion, manipulation of information, including disinformation, online harms and cyber attacks, politically motivated Internet shutdowns, human rights violations and abuses, terrorism and violent extremism. We also face threats to our social fabric from persistent inequalities and discrimination, including racism and resistance to gender equality. In the midst of these threats, we will work together to create an open and inclusive rules-based international order for the future that promotes universal human rights and equal opportunities for all,” the statement declared.
It emphasised the strengthening of open societies globally by protecting civic space and media freedom, promoting freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. The agenda of promoting the idea of an open society globally is a commendable initiative, indeed.
The concept of an open society was most notably elaborated by Karl Popper in his The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). He said that modern civilisation, which is still in its infancy, is perhaps aiming at humanness and reasonableness, and equality and freedom. “This civilisation has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth – the transition from the tribal or ‘closed society’, with its submission to magical forces, to the ‘open society’ which sets free the critical powers of man,” said Popper.
He observed that the shock of the transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilisation and to return to tribalism. The origins of tribalism and totalitarianism are as old as human civilisation; it should be understood thoroughly and be fought against persistently.
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Populism as the new enemy
The greatest threat to open society in our times is posed by authoritarian populism. Jan-Werner Muller, in What is Populism? (2017), points out that populists are always anti-pluralist. Populists claim that they, and they alone, represent people.
Turkish populist President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, in the AK Party’s Congress, declared in defiance of his numerous critics, “We are the people, who are you?’’ This is the universal tune of populist politics. Populism is an exclusionary form of identity politics that poses a danger to democracy as democracy requires pluralism and the recognition that we need to find fair terms of living together as free, equal, but also irreducibly diverse citizens. The populist idea of homogeneous and authentic people is a dangerous and inhumane fantasy.
“Populist governance exhibits three features: attempts to hijack the state apparatus, corruption and ‘mass clientelism’ (trading material benefits or bureaucratic favours for political support by citizens who become the populists’ ‘clients’), and efforts systematically to suppress civil society’,” opined Jan-Werner Muller.
Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History (1992) thesis argued that there were no more rivals to liberal democracy at the level of ideas. He predicted that only religious fundamentalism, a fringe ideology, may challenge liberal democracy in future. Democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term, although it may suffer “temporary” setbacks, he argued. Whether populism is merely a temporary setback to liberal democracy or a formidable rival is a debatable topic. Yet there is the likelihood of its frequent recurrence in the contemporary world.
“The danger to democracies today is not some comprehensive ideology that systematically denies democratic ideals. The danger is populism – a degraded form of democracy that promises to make good on democracy’s highest ideals (‘Let the people rule!’). The danger comes, in other words, from within the democratic world – the political actors posing danger speak the language of democratic values. That the end result is a form of politics that is blatantly antidemocratic should trouble us all – and demonstrate the need for nuanced political judgement to help us determine precisely where democracy ends and populist peril begins,” wrote Jan-Werner Muller.
Delineating democracy from populism is a precondition for fighting out the totalitarian tendencies of populism.
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Basharat Peer in A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen (2017) examined what happens when a democratically elected leader evolves into an authoritarian ruler, limiting press freedom, civil liberties and religious and ethnic tolerance; comparing contemporary politics in India and Turkey, two of the world’s biggest democracies – multi-ethnic nations that rose from their imperial past to be founded on the values of modernity. They have fair elections, open markets and freedom of religion. Yet the charismatic populist strongmen – Narendra Modi in India and Erdogan in Turkey – used the power they had won as elected heads of state to push their countries toward authoritarian ways. This phenomenon amply demonstrates the danger that populism poses to liberal democracy in the contemporary world.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference to present the outcome of the G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Wolfgang Rattay
Robert Alan Dahl propounded the pluralist theory of democracy – in which political outcomes are enacted through competitive, if unequal, interest groups – and introduced “polyarchy” as a descriptor of actual democratic governance. Polyarchies have elected officials, free and fair elections, inclusive suffrage, and rights to run for office, freedom of expression, alternative information and associational autonomy. It is a sophisticated and advanced version of democracy. The effective participation of all citizens in public agenda setting, voting equality at the decisive stage, citizen’s enlightened understanding of public affairs, control of the agenda, inclusiveness in political process are the five elements of polyarchy. No modern country meets the ideal of polyarchy, which is a theoretical utopia. Yet it is a destination worth travelling to.
The agenda ahead of the G7 and its outreach allies, as the vanguards of liberal democracy, should be containing nascent populism and pursuing a long journey to polyarchy. The Open Societies statement by the G7 leaders would hopefully furnish a floor plan for such an agenda.
Faisal C.K. is an independent researcher.
