Abstract
Current threats and developments raise the question whether democracy still functions. This chapter provides a philosophical analysis of democracy as a political regime and as a ‘form’ of society. The essence of democracy will be addressed by using the ideas of Lefort and Arendt; while the concept of a ‘regime’ is studied by analysing key texts of Plato and Aristotle, stating that this regime constitutes a society that is open to the possibility. The ‘openness’ of democracy is then compared to the ontological inversion of the Aristotelian ontology by Heidegger; democratic openness is an openness to the unexpected and the possible. This means that this ‘possibility’ can also be undemocratic. Therefore, the ‘Weimarian’ debate between Kelsen and Schmitt on a ‘constitutional dictatorship’ is discussed, that is a dictatorship in its classical sense (as a Roman legal concept), in order to defend the state and the legal order during a state of emergency. This chapter will, however, argue for deriving the militancy of democracy from within democracy itself, rather than from the constitutional state (rechtsstaat), by analyzing Derrida’s concept of ‘democracy to come’ and Montesquieu’s view on democracy. The chapter concludes by stating that democracy is indeed a fragile regime – it produces a conflictual form of society and is constantly exposed to internal and external threats – but remains a convincing regime.
Higher than actuality stands possibility.
Martin Heidegger (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell 1995, p. 63.)
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Dutch as: Afshin Ellian. 2018. ‘L’amour de la démocratie versus de dictatuur van de rechtsstaat. De weerbaarheid van de democratie zelf’. In De Strijd om de democratie: essays over democratische zelfverdediging, ed. Afshin Ellian, Gelijn Molier and Bastiaan Rijpkema, 155-195. Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers.
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Notes
- 1.
Chérif 2008, p. 53.
- 2.
- 3.
Chérif 2008, p. 42.
- 4.
Cf. Jasper Doomen, ‘Mitigated Democracy.’ Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie vol. 102, no. 2, p. 293.
- 5.
Loose 1997, p. 170.
- 6.
Loose 1997, p. 170.
- 7.
In a broader context, Carl Schmitt says: ‘All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts (...).’ Schmitt 2005, p. 36.
- 8.
According to Adolf von Harnack, Martin Luther is in several respects an old-Catholic phenomenon. At the same time, he famously concludes, in his comprehensive study of Christian dogmas, that Luther inaugurated the modern era by hammering his theses to the church in Wittenberg. Von Harnack 1893, p. 541ff.
- 9.
Nietzsche 1893, p. 15.
- 10.
Fukuyama 1992, pp. 211–212.
- 11.
The following reconstruction is based on the most recent study of this history: Plokhy 2014, pp. 319–406.
- 12.
Glass 2011.
- 13.
Plokhy 2014, p.309.
- 14.
Garry Kasparov writes, in his chilling account of the rise and fall of democracy in Russia, that Putin disposes, just like many other modern autocrats, of means, ‘an advantage the Soviet leadership could never have dreamed of: deep economic and political engagement with the free world.’ Kasparov 2015, p. xiv.
- 15.
Leiden professor of Turkish studies Erik-Jan Zürcher was positive that Turkey was moving ever closer towards Europe. He denounced his own analysis with respect to Turkey and Erdoğan in 2016, and sent back the prestigious award he had received in 2005 to the Turkish government. ‘Europa moet vooral kappen met Turkije’, in: De Volkskrant of May 14, 2016.
- 16.
Plato 1888, 546a.
- 17.
- 18.
Plato 2006b, p. 249.
- 19.
Plato 1888, 557a.
- 20.
Plato 1888, 557c.
- 21.
Plato 1888, 562a.
- 22.
Plato 1888, 562c, d.
- 23.
- 24.
Plato 1888, 564a.
- 25.
Plato 1888, 573c
- 26.
Aristotle 1916, 1288b. The original Greek text can be found in: Aristotle Politics, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press 2005.
- 27.
Aristotle 1916, 1288b.
- 28.
Aristotle 1916, 1289a.
- 29.
Aristotle 1916, 1289a.
- 30.
Aristotle 1916, 1285a.
- 31.
Aristotle’s spirit lived on in Montesquieu’s work, the latter distinguishing three distinct regimes, namely, republic, monarchy and despotism. He discusses the relations between laws and forms of government as well as the decay of each constitution in particular. There is no mention of a revolution to realize a regime change beyond the purview of cyclical forms of government; he rather associates each regime form with a specific principle of its own. Once that principle is corrupted or neglected, the constitution decays. See Montesquieu 2000, pp. 10–11.
- 32.
In his chapter dealing with politeia, Aristotle discusses the reciprocity between the laws and the excellence of those who create them: ‘(…) it appears to be an impossible thing that the state which is governed by the best citizens should be ill-governed, and equally impossible that the state which is ill-governed should be governed by the best.’ Aristotle 1916, 1294a.
- 33.
Arendt 1990, p. 20.
- 34.
Schmitt 2007, p. 28–29.
- 35.
Aristotle 1916, 1298a.
- 36.
Thomas Aquinas’ De Regimine Principum ad Regem Cypri is an example of a reasoning of how a despot may be deposed. A modern translation is Über die Herrschaft der Fürsten, (On Kingship. To the king of Cyprus) Stuttgart: Reclam 1971.
- 37.
John Adams, one of the leader of the American Revolution and the second president of the United States, had, as becomes apparent from his essays, carefully studied the Italian city-states. Vide Adams 2004, pp. 291–335.
- 38.
Arendt 1990, p. 36.
- 39.
In his Politik als Beruf (1919), Max Weber continues along the lines of Machiavelli: ‘It is the specific means of the legitimate use of violence as such, in the hand of human associations, which determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics. He who always realizes contracts by this means, to whatever ends – and every politician acts thus –, is delivered to its specific consequences.’ Weber 1919, p. 61, 62.
- 40.
Israel 1996, p. 261–304.
- 41.
See, e.g., Federalist no. 20 (Madison to Hamilton). Hamilton et al. 2000, pp. 118–123.
- 42.
Ellis 2007, p. 21.
- 43.
- 44.
Arendt 1979, p. 464; cf. p. 466, where Arendt states that the essence of totalitarian government is total terror.
- 45.
- 46.
Lefort 1988, pp. 12–13.
- 47.
Lefort 1986b, p. 303.
- 48.
Lefort 1986b, pp. 303–304.
- 49.
Lefort 1986b, p. 304.
- 50.
Lefort 1986b, p. 303.
- 51.
Arendt 1998, p. 52.
- 52.
Arendt 1998, p. 53.
- 53.
Lefort 1986b, p. 279.
- 54.
Lefort 1988, p. 16.
- 55.
Lefort 2000, p. 266.
- 56.
‘Someone who exercises some public responsibility is under no obligation to take an oath of faithfulness to the constitution. It is perfectly possible for this or that person to flaunt his contempt for elections, for the decisions of the majority, for the demagogy of parties, and at the same time to display a desire for independence, a freedom of thought and speech, a sensitivity to other, an investigation of the self, a curiosity for foreign or former cultures. All of these displays bear the mark of the democratic spirit.’ Lefort 2000, p. 266.
- 57.
Lefort 2007, p. 624.
- 58.
Habermas ’ ‘Diskursbegriff der Demokratie’ does not provide a solution for the democratic crises, either. He attempts to replace democracy by rationality, inventing, along the way, new concepts to formulate a rational utopia. See Habermas 2007, pp. 302–315.
- 59.
Kelsen 2000, p. 108.
- 60.
Kelsen 2000, p. 86.
- 61.
Kelsen 2000, p. 88.
- 62.
Kelsen 2006, p. 237 (translated from the German by the author, AE).
- 63.
John Keegan opens his book on World War I with the observation that it was an unnecessary and tragic conflict. The author does not, unfortunately, discuss the issue of democracy in this study and deals with the Russian February Revolution merely summarily. See Keegan 1998, pp. 358–369.
- 64.
- 65.
Rousseau 1763, p. 50.
- 66.
Rousseau 1763, p. 50.
- 67.
The original text reads: ‘(…) ‘conformer leurs volontés à leur raison.’ Rousseau 1763, p. 51.
- 68.
Schmitt 1988, p. 13.
- 69.
An absolute equality of all human beings without the necessary correlate of inequality is, according to Schmitt, both conceptually and practically void. See Schmitt 1988, p. 12.
- 70.
Schmitt 1988, p. 9.
- 71.
Doomen 2014, pp. 35–43.
- 72.
Schmitt 1996, p. 7.
- 73.
The relation between what is liberal and what is democratic is problematic against the backdrop of the so-called neoliberal economic developments. See Dallmayr, pp. 169–179.
- 74.
Laski 1921, p. 36.
- 75.
Schmitt 1988, p. 15.
- 76.
Farrell 2003, p. 125.
- 77.
Schmitt 1988, p. 16.
- 78.
For clarity: I am not concerned here with the issue whether a referendum is a proper instrument.
- 79.
Translated by Randall Bytwerk in the German Propaganda Archive, see: http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/angrif06.htm. The original text, from Der Angriff (April 30, 1928).
- 80.
‘In the beginning was the end: the sate crisis of 1933 was prefigured in the turbulence of the first years, and neither the practice of emergency government nor the interpretation of its constitutional foundation in Article 48 can be understood from the last year alone.’ Ellen Kennedy 2004, p. 155.
- 81.
Kershaw 1998, p. 333.
- 82.
Kershaw 1998, p. 409.
- 83.
Schmitt 2004, p. 94.
- 84.
Schmitt 1988, p. 76.
- 85.
Cf. Kennedy 2004.
- 86.
Rossiter 2002 (1948), pp. 3–48.
- 87.
Bodin even reserves a chapter to provide an answer to the question under which circumstances it is permitted to terminate the life of a tyrant and to recall the laws he has created. See Bodin 1992, pp. 110–126.
- 88.
Schmitt 2014, pp. 105–111.
- 89.
Rousseau 1763, p. 135.
- 90.
Schmitt 2014, pp. 127–128.
- 91.
Schmitt 2014, p. 119.
- 92.
Lefort 1986b, p. 276.
- 93.
Schmitt 2014, pp. 123–124.
- 94.
Schmitt 1988, p. 72.
- 95.
I am not concerned here with the philosophical debate on the state of exception, which is discussed in: Ellian 2012, pp. 23–69.
- 96.
Van den Bergh’s inaugural lecture ‘De democratische Staat en de niet-democratische partijen (1936)’, reprinted in Van den Bergh 2014, p. 143.
- 97.
Van den Bergh 2014, p. 129.
- 98.
Rijpkema 2015, p. 155.
- 99.
Rijpkema 2015, pp. 148ff.
- 100.
Rijpkema formulates three necessary conditions for a democratic self-correction to be realized: evaluation (through elections), political competition (realized by the participation to these elections of several political parties or individual candidates) and freedom of expression. See Rijpkema 2015, p. 177.
- 101.
Hans Kelsen 2006, p. 238.
- 102.
Montesquieu 2000, p. 112.
- 103.
Montesquieu 2000, p. 167.
- 104.
Montesquieu 2000, p. 43.
- 105.
See Dallmayr, pp. 10–11.
- 106.
Müller 2016, p. 3.
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Ellian, A. (2018). L’amour de la démocratie versus the Dictatorship of the Constitutional State (Rechtsstaat). The Defense in Democracy Itself. In: Ellian, A., Rijpkema, B. (eds) Militant Democracy – Political Science, Law and Philosophy. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97004-2_8
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