Conclusions to Forum 5: Do we live in a democracy?

Is ours a real democracy? This was the question around which our second forum this year was organised. The question, we must admit, had at a first sight an apparently obvious answer. However, as we were able to see through all our comments, obviousness is far from being the more consistent attribute of this topic. Just considering the main possible answers given during this debate could account for this. Although simplifying the nature of most of your comments, it is possible to identify three clear stances:

• Some people answered affirmatively to the question at the beginning, considering that there’s no doubt we live in a democracy.
• Some others, on the contrary, doubted whether ours is a real democracy, and carefully proposed that we live in a false democracy.
• Others, however, defended arguments from both previous stances, arriving at the conclusion that although we live in democracy, this is not a full one.

In reality, each different alternative appears equally valid and it would not be serious to say any of them is wrong. But we still have a difference; how can we account for it then? I think what makes these three options differ is perhaps the fact that each of them implies a different conception of what democracy is. For those adhering to the first option, democracy seems to be characterized by popular sovereignty, which implies that people is the source of any political power. For those who agree that we live in a democracy, the fact that we have the right to vote our representatives would be proof enough of our political power as citizens.

Those taking part for the second option, however, seem to interpret that democracy goes beyond the right to vote. For these people, democracy needs some preconditions without which open elections are no more than a form without content. Some common preconditions are equality of rights, equality of education, similar access to the media and to campaign funds for all political parties, direct participation in political decisions by means of popular consultations and, perhaps more importantly, actual limits and control over those chosen as representatives. Honestly, none of these preconditions has ever been effective in our country, which has not only limited the political options to the preponderance of a few changing and contradictory parties, but has also scared youth off from politics in the last decades. Then it looks quite natural for those who think participation, plurality and the discussion of ideas are essential to democracy, to doubt in calling this a real one.

Democracy Index (The Economist, 2007). More democratic nations in paler blue.

Finally, the third group could be read as a combination of the former two. They seem to look at democracy not as a definite political fact, but as a gradient, where a wide spectrum of forms that are still democratic in nature can take place. For these people, although we vote and have laws that orientate our nation in a democratic fashion, this is an incomplete democracy that can be improved with time and participation.

As I said before, all perceptions are valid. There’s no agreed definition of what democracy is. This should tell us something about the complexity of the term. But also about its malleability. In a way, we can make democracy look the way we want it. Because each nation creates its own image of what democracy is. Some countries tolerate corruption, some others not; some countries tolerate class differences, some others not; some tolerate poverty, and some not. Democracy means a different thing in each of these countries, just as it means different things among ourselves. Perhaps, better than asking about whether or not we live in a democracy, we should have asked what do we want our democracy to look like. Do you think we would have agreed?

In green, nations claiming themselves as democratic.