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DEMOCRACY ISN’T DECLINING; IT’S THE NATION-STATE

 * admin
 * October 19, 2024
 * NEWS

Democracy is not in decline. The nation-state is.
That distinction — between democracy and the nation-state — might seem strange
because it is so rare. When people around the world talk about how democracy is
doing, we talk about democracy almost exclusively at the national level.
We see this every year, when think tanks issue rankings on the state of
democracy — that consider the national governments only.
Take International IDEA, a Sweden-based intergovernmental organization that, in
its Global State of Democracy Report, declared that democracy remained in
decline because only one in four nations was becoming more democratic, while
four in nine nations were becoming less so.
Similarly, Freedom House, based in Washington DC, points to growing numbers of
nation states with problematic elections and armed conflict to declare that this
is the 18th consecutive year of decline.
And Varieties of Democracy, a global think tank, says that democracy has been in
decline for 15 years because the share of the population living in nations that
are becoming more autocratic is higher than the share living in democratising
countries.
To be sure, these national level trends are not good news. But they paint a
misleading picture of the state of democracy on this planet, for three big
reasons.
The first is rather obvious. Democracy is self-government, the business of
everyday people governing themselves. And most democracy on this planet takes
place where most people experience the ins and outs of their day-to-day
existence — in local communities, rather than at the national level.
Second, these global rankings of democracy rest heavily on elections, which are
only one democratic process. Yes, trust and participation in elections is
declining. But other forms of democracy — direct democracy (initiative and
referenda), participatory democracy (as in budgeting), deliberative democracy
(like citizens assemblies) and digital democracy (platforms like Pol.is and
Decidim) — are growing. Their use has become even more commonplace at the local
level.
The third reason is the most fundamental. Nation-states everywhere — be they
more democratic or more authoritarian — are in crisis, with their rulers losing
the ability to govern their own countries. The United States, as a nation, is in
danger of breaking apart. So, too, is Russia, which is caught up in a war in
Ukraine and suffering long-term declines in the health and life spans of its
people. Germany is losing its dynamism and cohesion, for sure, but so is China.
Why is this happening?
Nation-states simply can’t manage up or manage down in the 21st century world.
Looking up, nation-states have proven incapable of handling planetary forces and
threats — climate change, finance and capital flows, technological advances,
disease, religious-oriented terrorism. Looking down, nation-states can no longer
unify their peoples. Instead, national leaders routinely exploit divides to
maintain power.
Almost all wars are now between groups of people inside nation-states that are
breaking down. Many civil wars have been internationalised by other
nation-states, as in Sudan’s current civil war, fueled by Russia and the United
Arab Emirates, which has displaced millions, starved hundreds of thousands to
death, and caused the destruction of the city of Khartoum.
The void left by the decline of the nation-state is frightening because it could
lead to violence as our world’s governance infrastructure falls apart. But that
same void also represents an enormous opportunity for democracy, particularly
those forms of democracy being practised more often on the local level.
Attacks on democracy also are redounding to democracy’s favour. Ukraine, amid
Vladimir Putin’s invasion, is awash in ambitious local plans for rebuilding
cities in more democratic ways.
Around the world, alliances of cities are working together to address climate
change, poverty, and other problems that the failing nation-states can’t solve.
These alliances, which often combine democratic processes with technocratic
expertise, point the way to a brighter future, in which stronger and more
democratic local governments handle more of their own problems, together.
Visions of a local planetary replacement for the nation-state system might be
dismissed as implausible, but the nation-state idea dates only to 1648, and the
modern nation-state is less than a century old. It is obviously vulnerable.
And democracy — and particularly the people-driven forms of democracy now on the
rise at the local level — is our best bet to replace that system. ©Zócalo Public
Square
Joe Mathews is a columnist for Zócalo Public Square and the founder of the
planetary publication Democracy Local.


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