Opinion Sur
This article attempts to trace the sociological roots of political polarization in the national and international arena and its relationship with democracy.
As I argued in a recent interview in an Argentine newspaper[i], democracy has a historical and philosophical justification: alternation in power in the hope that each successive ruler will be less arbitrary and despotic than the previous one. In this process, the participation of citizens is increasing. It is a long, incomplete process, and with ups and downs. That is its general appeal, although democratic practice has many stages and variations in each national context.
It began to be a mass democracy more than a century ago. There is a danger here: the possibility of becoming a totalitarian democracy, where a presumed general-will expressed at the ballot box might suppress other positions; in which whoever wins, wins everything and cannot accept dissidence. The danger has existed since its very foundation as an idea.
To avoid democratic overflow, a republican component was added in the West: an institutional structure that avoids the concentration of power. It is the tripartite division between a legislative power, an executive power, and a judicial power. That was the Anglo-Saxon model: popular participation without social overflow, without short-circuiting republican institutions.
Contemporary democracies have a strong populist and unitary bias. Consequently, they can generate a direct connection between the president and the people, without filters, where political parties and the division of powers are overlooked. The German sociologist Max Weber gave this version a name: plebiscitary democracy with strong leaders (Plebiszitaren Fuhrerdemokratie). This tendency is reinforced when there is polarization within society.
Let me explain. Political polarization (group adherence to intransigent positions) undermines the social component of democracy, which is civic culture. In my opinion, political polarization is a grammar of power, the same form with different contents. This means that first the fight is sought and then the pretext for it is searched. That is why it is transferred to any field.
This tendency stems from a rejection or resentment of a modern, complex, and anomic society. In this framework, some people bet on all or nothing. That kind of binary, blunt thinking reduces politics to a confrontation between friend and foe rather than a discussion between rivals capable of negotiating. The theorization of this polarization was made by another German theorist: Carl Schmitt. In polarization, civic culture does not exist, since coexistence, debate, commitment and alternation are rejected. This sharp division understands politics as a war and not as a space for discussion. It catches on in contexts of uncertainty in which societies are looking for quick solutions.
In many countries, this polarization sometimes occurred in terms of an idea of overflowing democracy: it generates the fear of leading to a totalitarian system, and then solutions were promoted (such as an authoritarian-military coup) to stop it. That is not alternation but a dangerous pendulum. Here comes into play a variable that I have studied in some detail: the role that fear plays in politics and in society.
We are in an era in which fear is often used excessively to mobilize an electorate politically. Insecurity, the rise in crime, or drug trafficking are exaggerated, to give examples. This type of mobilization of fear occurs today in many societies.
The fear of losing rights or being attacked is a mobilizing factor. The existence of an enemy, often fictitious, generates a situation disguised as an emergency that, in turn, leads to the demand for a strong authority. It is not a policy of mobilization based on hope, which is the antithesis of fear, for example a primary mobilization of the excluded who want to enter the system, but a policy that portends a more dangerous world, that is, a reactionary and defensive attitude.
How are the freedom of the individual, subjection, and fear linked? Just as there is a desire for freedom to get out of fear, there is also a fear of freedom. Faced with the anguish of being displaced and alone, the search for protection arises. This can be authoritarian, where someone indicates what to do, or communal, in the style of a tribe or herd.
There are two engines that drive social action: the desire for self-realization and the desire to give descendants a better future. When the future seems uncertain, the desire for order and security arises, that is, a demand for authoritarianism. The opposite would be that freedom means progress, tranquility, and increased happiness. But today, for example, in the ecological or climate change discourse there are warnings about a worse future, and anguish about the time to come. The same happens with technological emergences such as artificial intelligence. So, we want certainties. From there comes a resurgence of religions, but also of prejudices and everything that implies rejecting uncertainty and seeking salvation in a non-rational way. This has consequences on the geopolitical level.
In international relations today, each country is self-absorbed and clings to the traditional concept of sovereignty. It wants to live with its own and is suspicious of the neighbors. This is in profound contradiction with the increasingly urgent need to produce an international coordinated response to planetary challenges, which cannot be addressed from nationalism.
Today, in a globalized world with tensions between great powers, other countries may run the risk of being made to play in a game that is not necessarily theirs. In the new globalized struggle between the United States and China, which is being joined by other powers, a different country has to heed the warning made by Africans with the expression “when two elephants fight, the grass suffers.” And so it will be, as long as there is no glimpse of a new international order to replace the one we were used to and in plain sight is now dying.
[i] https://www.clarin.com/opinion/juan-corradi-polarizacion-politica-gramatica-poder-socava-democracias-dentro_0_PRROqBK95h.html
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