Direct Democracy

"Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which people decide on policy initiatives directly. This differs from the majority of most currently established democracies, which are representative democracies."

"A type of government where the power lies directly in the hands of the people instead of representatives."

... it can generally be said that during the 20th century democracy has become, as Hans-Peter Kriesi affirms, the “only legitimate [political; LP] game in town” (Kriesi 2013, 1). ... democracy inherently entails that people have the rights and capabilities to co-determine their shared social conditions.

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democracy inherently entails that people have the rights and capabilities to co-determine their shared social conditions

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1.2. Models of Democracy

In discussing the question whether contemporary democracy is in a crisis, Wolfgang Merkel distinguishes between minimalist, medium-range and maximalist models of democracy. Merkel associates the minimalist model with Joseph Schumpeter’s competitive and elitist model of democracy. Here, “free, equal, and secret ballots are not only the core of democracy, but democracy itself” (Merkel 2014b, 12). Other names for this type of democracy are, for example, Max Weber’s “plebiscitary leadership democracy” (Held 1987, 158) or the “pluralist elitist equilibrium model” (Macpherson 1977, 77). Competitive elitist democracy emphasizes the existence of social inequality in the form of a ruling elite as political producers vis-à-vis the less well-off and less educated masses as political consumers. The model presupposes a pyramidal and bureaucratic structure of society and is based on what Vincent Ostrom calls “machine politics and boss rule” (V. Ostrom 1997, 19). Political power is located at the center and top of society and is made responsive and vertically accountable through competitive elections. Due to the danger of such centralized power, this competitive elitist model of democracy is often coupled with protective and legal models of democracy (Held 1987, 37-71, 243-254, Macpherson 1977, 23-43). To further limit the power of the state and the representatives in office, the minimalist concept of democracy also requires a clear separation of the public from the private and of political from economic spheres. This separation supposedly provides people with a realm of private economic freedom that protects them from state coercion. This is what is normally understood as negative freedom: The freedom from arbitrary interference by the state or public (Berlin 2008, 169-78). In turn, this freedom also disciplines the state through the power of private individuals, which is mostly based on their “countervailing power of private capital” (Held 1987, 160). We will return to this model of democracy when discussing the justification of open and competitive markets later. According to Wolfgang Merkel, this minimalist model does not provide us with the information to discern whether a democracy exists or is in crisis because we cannot know whether the elected representatives are governing on behalf of the people or “on behalf of large corporations, banks, lobbies, and supranational regimes” (Merkel 2014, 13).

In comparison to this minimalist model, Merkel argues that a medium-range democracy goes beyond periodic elections and vertical accountability. Here, he argues that a medium-range democracy must be “embedded in guaranteed human and civil rights and in checks and balances” (Merkel 2014, 13). Although Wolfgang Merkel only discusses the rule of law as a central element of democracy in the mid-range model, I would argue that Merkel does not differentiate between specific types of the rule of law. In a minimalist model, the rule of law is limited to the protection of private property, the enforcement of contracts and the guarantee of periodic elections. In the medium-range model, the rule of law is extended to other civil rights which include, most importantly, the right to participation in political decision-making processes (Merkel 2015, 12). This comes close to Cheneval’s second definition of the adjective “democratic”, which “means a decision- making procedure of a political community or people, in which all citizens have the right to participate in the organization of collective action and to control the use of political authority/power” (Cheneval 2015, 19; transl. LP). The focus lies here on the input-dimension of democracy and background institutions that provide just procedures. The specific output of democracies is not included in this definition, but, rather, depends on the outcomes of deliberation processes. Input and output, form and substance are torn apart. The emphasis on political procedures and participation implies that a middle-range democracy includes certain forms of developmental democracy such as the one propagated by John Stuart Mill, in that it enables people to develop their intellect and moral capabilities through this participation (Macpherson 1977, 44-76). This can, in turn, be understood as a formal understanding of positive freedom, or the freedom to reflexively develop one’s self in deliberative interaction with others (Honneth 2014, 29-41). Furthermore, Merkel (2015, 12) argues that this model of democracy also theoretically includes more demanding forms of participatory democracy as propagated by Benjamin Barber (1984) and Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (2003). It appears, therefore, that Merkel’s notion of medium-range democracy is very broad and includes a wide variety of specific democratic concepts ranging from representative to more participatory forms of democracies.

In contrast to this procedural understanding of democracy in the medium-range model, Merkel argues that the maximalist model of democracy emphasizes the output dimension. According to Merkel, this

“include[s] public goods, such as internal and external security, economic welfare, welfare state guarantees, fairness in the distribution of basic goods, income, social security, and life chances. In particular, they emphasize the need to avoid extreme inequalities in the distribution of income, and view the provision of primary and social goods at the core of democracy” (Merkel 2014, 13).

This, in turn, comes close to Cheneval’s third concept of the adjective “democracy”, which “generally means the normative ideas of a form of living that is egalitarian, inclusive, deliberative, transparent, free from oppression and exploitation, fair, etc.” (Cheneval 2015, 19). The inclusion of the output dimension into the definition of democracy implies an extension of the rule of law to include social and economic rights such as the right to education, housing, health, a minimum wage or the means of production. This maximalist model attempts to deal with the problem of a purely procedural concept of democracy in which the door to participation might be wide open, but if people lack the resources and capabilities to enter the realms of politics, participation becomes an empty promise. The model attempts to give substance to form – and transforms formal freedom into a more substantive, positive freedom. However, Merkel is critical of the maximalist model because it does not necessarily require democratic procedures and can easily be realized in more authoritarian regimes (Merkel 2015, 13). Furthermore, Merkel rejects the maximalist model because normative standards are supposedly so high that “only a few democracies can pass their ‘social-democratic test’” (Merkel 2014, 14). And because the minimalist model is so meager, Merkel argues that it is necessary to adopt a medium-range definition of democracy that enables people to measure the grades of a democracy without automatically assuming that all democracies are either in perfectly good health or permanently in crisis (Merkel 2015, 14).

Heterarchy, form of management or rule in which any unit can govern or be governed by others, depending on circumstances, and, hence, no one unit dominates the rest. Authority within a heterarchy is distributed. A heterarchy possesses a flexible structure made up of interdependent units, and the relationships between those units are characterized by multiple intricate linkages that create circular paths rather than hierarchical ones. Heterarchies are best described as networks of actors—each of which may be made up of one or more hierarchies—that are variously ranked according to different metrics. Etymologically speaking, the term is made up of the Greek words heteros, meaning “the other,” and archein, meaning “to rule.”

Of the Italian trio, [Robert] Michels is the most interesting, not least because so much of his attention is paid to the Left formations to which he once belonged. His most famous contribution is known as the the “iron law of oligarchy,” a belief that organizations will always evolve into hierarchies, even parties ostensibly trying to overthrow the hierarchies of bourgeois society. Marx was right about class struggle as the motor of history, Michels conceded, but every new class coming to power will itself evolve a new hierarchy.

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This doesn’t mean one should be complacent about them, or about the concept of leadership in general. Many on the Left have resisted applying Michels’s iron law to our parties and occasionally our governments, but it would be better to acknowledge the power of the tendency and figure out the best way to keep those leaders accountable through what Michels called “a serene and frank examination of the oligarchical dangers of democracy.” It’s better to be open about the reality of hierarchies than to pretend they don’t exist; even professedly leaderless organizations are subject to domination by the charismatic.