In the United States and the United Kingdom, just like in the fledgling democracies such as Kenya, democratic talk is cheap. We are long on rhetoric but way too short on concrete action. The promise of democracy – opportunity, liberty, prosperity and the rule of law – is faltering.
People everywhere value not the ideals but the fruits of democracy. Populist autocrats seem to be surging, buoyed especially by China’s roaring social and economic success of the past three to four decades. Conversely, the emergence of Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK has caused many to doubt the ability of democracy to endure in our time.
The discontent with democracy must not be ignored. That citizens cannot touch and feel prosperity in their lives is disconcerting at the very least. The political class seems to be tone deaf to the economic plight of the majority.
It does not help that governments everywhere are swinging from one recession to another. In the US and the UK, for instance, populist politicians channel anger against globalisation and promise to restore the golden age of heavy manufacturing and lucrative export markets.
The entrenchment of bureaucratic, political and business elites subverts the very idea of rule by the people. The elite are the modern-day monarchs. But for all intents and purposes, they constitute an oligarchy.
All three branches of government as defined in a democracy, aided by a cabal of wealthy, only exist to each self-propagate and preserve their self-interest. Unfortunately, it fell upon limited men like Trump and Johnson to lead the movement to liberate their fellow citizens from the “tyranny of the elite”.
Democracy advances human wellbeing, especially material prosperity; enabling equitable access to resources necessary to advance ingenuity and enterprise. That capitalist, liberal democracies have failed to deliver equitable prosperity must cause us to re-examine the economic model, especially when the dominant modes of production now threaten our very existence because of global warming.
Neither trickle down from unbridled free enterprise nor socialist, state welfare programmes seem to be working. We need new economic thinking.
We must not forget that citizens are the beating heart of a functional democracy. After all, democracy is in the sense of Abraham Lincoln “government of the people by the people”. In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, can only continue if citizens keep it alive. Otherwise, it shall perish from the earth.
Citizens are the bearers of political power and have the responsibility to delegate and audit that delegation by voting in free and fair elections. But the capacities for engaged citizenship are not innate. Such capacities must be nurtured through education. John Dewey, the American philosopher, wrote that “democracy must be born anew every generation and education is its midwife”.
We must renew interest in the scholarship and teaching of civics and citizenship, from primary school to university. The art and science of democratic citizenship can and must be taught.
The views expressed are the writer’s
