-Caveat Lector-
an excerptfrom:
Drug Politics
David C. Jordan
University of Oklahoma press©1999
Norman Publishing Division of the University
ISBN 0-8061-3174-8
288 pps -- first edition -- In-print
-----
---With the drugging of the general population, governing elites come to see
themselves as a ruling class and not as public servants accountable to a
public that believes in limits on private and public behavior. And, finally,
as these unaccountable elites forge alliances with their counterparts in
other countries, a transnational alliance of finance capital is facilitated,
an alliance freed of democratic republican accountability. Borderless and
unchecked capital is thus available for speculative assaults on states
resisting the agendas of unaccountable money interests.--
Quite the interesting book. A bit of a view from an ivory tower, but all in
all thought-provoking. Recommended. A taste
Om
K
-----
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANISM AS THE
ALTERNATIVE TO PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY
The alternative to procedural democracy is democratic republicanism, which
explicitly grapples with the problem of corruption by seeking to prevent
decay and politicians' abuse of power. Democratic republicanism provides an
alternative foundation for democratic theory by focusing on how power may be
abused and how the process of accountability may be corrupted. Democratic
republicanism is historically based on the mixed regime that highlights the
people's responsibility to maintain accountability.
The norms of the democratic republic were developed to address the problems
of tyranny, to provide independence for the state vis-a-vis other states, and
to promote liberty within the state. Democratic republicanism considers
participation a phenomenon of a disciplined people, seeks to avoid electoral
despotism, supports a mixed regime, and fears the corruption of the public
and the public's servants. This book seeks to reach beyond the classical
concerns of democratic republicanism, to add to those the challenges that
arise from the globalization of the world economy and the threat of
corruption.
POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGIES
Normative political science can be approached from two angles: political
anthropology and philosophical anthropology. One establishes how a society
understands itself and behaves and the other how all societies ought to be
evaluated and conduct themselves.
Political anthropology approaches the understanding of a political society as
it perceives itself. Human activities must be understood in terms of the
meanings the actors in a society ascribe to them. The political order in
which humans live is normative in the sense that people understand what they
should or should not do in any given society. The rules from one society do
not necessarily apply to another. Political anthropology provides a relative
understanding of societies. The population's existence or its real situation
in a society is guided by what is and is not permitted in that society
Members of a nation have no choice but to live in that nation's understood
social order. Once the "rightness" of that order comes into question or is
evaluated, the study of philosophical anthropology is being introduced.
The Greeks pioneered philosophical anthropology They accepted the existence
of a tribal order, idios kosmos, which were the rules of that particular
order or city-state. There also existed a universal order, a koinos kosmos, wh
ich was a universal standard for judging all particular orders. Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle all believed in this universal order. The koinos kosmos w
as superior to the tribal orders and was the basis for evaluating each of
them. The philosophical anthropology of the Greeks asserted that koinos
kosmos was an ultimate truth, a Logos for all mankind." For Heraclitus, the
precursor thinker of the Logos concept, the Logos was the principle of order
under which the universe exists. The Logos was the bridge between the Greek
world and Christianity. Logos gave a person reason and knowledge of the
truth, not only of the physical world, or the world of nature, but also of
human events: "All things are controlled by the Logos of God. The Logos is
the power which puts sense into the world, the power which makes the world an
order instead of a chaos, the power which sets the world going and keeps it
going in its perfect order. The Logos," said the Stoics, "pervades all
things."[23]
The bridge between the Greek world and Christianity came with the
identification of Christ's word with the Logos. Christianity spread the idea
of the Logos, thereby rooting philosophical anthropology in Western culture.
The practical application of philosophical anthropology confronts whether the
universal standard could or should be applied in actual circumstances, and,
if so, how.
MACHIAVELLI AND TOCQUEVILLE
Niccolo Machiavelli and Alexis de Tocqueville are two well-known classic
theorists of democratic republicanism. Both use the methods of political and
philosophical anthropology to determine how an existing political society can
be reformed. Writing in different centuries, they each chose one state as a
basis for describing how a good order works and how its lessons can be
applied to other countries. In the 1500s, Machiavelli wrote about Rome to
explain what made the republic work and to elucidate both the difficulties
and prospects for reforming his native Florence and uniting Italy.
Tocqueville wrote about the United States in the early 1800s in order to
illustrate the success of American republicanism but also to suggest how his
native France could avoid tyranny and deterioration while becoming
democratic. Both of these perceptive thinkers are classic practitioners of
the methods of political and philosophical anthropology.
Machiavelli and Tocqueville are not primarily concerned with establishing
absolute normative standards. They are more preoccupied with what makes a
system work and how another state's system may emulate it. Their views are
similar to those of procedural democratic theorists in the sense they do not
attempt to justify absolute normative standards. Machiavelli and Tocqueville
enrich our concept of the purpose of democratic procedures and increase our
understanding of how a freedom-sustaining democratic regime should operate.
They argue that the values people need to sustain a democratic republic
require a founding based on religion. In this sense, they are practical
philosophical anthropologists—they use the idea of the "good" for reform
purposes.
Machiavelli
Machiavelli's methodology starts with an assumption that human nature is
constant and essentially bad. He wrote,
All cities and all peoples are and ever have been animated by the same
desires and the same passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the
past, to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any republic, and
to apply those remedies that were used by the ancients, or, not finding any
that were employed by them, to devise new ones from the similarity of the
events. But, as such considerations are neglected or not understood by most
of those who read, or if understood by these, are unknown by those who
govern, it follows that the same troubles generally reoccur in all
republics.[24]
Machiavelli assumed that the event critical to the solid foundation of a
state is the establishment of good laws. Good laws are essential to the
discipline of the people because, for Machiavelli, a well-disciplined people
can master fate. He argued that the relationship of good laws and discipline
is favorable to liberty. Paradoxically, he believed liberty to be derived
from the quarrels of the two sides that exist in every state: the nobles and
the people. He believed these agitations are necessary because, "every free
state ought to afford the people with the opportunity of giving vent." In
Machiavelli's analysis, the people have a normative role in fostering
liberty, and he thought this to be particularly true if the republic is to be
imperial. Machiavelli supported an imperial state because he believed a
united Italy could defend itself against intervening neighbors.
Machiavelli studied how the Romans developed the discipline that permitted
their people to protect both their internal liberty and the external autonomy
of the Roman state. He argued that religion was the key to the Roman people's
unity, freedom, and imperial grandeur. He noted that the founder of the
republic, Numa, reduced the savage Romans to civil obedience through
religion. Religion was the source of the discipline of the Roman citizens who
"feared much more to break an oath than the laws." Machiavelli concluded that
religion was the source of Roman discipline and that this source of
discipline was a universal requirement for all free peoples, writing, "There
never was any remarkable law giver amongst any people who did not resort to
divine authority as otherwise his laws would not be accepted by the
people."[25]
The generalization that Machiavelli extracted from his analysis of Rome is
that religion is the critical element to sustain a democratic republic. He
stated without any caveat, that "the observance of divine institutions is the
cause of the greatness of republics, so the disregard of them produces their
ruin, unless it be sustained by the fear of the prince which may temporarily
supply the want of religion." This understanding of the fundamental
importance of religion to the republic makes the problem of corruption the
most critical one for the survival of the regime. Machiavelli was far more
concerned with the corruption of the people than of the ruler. He believed
that if the ruler or prince is corrupt but the people remain sound, liberty
may be restored. "A corrupt people that lives under the government of a
prince can never become free," he wrote. "Where corruption has penetrated the
people, the best laws are of no avail, unless they are administered by a man
of such supreme power that he may cause the laws to be observed until the
mass has been restored to a healthy condition. And I know not whether such a
case has ever occurred, or whether it possibly ever could occur."[26]
Machiavelli's study of the decay of Rome concluded that corruption was caused
by the great inequalities of wealth that developed in the republic.
Corruption caused the laws to change so that the most meritorious people in
the country increasingly abstained from serving the republic and ultimately
were wholly excluded from public affairs. Over the centuries, critics have
questioned Machiavelli's argument that the restoration of good morals
requires evil means. His reliance on evil means was based on his conclusion
that it is nearly impossible to restore liberty "in a republic that has
become corrupt, or to establish it there anew." A corrupt republic would
inevitably be replaced by a monarchy, he felt, because the loss of moral
discipline requires an "almost regal power" to maintain control.
TOCQUEVILLE
Tocqueville's methodology was similar to Machiavelli's. He studied how
democracy functioned in the United States in order to understand how
democracy could be prevented from threatening freedom in France. In December
1836 he wrote to his friend Louis de Kergorlay that his purpose was "to show
people, so far as possible, what one must do to avoid tyranny and
degeneration while becoming democratic."[27] Tocqueville believed that in the
times he lived there was no alternative to democracy, but he feared that
tyranny could also arise with the democratic system. He thought the Americans
had avoided tyranny in their democratic republic, and he sought to understand
how they had done this in order to help France avoid tyranny as well.
Tocqueville noted that geographical circumstances and American laws were all
favorable to the country's freedom. However, he argued that the principal
cause maintaining the democratic republic as a free polity was the manners
and customs of the people. He saw religion (or the Logos) as the basis of the
Americans' good customs, writing, "the greatest part of British America was
peopled by men who ... brought with them into the New World a form of
Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic
and republican religion."[28]
The similarity of Tocqueville's analysis of Christianity in America and of
Machiavelli's analysis of religion in the Roman republic is remarkable. As
Machiavelli wrote, "if the Christian religion had from the beginning been
maintained according to the principles of its founder, the Christian states
would have been much more united and happy than what they are. Nor can there
be a greater proof of its decadence than to witness the fact that the nearer
people are to the church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less
religious are they"[29]
Like Machiavelli, Tocqueville focused on the political utility of religion,
especially for a free republic: "I am at this moment considering religions in
a purely human point of view," he wrote. "My object is to inquire by what
means they may most easily retain their sway in the democratic ages upon
which we are entering."[30] Tocqueville was aware that the directing classes
of France had been deeply infected by the skepticism and rationalism of the
Enlightenment and that Roman Catholicism in France had not developed as much
of a republican consciousness as it had in the United States. Consequently,
he addressed the most moral and intelligent elements of the directing class
in France, urging them to copy the American founders by conscious decision.
Tocqueville's call for the conscious embrace of religion for practical
purposes in France contrasts with America's experience. In America, the
democratic republic arose where the people's belief in Christianity converged
with a new territory and in new circumstances. Still, Tocqueville thought
that if France imitated aspects of the American experience it would remedy
the decay of public morals. He argued against political centralism in order
to produce the practice of democratic accountability locally and regionally,
against individualism in order to produce community cooperation, and against
the elitist bureaucratic elements in the government that would destroy the
people's consciousness. The essence of Tocqueville's effort to reform a
corrupted polity was his belief that a country needed a moral leadership in
order to fight the population's dependence on central government and to
promote community cooperation through civic regeneration. He expected that
the most meritorious people would want to serve an active, aware, and
regenerated population.
* * *
>From a historical perspective, both Machiavelli and Tocqueville were
prophets, advising against the corruption of a democratic republic.
Both sought political mechanisms that would reverse that corruption.
Machiavelli despaired of achieving this without evil means, while Tocqueville
relied on the ascendancy of a moral elite.
As practical philosophical anthropologists, both theorists sought to engineer
the restoration of the moral state rather than to rely on the fortuitous
development of a religious people. To this degree, they shared elements of
the elitist theory of democracy. Because they believed that the moral nature
of the people is critical to sustaining the democratic republic, they were
fearful that corruption of the people is the most likely avenue from which
tyranny might arise under the guise of democracy. They foreshadowed elements
of the elitist theory of democracy but remained convinced that if corruption
were to infect democracy, then the regime would be a disguise for tyranny.
Both Machiavelli and Tocqueville emphasized that to forestall the rise of
tyranny, democracy in a large state required a focus on the people. Modem-day
theorists who follow Machiavelli and Tocqueville ask different questions than
do procedural theorists:
o What conditions permit political elites to remain unaccountable
despite contestation and inclusiveness?
o Does privatization produce gross economic inequality and hence undermine
civic virtue? (A capitalist oligarchy-that is, rule by the well-to-do
few-concentrates economic power as much as a centralized bureaucratic
oligarchy does.)
o What factors undermine the religious culture of the people?
When a government is corrupt, the elites are able to manipulate the electoral
system to maintain themselves in power. This capability in itself indicates a
lack of accountability. Democratic republicanism involves more than
institutional checks on elected representatives. As Machiavelli and
Tocqueville suggested, it requires a civic culture that leads people to value
their own independence and the moral probity of their representatives.
Corruption is the most critical element in the decomposition of the
republican regime. It attacks the moral core of the people and the people's
representatives. If the democratic republic is to survive, it must protect
itself from corruption-induced decay.
These two great thinkers concluded that a certain type of civic culture is
basic to the health of the democratic republic. Unlike the procedural
democratic theorists, who view the mechanism of participation as an end in
itself, the democratic republican theorists argue that the purpose of an
election is defined by its end: the protection of the public from arbitrary
interference from the state. In order for liberty to be achieved, citizens
must share a normative structure. As will be explained in subsequent
chapters, narcotic consumption adversely impacts the normative basis of the
civic culture.
pps. 29-36
--[notes]—
22. For a further discussion of these issues, see Anthony H. Birch, The
Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1993). Also
useful is William C. Havard, The Recovery of Political Theory: Limits and
Possibilities (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984).
23. William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, rev. ed. (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1975), 35.
24. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses (New York: The Modern Library, 1950),
216.
25. Ibid., 146,147.
26. Ibid., 148, 165, 166.
27. Michael Hereth, Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE: Threats to Freedom in Democracy (Du
rham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1986), 108.
28. Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage,
1972), 300.
29. Machiavelli, Discourses, 51.
30. TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy, vol. 2, 22.
=====
CHAPTER 3
THE CORRUPTION OF ELITES
Corruption in politics enables elites to remain in power during and after
democratic elections. In the democratic republic, governors are public
servants who derive their legitimacy from representing the interests of
society. The representative function requires both responsibility and
responsiveness. The responsibility factor calls for a standard of resisting
popular passions when the facts and circumstances honestly compel the
representative to make a decision contrary to the wishes of the population.
The population must also have the moral capacity and ability to remove
representatives from office when their decisions are unacceptable. In a
democratic republic, accountability takes precedence over responsibility,
thereby undermining the possibility of unaccountable elitism. A sense of
responsibility may lead representatives to oppose popular wishes, but
ultimately, they have to be accountable to the people.
Corrupt elites threaten accountable governments. Corrupt elitism can develop
within an established democratic regime or persist after an apparent
transition from authoritarian to electoral selection. The following three
indicators are a means for identifying corrupt elitism:
1. Access to political office is limited to a relatively small group.
2. Officeholders are able to avoid accountability to the community despite
pursuing interests the community repudiates. (Under a system of shared norms
public officeholders would be responsible, have integrity, and not undermine
these norms.)
3. Institutional checks on the self-perpetuating group are relatively
unregularized and ineffective.
These three indicators recognize that where there is a system of corruption,
irresponsibility, and self-perpetuation of elites, the normative purpose of
elections has been frustrated. Where political elites in an electoral system
can pursue policies the public essentially opposes, continue in or be
returned to office with a record of corruption and irresponsibility, then one
or more circumstances are occurring: The society is unable to enforce a
shared normative judgment on its public servants, the society itself does not
possess such a standard, or it is confused by the elites' ability to mold
public opinion or prevent access of critical opinion.
Trends in accountability, which indicate whether concentration of power in
the executive is more or less accountable to alternative institutions and the
public, suggest three types of regime processes. These are outlined in table
1.
CIVIL SOCIETY AND POLITICAL PARTIES
Transitions from authoritarianism and consolidations of democracy raise the
question of requirements for an accountable regime. The initiation of
democratic procedures leads to the important issue of methods for holding
elites accountable but does not confront the capabilities of the civil
society to do so. If a democratization process is to become consolidated,
then in addition to the government's accountability and mutually balancing
institutions, the government and civil society must support a shared civic
culture. What is a civic culture? One view has been to relate civic culture
with liberalism. Liberalism, as the basis of a civic culture, has been
defined as the effort "to restrict the powers of the state and to define a
uniquely private sphere independent of state action. At the centre of this
project was the goal of freeing civil society ... from political interference
and the simultaneous delimitation of the state's authority."[1]
Civic culture in the sense used here is not exclusively liberalism. In order
for government to be accountable, the values of the society must compel the
state's representatives to exercise power responsibly—which means the
society's values must be expressed and disseminated. In short, in the
democratic republic's civic culture, governors are public servants, not
rulers.
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba give a standard account of civic culture.
They argue that it "is not a modem culture, but one that combines modernity
with tradition." For them, a civic culture is "neither traditional nor modem
but partaking of both; a pluralistic culture based on communication and
persuasion, a culture of consensus and diversity, a culture that permitted
change but moderated it." The authors maintain that the civic culture they
admire and seek for most countries "is present in the form of aspiration, and
the democratic infrastructure is still far from being attained." These
theorists infer the elements of the democratic culture by examining attitudes
in a number of existing democratic states. Their account of a working
democratic system stresses the need for congruence between the attitudes,
affections, and cognitions of the populace with the system. They employ the
concept of culture as the psychological orientation of people toward social
objects, and they are concerned with the internalized feelings, values, and
understandings of the population.[2]
The civic culture that produces public servants is a blend of three civic
traditions, two of which are secular and one religious. Of the secular
traditions one is the Aristotelian. This tradition sees political liberty as
deriving from citizens imbued with public spirit or virtue who participate in
politics and defend the state from external threats. Private property
provides the public with the material preconditions to serve the state in
peace and war.
The second secular tradition, the juristic, asserts the individual's right to
be free from arbitrary authority In this tradition, citizens have rights
vis-a-vis the state. Since this tradition is commercial, property is also a
fundamental right. Property and the market are critical both to the rights of
the citizen and to the defense of the republic.
The third tradition is deeply linked to Judeo-Christianity. The strict
observance of God's commandments is essential to this order, where the people
are governed by religious elders distinguished for their wisdom and
integrity. The republican principles were designed to prevent the polity from
degenerating into oligarchy or tyranny. In this view, the only king of a
godly people is God.
The Puritans in America followed this perspective. In this tradition, the
welfare of the whole is dependent on the morality of the people, which in
turn depends on a religious basis. On June 5, 1788, Samuel Langdon gave a
sermon promoting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. It provided an
important statement of the Puritan attitude about the religious basis to the
republic.
If you neglect or renounce that religion taught and commanded in the Holy
Scriptures, think no more of freedom, peace, and happiness.... And if our
religion is given up, all the liberty we boast of will soon be gone; a
profane and wicked people cannot hope for divine blessings, but it may be
easily foretold that "evil will befall them in the latter days."[3]
It is highly significant that in the United States the norms restraining both
the civic culture and the elites have historically been religious.
TOCQUEVILLE made a classic observation about the American polity: "Liberty,"
he said, "regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its
triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims.
It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best
security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom."[4]
The two secular traditions also have a strong presence in the mix of values
undergirding America's civic culture. The Aristotelian tradition was often
expressed by people representing landed interests in the United States, and
the juristic tradition was represented by commercial interests.
This view of the civic culture as it developed in the United States sees it
as (1) epiphenomenal, or emanating from the economic base of society, and (2)
metaphysical, or emanating from the people's religious beliefs and feelings.
If accountability of the public's servants in this conception of the role of
civic culture is to be maintained, then the shared normative political
understandings must remain embedded in civil society.
John Dewey was one of the first to openly challenge the metaphysical basis to
the classical civic culture of the United States. Dewey attempted to replace
supernatural religion with the natural "religious." He argued that humanism
had all the elements of a religious faith and that it needed to be made
explicit and militant.[5] He may be perceived as having prepared America's
intellectual culture for the elitist theory of democracy, because by his
thinking, man is the ultimate or supreme authority, and those who understood
this were the natural rulers of those who did not. Dewey wrote, "To say
emphatically of a particular person that he has soul or a great soul is not
to utter a platitude, applicable equally to all human beings. It expresses
the conviction that the man or woman in question has in marked degree
qualities of sensitivity, rich and coordinated participation in all
situations of life."[6]
Modem proponents of Dewey's perspective, such as Richard Rorty, attempt to
retain the nation's religious tradition of sympathy with other cultures and
human beings without making that tradition's religious orientation
foundational for either public or private life. The objective is to continue
the American culture's commitment to tolerance without restraining the
private efforts of self-creation, play, and erotic exploration. Ideological
pragmatists cannot be philosophical anthropologists. They have no convincing
way of resolving the conflict between apparently legitimate preferences of
differing cultures. They separate public from private morality, with the
former based on human solidarity and the latter on the "irony" that one's
beliefs are based on time and chance. A private aesthetic morality is Rorty's
solution to public liberalism and private libertarianism because he believes
it underscores "the ability of each of us to tailor a coherent self-image for
ourselves and use it to tinker with our behavior."[7]
These views erode America's metaphysical component to its civic culture.[8]
Certainly, the private aesthetic provides no basis to resist—and conceivably
could even provide an intellectual incentive to experiment with—the use of
narcotics.
Finally, the metaphysical perspective is critical to an understanding of how
the party system works to maintain the accountability of public servants and
the shared normative structure of the people. The system is necessary to
support the normative relationship between the principles embedded in civil
society about permissible human behavior and the limits, on power of the
public's servants.
Political parties and the party system were instituted to restrain the
country's public servants and reflect the civic culture. The parties in a
competitive system foster the people's sense of shared norms and the leaders'
sense of accountability. Parties reinforce the concept of accountability,
respect for the temporary minority, and openness of opinion formation because
they mediate the normative interaction between accountable leaders and
restrained publics. While the epiphenomenal and metaphysical traditions are
important for America's civic culture, the rise of the pragmatist challenge
and the growing dominance of unrestrained economic interests indicate that
the metaphysical component is in decline. Yet it would be pertinent to
remember that Tocqueville held the religious tradition to be the most
important for the maintenance of accountability. He wrote,
When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher
powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others.... Such a
condition can not but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and
prepare a people for servitude. Not only does it happen in such a case that
they allow their freedom to be taken from them; they frequently surrender it
themselves.... For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the
same time complete religious independence and entire political freedom. And I
am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and
if he be free, he must believe.[9]
ELITE DOMINATION
The characteristic feature of the authoritarian regime is elite domination.
How is it, then, that in alleged democratic transitions elites persist and
maintain themselves in power even after the democratic regime has supposedly
been consolidated?
In authoritarian regimes, elites are often considered critical to a
successful democratic transition. They facilitate transitions through pacts
or settlements among the ruling class. John Higley and Richard Gunther argue
that elite settlements have two main consequences: "They create patterns of
open but peaceful competition among major league factions, and ... they can
facilitate the eventual emergence of a consolidated democracy."[10] They
argue that elite consensus is the essential precondition for consolidated
democracy. For example, they submit that Colombia had an elite settlement in
1957-58 and Mexico had a similar elite settlement in 1929. Both case studies
in the Higley and Gunther work, however, problematized the elite settlement.
As John A. Peeler has written about Colombia, "The course of politics in
Colombia since the end of the National Front in 1974 cannot be characterized
as democratic consolidation. If anything, we are witnessing a process of
deconsolidation, of gradual breakdown."[11] And, with regard to Mexico, Alan
Knight has written, "It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the
1928-29 elite settlement, though fostering consensual unity within the
revolutionary elite, encouraged—or at the very least permitted—a deepening of
divisions within the country as a whole, pitting revolutionary elites against
their non- or antirevolutionary rivals."[12]
If the characteristic feature of the authoritarian regime is elite
domination, then the key objective of a ruling elite facing democratic
transitions and consolidations is to maintain its ruling status. The former
authoritarian elite must seek to insulate itself from accountability to the
population through elections.
For the democratic procedural definition to be normatively acceptable, the
elite must be accountable to the people. It must not be able to either
frustrate a community's desire for accountability or destroy a people's faith
in the concept that the measure of good government is based on a shared norm
that is binding on the public as well as the public's servants. Such an
understanding of norms means that in the state neither the people nor the
government are absolutely sovereign.
This understanding of procedural democracy denies the superior knowledge of
the few as having authority over the collective judgment of the many. It
asserts that representation means that the few are restrained by the
interests, characteristics, symbols, authorizations, and judgments of the
community all of which are guided by shared norms. On the other hand, elitism
develops an ideology or political myth by which it justifies its rule to the
rest of the population. When that ideology or myth loses its credibility with
the population as a whole, the ruling elite needs to find a new legitimizing
formula. The stunning discovery by elements of the authoritarian elites in a
number of countries is that the electoral system may be used to both
perpetuate and legitimize their rule.[13]
NARCOSTATIZATION AND REDEFINING DEMOCRACY
In the stage of advanced narcostatization, elitist unaccountable governments
prevail within the structure of procedural or formal democracy. Governments
interpenetrated with narcotics power depend on the monetary surpluses
provided by narcotics trafficking to service debts, limit taxes, subsidize
constituencies, buy off power contenders, and project state power into other
states and societies.
These developments force a reconsideration of the definition of democracy,
particularly of a "good regime," based solely on procedural norms. They also
require a reconsideration of the democratic peace thesis and compel an
exploration into the relations of drug cartels with the interests of certain
government ministries, for narcostatization cannot be ruled out when
considering the spread of insurgency and the alignment of public opinion with
the interests of the insurgents.
The capacity of the democratic state to control narcotics trafficking is
hidden by the procedural definition, which focuses primarily on contestation
and participation. The weakness of that definition, with regard to the
component of narcotics trafficking, is not only what it does not include, but
also its failure to clearly indicate the logical conditions necessary for a
democratic regime to work. The following description of democracy directs one
toward understanding both the substantive and procedural problems and the
logical and empirical conditions that permit a distinction between an actual
democracy and a pseudodemocracy.
A democracy is a political system or regime in which the people with a civic
culture, or Logos, constitutionally decide who will determine the decisions
for the state. Those elected cannot decide or act independently of
constraints, checks, and balances. It is the intention or purpose of the
democratic regime to avoid tyranny and to produce and enforce good laws and
policies. A democratic republic has plural institutional powers that clearly
indicate that the regime has both procedural and institutional components
capable of managing its vulnerability to global financial movements and
oligarchical transnational interests.[14]
The key components of this definition need to be understood. "The people"
means "a whole" and refers to the adult voting population. Over the years,
the concept of the voting population has expanded from males with property to
all males and finally to women. It may exclude, for example, criminals and
the insane and represents a concept of the people as possessing moral and
judgmental characteristics. There may be additional empirical characteristics
that the people must have in order for the system to be accountable to them.
The democratic system will not have the necessary conditions unless the
people possess the appropriate characteristics, characteristics subsumed
under the term "civic culture."
"Constitutionality" exists when basic norms of the system establish how
authorized public servants are chosen and how the policy structure of the
regime is made accountable. The constitution structurally sets up a democracy
as an institutionally mixed regime. Although the term "mixed regime" is not
used in the definition, the concept of constraints and checks and balances
makes the mixed regime a necessary component of a democracy and therefore
properly defines a democratic republic. In the mixed regime, the legislative,
executive, and judicial functions must be independently accountable, either
directly or indirectly, to the people. These components of the mixed regime
must also be mutually restraining. In short, certain types of institutions
and arrangements among institutions give effect to public accountability in
the democratic regime.
Another empirical condition for a working system is the existence of free
elections. For elections to function there must exist a free choice between
two or more competitive parties where freedom of speech and press is present.
Political parties are empirically and systematically necessary for democracy.
Parties act as representatives of the people not only with regard to who and
what are represented but also in regard to the actions they take. The
function of parties is not to keep elites permanently in power but to act as
the agents of the electing people. Parties make sure that the people's
wishes, rather than the elites' wishes, are respected. The democratic concept
of "good" laws and policies are those that are authorized by the people.
The definition of the democratic republic must also meet the problems arising
from the globalization of the world economy and that economy's capacity to
restrict democratic decision making. A modern theory of democracy must
incorporate the idea of an accountable relationship between the institutions
of the world economy and the state.
AVOIDING ACCOUNTABILITY IN
A CONSOLIDATED DEMOCRACY: THE SWISS CASE
Elitist dominance in democracies in the contemporary environment arises from
the fact that external transnational elites and domestic elites are capable
of blocking accountability. Transnational elites seek influence over
parliaments, media, and academia in conjunction with domestic elements,
hoping to free themselves from accountability. These transnational elites are
ensconced in financial capitals that evade nation-state controls. Sometimes
termed "the overworld," those elites outside the control of individual states
see themselves as managing the global economy and influencing attitudes
worldwide.[15] An example of the interaction between overworld and domestic
elites and underworld interests in transforming the accountability of a
political system occurred in Switzerland in 1997.
Switzerland is generally thought to be an idyllic country, with a modern,
civilized, highly educated population living peacefully in a drug-free
society with a model democratic system. However, another picture is emerging.
There is crime in the villages, urban decay in the cities, and widespread
drug consumption and decline in educational standards throughout the country.
Zurich, the finance capital of Switzerland, provides a case in point. Before
1989 there were only three hundred methadone addicts in the canton of Zurich.
In the mid-1980s a socialist-environmentalist coalition took over Zurich's
town council. One of the new councilors, Emilie Lieberherr, was linked to the
Radical Party, an Italian party that founded the International League against
Drug Prohibition, which seeks the liberalization and the legalization of
narcotics.[16] The Radical Party has openly courted Italian criminals and has
sponsored membership drives in Italian prisons. It is funded by convicted
murderers and organized crime figures. Voting analysts have demonstrated that
its support has come from areas of so-called high-density mafia vote.[17]
In any event, the subsequent liberalization of drugs in Zurich resulted in a
needle-exchange program, followed by the opening of Needle Park (Platzpitz),
where fifteen thousand syringes and sixty-eight hundred substitute needles
were distributed daily. Three thousand addicts received methadone; of twenty
thousand addicts, four thousand were HIV positive. Despite the drop in the
price of drugs stemming from the government's subsidized program, organized
crime continued to control a piece of the market.[18] During this period,
crime increased, and the death rate among addicts who took legal drugs was
2.4 times higher than among those who did not.[19] Authorities were
eventually forced to close Needle Park in February 1992.
Despite this experience—and despite a strong antidrug sentiment among Swiss
citizens—advocates of drug legalization continued to advance harm reduction
as the preferred way to manage the drug problem. The government opened a
second drug park in the summer of 1992 at Letten Station, an area where close
to fifty thousand students pass by on their way to school and the university
Approximately fifteen thousand syringes were distributed there daily. The
number of drug addicts in the country had doubled by May 1995 and had doubled
again by November 1996.[20]
Swiss lobby groups, such as the Verein Zur Forderung Der Psychologischen
Menschenkenntris (VPM), called for a referendum against legalization and
attempted to block the open needle-supply centers and shooting galleries.
Opposition to the September 28, 1997, referendum came from an alignment of
government officials, the press, and prominent business leaders.
Roland C. Rasi, general manager of the Swiss Bank Corporation (SBV), one of
Switzerland's largest banks, took the lead in persuading many business
leaders to sign an antireferendum document. A press conference supporting the
legal distribution of heroin was held at the SBV's headquarters in Zurich on
November 9, 1995.[21] The business leaders endorsed the employment of addicts
in the workplace and their integration into society while maintaining their
addiction through heroin distribution projects throughout the country.
The support of the business community gave respectability to the
antireferendum forces and contributed to the success of the legalization
movement. Their strategy succeeded when 71 percent of the voters rejected the
prohibition against legalization. However, those voting represented only 30
percent of eligible Swiss voters. The health ministry then attempted to put
state distribution of heroin to hardened addicts on a permanent legal
footing. "We will propose a change in the narcotics legislation to the
cabinet as soon as possible," director of the Health Ministry, Thomas
Zeltner, announced.[22]
The legalization movement in Switzerland openly seeks to bypass the checks of
the electorate. In the words of Councilor Lieberherr, "We are looking for a
way past the people."[23] This search for "a way past the people" has the
support not only of business leaders and the liberal press, but also of
public health officials, including the Swiss minister of health and family
affairs, some police chiefs and government advisors backing a narcotics
policy of "harm reduction," mafia fronts, and other marginal groups." The
existence of such an alliance reveals how narcostatization evolves and the
extent to which Switzerland is undergoing the process of narcostatization.
The fluidity of the situation in Switzerland is demonstrated by the failure
of the prolegalization movement in the November 29, 1998, referendum. In that
referendum 74 percent voted against a constitutional amendment that would
have legalized "the consumption, cultivation or possession of drugs and their
acquisition for personal use." The proposed amendment to the constitution
stated in addition that narcotic drugs consumed for nonmedical reasons be
made available without prescription [Articles 32.1 and 32.21. It is
interesting to note that a public letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
which was published in the New York Times on June 8, 1998, stating that "the
global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself," was
republished in Switzerland's largest German-language newspaper, Neue Zurcher
Zeitung, three days before the referendum. Among the signers were members of
the Drug Policy Foundation and the Lindesmith Center, John Sperling of the
Apollo Group, and George Soros, chairman of George Soros Management.[25]
The case of Switzerland illustrates that if the public servants are not
accountable, the regime is a pseudodemocracy or an elitist system, even if it
has the formal attributes of elections. According to the Index of
Narcostatization Indicators (see chapter 7), Switzerland is at level 2, the
developing stage of narcostatization, while already harboring one element
each from levels 3 (serious) and 4 (critical).
THE SPREADING CAMPAIGN FOR LEGALIZATION
Why the push for legalization in Switzerland? One theory is that Switzerland
has been under international pressure to adopt legalization. This theory
views Switzerland as a pilot project for experimenting on how to bring about
drug legalization in a highly developed, moral, independent, and democratic
country.[26] According to this theory, if a country widely known as both
conservative and humane can be brought to legalize drugs, then others will
undoubtedly follow. Prolegalization forces view Switzerland as a laboratory
for experimentation and a first domino.
A second theory is that Switzerland is important for the money-laundering
interests of the drug trade. Carla del Ponte, the Swiss public prosecutor,
argues that "a liberalization or legalization of the sale and consumption of
drugs will lead to an influx of drug money in Switzerland because the money,
after legalization, will no longer be dirty, but clean."[27] This movement
can be traced to 1990 when four cities—Zurich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Amsterd
am—founded the European Cities on Drug Policy (ECDP) and adopted the
Frankfurt Resolution, which calls for the distribution of heroin to addicts,
the legalization of marijuana, the introduction of "shooting galleries," and
the termination of the 1961 UN Single Convention. The ECDP cooperates with
Italy's Radical Party, the International League against Drug Prohibition, and
the U.S.-based Drug Policy Foundation. Since its founding, ECDP has
established membership in thirty European cities in addition to Switzerland's
six largest German-speaking cities.[28]
NARCOSTATIZATION AND THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Narcostatization operates against the empirical and logical conditions that
make a democracy real rather than formal. The following five components of
the corruption of democracy show how narcostatization undermines the
necessary conditions for a democracy to serve its intended purposes:
1. The narcostatization process undermines a people's civic culture. The key
role for the civic culture in a democratic civilization is to maintain
stability Evidence suggests culture does not cause the creation of the
democratic regime but constrains the behavior of political officials." As
more people use drugs, commit crimes, and embrace values demonstrating
indifference to political participation, then the portion of the adult
population that has the desire and the economic and political capability to
hold elites accountable decreases. Note that less than 24 percent of all
eligible Swiss voters supported heroin distribution in an election in which
70 percent of the Swiss did not vote.
2. The narcostatization process impacts on party competition as the
contending parties for high office become dependent on subsidies from drug
traffickers to fund their campaigns. These subsidies indicate that despite
rhetorical and, in some cases, sporadic enforcement measures, the parties
become more responsive to the interests of the cartels than to those of the
people. This result indicates that the pact or pacts that set up the rules
constraining public officials' behavior is unraveling. When citizens do not
act in concert to protect their culture, a ruling group may emerge and gain
public acquiescence to activities the public did not initially support.
3. The narcostatization process undermines the institutional checks of the
executive, legislative, and judicial powers on the ruling elites. As the
major institutional centers find themselves compromised by narcotics, they
are increasingly unlikely to restrain other institutions in this activity
This result is particularly alarming for an ethnically divided society such
as found in Switzerland, which devised provisions explicitly to check the
effects of ethnic and religious differences. If it becomes widely understood
that limits are not enforceable against public officials, then ethnic and
religious trust may be one of the casualties as well.
4. The narcostatization process undermines elite accountability and
transforms public servants into a ruling class. The intention of the
democratic regime to avoid tyranny and to produce good laws and policies is
defeated as both the procedural and substantive components of the democratic
republic are fused with the protection of and dependence on organized
criminal behavior.
5. To the extent the democratic state does not have a responsible
relationship with the transnational system of global governance, its
governing class becomes more dependent on external forces than domestic ones.
Where the transnational economic system is corrupted and the democratic state
does not assist the institutional mechanisms for controlling corruption, its
elites may be incorporated into a criminalized world system.
The processes undermining the five major components of the democratic
republic permit an understanding of how narcostatization can reveal what is
occurring. On the other hand, if the procedural definition of democracy is
used, awareness of what is happening will be postponed until the process may
well be irreversible.
In summary, the erosion of the civic culture, the decay of the party systems,
the fragmentation of the permanent institutions of the regime, the change
from serving to ruling in the principles of the governing elites, and the
forging of ruling rather than serving transnational elite alliances are signs
of the eclipse both of the democratic republic and of a more peaceful
international environment. Understanding the corrupting role of narcotics
trafficking provides a warning mechanism for detecting the transformation of
apparently democratic regimes and for heading off the possibilities of
increasing conflict within and between states.
The narcotics trafficking industry works synergistically with modernist and
postmodernist intellectual and cultural trends to transform mass culture. It
changes mass culture from one embedded in metaphysical norms to one fostering
libertarian permissiveness and individual economic concerns. It pulls party
competition away from its system-sustaining role since the shared norms
limiting behavior no longer exist in the civic culture. If the loss of a
common normative civic structure inhibits people from acting jointly for the
public good, the rule of party factions supported by corrupt private
interests may be expected.
With the drugging of the general population, governing elites come to see
themselves as a ruling class and not as public servants accountable to a
public that believes in limits on private and public behavior. And, finally,
as these unaccountable elites forge alliances with their counterparts in
other countries, a transnational alliance of finance capital is facilitated,
an alliance freed of democratic republican accountability. Borderless and
unchecked capital is thus available for speculative assaults on states
resisting the agendas of unaccountable money interests.
The above description distinguishes between actual democratic and
pseudodemocratic regimes. It identifies how corruption subverts the
power-checking purpose of the democratic regime. It focuses on the logical
and empirical conditions necessary for democracy to work. And it recognizes
that forms alone are not sufficient.
pps. 37-52
--[notes]—
CHAPTER 3.
1. David Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1987), 41.
2. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes
and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 5, 6, 13.
3. Samuel Langdon, "A Sermon Preached at Concord in the State of New
Hampshire; before the Honorable General Court at the Annual Election. June 5,
1788," in Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1
730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 962, 965.
4. Tocqueville, Democracy, vol. 1, 44.
5. John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 1934),
87.
6. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: Norton, 1929), 293-94.
7. Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 162.
8. C. S. Lewis wrote, "I am very doubtful whether history shows us one
example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and
attained power, has used that power benevolently. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition
of Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 75.
9. Tocqueville, Democracy, vol. 11, 21-22.
10. Higley and Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation, 14.
11. John A. Peeler, "Elite Settlements and Democratic consolidation:
Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela," in Higley and Gunther eds., Elites and
Democratic Consolidation, 104.
12. Alan Knight, "Mexico's Elite Settlement: Conjuncture and Consequences,"
in Higley and Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation, 135.
13. It is interesting to note that students are becoming increasingly aware
of the elitist nature of procedural democracy. Robert L. Allen in Open Doors:
The Life and Work of Joseph Schumpeter, 2 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Publishers, 1991), and Richard Swedberg in Joseph A. Schumpeter:
His Life and Work (Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press, 1991) expose how little
Schumpeter's perspective allowed him to recognize the threat of Hitler's
election in Germany These biographers find indications of Schumpeter's
sympathy for the Nazi party. In this sense, we need to explore whether the
apparently value-free procedural democratic theory did not have its origins
in a prescriptive intention to support elite control of the socialist
tendencies of the late 1920s and 1930s.
14. This definition seeks to incorporate David Held's observation "that the
meaning of national democratic decision-making, today has to be explored in
the context of a complex multinational, mutlilogic[sic] international
society, and a huge range of actual and nascent regional and global
institutions which transcend and mediate national boundaries." Held,
"Democracy," 208.
15. See Charles'. Levinson, Vodka Cola (New York: Gordon and Cremones, n.d.).
16. Patricia Morgan, "Radicals Hijack Swiss Idyll," Sunday Telegraph, May 2,
1995. The International League against Drug Prohibition was founded in Rome
in April 1989. The Radical Party made clear that the league's aims were (1)
to legalize drugs and (2) to abolish the UN Single Convention on Narcotic
Drugs of 1961 which prohibits members from legalizing drugs. Two members of
the league, Guido Jenny and Hans Schultz, have been the Swiss government's
legal
consultants on drugs. Patrick Henderson, "Something Rotten in the State of
Switzerland," Salisbury Review, March 1995, 10.
17. Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the
First Italian Republic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 207.
18. David Moller, "Drugs; Why We Must Stay Tough," Reader's Digest, July 1994.
19. Franziska Haller, "Harm Reduction: A Declaration of Surrender in the Face
of Human Suffering," paper presented to the Verein Zur Forderung Der
Psychologischen Menschenkenntris (hereafter VPM), October 17-20,1996, 6.
20. Franziska Haller, "The Swiss Drug Situation and Its Impact on Europe and
the World," unpublished paper (December 6,1995), 2.
21. "On November 9, 1995, a group of 94 corporate executives, mostly company
presidents and chairmen of the board of directors, presented a paper
supporting a very liberal drug policy, including the demand for a major
expansion of legal heroin distribution to drug addicts, as a way to research
the pros and cons of so-called legal drug trade for the future. [Their paper
supports] the official Swiss drug policy of legal distribution of narcotic
drugs to drug addicts. They oven demand preparation for the implementation of
a legalized private drug trade with the means of a 'broadly implemented,
geographically scattered, medically prescribed drug distribution."' Franziska
Haller, "Short Explanation of the Swiss Drug Situation and the Position Paper
of Some Important Business Leaders," unpublished paper, (September 18,1997),
1.
22. "Swiss OK Distribution of Heroin," Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.),
September 29,1997, A4.
23. Annemarie Buchholz-Kaiser, "Swiss Drug Policy: The Present Situation"
VPM, April 28,1992, 7.
24. These marginal groups include remnants of the narcotics trafficking
organizations of the former Soviet Union and East European intelligence
services. These intelligence services became involved in narcotics
trafficking during the cold war and sought, through facilitating drug
addiction in the West, to expand crime, unemployment, and internal conflict,
thereby promoting a crisis in Western democracies. The chairman of the Drug
Aid Cologne Association was the former Stasi agent Wilhem Vollman, who was
also a member of the North Rhine-Westfalia Parliament. According to Swiss
sources, he was a Stasi agent for twenty years and cultivated relationships
with Swiss journalists.
25. Neue Zucher Zeitung, November 26,1998, 72-73.
26. Franziska Haller explores this theory in "Swiss Drug Situation," VPM,
March 1 2,1996.
27. "VPM Is Troublesome in the Drug Problem," VPM, n.d., 2.
28. ECDP is now scheduled to expand its legalization network to Latin
America. In 1997, the mayor of Medellin, Colombia, invited two leading
Frankfurt Resolution advocates from Germany to address mayors of major Latin
American cities, including Lima, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, and La Paz,
along with the police commissioner of Caracas. The U.S. Drug Policy
Foundation was involved in the preparations for the Medellin conference. The
conference's preliminary objective was to push for the provision of hard
drugs to addicts under medical supervision. According to Der Spiegel, a
"Medellin statement" was designed to attack the U.S. position against drugs
and call for treatment of drug addiction. The meeting in Colombia was
designed to challenge the U.S. sphere of influence in seeking to extend the
legalization network into areas of vital U.S. interest. Der Spiegel 36,
(1997), 15.
29. Barry R. Weingast, "The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Role
of Law," American Political Science Review 91, no. 2 (June 1997), 245-63.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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