Elites and citizens

In early November, the European Parliament organized an Agora (in Greek, a marketplace, a public forum), to which some 500 representatives of civil society were invited to discuss the question: “New treaties: challenges, opportunities, instruments”. The Citizens’ Agora (or Citizens’ Forum) was intended to remedy the “democratic deficit” within the European Union, and so offer an example of “participative democracy”. This concept deserves some further reflection.The member states of the Union constitute “representative democracies”, in which citizens elect those they consider best suited to rule over them. “Representative democracy” is generally opposed to “direct democracy”, in which the electors take specific political decisions themselves instead of electing suitable persons to this end. By voting for their own representatives, citizens renounce their direct decision-making power, for example through referendums. A referendum may seem “more democratic” than a parliamentary decision, since it enables the voice of citizens to play a decisive role. But it is a brutal mechanism. It is clear that in this case those who formulate a simple question on an inevitably complex problem wield immense power. This procedure also deprives the elected representatives of their most valuable function and powers.Representative democracy allows the alternation of the rule of citizens, every four or five years, with the prolonged rule of their elected representatives. This alternation involves a reciprocal, and not merely unilateral, relation between citizens and their representatives. But it also creates a void in which the participation of citizens may remain latent between one election and the next, and this leads in turn to alienation between the political class and the population as a whole. This alienation is evident in Western Europe, in which it is believed that “democracy” is intrinsically just, but in which it is in practice ignored.Yet the remedy of this situation poses a danger. Participative democracy involves a continuous process, through which individual citizens and communities can instruct and inform their own representatives, thus leading them to respond to their own actions, though without controlling them. In our time, online forums permit interested groups to communicate ideas of great quality to parliamentarians, but what is still lacking is a complementary structure through which these ideas may be taken seriously. One of my colleagues is fond of citing the encouraging example of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia: it provides not only a clear procedure for the correction of errors and for the control of abuses, but its basic articles permit debates and “discussion forums” around them. The richness of this combination prevents the risk of fundamentalism which would consist in the acceptance of the advice and judgements of others without bothering about the quality of the thought that underlies them.Thanks to the Citizens’ Agora, the European Union recognizes the need to institutionalize this process of participative democracy. As an American observer, James Fishkin, observes, “ we find ourselves faced by the fundamental and recurrent problem of public consultation. If we appeal to the elites, we have deliberations without political equality. If we appeal directly to citizens, we have political equality but generally without deliberations“. Since a situation in which political elites would cease to exist is inconceivable, the enrichment of the public debate is the only plausible solution for the future.