Good Goverment : Democracy Beyond Elections

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A Democracy of Trust

The shrinking of debate to a series of monologues has since been ex­ tended to encompass e­ very aspect of po­l iti­cal expression, with the same effect of impoverishing demo­c ratic society. A monologue is a way of speaking that takes no risk and that, b ­ ecause it can never be challenged, lives on without fear of contradiction inside a fortress of pure assertion. It serves to further harden already entrenched positions by enforcing a par­tic­u­lar type of discourse to the exclusion of any other, by encour­ aging citizens to take sides unreflectively rather than helping them to make up their own minds through the examination of facts and the comparison of arguments. Citizens are thus condemned to passivity. To the question of how this cunning form of slow po­l iti­cal death might be counteracted, ­there is no ready juridical or institutional answer. Fortu­ nately one cannot imagine a law being passed making truthful speech mandatory, except in a totalitarian regime determined to turn it to its own advantage (which is done in vari­ous ways, most notably by pun­ ishing alleged attempts to subvert the institutions of state). But one might well imagine requiring candidates for public office to take notice of the views of civic groups on all relevant topics in order to promote debate in vari­ous settings, at ­every level, from community councils to nation­ ally televised forums, with the assistance of existing institutions and ones that have yet to be designed. Already a number of broadly repre­ sentative ad hoc councils and commissions have aided the examination of controversial issues and cleared away obstacles to decision ­making on sensitive subjects (in France, one thinks of what the Commission on Nationality accomplished regarding citizenship in 1987,53 of the pro­ gress made in clarifying the princi­ple of secularism by the Stasi Com­ mission in 2003, and by the ongoing study of the retirement system by the Pensions Advisory Council, to mention only three well-­k nown ex­ amples). The media likewise have a role to play in t­ hese areas, with much the same objective of causing partisan verbiage to collapse beneath the weight of its own pomposity, of forcing politicians to come out from ­behind their protective shell, of helping citizens face up to real­ity by pulling down ideological barriers. ­Here again, the demo­c ratic function of journalism becomes increasingly vital.54 A third front in the ­battle for plain speaking has been opened up by the sudden emergence of a language of intentions. This is a new po­liti­cal development of relatively recent origin. It arose from a general mood of disorientation and powerlessness that, as we have seen, spread in reac­


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