Democracy, compromise, and mediocrity

Plato did not rate democracy especially high. Actually he downright despised it as the realm of opinion, unstable and misleading. Looking back on History, his insight into the flaws of the system is startling yet fails at some crucial point. Indeed, through various checks and balances and an increasingly educated population, democracy has proven to be a rather stable system, and certainly the only one with long-term respectability and viability.

This stability is achieved through the necessary catering to a sufficient portion of the electorate. Proportionally, agendas are diluted in order to reach a compromise insuring sufficient popularity, or rather minimum antagonism. It is ever smoother to let be rather then make change. France stands out as a case study of how easy it is to move crowds against something yet so darn difficult to get a sizeable majority to agree on anything. Another key factor in political dynamics concerns the importance of motivated and organised minority in keeping privileges against a mostly passive majority, the quasi mythical “silent majority”. As a result, rousing the silent majority is all the more difficult since with every other issue it is thinned out into antagonistic communities.

This external pressure is strengthened by similar pressures from within political parties. The same logic of compromise and seduction applies, maybe even highlighted by the superposition of personal ambitions on top of public issues. Personalities come into account, furthering evermore the dilution of strong stances. Here compromise can touch to mediocrity such are the pressures converging towards the non-committal centre. What remains is an unspoken and fruitless status quo.

At this point, paradoxically, stability proves to be treacherous, allowing unsustainable situations to rot and stretch. This misleading stability just ends up leading to a dead end, trigging important political crisis instead of the ideal minute adjustment towards an elusive golden balance. As they say, comes a point when everything must change if everything is to remain the same. The very checks that insure no man stands for too long above the others can lead to a misplaced yearning for the providential man, Plato's arch-enemy.

At the end of the day, the political centre of the spectrum can prove to be a rather treacherous place. The illusion of striking a golden balance is never as strong as at the uneasy compromise of the centre which always magnets candidates of important elections. The ideal politicians would then be someone capable of making reasonable policies of changes shine through petty lobbies thanks to personal charisma. A potential dictator with ethos to keep him steady, in other terms. And when all is said and done, he will still have to go, just in case power turns his head. And so it should be, for isn't democracy “the worst political system, after all the others”, “a system that makes sure we are governed no better than we deserve”?

Retrouvez cet article dans le numéro d'OpinionS de mars 2007

16/11/2007

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