The Life and Death of was published exactly a year ago. How has The life and death it been received?

The reception perhaps mirrors the scope of the book – it’s an attempt to of democracy write the first-ever global – and the multiple voices it contains. It’s hardly a single-authored book, but very much a collective effort. Conceived during my time at the Bridget Cotter interviews John Keane Centre for the Study of Democracy, it’s a summary statement of what I learned from all the things that went on there: the interesting and sometimes fiery debates, the excellent dissertations, the inputs of researchers and the many visitors from home and abroad who spirit of assembly democracy after There are various reasons for this made it such a fine place to work. The Athens, for instance within the early chronic memory loss, including the book’s also a collective effort in Muslim world, is highlighted, along grip of empiricism and a preoccupation another sense. Hundreds of people with the medieval origins of with teaching the supposed ‘classical’ generously granted interviews, democratic government in texts and authors, but the knock-on submitted tips and materials, and read representative form. The book effect is unhealthy. Those who have no and made comments on various drafts questions the view of Robert Dahl, sense of the past inevitably of the long narrative. I suppose the John Dunn and others that after misunderstand the present, and that’s a book’s reception has been shaped as Athens democracy faded away almost big quibble I have with current well by its attempt to stir up trouble, to everywhere, for nearly two thousand analyses of democracy. prod and poke at the many prejudices years. It pays attention to the long that have become affixed to the ideals, chain of efforts to democratise You write about ‘monitory language and institutions of representative government, many of democracy’. What does this mean? democracy. them forgotten, from the first experiments during the late sixteenth- I’d like to emphasise that democracy, What kinds of prejudice? century in the Low Countries to the treated as a political form, as a whole later struggles for democratic way of life, is unique because it Against previous self-contradictory representation throughout Spanish sharpens people’s collective sense of efforts to justify democracy by America and the colonies of Australia, the contingency of who gets what, resorting to haughty First Principles, New Zealand and Canada. when and how, and whether they the book makes a new ethical deserve their privileges, or their case for democracy as the misfortunes. Alexis de ‘“monitory democracy” is a large-scale best remedy for human folly, Tocqueville was the first writer arrogance, lying and the mutation that slowly but surely is on democracy to spot its de- hubris that typically feeds naturing effects. Through time, upon First Principles. The transforming the dynamics of the spirit, democracy has enabled people – book criticises the language and institutions of democracy’ I don’t say The People – to nineteenth-century myth of question the supposed democracy’s Athenian necessity of tyrants, monarchs, beginnings. It tables solid new The whole approach is not emperors, slave owners, bosses and archaeological evidence of the antiquarian, history for history’s sake. bullies. It’s very odd that contemporary existence of scores of ancient Greek It’s rather a history of democracy that analyses of democracy mostly suppress , some of them much older concentrates on the present and future the point. So the book sets out to than Athens. The pre-Greek of democracy. It’s designed to democratise our understanding of (Mycenaean, Linear B) roots of the underscore democracy’s great fragility democracy by heightening our sense of language of democracy are examined. and mutability as a political form, as its temporality. It speaks about three The book defends the controversial well as to persuade readers that almost historical epochs of democracy: the claim that early democracy had all current fads in democratic theory – early forms of assembly democracy; Eastern origins, in the citizen from and its the emergence of democracy in assemblies that first sprang up in neo-Hobbesian opponents to talk of representative, territorial state form; ancient Syria–Mesopotamia and were ‘’, cosmopolitan and, since the end of World War Two, later imported via the Phoenicians into democracy and participatory the rise of ‘monitory democracy’, a the Greek world.The survival of the governance – suffer from amnesia. large-scale mutation that slowly but

CSD BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 | DOUBLE ISSUE VOL 17 NOS 1 & 2 | 3 surely is transforming the dynamics of reaction to the idea of monitory and ‘democracy’, is a secure the spirit, language and institutions of democracy happened in the infrastructure of independent, extra- democracy. Democracy is coming to Netherlands, Greece, Belgium and party mechanisms for publicly mean much more than just fair and Spain, where there’s also been scrutinising the power of the free elections within territorial state discussion of the book’s claim that the authorities, from the municipal level settings. It’s a synecdoche for the first recorded parliament was to the very top echelons of power. Yet chastening of power, a signifier that convened at the end of the twelfth the theme of monitory democracy has underscores the vital importance of century in Leon, in the north of Spain. also attracted interest in high official subjecting governments, corporations Spanish journalists and other circles, for instance within the China and other bodies to permanent public commentators seemed to delight in the Executive Leadership Academy in scrutiny and control. For the sake of evidence that Westminster can no Shanghai. Officials there have grasped greater equality, democracy is the longer be considered the mother of the need for independent mechanisms ongoing attempt to humble power, to parliaments. for publicly scrutinising corrupted and keep power on its toes – in between There’s also been a fascinating corrupting power, particularly at the elections, even in cross-border reception in China. When the book municipal level. They understand well settings. was first conceived, over a decade ago, that in the absence of monitory everybody told me that it could be democracy projects like housing What did reviewers say about published only in Taiwan, simply construction, transport systems and ‘monitory democracy’? because the authorities in Beijing environmental protection cannot be would consider a lengthy treatment of efficient, effective or legitimate. The distinction between assembly and democracy too dangerous. Well, such Whether or not the party authorities representative forms of democracy is is the flux in contemporary China that will or could embrace the principle of familiar, even though I independent public try to explain in detail monitoring of their own how and why the ‘ officials in the China Executive Leadership power is unclear. It’s one of distinction came about. the great political questions The theory of monitory Academy in Shanghai have grasped the need confronting our world. Can democracy is a different the Communist Party of matter. It has stirred up for independent mechanisms for publicly China transform itself into a lot of discussion and scrutinising corrupted and corrupting power, something resembling the has meant different Congress Party led by things to different particularly at the municipal level’ Nehru, or the ANC led by audiences in different Mandela? I wish I knew the contexts. It all started in answer. Britain, where the book appeared in the a full-length Mandarin translation is midst of the gravest parliamentary due to appear next year. We’ll see What has been the reaction to the book corruption scandal since the early whether there are cuts, for instance of in the United States? nineteenth century. MPs ‘flipping’, the book’s analysis of the strong bogus invoices for second houses and democratic imaginings within the It’s been disappointing. The American flats, and petty claims for such items works of Liang Quichao and Sun Yat- publisher’s explanation is that the as fox-proof floating duck islands, cake sen, or whether there will be recession has tightened the book trade tins and shopping bags costing 25 airbrushing of the book’s analysis of and that British authors living outside pence understandably aroused much the dangers of post-democracy in the United States no longer get red public indignation. China. I don’t know what to expect. carpet treatment. The collapsing The first review of the book [in The newspaper business model, which has Times by David Aaronovitch] likened Will you allow the book to be savaged book review culture, hasn’t the angry hysteria to the grief triggered published in mainland China if any of helped. Review space has declined by by the death of Princess Diana. He it is cut or ‘airbrushed’? more than a third in a decade. On-line said, in effect, that the theory of reviews hardly compensate for the monitory democracy was a great Let’s see what happens. The reaction in decline, or that’s been my experience breakthrough because it provided a China to the theory of monitory with this book. The Daily Beast form of psychoanalytic explanation of democracy has been fascinating. The complained about its excessive length. the outburst. The book is a type of term is easy to translate (jian du shi Several others, including the Internet psychoanalysis of democracy, and the minzhu) and it has a clear resonance Review of Books, said that my pathologies that have developed within two quite different sets of treatment of the American founding around political parties, parliaments audiences. The supporters and fathers, especially James Madison, was and politicians, though I hadn’t sympathizers of Charter 08 see its unacceptably pejorative: I argue that anticipated that just one section of the radical potential. For them, what is the republican gentlemen who book would be seen as its central missing in China, a one-party system championed the revolution were message. Much the same favourable defined by much talk of ‘the people’ actively opposed to democracy. I was

4 | CSD BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010| DOUBLE ISSUE VOL 17 NOS 1 & 2 struck by the honesty. I opposed definitions of suspect the wounded democracy. It was the pride caused by the first country to turn book’s treatment of the democracy into an United States may have enemy of slavery. And fed the silence. so on. American readers American intellectuals, should feel pride in the with some important fact that during the exceptions, seem to nineteenth century the find it hard to think American republic was outside their own skins the world’s most when it comes to important laboratory of democracy. A recent democracy. The devil’s case in point is Stefan in the detail, however, Halper’s widely for what the book tries discussed claim that to show is the way that China’s authoritarian the democratisation of capitalism is ‘shrinking the American republic the West’, and that, was causally bound up given the illusion that with the growth of capitalism begets empire. Democracy had democracy is crumbling, what is now new ‘compound republic’, as Madison a darker side. There have been only urgently needed is a global renewal of called it, regarded a two-tiered, three democratic empires: ancient faith in the superiority of American- presidential republic guided by Athens, revolutionary France and the style ‘liberal democracy’. His silence is periodic election of representatives of United States, which is the first-ever striking about the potential global ‘the people’ as the best prophylactic democratic empire in global form. A significance of the new hybrid ‘post- against democracy. No signatory of the democratic empire is of course a Washington’ forms of monitory Declaration of Independence was a contradiction in both terms and fact. democracy that have taken root in democrat; and literally every delegate How is it possible to spread the places as different as Taiwan, Brazil, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention language, the ideas, and the India, South Africa and the European rejected democracy because they saw it institutions of self-government Union. It’s as if America is democracy. as a formula for social disorder and through imperial power in soft or hard But America is no longer – as political tyranny. form, without inside and outside Tocqueville supposed – the lighthouse The book thus unravels a paradox to resistance to the hypocrisy and of democratic norms and institutions. show how, with great difficulty, the injustice of it all? Ancient Athens and The remarkable democratic butterfly of revolutionary France paid a heavy price breakthroughs in India for their failure to resolve triggered a different pattern of that issue. Will America ‘indigenisation’. A global ‘every delegate at the 1787 Constitutional suffer the same fate? compass swing is happening. The future of democracy will Convention rejected democracy because they Returning to the alleged be decided by what happens difference between in the Asia and Pacific region saw it as a formula for social disorder and representative and – that’s where Tocqueville, if monitory democracy: he were still alive, would political tyranny’ have we really entered a today have to travel, or so the new historical era? Aren’t book argues. we talking simply about escaped from the chrysalis of rule by representative democracy with You say that American reviewers were republican gentlemen, many of them monitoring institutions added on? offended by the argument that the slave owners and most of them hostile Founding Fathers were not democrats. to indigenous peoples. The unintended I realise I’m out on a limb here. The This point is not all that controversial. consequence of 1776 – a type of task of persuading others that we’re Why should it have offended them? democracy unknown to the ancients – living in a black swan moment, that was remarkable. The country there’s a need for a gestalt switch The book is pitched against the view of witnessed the first peaceful handover guided by a ‘wild’ category, monitory Francis Fukuyama and others that of government from one party to democracy, one that brings new modern ‘liberal democracy’ has its another and the first grassroots descriptive, strategic and normative roots in the American Revolution. political party calling itself significance to real-world trends that That view doesn’t square with the fact democratic. America survived a brutal we can see all around us, isn’t easy. It that all the earliest champions of the civil war between two hostile and rather reminds me of the old uphill

CSD BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 | DOUBLE ISSUE VOL 17 NOS 1 & 2 | 5 intellectual battles in defence of the elections and territorial states. nonsense. It begins to democratise category of civil society. Many democracy – to cut down to size its old observers of contemporary So you welcome the trend towards principle of the Sovereign People. speak as if nothing has changed, as if ‘monitory democracy’? There are no guarantees that it will we still live in the era of ‘liberal’ or succeed in this. Monitory democracy ‘representative’ democracy. We don’t, When measured in terms of the history is an unfinished project; to use the and those living-dead zombie terms are of democracy, monitory democracy is words of Derrida it’s still the unhelpful in finding our bearings and easily the most vibrant, dynamic and democracy to come. It will forever be fixing our priorities, or so I think. The power-sensitive form of democracy the democracy to come. The struggle growth of new monitory institutions – we’ve known. It’s a remedy for some of against hubris can never be won and I have in mind more than a hundred the profound weaknesses within the that’s why it must never be new types of watchdog institutions old model of representative democracy. abandoned. Whether monitory born since 1945, bodies such as anti- For instance, monitory mechanisms democracy can or will survive the corruption commissions, citizens’ encourage the greening of our pressures and contradictions of the assemblies, summits, world in which it’s been human rights networks, born, well, I don’t know. democratic audits and ‘Mill did not see that representative Monitory forms of election monitors – change democracy are our best hope the dynamics of democracy democracy could prepare the ground for what for preventing or reversing as we know it. Helped along the evils produced by by the development of new Heidegger justified as the historical fulfilment unaccountable power, but communication media, they are certainly not parties, parliaments and of “the people” in the “Führer state”‘ leading us towards paradise politicians feel the heat of on earth. Monitory public criticisms, scandal democracy generates plenty and disaffection. Membership of societies. These mechanisms empower of its own pathologies. Its mechanisms political parties plummets. Electoral new representatives, some of them heighten the sense that territorial turnouts become more volatile. unelected, who speak and act against states and their conventional Politicians are suspected of being the old paradigm of treating the parliamentary institutions are too crooks. That’s not to say that citizens biosphere as if it were merely a weak or illegitimate to handle ever- lose interest in politics. In virtually commodity, or an expendable slave of expanding bundles of problems. The every democracy it’s the opposite; governments.. When they work well, practical failure of monitory people in fact expect much more of monitory mechanisms also call into mechanisms to make headway in areas political decision makers and the question the abuse of state and such as migration, the arms trade and definition and scope of politics corporate power across borders. The global finance causes disappointment, expands, and becomes more ‘viral’ in global uproars that accompanied the hurt and suffering to millions of quality. American invasion of Iraq, and the people. The growth of monitory Some conservative reviewers of the devastation of the Gulf of Mexico democracy also stirs up feelings that book, John Gray and Noel Malcolm for caused by the criminal negligence of existing political elites are instance, expressed deep fears about BP, are pertinent examples of monitory unrepresentative fools who lie, cheat the capacity of watchdogs to democracy in action. and break promises. Such feelings are undermine sovereign state power, but I Least obviously, perhaps, monitory of course the soil in which the new think that’s unwarranted nostalgia. In democracy is a remedy for what J.S. enemies of monitory democracy put the age of monitory democracy the Mill and other nineteenth-century down tap roots: authoritarian leaders powerful – corporations, churches, critics dubbed the tyranny of the like Ahmadinejad, Chavez and government agencies – feel the pinch majority. They pointed out that Berlusconi, anti-democratic populists of public scrutiny, sometimes from all representative democracy, with its who act as if they have a right to steal sides. Some monitory bodies, human promise of equality for all, contained people’s hearts and minds. rights networks for instance, operate the seeds of its own destruction. They over great distances. Efforts at did not see that representative John Keane has been appointed chastening power spread underneath democracy could degenerate into Professor of Politics at the University and across state borders. The spirit of something much worse than tyranny – of Sydney. In March 1989 he founded monitory democracy goes regional, that it could prepare the ground for the Centre for the Study of even global. In all this we’re talking what Heidegger, in his winter semester Democracy. Bridget Cotter is lecturer about a qualitative not a quantitative seminars of 1933/34, described and in Politics at the University of shift – a rough ‘n’ tumble alteration of justified as the historical fulfilment of Westminster, where she teaches the spirit, institutions and language of ‘the people’ in the ‘Führer state’. political theory. She was the democracy, which escapes the Monitory democracy fuels fears and founding editor of the CSD Bulletin containers of both party-centred doubts about such dangerous in the early 1990s.

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