The Truth About Democracy

Vikas Shah - February 02nd 2010

Manchester Business School – Transforming Management - http://shah.tm.mbs.ac.uk

In recent weeks, we have seen uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Jordan where
members of the populous have taken to the streets, demonstrating and disrupting a country
over issues ranging from food inflation, corruption, freedom of speech, living conditions and
basic human and economic rights. Most notably of these have been the actions in Tunisia
and Egypt which, at least academically, have forced some degree of regime change. For the
first time within the Arab world, populations have realised that they can create change by
mobilising.

The Missing Ingredient

So what's changed? Why did this not happen sooner? The answer is technology.

In each of these countries, you are dealing with regimes which curtail freedom of speech and
communications to a degree which gives them notional control over the population. The
combination of fixed line and mobile internet, together with social media platforms and even
SMS has given 'the general public' tools by which they can co-ordinate themselves in an
organised and massive fashion; and in a way which subverts the typical methods of
censorship employed by regimes. In the Egyptian example, even recreant actions such as
'switching off the internet' didn't preclude demonstrations from continuing, as firms such as
Google provide alternative access platforms for users.

"New media conducive to fostering participation..." says Clay Shirky (Professor of New
Media, NYU) "...can indeed increase freedoms... just as the printing press, the postal service,
the telegraph and the telephone did before." He continues by citing Jurgen Habermas, a
German philosopher, who argued, "...the printing press helped democratise Europe by
providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often
before the state had fully democratised."

In less public examples, the collective powers of social media have allowed people to renege
death-sentences (such as the example of Hossein Derakshan in Iran) and even become aware
to subversions in the information the government present to them (such as the differences in
the 'official state' view of the Tianamen uprisings in China, versus what actually happened-
and recent revelations presented by Wikileaks on a wide-range of issues).

Cynics argue that social-media does nothing but enable populations to demonstrate, and make
noise- and while there are many examples such as these, where it has been successful- there
are many others which haven't.

The Wrong Context...

Underlying all these incidents and rhetoric is one fundamental need- that being for a
population to have democratic structures to govern themselves (either through political
agency, or otherwise). Social media has provided the population with the tools to examine
and respond to their political and social contexts- whether that be through the public
exposures of wrongdoing (be it human rights abuses, secrecy, corruption or otherwise)- or
through the co-ordinated disruption of a country until change is brought about. The big
question is... what next? The danger- of course- is that by displacing one regime, the
population will end up with military rule or (worse) an even more oppressive regime with a
heavier iron-fist. The conflicts in Rwanda and Darfur have taught us, in recent history, that
there are leaders for whom the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is not a
sufficient taboo such as to be avoided in their pursuit of power.

The missing link is the mechanism of participation. Technology has now got to the stage
where even in the most remote regions- sufficient communications technology exists to allow
people to participate in the democracy process, while having transparent access through their
government. India is a case in point of such activities where the government is combating
highly public and embarrassing corruption scandals to generate an integrated electronic
system to allow everyone from villages to cities to participate in the democratic process.
These mechanisms are helped by freedom of speech, assembly and so forth- but the Jasmine
revolution has shown that even in the most oppressive of circumstances, voices can still be
heard. The balance of power within any population usually means that left to their own
devices, with the right participation mechanisms, a population will usually perform
democratically for the benefit of the whole. It is, after all, far more difficult to subvert in a
transparent environment as extreme voices are more rapidly exposed and argued away (which
is one of the reasons we have proportionally fewer radicalised individuals in the UK and
USA than, say, Afghanistan)

This is a pivotal point for humanity. We are facing a potentially catastrophic situation with a
global population struggling to find security in food and water supplies, together with
shortages of energy- and more frequent incidents of extreme weather, war, and economic
instability. Many of these issues have been caused by short-sighted policy makers who
either bow to their own, or corporate interests- at the expense of the population (for example-
had policymakers been able to work together instead of fighting petty differences- the world
would probably be food and water secure right now, with most of the 2billion hungry not
dying...)

Our history now will be determined by our response to this change. Will we embrace
technology and realise that we can finally have true democracy (rather than various pseudo-
authoritarian regimes)? or will we find an environment where a small group of individuals
subvert everyone's freedoms with continuing use of censorship, force, and economic control.

The utopian former case is well within our capabilities- but it would take a paradigm shift in
political attitudes (even in the liberal west) for this to be enacted. In the latter case, there
will inevitably be a breaking point as, without fail, humanity always finds freedom.

“There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not
free.” Walter Cronkite