Like many others, I bemoan the election of Donald Trump. I recoil from the sexist, xenophobic and racist persona that he projected in the election, from the disdain for consistency and fact that he displayed, and from the reckless positions he maintained on many policy fronts. If he sticks by these policies then when he exits the presidency, he will leave the United States and the world worse off than he finds it on entering office.
The worst harm that Trump might achieve, however, would be to deprive us of our belief in democracy. True, democratic election has not served us well in this instance. But democracy flies on two wings, one electoral, the other contestatory. And there is some reason to hope that the contestatory form of democratic power will contain Trump’s excesses in the years before us.
The contestatory aspect of democracy becomes salient when we register how much worse it would have been, if he had come to power within a non-democratic regime like China’s. Whatever complaints citizens of the US may have under his rule, they will still be in a constitutionally entrenched position to voice those complaints, make common cause in pressing them, mobilise public opinion in their support, organise against the powerful, and seek their day in court, at the polls or on the streets. They will be able to impose an important degree of pressure and discipline on how his administration behaves.
Democratic regimes are most saliently characterised by the way they enable people collectively to elect their government. But normal democracies also enable citizens individually or in social movements to contest the policies proposed by government and to work at getting them changed.
Active measures
This contestatory power is normally imposed on government by active measures such as court action, political mobilisation and civil disobedience. But the very possibility that people will resort to such initiatives already has a shaping effect on government. In a contestatory democracy politicians have to consider the opposition their preferred policies are likely to trigger and, at peril of losing office, they have to preempt opposition by suitable compromises. This virtual form of influence, which often goes unnoticed, may be the most effective form of democratic power.
Of course citizens enjoy contestatory power, active or virtual, only because the officials they elect are not the sole authorities in a democracy. If their contestation is to have any effect, citizens must enjoy security in the information they have about government, in their capacity to complain and organise against official policy, and in their access to the courts, the media, the hustings and the streets. And they can enjoy this democratic security only because of the independence of bodies such as courts and tribunals, bureaus of statistics and budget offices, ombudsman and equal-opportunity authorities, central banks and exchange commissions, and regulatory agencies such as an auditor general’s office. It is such bodies that keep channels of information open and ensure access to the resources of contestation.
Yes, it is extremely disturbing that someone like Donald Trump has been elected to the presidency of the United States. But it would be much worse if he had come to power in the absence of constitutionally guaranteed, contestatory institutions. They would have been absent in a non-democratic regime like China’s, of course. And they would also have been absent in purely electoral regimes like those now emerging in Russia and to a lesser extent in Turkey, Hungary and Poland.
Dictatorships
These regimes are electoral dictatorships, not democracies in any full sense of the term. They claim to advance policies that represent the wishes of the real people rather than elites, a neo-populist pretension that also marks Trump’s canvassing. And in support of this project, they try to suppress the contestatory dimension of democracy. Thus they typically demonise non-governmental organisations and social movements and try to weaken or undermine the independence of the courts and other statutory bodies.
These observations argue that there is consolation for citizens of the US in the fact that, however they dislike the incoming president, his election to office is unlikely to deprive them of their democratic power. But is there any consolation on offer for those who live outside the US and look with horror at the prospect of a retreat from climate commitments, a new aggression in trade policy, and a refusal by the US to play its part in offering a home to refugees?
There is some consolation even on this front. Contestatory democracies connect with one another at many levels through the interaction of agencies, officials and citizens across countries and in global forums; to a lesser extent, indeed, the same is true of all regimes. That means that the only power any one of them can hope to enjoy is the soft power of a persuasion pursued at different levels and tailored to different issues. Even the US cannot prosper alone. And, however much it may rail at the constraint, even a Trump administration will have to come to terms with that reality.
Lessons
Are there lessons to be learned from Trump’s success for democracy in Europe? The main lesson is that social democratic parties cannot afford to neglect the concerns of those that have been deeply hurt and alienated by a combination of neo-liberalism in commerce and austerity in government. And in particular, they cannot allow right-wing parties to mobilise the frustrated around a neo-populist hostility to immigrants and refugees.
A certain danger of allowing this neo-populism to prosper is that governments will be elected that put the contestatory resources of European democracies under enormous strain. And a possible danger is that in countries with limited constitutional protection, the rise of neo-populism might destroy those resources and lead to electoral dictatorship. This would make a mockery of all that western Europe achieved after the defeat of fascism in the second World War.