Liberal
democracy – incorporating human rights, democracy and capitalism – is a
Eurocentric concept and practice that has achieved a false universalism. It
emerged at the interstices of the collapse of colonialism on one hand and of
communism on the other: liberal democracy thus derived its neo-colonial aspect
from the former and its parochial universalistic tone in response to the
latter.
Given, as is often claimed, that the trident forms of liberal democracy are part of everyday discourse in the non-western world, is liberal democracy’s ubiquity a sufficient enough basis on which to justify the perpetuation of these western folk concepts and grant them normative status, against which other modes of governance and rights are assessed (and found to be wanting)?
That is: it was a protest against the rulers of the Arab world and the linkages between ethnicity and differential access to power, status, resources that their rule epitomized. Yes, support for democracy and freedom was extremely vocal among the protestors, but these tenets are not in themselves meaningful in the context of the Arab Spring once disengaged from the basic aim of protesting against ethnic ruling elites that disempowered ethnic outsiders.
As the Western world has found to its sincere chagrin, the Arab Spring was not motivated by Western prescriptions of “democracy” and “freedom”, entailing as these do the corollary prescription of secular statehood among other things.
It was based on a wider, more inclusive, universalist, and non-culturally specific reading.
It understood that democracy and freedom are not concepts or ideals to be attained in themselves; rather, that they are methodologies for articulating polyvalent voices and realities, and establishing them as part of meaningful interaction and discourse with the powerful elite.
Whether that interactive and discursive space frames protest and revolutionary activity, or comprises electoral voting-off of one party for another, is irrelevant. The important matter is that this space is available, that the methodologies are available: the use to which they are put, the impulse in which they are harkened, are not the crucial elements.
It is time for the West to release its stranglehold over democracy and freedom, to accept itself and its colonising past as one culture among many, to overcome its satiated sense of entitlement as the bearer of civilisation and as representing the zenith – the end – of history.
Given, as is often claimed, that the trident forms of liberal democracy are part of everyday discourse in the non-western world, is liberal democracy’s ubiquity a sufficient enough basis on which to justify the perpetuation of these western folk concepts and grant them normative status, against which other modes of governance and rights are assessed (and found to be wanting)?
Should
liberal democracy not more accurately be perceived as a product of post-colonial
blues among former rulers, aimed at enlivening Western modes of ‘ethnic’
dominance vis-a-vis non-western ethnic peoples; a crucible for precepts and
practices tied to the vanity project of re-establishing a culture of west
European domination?
If non-western states and peoples discourse on liberal democracy, that is evidence not of the term’s apparent universalism but of the non-western world’s maturity in embracing cultural relativism within which rubric liberal democracy most comfortably sits.
The
knee-jerk reaction to such commonsense thinking may well be to cite the protests of the Arab Spring of 2011: a series of events apparently undergirded
by the twin idealisation of democracy and freedom. In truth, though, as
academics and history itself have demonstrably shown, the Arab Spring was
forged through mass mobilisation in pursuit of the common denominator that was
the removal of the ruling ethnic classes.If non-western states and peoples discourse on liberal democracy, that is evidence not of the term’s apparent universalism but of the non-western world’s maturity in embracing cultural relativism within which rubric liberal democracy most comfortably sits.
That is: it was a protest against the rulers of the Arab world and the linkages between ethnicity and differential access to power, status, resources that their rule epitomized. Yes, support for democracy and freedom was extremely vocal among the protestors, but these tenets are not in themselves meaningful in the context of the Arab Spring once disengaged from the basic aim of protesting against ethnic ruling elites that disempowered ethnic outsiders.
As the Western world has found to its sincere chagrin, the Arab Spring was not motivated by Western prescriptions of “democracy” and “freedom”, entailing as these do the corollary prescription of secular statehood among other things.
It was based on a wider, more inclusive, universalist, and non-culturally specific reading.
It understood that democracy and freedom are not concepts or ideals to be attained in themselves; rather, that they are methodologies for articulating polyvalent voices and realities, and establishing them as part of meaningful interaction and discourse with the powerful elite.
Whether that interactive and discursive space frames protest and revolutionary activity, or comprises electoral voting-off of one party for another, is irrelevant. The important matter is that this space is available, that the methodologies are available: the use to which they are put, the impulse in which they are harkened, are not the crucial elements.
It is time for the West to release its stranglehold over democracy and freedom, to accept itself and its colonising past as one culture among many, to overcome its satiated sense of entitlement as the bearer of civilisation and as representing the zenith – the end – of history.
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