May 21, 2021

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

José Manuel Pureza

For nearly three decades democracy seemed to be unquestioned and unquestionable. The Fukuyaman post-political and post-history framework dominated social theory and mainstream political science approached democracy solely through its formal liberal representative prescription based upon free and fair rules of competition between parties. Also, critical political theory had more or less accepted the liberal political horizon; proposing deliberative, participative and agonistic alternative models which left capitalism itself evermore unquestioned. In the middle of the Global Financial crisis, the Euro crisis, the emergence of the Occupy movements and the Arab Spring, these certainties seemed to eclipse instantly. The main objective of this research was to discover why and how democracy was going through such a legitimacy crisis. This thesis is an inquiry into the relation between crisis and democracy based on the case-study of austerity-ridden Portugal between 2011 and 2015. Based upon a historical analysis of democratic theory throughout the evolution of capitalism and a critical analysis of the concept of crisis in the construction of political knowledge, this research studies the relationship between Portugal's political economy and the development of its democracy; from the period of fascism, over the Carnation Revolution and the European integration process to its present period of crisis and austerity. Our research is based upon the idea that democracy is an ideological concept - in which ideology refers to the medium through which consciousness and meaningfulness operate - and that crises emerge the "fundamental contradictions in society"; breaking up the hegemonic consensus. As diverging, potentially legitimate interests emerge, the dissensus in society is concentrated in the conceptualization of democracy itself, producing divergent narratives and perspectives of it: a Demodiversity is the apparent expression of the crisis of the hegemonic form of democracy. Such hypothesis has been substantiated by applying a critical discourse analysis to interviews of the various sides of the social conflict under austerity conditions. Besides the 67 people that were interviewed at the anti-austerity protests; we also interviewed 8 key-players: policymakers, opposition members of parliament, social movement activists and Trade Union leaders. For at least three decades, the traditional liberal-democratic democratic discourse has based upon the technocratic depoliticization and the culturalization of political problems, while government policies are formally legitimized based on procedures, law, elections, parliamentary majorities, ratified treaties and constitutional judgements. Austerity only deepened and normalized the neoliberal dimensions of inevitability and exceptionality. Besides the dominant model, we distinguished three other competing discourses of democracy which could have formed an alternative democratic content: the Acampadas, the Trade Union model, and the alternative party model. While the union discourse focusses on a conceptualization of democracy based upon everyday working and living conditions, collective action and direct participation, the social movements were more utopic by focussing on systemic change, horizontality, and practices of prefiguration. The discourse of the parties, was more institutionalist, focussed on organization, power, and the state, focussing on social and constitutional rights, elections, history, ideology, and strategy. This thesis argues that an articulation between these models - in the form of socialism - is necessary to present a viable alternative to the hegemonic liberal-democratic form. We conclude this thesis by critically analysing possible shortcomings of the separate alternative discourses, and how, to different extent, they were rearticulated back into the hegemonic liberal-democratic model of democracy. Notably, we focus on how aspects of depolitization and aesthetics in the assembly movements and how the excessive hope in electoral change and subsequent coalition-negotiations around the Geringonça-project did not solve the structural problems behind the democratic crisis.

Keywords: Crisis. Democracy. Legitimation crisis. Indignados. Demodiversity. Semi-peripheral capitalism. Portugal. Democratic discourses. Austerity. Social movements. Political Science