Roj Bash Kurdistan

The first and most important component of the democratic ethic is so obvious, that it is rarely explicitly named. It is the principle of ethical and political legitimacy: "a democratic government should not be overthrown". In the normal course of affairs, democratic states rely on legitimacy to preserve their own existence and cohesion. Overthrow of the government is totally off the political agenda: it is taboo to even discuss it. There is no large army to suppress armed revolts, because there are no large armed revolts - and no small ones either. The United States is a nation of gun-owners, but despite a month of political feuding over the Gore-Bush election result in 2000, not a shot was fired for political reasons. That was a remarkable achievement, in a country with a history of secessionism, Civil War, and military conquest of ethnic minorities. The 'normal course of affairs' is historically not normal at all.

What would happen if legitimacy disappeared completely? In principle, you could hold free and fair multi-party elections in an open society - and then overthrow the democratically elected government, after each election. That could happen every week, but it would not be considered 'democracy'. This emphasises the formalism and proceduralism of democracy: once followed, the democratic procedures are claimed to produce legitimacy. The government which is elected by the democratic procedures becomes the absolutely legitimate government. If legitimacy is strong, then it becomes culturally taboo to overthrow it. It even becomes taboo not to see it as 'our government'. Because US citizens think this way, the United States is politically stable.

To be a democrat means, that you think this should happen: you believe that the democratically elected government is legitimate and must be accepted as legitimate (unless it is itself anti-democratic). The procedures are not an ornament, they are the essence. This legitimacy claim is a major ethical defect of democracy - because procedure is no substitute for morality. Most democrats go much further, and would claim explicitly that a democratically elected government, which has acted on a decision made in accordance with democratic procedures and the rule of law, should not be overthrown, even if the action is morally wrong.

At the heart of democracy is something which is morally unacceptable. What democrats are saying, is that no value may override democracy. In terms of regime preference, they are saying, for instance, that a democracy which tortures, is preferable to a dictatorship which does not. Now, all states claim political legitimacy - that their laws should be obeyed, that their judges are entitled to judge, that they may raise taxes. However, the claims of democrats imply ethical legitimacy, a claim to moral authority. It is more like the infallibility claim made by the Catholic Church, which asserts that certain declarations by the Pope are the absolute moral truth.

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The second important component of the democratic ethic is the prohibition of secession. Unlike the legitimacy claim, the democratic principles concerning secession are often discussed - for instance in Canada, in connection with Québec secessionism. Unlimited secession would make democracy pointless. If free and fair multi-party elections are held in an open society, but anyone who disagrees with the result can set up a separate state, no democrat would accept that as a democracy. For democrats there must be a unit, beyond which secession is not permitted: this unit is the 'demos'. Again, its modern expression is the democratic nation state. The indivisibility of the demos is as important as legitimacy, because legitimacy collapses in the face of secessionism. Secessionists see the existing government as 'foreign', and they no longer feel any obligation to its laws, institutions, and policies. So a democratic government ultimately depends on military power to sustain itself in office, and to prevent the unlimited secession of minorities. This aspect of the democratic ethic brought democrats into a long-term alliance with nationalism. No guns,no democracy.

talsor wrote:If you dig deep enough , you will find that there is nothing wrong with any ideology or system whether it is socialism , communism , capitalism , democracy , even a dictatorship . They all work fine and bring different results if it is implemented properly . like my teacher used to say "The problem is not the system , it is the idiot(s) behiend the keyboard" .

As with the Kurdish case, the area of secessionist aspirations is usually isolated from the rest of the country; the secessionists are not trying to impose their goals or ideology on the remaining population, and instead try to decentralize the democracy which to me actually seems more like democracy in practice than a central 'demos' having to maintain order over large sections of unsatisfied population. I cannot understand the rationale behind preserving the inefficient 'demos'.