Timbuktu Institute - September 2024

Undertaking a refoundation of democracy, to defend its gains where it is established and promote it where it is still an aspiration, a dream or, at best, in its early stages of realization, requires taking into account the main causes of its retreat and the difficulties standing in the way of its realization in Africa and elsewhere. 
As Mohamed-Chérif Ferjani puts it, the first challenge of such a refoundation would perhaps be to collaborate “in the construction of a truly universal democracy, which excludes no one and needs no one's exploitation, neither in the North nor in the South, neither in the East nor in the West”. To achieve this, he reminds us, “ we must all assume our responsibilities, and stop stigmatizing others, with arrogance and bad faith, in order to absolve ourselves of our responsibility; we must all start by putting our own house in order, and stop seeing each other as a threat to our security and comfort ”.
Moreover, rebuilding democracy requires us to take into account the reasons for “democratic disenchantment” in Africa , as elsewhere in the world, both in relation to representative democracy and to its populist critics calling for forms of direct democracy that are often reduced to forms of “plebiscitary democracy”, not to mention the non-democratic alternatives that criticize democracy, whether direct or indirect, for the political instability inherent in changing majorities, the difficulty of envisioning long-term projects, the populist temptation to win elections at all costs, the dictatorship of the majority to the detriment of the rights of the minority(ies), etc.

Representative democracy, direct democracy
As far as representative democracy is concerned, it is indisputable that the elites exercising power in the name of the people tend to distance themselves from them, or to cut themselves off from them, to the point of driving the people to various forms of rejection of politics: abstention, individualistic withdrawal that is incompatible with the requirements of solidarity necessary to life in society and the will to live together, as predicted by A. de Tocqueville (De la démocratie). de Tocqueville (On Democracy in America), withdrawal into “mechanical solidarities” and “murderous identities” based on ties of “blood” and tribal, ethnic or religious allegiances, opening the way to various forms of questioning “democratic living together”. Criticisms such as those developed by intellectuals (like A. Negri and C. Mouffe) and by populist movements pointing to the betrayal of governing elites closer to financial circles and multinationals than to the concerns of their electorate, are not entirely erroneous, even if the remedies advocated and the theoretical references (notably to C. Schmitt) are highly suspicious. 
As for direct democracy, apart from the difficulty of implementing it outside small-scale societies living on small territories, it has the disadvantage of diluting power and, consequently, responsibility: if the people who directly exercise power make a mistake, who is going to hold them to account, and how can they be sanctioned? You can dissolve a government, an assembly or an institution for reasons of incompetence or corruption, or for decisions deemed erroneous or dangerous, but you can't dissolve the people, except by subjecting them to dictatorship, tyranny (as Plato predicted), or to a despotic or dictatorial power that denies them their sovereignty and reduces them to the status of “subjects” forcibly subjected to those who know their interests and the means to guarantee them better than they do (as Hobbes conceived in Leviathan, or as all dictators, whatever their ideology, have thought and dreamt).
Taking into account Prof. Mohamed-Ferjani's remarks, a number of ideas have been put forward with a view to remedying the shortcomings of representative democracy - the only system that can be envisaged for states with large populations and extensive territories - without resorting to various forms of anti-democratic regimes. He stresses that the imperative mandate (as advocated by Rousseau and others who follow in his footsteps), participatory or deliberative democracy using popular-initiative referendums (as in Switzerland and in local democracy), and respect for the foundations of the rule of law are all possible:
(1) the real separation of powers, so that they limit each other,
(2) respect for the law by those who govern and those who are governed,
(3) pluralism and collective freedoms (political, trade union, associative, etc.), on which the strength of civil society and the intermediary bodies essential to democratic coexistence depends,
(4) respect for the inalienable personal, political, cultural, social and economic rights of peoples, individuals and minority groups, irrespective of differences of sex or gender, opinion, origin, affiliation, spirituality or religion, sexual orientation, etc.
Insisting on the universal scope of democracy, he warns of “ the dangers of seeking to dissociate or oppose democracy, human rights and the rule of law, as advocated by the ‘conceptions of Carl Schmitt and its populist uses’. In his view, such attempts at dissociation are “dangerous for democracy ”.

Is the universality of the democratic principle a way out of the pitfalls of culturalism?
The diversity of democratic forms (direct and representative democracy, parliamentary, presidential or mixed regimes, republics, constitutional monarchies, etc.) shows that the construction of democracy has never been and cannot be envisaged on the basis of a supposedly universal model. However, we cannot accept projects that tend to dilute the intangible foundations of democracy in the search for specific conceptions that distance themselves from it, in the name of a certain culturalism that opposes particularisms to the universality of the human being, his aspirations and his rights. 
This simply means that the construction of democracy cannot proceed from vertical injunctions; it must be based on the participation of socially, geographically and culturally situated populations, taking into account their needs and specificities, and giving them the means to appropriate its principles and build it themselves. This requires information and training, based on the search for ways of living it other than as an imported model, or as a foreign concept designed to “Westernize” or “McDonalize” the world, as Benjamin Barber[1] puts it, in local cultures and in the traditions of solidarity specific to each society. 
Only by embracing the forms given to it by those who aspire to it, can it become a perennial universal reality. It needs, in every situation, in every country and in every region, a democratic culture rooted in the reality of the society that claims it. 
It needs forces and institutions that embrace its values, work to promote it and defend it tooth and nail against its adversaries and gravediggers: political parties, associations, intermediary bodies, public services that guarantee the solidarity necessary for democratic coexistence, laws and rights that give it concrete content and make it desirable. It also needs the economic, social and cultural conditions to elevate it to the level of a vital need, not just for a privileged minority, as has been the case until now, but for the entire population of every country.

*This article was written under the coordination of Prof. Mohamed-Chérif Ferjani, Chairman of the High Council of the Timbuktu Institute.

[1] Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs McWorld, 1995