Post-democracy
Encyclopedia
The term Post-democracy designates a state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...

 conducted by democratic rules, but whose application is progressively limited. The English conservative journalist Peter Oborne
Peter Oborne
Peter Oborne is a British journalist and political commentator. He was educated at Sherborne School and The University of Cambridge. He is a Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph columnist, author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class, and, with Frances Weaver, the...

 presented a documentary of the 2005 general election
United Kingdom general election, 2005
The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....

, arguing that it had become anti-democratic because it targeted a number of floating voters with a narrow agenda.

Basic claim is based on economic and thus also political power of multinational corporations. Corporations and governments are in close relation because states are in need of corporations as great employers which cause enormous cash flow. But a lot of production is outsourced and corporations have almost no difficulties to move to other countries. Therefore as a consequence labor-law is becoming employee unfriendly and tax bites were moved from companies to individuals in order to make better conditions for corporations. Neoliberal doctrine brings state to corporations even closer. To put it in a nutshell neoliberal order is the total rejection of the state as an institution which can service the needs of the people and provide public and social services to the population regardless of wealth, class or creed. Once the state begins to abandon that, these tasks are handed over to private corporations. That allows corporations to influence the decisions of the state like how, where and what to build, what to buy, environmental and labor laws and probably more (that does not premise some word plot, but that certain interest groups influence certain areas).

Definition Tentative

This term appeared to define a running evolution within the democracies during the 21st century.

It is a polemic term because it calls attention to recognised democracies that are losing some of their foundations evolving toward an Aristocratic regime.

A Post-democracy may be characterised with:
  • non representative election
    Election
    An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

    s
  • citizen rights are not respected by the state, or its representatives
  • or, impossibility to get balanced debate
    Debate
    Debate or debating is a method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is a technique of persuasion...

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Hereby, while thus contradicting pluralist assumptions, it seems to be an accepted presumption, that the common good were something to be determined objectively and that conflicts of interest were not to be handled within democratic processes but instead within administrative proceedings.

Further reading

  • Colin Crouch: Post Democracy, 2004, ISBN 0-745-63315-3
  • Jenny Hocking, Colleen Lewis: Counter-Terrorism and the Post-Democratic State, 2008, ISBN 1-845-42917-6

External links

On Coping with "Post Democracy" La postdemocracia
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