Arendt versus Occupy

Review of:  Danny Michelsen and Franz Walter, Unpolitical Democracy: On the Crisis of Representation  [Unpolitische Demokratie: Zur Krise der Repräsentation (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013)]

In this new study, Danny Michelsen and Franz Walter of the Institute of Democracy Research at Göttingen University examine the problem of democratic representation in terms of a paradox: democracy wishes to include everyone, but as its scope expands it requires ever more mediation. While Athens flourished with direct democracy, its modern forms require representatives since everyone can no longer "fit in the same room."

Walter is one of the most prolific scholars of political parties in Germany and the book connects and Arendtian focus on politics with practical concerns of how parties acquire legitimacy and reach agreement through negotiation. The reference to the "political" in the title indicates the authors' debt to Arendt’s conception of the term. They orient their investigation in the first chapter in terms of her “refreshing contrast to output oriented theories of democracy, which neglect political participation in favor of efficiency criteria.” (28) From On Revolution, they speak of specifically of “how to conserve and stabilize the republican moment of founding, while at the same time renewing it and continuing it.” (27)  They also draw on her work to set out a broad range of challenges to politics, such as increased emphasis on the private realm, expansion of the sphere of the economy, and the increased role of experts. Most pointedly, the authors speak of a "spectator democracy" that threatens the essence of politics in Arendt's sense since it does without action.

When people believe they can save the environment by buying certain products rather than engaging in political initiatives and turn to anonymous internet forums rather than signed pronouncements in the public sphere, democracies lose their constitutive power.

Yet the authors do not merely address and illustrate these threats, but deepen their inquiry by critiquing the most popular responses to the crisis in politics in recent years. These responses mainly fall under the category of the wish for greater transparency and direct democracy. In other words, the hope of quickly cutting through the many obstacles to the true wishes of the people. Their discussions of the German Pirate Party and the Occupy Movement are particularly illuminating.

The German Pirate Party entered the Berlin parliament in 2011 when they crossed the threshold of 5% of votes. It began as a group that sought to defend privacy rights in the digital age but developed to advocate bringing horizontal structures and open source models to government. One of their key concepts is "liquid democracy," in which party members can follow debate over bills in the parliament in real time through special software. Many elected officials then said they would vote exactly as the members wished on each bill. Michelsen and Walter argue that such a stance would make them delegates rather than representatives. While acknowledging the growing power of experts in the government and the problems they can cause, the authors ask if each individual voter can really be expected to understand the complicated technological and economic issues of the day such that they can wisely vote directly on the issues at hand.

 Michelsen and Walter call Occupy Wall Street "anarchist" in its explicit rejection of political representation and calls for direct democracy. In a subtlety argued analysis though, they praise the movement’s attempt to rejuvenate politics by focusing on new forms of public deliberation, and even accord value to political experiments that set themselves off from the broader norms of national discourse. Like others, the authors criticize the failure of this group to put forth concrete demands that could then be debated in the public realm. However they do not simply discount the movement for this reason but helpfully figure their objection in terms of an inability to link the moment of political experiment with a later moment of integration into public discourse. From an Arendtian perspective, one might see this in terms of enthusiasm for emphasis on fundamental idea of politics as action but as disappointing in terms of the concrete requirements of power.

In their conclusion, the authors return to Arendt's ideas of local participation. At higher levels of government through, they defend Social Democracy in the German tradition as a way of integrating society and politics – against proponents of anarchism, communism, and free market capitalism. The breadth of their inquiry is refreshing, as is their careful work in distinguishing movements that have left wing components that U.S. commentators often blur. The book largely consists of condensed assessments of academic papers on recent debates over political representation but is written in an accessible style that explicates and digs deeper into recent key terms in political culture. At over 400 pages, it provides a comprehensive overview not only of challenges to political participation, but of proposed answers to current challenges as well.

The authors ultimately argue for a more modest conception of democracy that admits the need for negotiation between representatives and a large role for expert opinion. Indeed, they go so far as to claim that inflated rhetoric around the ideal of democracy provides cover for those who wish to undermine its actual strength. This position will be hard to accept for advocates of radical democracy as defended, for example, by Rancière and Derrida. In a broader sense though, Michelsen and Walter offer a probing critique of the idea that we could do without representation in politics and challenge us to think of how to renew politics within the  demands of mediation that its current scope requires.

-Jeffrey Champlin