what are the redefining democracy policy
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It is a testament to the power of the democratic idea that authoritarian leaders around the globe claim the mantle of democracy for forms of government that amount to legalized repression. Even as they heap disdain on the liberal order that prevails in the United States and Europe, Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist leadership, and various aspiring leaders-for-life insist on the validity of their own systems as types of democratic rule. They even devise special phrases, usually consisting of the word “democracy” preceded by a modifier to describe their supposed variant: “sovereign democracy,” “revolutionary democracy,” “illiberal democracy.”
The most outrageous attempt to appropriate the “d” word to add a patina of legitimacy to an antidemocratic system was the phrase “people’s democracy.” This label was attached to the East European satellite states where communism was imposed by the Red Army after World War II. Given the unambiguously totalitarian nature of the political order in these countries, the term soon fell into disrepute.
During the 1950s, another variant emerged: “guided democracy.” Sukarno, Indonesia’s postcolonial leader, coined the phrase to describe a system based on the prevalent decision-making method in his country’s villages, which ostensibly entailed public consensus but granted wide-ranging powers to the village elder. Since Sukarno regarded himself as a kind of village elder for all of Indonesia, guided democracy suited him well. The concept mostly died out after Sukarno lost power in the mid-1960s, though the phrase (sometimes rendered as “managed democracy”) is occasionally dusted off to describe quasi-authoritarian arrangements like that in Singapore.
These tortured efforts to exploit “democracy” to dress up antidemocratic projects faded during the political changes of the last quarter of the 20 century. In recent years, however, the democratic idea has come under increased pressure from a more aggressive collection of authoritarians and would-be strongmen. Some have imposed systems that reject democratic standards almost in their entirety, with bogus elections, state-dominated media, the repression of civil society, rampant corruption, and a thoroughly politicized judiciary. But even as they abolish the institutions of democracy, the new authoritarians still cling to the word itself, while adding a modifier or qualification that is invariably justified as reflecting “the unique history and culture of our people.”
Here are three of the more prominent contemporary democracy modifiers:
• Sovereign Democracy: The phrase was coined in 2006 by Vladislav Surkov, a spin doctor for Vladimir Putin, in an effort to give Russia’s evolving nondemocratic system a thread of legitimacy. The term seems designed to exempt the country from international norms and attach some sort of national pride to a structure that guaranteed the Kremlin’s dominance of politics, the media, and the judiciary. Surkov stage-managed a superficial display of elections and political pluralism, but few were fooled. As one critic put it, the system degenerated into “a political contraption based on imitation, cynicism, slanderous propaganda, and outright electoral fraud … driven by fake parties and ghost nongovernmental organizations dependent on government money.”
Since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 and invaded Ukraine in 2014, the regime has grown more openly hostile to democratic institutions, and the concept of sovereign democracy is seldom mentioned. Instead, Putin and his entourage speak of their commitment to “traditional values,” a phrase meant to distinguish Russia from a Europe that is said to be in economic and cultural decline.
The most outrageous attempt to appropriate the “d” word to add a patina of legitimacy to an antidemocratic system was the phrase “people’s democracy.” This label was attached to the East European satellite states where communism was imposed by the Red Army after World War II. Given the unambiguously totalitarian nature of the political order in these countries, the term soon fell into disrepute.
During the 1950s, another variant emerged: “guided democracy.” Sukarno, Indonesia’s postcolonial leader, coined the phrase to describe a system based on the prevalent decision-making method in his country’s villages, which ostensibly entailed public consensus but granted wide-ranging powers to the village elder. Since Sukarno regarded himself as a kind of village elder for all of Indonesia, guided democracy suited him well. The concept mostly died out after Sukarno lost power in the mid-1960s, though the phrase (sometimes rendered as “managed democracy”) is occasionally dusted off to describe quasi-authoritarian arrangements like that in Singapore.
These tortured efforts to exploit “democracy” to dress up antidemocratic projects faded during the political changes of the last quarter of the 20 century. In recent years, however, the democratic idea has come under increased pressure from a more aggressive collection of authoritarians and would-be strongmen. Some have imposed systems that reject democratic standards almost in their entirety, with bogus elections, state-dominated media, the repression of civil society, rampant corruption, and a thoroughly politicized judiciary. But even as they abolish the institutions of democracy, the new authoritarians still cling to the word itself, while adding a modifier or qualification that is invariably justified as reflecting “the unique history and culture of our people.”
Here are three of the more prominent contemporary democracy modifiers:
• Sovereign Democracy: The phrase was coined in 2006 by Vladislav Surkov, a spin doctor for Vladimir Putin, in an effort to give Russia’s evolving nondemocratic system a thread of legitimacy. The term seems designed to exempt the country from international norms and attach some sort of national pride to a structure that guaranteed the Kremlin’s dominance of politics, the media, and the judiciary. Surkov stage-managed a superficial display of elections and political pluralism, but few were fooled. As one critic put it, the system degenerated into “a political contraption based on imitation, cynicism, slanderous propaganda, and outright electoral fraud … driven by fake parties and ghost nongovernmental organizations dependent on government money.”
Since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 and invaded Ukraine in 2014, the regime has grown more openly hostile to democratic institutions, and the concept of sovereign democracy is seldom mentioned. Instead, Putin and his entourage speak of their commitment to “traditional values,” a phrase meant to distinguish Russia from a Europe that is said to be in economic and cultural decline.
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