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Democracy fatigue

Ukraine in the front line as democracy’s triumphant procession threatens to run out of steam

 If you want to know quite how flawed modern democracy really is, it helps to talk to a Russian. The Kremlin’s media empire does a sterling job of keeping the Russian population up to date with all the latest examples of democracy’s hypocrisy, deceit and illusionary freedoms, and as a result most citizens of Putin’s empire are veritable experts on the subject. They might not be able to name any of their own prime ministers for the past nine years, but they do know that Gordon Brown wasn’t elected. They are well aware that the EU is a largely unelected technocracy and they know all about how we recognised Kosovo but not South Ossetia. They might also point out that we like to invade countries under the guise of democracy-building and yet work quite happily with the most undemocratic nations on the planet, before concluding that we must be either naïve or stupid to actually believe we have any say in how we are governed.

Authoritarian order vs democratic chaos

Ten years ago most Russians would not have been nearly as ready to denounce democracy in such direct terms – back then accepted wisdom had it that while democracy may well be great for others, it simply wouldn’t work in a country like Russia where there can only ever be a stark choice between order or disorder. At the time few seemed proud of this harsh reality but accepted it nonetheless with a fatalistic Soviet shrug. However, in the past decade much has changed to make Russians feel less uncomfortable about their one-party state. Putin’s rise has been genuinely formidable, but that alone would not have been enough to discredit democracy in Russian eyes. However, by skillfully juxtaposing the relative stability and affluence of his own reign with the criminal chaos and grinding poverty of the pseudo-democratic 1990s, Putin has succeeded in turning ‘democracy’ into a dirty word in modern Russia.

Nor is Russia alone. Putin’s anti-democracy drive has been aided by the emergence of an ideologically ambiguous multi-polar world that is fast replacing the once relentless march of democracy as the defining ingredient in modern international relations. The number of democratic countries in the world may have risen from 40 to over 120 in the three decades leading up to 2005, but the tide may now have finally turned. China today is both a Super Power and one of the world’s least free societies; a place where nobody knows anything about Tiananmen Square but it doesn’t matter because they’ve all got iPods. The economic powerhouses of the Middle East also feel no pressing need for democracy. I doubt the citizens of Afghanistan have much to say in favour of democratic government at present, nor is the concept likely to be popular with many in the equally war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indeed, in today’s world it is difficult to see where the next democratic gains are going to come from. 

Brussels Eurocrats and Kremlin autocrats

Meanwhile, within the European Union itself voter turn-out has been steadily declining for years as once ideologically opposed political parties merge into the middle ground and power devolves to Brussels. Lulled by the self-satisfaction of democracy’s Cold War triumph and deprived of a post-Soviet ideological counterweight, the West appears to have collectively lost its way and is no longer capable of championing the democratic cause with the gusto it mustered in the victorious 1990s. Instead, we are about to see a new EU constitution come into force which many fear will lay the foundations for a European Super State, and yet there have been no mass protests in EU capitals, no great movement emerging to defend the democratic fruits of centuries. On the contrary, those who raise their voices in concern are labeled as reactionaries. Democracy fatigue, it seems, has reached the very heart of empire.  

This changing geopolitical climate looks particularly ominous when viewed from Ukraine. After years of struggling for a democratic ideal which has always been intrinsically linked to the country’s notions of European identity, Ukraine now finds itself confronted with an EU where many of the principles underpinning Europe’s oldest democracies are being quietly replaced by the benevolent dictatorship of the sub-committee. Ukraine’s Russophile minority and the Kremlin both have much to gain from this development as they wrestle with the Euro-democrat camp for the soul of the country. After all, they might argue, what talk can there be of European democracy when the continent is increasingly run from behind closed doors by faceless Eurocrats whom almost nobody in the EU has ever heard of, never mind actually voted for?

For Ukraine, the timing of this swing away from democracy-building could hardly be worse. The country sits astride one of the world’s great geopolitical fault lines and remains balanced on a knife-edge between democracy and autocracy, but at present it looks like the Ukrainian front is in danger of being forgotten. Meanwhile, most Ukrainians themselves are long since tired of the country’s seemingly endless elections and disgusted by the current cadre of political leaders who have done so much to discredit democracy domestically. As a result many of the ideological issues which so recently captivated the population will be redundant in the coming election campaign, presenting Ukraine instead with a pragmatic choice between rival political machines stripped bare of their populist appeal.

There will no doubt be much grumbling over this sobering retreat from the moral high ground of the Orange Revolution, but as each Ukrainian contemplates whether they will actually bother to vote at all, it is worth remembering that however flawed Ukraine’s democracy may be, the alternative would likely mean much the same people in power but with even less of a chance to exert any influence over them.