Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

– like electoral system, division of power, and parliamentarianism, –
peculiar to some investigators, contradicts both traditions of classical
understanding of democracy as the power of all the people, and the
already present real trends of democratization. Democracy is not simply
the division of power, neither is it a many-party system or elections of
representatives, – democracy is just means for optimizing social life
so that it would better suit interests of each person. Democracy is the
supremacy of interests neither of democrats nor of democracy itself,
but of those of each human person.
In our times, under globalization, the humanity faces the becoming
of the new form, new space of democracy development – the third one,
after (1) its antique and medieval poleis form, and (2) its nation-state
Modern form, – the space encompassing humanity as a whole. There is
a criticism of the nation-state postulating its irrelevance and uselessness
in our times and appearing both from the left and from the right. We can
just mention two books with the identical title – “The end of the nation
state” – published in 1995. According to Japanese business-consultant
Kenichi Ohmae, such a state lacks any meaning for global economy, it
hampers the development of the economy with its barriers and borders
[Ohmae, 1995, p.5]. And French diplomat Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who
stands for more humanistic positions, thinks that nation-state is still
too remote from the daily life in order to be able to satisfy the needs of
concrete persons, and appears increasingly like ‘a straitjacket’ relating
not only to economical globalization of the world, but to sovereignty,
defense, and social justice as well [Guéhenno, 1995, p.12-13].
Champions of liberal representative democracy grounded their
views on sincere beliefs that state power exercised by ‘all the people’
is technically impossible, – ‘real (direct) democracy’ was only realizable
in poleis or in small tribes [Schumpeter, 1975, p.245]. Should we
agree with such a position, democracy then must be described as an
exclusively historical phenomenon, its contemporary embodiment
having not much in common with its glorious predecessors. Indeed,
each and every person can never become a ruler of Modern nation
state – but we believe that indicates not the demise of democracy (nor its
transformation into post-democracy) under the power of such states, but
rather a death of a nation state under the development of democracy. Every
human cannot be a president and govern a state – but every human
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DEVELOPMENT OF TODAY’S
DEMOCRACY:
PEOPLE, POWER, AND
HUMAN PERSONALITY
Iurii Mielkov e Anatoliy
Tolstoukhov