The Face of Democracy: Oops, he did it again!

Mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug are reported to have been continually referring to the fact that Rob Ford received a great number of votes in the 2010 municipal election, and that anything which interferes with his ability to be mayor disrupts the essence of democracy because he was elected to the position.

It is very strange to hear Rob Ford’s opponents talk about elections now as though that single process alone does not constitute the legitimacy of a democratically elected and publicly supported official. He is a public figure and he has been repeatedly presented by the people as their political leader. The demos has voiced its opinion. Rob Ford represents the people of Toronto. His misdemeanor-provoked voices from the opposition that democracy is about more than elections sound preposterous.

Rob Ford is the face of Democracy.

Erroneously, normative democratic theory first deals with the moral foundations of democracy and only after that with democratic institutions. Because contemporary Western capitalism requires an ideology, it uses normative democratic theory to provide a pseudo scientific account of when and why democracy is morally(!) desirable as well as particularly moral principles for guiding the design of the so-called democratic institutions.

To make things look even more complicated, that normative democratic theory is described as inherently interdisciplinary bringing in political science, sociology and economics in order to give this ideology a look of concrete guidance.

It is noteworthy that the academic discourse on democracy in the Western school of thought begins first of all with the question of why democracy is morally desirable at all. Putting moral dimension in this discourse is unscientific.

Democracy in essence is the government by the people, technically speaking. It is a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. In its pure form, democracy is possible only in very small socially homogeneous groups.

The moral aspect of democracy hinges upon the individual qualities and moral outlook of the constituent members, who are being driven generally by their individual selfish interests. Therefore, any moral definition of democracy is not intended to carry any normative weight to it. Moreover, in modern complex societies, the defining notions of democracy in their original forms become dissolved in other forms of socio-political relations.

That is why present-day democracy in the complex social systems of the Anglo-Saxon nations has acquired the features of political theater, whereas the issues of government and power have become increasingly concealed beneath the layers of the so-called Deep Government and Deep Power.

Those small pockets of near-pure democracy have become possible, in these upheaval times of global political change. Due to the occasional temporary overlook by the Deep Power structures, small democratic processes have been allowed to flourish in certain communities. Invariably, those little dated experiments in primitive, if not pure, democracy have brought on top a number of political figures, who have become the show cases of their voters’ inherent moral and ethical qualities and characteristics.

Those democratically elected political leaders have turned out to be severely lacking in terms of the contemporary notions and ideas of morality and ethics that have evolved over time and now constitute the general image of aspiring humanity of our civilization. The pockets of pure, if primitive, democracy amid the reigning rule of concealed autocracy have given birth to relatively little political monsters and big moral freaks of our times.

Even in our tumultuous times, consequences of such lapses of political process, taking the form of direct exercise of power by the separate individuals in various places, look like a step back from the civilized norms of our contemporary social relations. Pure (direct) democracy may well suit the members of a local constituency, who had voted for their little political monsters, regardless of the latter’s moral image, in hope of dramatically improving their own lives. After all, political process is no beauty contest. But it demonstrates that from purely moral point of view, democracy itself is no guarantee of moral conduct.

Claiming moral foundations for democracy is preposterous. Therefore, the normative democratic theory has no ground to call for the moral foundations of democracy as such! In democracy, the moral image as well as the character of each individual - voting for his or her local political leader - is normally hidden from public observation, but it is revealed in the official, who has been elected thereby. This circumstance demonstrates the moral foundations of individual voters, but it gives no moral ground to Democracy itself.

It would come as no surprise then if his opponents were found to have finally resorted to some purely undemocratic means to oust Rob Ford from his mayoral office. As opposed to that largely contaminated democratic theory of today, such a move would be pure political science.