Post-democracy

Definition

Causes

• No common goals: For people in the post-industrial society it is increasingly difficult, in particular for the underclass, to identify themselves as a group and therefore difficult to focus on political parties that represent them. For instance laborers, farmers or entrepreneurs no longer feel attracted to one political movement and this means that there is no common goal for them as a group to get united.
• Globalization: The effect of globalization makes it almost impossible for nations to work out their own economic policy. Therefore, large trade agreements and supranational unions are used to make policy but this level of politics is very hard to control with democratic instruments. Globalization additionally endows transnational corporations with more political leverage given their ability to avoid federal regulation and directly affect domestic economies.
• Non-balanced debates: In most democratic countries the positions of the political parties have become very much alike. This means that there is not much to choose from for its voters. The effect is that political campaigns are looking more like advertising to make the differences look bigger. Also the private lives of the politicians have become an important item in elections. Sometimes "sensitive" issues stay undiscussed. The English conservative journalist Peter Oborne presented a documentary of the 2005 general election, arguing that it had become anti-democratic because it targeted a number of floating voters with a narrow agenda.
• Entanglement between public and private sector: There are large shared interests between politics and business. Through lobbying companies, multinational corporations are able to bring about legislation more effectively than the inhabitants of a country. Corporations and governments are in close relation because states need corporations as they are great employers. But as much of the production is outsourced, and corporations have almost no difficulty in moving to other countries, labor law becomes employee-unfriendly and tax bites are moved from companies to individuals. It becomes more common for politicians and managers to switch jobs.
• Privatization: Then there is the neoliberal idea of new public management of privatizing public services. Privatized institutions are difficult to control by democratic means and have no allegiance to human communities, unlike government. Crouch uses the term “phantom firms” to describe the flexibility and elusive nature of firms which bend to the market. He concludes that private firms have incentive to make individual profit rather than better the welfare of the public. For example, he states that there is a problem with pharmaceutical companies funding medical research.

  Consequences

• Fewer voters use their right to vote, or do vote but don't expect much.
• Politicians can ignore an undesirable outcome of a referendum or opinion poll. For instance in 2005 when France and the Netherlands voted "No" in a referendum about the European Constitution these countries still ratified the treaty after only minor modifications were made, and the British Members of Parliament who advocated revoking the Article 50 process to leave the European Union without a second referendum, which was the policy of the Liberal Democrats following the 2016 referendum, in which the electorate voted in favour of withdrawing from the EU.
• The rise of xenophobic and other populist parties who capitalise on prevailing discontent.
• Foreign governments can influence the internal politics of a sovereign country. According to Crouch, the way the eurozone crisis was handled is the best example of how things work in a post-democracy. European leaders managed to bring about a new government taking office in Italy, and in Greece far-reaching austerity measures were put in place, contrary to the vote in a popular referendum.
• Private interest becomes increasingly influential in public policy.

  Solutions