halfway

democracy in a world of inequality
(referencing Setting the People Free by John Dunn)


Dunn's difficulty remains rooted in equality. How do you run a world where every nation, great and small, conforms to the latest definition of democracy, when equality between nations and between their citizens is simply not a realistic part of the equation? Where there are winners and losers by design, one world of permanent inequality? That's a pretty feeble beacon - and some nasty supplementary questions spin out from behind it.

One is the way that the economic order that goes with democracy renders freedom to choose, to change course profoundly, an illusion. Success (or failure) is handing political power to a central bank. Make Alan Greenspan or Mervyn King monarchs of the market and your vote inevitably loses force, the parts it can influence shrunk to opaque pledges about tax and pleas to nurses to wash their hands.

There is, in short, less to vote about, egoism abetted by forces and capital flows that are bigger than any of us. Why opt for abortion or classroom discipline instead? Because these are little things, cheap things. Globalisation, even in a single democratic world, strips power away. "Parliament is degenerating into a subsidiary of the stock market," says Günter Grass. The German debate, like the French debate, is about despair and incomprehension, not lighting bonfires on Beacon Hill.

and a review by roy hattersley