“Ridiculous to define modern democracy as rule by people” – historian

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Published time: August 25, 2010 07:34
Edited time: September 28, 2010 19:51

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Interview, Politics

Since the birth of the idea in Ancient Greece, the term “democracy” has undergone many changes in definition and essence, historian and political theorist John Dunn told RT.

“Democracy is a Greek word for naming that particular set of Greek arrangements a long time ago, and those arrangements essentially disappeared 2,500 years ago roughly. And they haven’t really reappeared except on a very small scale,” John Dunn said. “They haven’t much to do with the way in which any modern state is governed – modern states are much bigger and they are governed through complicated public bureaucracies. They are governed by relatively small numbers of, in a sense, professional politicians. That is a very different structure.”

Dunn pointed out that democracy is both the name of a form of government – not very clearly defined form of government – and a political pretension or political claim, “which is that form of government is actually authorized by the people at large.”

“But if you ask how the people actually do their authorizing, the answer is they have a very-very small bit-part, really,” the historian said. “They intervene in some countries barely at all, and in any country only every few years and very briefly, and in a way that gives them extremely little control over the outcome.”

Comments (3)

Hexxor 28.09.2010 15:34

Take a small issue like travelling. If an US citizen wants to travel to Cuba, it has to be done through a third country. Is this Democracy that humans have to be limited with respect to wich nation they wish to vicit? It is rather so that USA is not very democratic itself.

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David Rennie 25.08.2010 23:06

Right you are Babeouf

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Babeouf 25.08.2010 10:21

Democracy defined as a self governing community lacks a single instance in modern history. What the West has is the wholly bogus Representative Democracy. And as many have observed it is neither Representative nor Democratic. It is not Representative because for a state of more than two persons this involves a logical contradiction. You cannot both support policy x and support policy not x but in any community you will find people who support a wide variety of different actions on any given issue. It was for this reason that it was necessary to manufacture the notion of a National Interest(giving the state the same metaphysical structure as the individual). Of course what appears as the 'National Interest' ( purely coincidentally no doubt) is always in the interests of the governing elites. This leaves the Democratic part. But this is a vacuous claim. Democracy requires the continuous involvement of the ordinary citizen in the decisions made by a community. In the West there is no involvement at all. All political decisions appear as 'Other' government to the ordinary person . About which the individual may have an opinion and express it. That is the limit of the citizens involvement in power. A historian may give the obvious credibility but it will gain no publicity on TV or newspapers. On the internet however the ideas are destined to become common currency.

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