“In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house” -Aeschylus (525 BC-456 BC)
Aeschylus could not have written it better: Erstwhile victors plagued by uncertainty and doubt; leaders -gripped by Hubris- no longer able to sustain the trust of their citizens; popular discontent brewing on the eastern and western shores of the Common Sea; a vast chorus of would-be experts and pundits decrying the failure of the latest Hero to live up to the hopes for change and renewal he had awoken not so very long ago; to top it all, the Nemesis of economic decline and political impotence spreading out across these once proud cities who only yesterday seemed to rule the world.
While we may be forgiven to think that this description refers to the crisis which engulfed the Greek World on both sides of the Aegean sea some two-and-a-half millenia ago, after its famous victory over the Persian Empire, it just as aptly describes the succession of events currently unfolding in Europe and North America. Mirror images of each other, the perfect storms now shaking up the political institutions of both the United States of America and the European Union are both rooted in the political apathy and lack of imagination of their citizens and can only be cured by the remedy the father of Tragedy recommended so long ago: votes cast thoughtfully by concerned citizens.
In the United States, the crisis is one of partisan politics. An institutional system of checks and balances, devised two-and-a-half centuries ago, combined with a dicephalous party system where each head, Republican and Democrat, vainly attempts to devour the other whilst forgetting both share the very same body, has resulted, in the early 21st Century, into a damaging political stalemate and an increasingly dangerous loss of legitimacy of the democratic processes which have held America together since its birth. The Tea Party Movement on the Right, and swelling number of respected senior Democrats who, like Evan Bayh, the centrist Democrat Senator from Indiana, choose not to stand for re-election in the up-coming November elections, are but the most visible symptoms of this crisis. Above it all, desperately trying to stem the tides of disenchantment and revolt, a President who had been fêted both at home and abroad as the Great Saviour of Democracy and Renewer of Hope, but who surrendered the reigns of decision-making to the partisan politics of Congress, to the Nancy Pelosis and Bill Reeds of his party, and thereby implicitly reneged on the promises of greater accountability, openness, and responsibility which had fueled his fledgling campaign to such an incredible victory less than eighteen months ago. More and more articles in that bastion of the liberal political establishment, The New York Times, decry that “The World’s Indispensable Nation” has become leaderless and rudderless – and thus ungovernable: the Sick Man of our globalised economic system.
The European Union presents us with a mirror-image of the dynamics taking place across the Atlantic. Here, new institutions devised after the Second World War and designed to bind together the economic structures of six nations in the hopes of avoiding both another disastrous conflict and a Communist take-over, have now expanded to twenty-seven states stretching on both sides of the erstwhile East-West divide. Creation of political elites with little popular support and legitimacy, the new European superstructure also suffers, like its American counterpart, of a fatal Hubris: a Single Currency, a European Constitution and a EU President – yet no common, EU-wide political and economic ties of common solidarity and responsibility which could cement the weak knees of this shaky giant when the winds of economic recession were bound to strike. And strike they did: Hungary, the Baltics, Portugal, Spain – and now Greece: more and more of the smaller, newer member of what once started as the European Economic Community are facing severe financial crises and must be bailed out by the taxpayers of the larger, more stable nations – in particular, Germany and France. But in the new, expanded European Union, loyalty, legitimacy and democratic processes remain purely national affairs, while the European Parliament presents but a weak caricature of an elected, responsible and effective representative assembly, where each nation sends the representatives of its own, national parties, incapable of articulating and defending a wider, European discourse. And so, whereas in the US old institutions of government are gridlocked by unaccountable national political parties, in the EU, new central institutions are delegitimised by the lack of accountable and democratic pan-European political structures, capable of bridging the gap between ethnos and demos by bringing together the disparate national citizens of its twenty-seven members into a pan-European political public sphere, where trust, solidarity and democratic legitimacy can take root and prosper.
How do we prevent the current stasis of our present political institutions on both sides the Atlantic from degenerating into a fatal metastasis: a terrible social cancer whose symptoms – right-wing populism, isolationsim, narrow nationalism, xenophobia and racism- have afflicted our societies before and are on the verge of doing so again? “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, said that quintessential Euro-American of the 20th Century, the Spanish-born American philosopher, George Santayana. While it may well have become an oft-quoted cliché, we would be well served to rethink the current relevance of its underlying message. When examined in a broader perspective, the current crises in the US and EU teach us an important lesson, mirroring the “No Taxation Without Representation” of another Tea Party Movement, some two-and-a-half centuries ago: “Neither a civic surge without institutional renewal, nor institutional renewal without a civic surge”. The popular wave of enthusiasm and support that carried Barak Obama to the White House floundered on the shoals of outdated and deadlocked political institutions; whilst the new economic and political institutional structures implemented across Europe by its political élites have failed to take hold and become effective due to their lack of popular legitimacy and support from the vast majority of its citizens.
“Bench-marking” and “best practices” have long ago become fundamental principles of change and renewal not only in the business world, but also for local and municipal institutions who, more than all others, must cope with the daily needs and changing demands of their citizens. It is high time that our larger, national and supranational, integrative institutions of governance adopt these principles as well and start learning from each other’s experiments, successes and failures. Above all, it is incumbent on us all to become active citizens of mature democracies and stop expecting deus ex machina solutions to be delivered by a Demigod-like political saviour who, inevitably, will disappoint us greatly and who we will replace with his next iteration, solemnly promising to rescue us from the misdeeds of his predecessor, just as his predecessor had done before him. Rather than laying the burden and the blame at the doorstep of our entrenched political élites, we should seek to combine citizen-led, democratic reforms of outdated, ineffective and unaccountable institutional structures with the steady development of new, legitimating public spheres of debate and action transcending perimated notions of Left and Right. Only the birth and survival of such a flexible, accountable and effective citizen-led system of govenance in both the Old and the New World, thus transforming the Atlantic Divide into a common stream of innovation, creativity and legitimacy, will allow us all, in Europe and North America, to defy the tragic choruses of self-serving and self=appointed media pundits predicting the imminent doom and demise of our societies, and thus enter into a truly New Age of renwal, hope, and success.
“In the lack of judgment great harm arises, but one vote cast can set right a house”.
Aeschylus was right, after all.
