Five books on democracy

I was prompted to recommend five books on democracy. There are many excellent ones and choosing just five is a difficult, almost impossible task. The books below are not exactly my favorites (I don't think I can make this type of judgment) nor are they organized in order of preference, but I chose them because I believe that, given the current situation, they can enrich the public debate, bringing different and complementary perspectives on the topic. Without further ado:

On Democracy, by Robert Dahl (Yale University Press, 2020)

Figure 1: On Democracy, by Robert Dahl (2020)

In On Democracy, political scientist Robert Dahl (1915-2014), one of the main contemporary thinkers on democracy, presents in a very accessible way his vision of what it is, why it is desirable and how its ideal version differs from the one that actually exists (which he calls “polyarchy”).

Dahl's main justification for democracy is its participatory character, being the system that allows each citizen to participate on a reasonably equal footing in decisions that will affect their lives. The definition of democracy he presents is relatively minimalist and procedural (that is, based on the presence of certain procedural characteristics), but it goes beyond the mere holding of elections: for him, these must be free, fair and periodic and be accompanied by freedom of expression and association, free access to information and a notion of inclusive citizenship, with universal suffrage and the right to run for elected office for all citizens. For Dahl, the main advantages of a democratic regime would be the inherent protection of essential rights and freedoms, the peaceful mediation of conflicts and the promotion of both material prosperity and human development and peace between countries (something that can be observed empirically: there are no wars between democracies). Even so, the author emphasizes that no country's democracy perfectly meets all the criteria, so that democracy would be more of a spectrum (that is, something that varies across a range of values) than a binary notion and its continued improvement must always be a goal of any society.

Even though Dahl's vision on the topic is one of several possible ones, in the current Brazilian political context this book is interesting because it is an easy read, but it already provokes a more precise, deeper and systematic reflection on what democracy is. Even though we have acquired a certain notion of democracy due to living under a democratic regime in recent decades, research shows how Brazilian society has not yet evolved to the point of adequately internalizing liberal-democratic values . This is a problem that affects both the general population and the opinion-forming elite and manifests itself in the way we think and make politics. One of the ways to combat this is to bring this discussion to society itself in a direct and affirmative way. Books like this can be good instruments to foster this democratic education.

The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama (Free Press, 2006)

Figure 2: The End of History and the Last Man (2006)

The End of History and the Last Man is an influential and controversial book, but perhaps much more cited than actually read and understood—despite not being difficult to read. The book, which made the author, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, a true superstar of political thought in the early 90s, is an in-depth study of an essay he wrote in 1989—therefore, before the fall of the Berlin Wall—and was published in 1992, in the midst of the wave of democratization resulting from the end of the Soviet Union and the optimism with liberal democracy that accompanied it. Both the original essay and the book deal with how democracy would be the best form of government that human beings would be able to conceive, thus being the end of history. The controversy arose because many interpreted it as if Fukuyama was saying that all countries would inevitably become democracies and that, once this occurred, nothing more relevant would happen. Fukuyama's thesis, however, has much more nuance and complexity. His argument is strongly inspired by French thinker Alexandre Kojève's reading of the German philosopher Hegel, who sees history as a progression of socioeconomic systems that would eventually produce a final form of government from which it is not possible to evolve. The end to which Fukuyama refers, therefore, is not in the sense of ending, but of objective. Nor does it mean that, once achieved, events will stop happening and that everything will be perfect and irreversible—on the contrary, countries that find themselves at the end of history (liberal democracies) can, indeed, “return to history” if they do not take appropriate precautions.

A particularly interesting aspect of Fukuyama's thesis is how he substantiates it. The author borrows from Plato the concept of thymos, an innate need of human beings to have their dignity recognized by their peers. Some people would be satisfied with what he calls isothymia —the need for recognition as an equal —but others need something more: megalothymia , the need to be recognized as better. For Fukuyama, liberal capitalist democracy would be the only government system capable of considering both types of personality. From democratic and liberal aspects, the possibility of political participation, fundamental rights, equality before the law and due process would ensure isothymia by treating all people as equals, recognizing their dignity equally. From the capitalist aspect, in turn, the possibility of gaining status through social prominence and economic reward from innovation, enterprise and other forms of value generation allows megalothymia to be channeled in a productive way for society as a whole . It may happen, however, that the peaceful and prosperous society obtained through liberal democracy is not enough to satisfy megalothymia , which may end up leading it “back to history”.

For current times, Fukuyama's thesis of the end of history is relevant for several reasons, but I highlight two. First: it was never actually refuted. No one has managed to show that there is any better alternative than liberal capitalist democracy for organizing a human society, no matter how many defects there are in that system. Second: his insight into how the absence of recognition of dignity can lead to resentment, potentially resulting in social instability and even the destruction of liberal democracy itself. This theme resurfaces several times in Fukuyama's subsequent work, including his recent book Identity, which deals with how liberal democracies have had difficulty dealing with the growing tendency of some people to demand recognition of their identities not as individuals, but as members of identity groups.

Strangers in Their Own Land, de Arlie Hochschild (The New Press, 2018)

Figure 3: Strangers in Their Own Land (2018)

In the book Strangers in Their Own Land, American sociologist Arlie Hochschild, professor at the University of Berkeley, California, narrates how she decided to break the almost exclusively progressive bubble in which she lived to try to understand what was leading impoverished communities to join the far-right Tea Party movement , which advocated policies that, at least at first glance, would be objectively harmful to them. Intrigued by this paradox, she spent five years in a once-prosperous, now-decaying community in Louisiana plagued by a high level of unemployment caused by growing automation and a high incidence of disease resulting from the enormous pollution produced by the unregulated exploitation of the region's natural resources. by the oil industry, dominant in the local economy. Contrary to the superficial view preconceived by many of her progressive peers, she found a community full of kind, intelligent, charitable people, with a strong sense of community, a lot of perseverance and even a great appreciation for the environment and sadness over its visible deterioration. Interestingly, she observed that, despite being aware of the impact of environmental degradation on their lives and that it was mainly caused by oil companies, people's anger was directed at the federal government and not at the companies. In his research, therefore, Hochschild tried to understand these people and what was behind this apparently illogical attitude.

Hochschild's main insight from her research is that people have what she calls a “deep story”—a personal narrative that may not be factually real, but is experienced by them as such. In the case of the residents of this Louisiana community, she identified a history of humiliation and resentment. These people—generally white, working class, religious Christians, and quite traditional in their customs—strongly believed in the ideal of the “American dream”: the notion that effort would lead to prosperity. Despite his efforts, however, time passed and the reward did not come. Not only that, but at the same time that their lives were stagnant or getting worse, they saw some groups jumping the queue for the American dream: black people getting jobs that were previously held by white people, women getting jobs that were previously held by men, refugees and immigrants passing in front. For them, affirmative actions were not measures to correct injustices of the past, but rather concessions of undue advantages today — and they were being implemented by a government presided over by a black man supported mostly by an educated elite who openly despised them, seeing them as a bunch of expensive country bumpkins, backward, simple, ignorant and poorly educated. These people in this small Louisiana community felt that they were the real Americans—the heart of the country—and yet they were being passed over and humiliated by cultural and political elites. They felt like strangers in their own land.

Despite dealing with circumstances and phenomena restricted to a small stronghold in the United States, Hochschild's research is generalizable because it gives concreteness and even a certain systematization—in the notion of deep history—to something that Fukuyama and other authors also address: the need for People must be respected and recognized and that when we marginalize certain groups and points of view, we open the door to powerful resentment, which can have harmful political consequences. It is true that the deep history of certain groups and people is often supported by prejudices, immorality, falsehoods and retrograde attitudes. But the way to approach this must be gradual and patient, with empathy and understanding and through building bridges and convincing rather than with imposition, disdain and aggression—or we risk feeding a resentful, vengeful and angry monster.

Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, by Lilliana Mason (University of Chicago Press, 2018)

Figure 4: Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (2018)

Uncivil Agreement deals with identity, tribalism and polarization, with data from several studies on the topic and results from the author's own research, political scientist Lilliana Mason. Mason shows how the identities we construct are based more on the labels we give ourselves than the content of those labels. In other words, someone who has adopted the liberal label for themselves does not necessarily have liberal values, despite defining themselves as such. This adoption of labels has implications for how we organize ourselves in society: people are inherently tribal and look for groups that share the same labels and characteristics and this affects how they behave and see the world. We tend, for example, to favor members of our “group” even if the only thing we have in common with them is a meaningless label (a color, for example) and we don't even know each other personally. At the same time, we look with some fear at all people who are not part of our group and we have an inherent desire not only for our group to win, but—and above all—for the others to lose . The greater the emotional bond with an identity, the greater its power over us, distorting even the perception of easily verifiable objective facts.

As Mason demonstrates, tribalism is natural and, by all appearances, inevitable. In a healthy society, however, our adherence to a particular identity is balanced by simultaneous adherence to other identities—that is, each person is a mosaic of identities such that two individuals may, for example, have religious and political identities. different parties, but still have strong ties due to regional, professional, racial, gender, age or any other identification. This crossing of identities mitigates the pro-group bias and the perceptual distortion of tribal ties, allowing people belonging to different groups to coexist and not hate each other, as these bridges between identity groups prevent the complete dehumanization of the other. A problem begins to occur, however, when politics becomes an important identity and other identities begin to align around it.

Mason noted that over the past few decades in the United States, connections between Democrats and Republicans have gradually diminished. Democrats and Republicans were traditionally much more mixed, but they became increasingly homogeneous and isolated from each other. Not only did different identities start to align around the party political identity, but Democrats and Republicans started to live completely separate lives, living in different places, getting information from different sources, watching different programs on television, following different sports and even preferring different brands of products, foods, beers and soft drinks. They also began to hate each other more, with one party group blaming members of the other for all of the country's ills. In addition to the social aspect, the corrosion of the American nation itself, this had practical political consequences by making it less acceptable for the electorate for their representatives to make inter-party agreements on the part of their political representatives—after all, in their perception, political compromise has become a matter of life or death. Even though Democrats and Republicans agree on the merits about specific public policies, building consensus and a rational debate about the best and most realistic solutions to the country's concrete problems have become much more difficult.

Mason's research is more focused on the American reality, but much of what she describes can also be observed in Brazilian politics. The focus it gives to the issue of affective polarization is particularly relevant for Brazil, which consists of an emotional bond with political identities that, when extreme, can harm the social fabric and make it difficult to build minimum consensus that allows for the peaceful coexistence of different people. groups in a single society. Although this polarization may not be as strong in Brazil as it is in the United States, it is already an empirically verified (i.e., noticeable) phenomenon and considerably complicates not only political discussion around ideas and programs (since identities by definition are not negotiable), such as even building coalitions against threats to democracy itself.

The Moral Foundations of Politics, by Ian Shapiro (Yale University Press, 2012)

Figure 5: The Moral Foundations of Politics (2012)

There are countless introductory books on political theory, but what makes Yale University professor Ian Shapiro's The Moral Foundations of Politics interesting is its emphasis on how the moral aspect underlies the political legitimacy of the diverse traditions of Western political thought. In other words, the central question he seeks to answer is: when do governments deserve our loyalty? Who decides, and by what criteria, whether the laws and actions of the State are legitimate and must be obeyed?

The book is divided into three large blocks of chapters: Enlightenment, Anti-Enlightenment and Mature Enlightenment. In the first block, Shapiro explains the political thought of the early Enlightenment, characterizing it as the search for individual freedom through reason, and deals with utilitarian (considering authors such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and even Vilfredo Pareto), Marxist and contractualist traditions (the latter with a special focus on John Rawls, but also discussing John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Robert Nozick, among others). The block that follows addresses critical thinkers of the Enlightenment project from different perspectives, such as Edmund Burke, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty and Michael Sandel, among others. In the final block, Shapiro anchors what he considers mature Enlightenment in the principle of falsifiability of the modern scientific method—that is, the idea that present knowledge can always be refuted—and in how it integrates with the democratic tradition, enabling a synthesis of the original Enlightenment idea with some of its criticisms. In his discussion of democracy, he addresses authors such as Aristotle, Plato, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville and Joseph Schumpeter.

Despite being a relatively short book, Shapiro rigorously goes through the main currents of Western political thought since the Enlightenment, explaining and contextualizing each one and exploring their strengths and weaknesses in an objective and balanced way (although the author clearly has his preferences and make it explicit). This, in fact, is one of the strengths of the work: Shapiro does not take anything as certain or true a priori, considering the arguments of each author and tradition for what they are. For the current moment, the book is particularly relevant for highlighting how there are neither easy and obvious answers to moral questions, nor ideology, tradition or system of thought that can respond to everything adequately. Not only can traditions and lines of thought incur contradictions or result in obvious absurdities when applied in certain cases, but two people can have diametrically different notions of right and wrong and both be anchored in solid arguments. Specifically for the Brazilian case, the book is also interesting for its focus on the moral aspect as what sustains political legitimacy, therefore going far beyond the debates we normally have in our public sphere, which tend to guide politics through a prism almost exclusively economic and cyclical. The way we think and do politics reveals how we see ourselves as a society and this supports not only the choices we make for the economy and institutional arrangement, but also the politicians we elect and our own attitudes when we occupy a public institution (elected or not). or even when we act as private citizens.