Anyone who carefully reads in the reprinted pages Joint message by the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on global relations entering a fresh era and global sustainability of February 4, 2022, he must see 2 crucial points in it.
Firstly, it is hard not to read this agreement as a pact between Russia and China against Anglo-Saxon hegemony over the world. It is besides not by chance that the signing of this paper took place 3 weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is simply a Chinese evidence carte blanche for Vladimir Putin's policy towards Kiev.
Secondly, and this is the problem I want to address in this short text, it is worth noting that the words democracy and democratisation appear in it as many as 19 times. Therefore, from a doctrinal point of view, this paper should be read as an effort to take distant the American and European Union monopoly on defining what is and what is not democracy; which states are and which are not democratic. As a result, teaching what democracy is and what "standards" must be fulfilled in order for the English-speaking jury to give individual countries a certificate of compliance. It is not a secret that the 1 who assigns and receives certificates of democracy obtains ideological hegemony over the certified, forcing him to translate himself, defend himself, cayana, etc.
For this reason, the Russians and the Chinese powerfully declare: “Democracy is not built on templates. Depending on the socio-political structure, history, traditions and cultural characteristics of the country, its inhabitants have the right to choose the forms and methods of implementing democracy that correspond to the particularities of that country. Only its citizens have the right to justice whether the state is democratic. (...) The attempts by individual countries to impose on another countries their “democratic standards”, to grant themselves a monopolistic right to measure the level of compliance with the criteria of democracy, to draw up a line of division on ideological grounds, including by creating narrow-format blocks and ad hoc alliances, are in fact an example of trampling on democracy and of moving distant from its spirit and actual values. specified attempts to act as a hegemon pose a serious threat to global and regional peace and stableness and undermine the stableness of the planet order. The Parties are convinced that the protection of democracy and human rights should not be utilized as an instrument of force on another countries. The Parties argue the abuse of democratic values, interference in interior affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of defending democracy and human rights, as well as attempts to provoke divisions and confrontations in the world. The Parties call on the global community to respect the diversity of cultures and civilizations and the right of nations of different countries to self-determination."
The author of this text – like Russian and Chinese diplomats, as well as any Polish politicians opposed the imposition of EU standards of democratic “lawfulness” to our country – rejects the existence of 1 single model of the existence and functioning of a political government considered democratic. What was different was democracy in ancient Athens, erstwhile half of the inhabitants of this policy were slaves; what was different in the First Republic, erstwhile the sovereign nation was confined only to nobility (in both of these regimes political laws had a full of 10% of the population); something else is in the United States, where more votes can be obtained in elections and lost anyway; something else is it in France or Poland. The Athenian or Old Polish strategy seems to us present to be an aristocratic government, as political laws wielded in it a number of adult inhabitants, but in its epochs it was considered democratic. In the American system, therefore, you can get more votes and not become president (which has already happened respective times) due to the fact that it is simply a national strategy first and then a democratic system. But can Russia and China be included in democratic states?
They can and can't. It is up to the individual who sets up the minima, who must fulfil the political strategy in order to be considered such. According to Commissioners from the European Commission and parliamentarians from the European Parliament, Poland and Hungary seem to be on the border between democracy and authoritarianism today. According to the Americans, democracy is not in Iran – due to the fact that the will of voters is limited by the theocratic council of the imams – and it was in Afghanistan in 2004, erstwhile the voter turnout in elections in which under American barrels Hamid Karzaj was elected President, in any provinces it exceeded 100% of those entitled to vote. It was explained that this was not a problem, as it was 55% nationwide (which in practice meant that erstwhile elections were not held in the provinces occupied by the Taliban, there were massive voices in the Western and government forces controlled). The same Americans in 2013 supported in Egypt the coup d'état of Gen. Abd al-Fattah as-Sisi, directed against the muslim parliamentary majority. In turn, the French did not see the problem when, in Algeria in 1991, a recently elected parliament, dominated by Islamists, was driven by a leftist and lay army. respective 100 ex-parliamentarians were subsequently executed in Algeria and Egypt in judicial murders.
As a political scientist, I will say without hesitation that the word democracy is highly out of focus, as I wrote in 1 of my last books, namely in Non-liberal democracy (2022)1where I have distinguished 2 completely different models of knowing democracy in the Western tradition alone:
- Liberal-Democratic Model. It is an Anglo-Saxon model – his intellectual father was John Locke – on the Continent transplanted by the French raised in the tradition of the 1789 Revolution, which was applied since 1945 occupied by the Allies to Western Germany and after 1989 to east Europe, including Poland. This is simply a imagination of the harmonisation of the liberal (individualistic) and democratic (generousness of the nation) element, where, however, the rule of liberal was granted on the issues of the 2 principles. In the 19th century, liberal democracies so restricted electoral rights to mediate and higher classes so that the majority regulation would not violate the minority-friendly position quo of property. In the 20th century, erstwhile the rule of universal voting was established, the will of the nation was limited or inactive limited by: constitutional courts; the 3 divisions of power and independency of the courts from the will of the majority; global human rights pacts; various laws directed against groups considered extreme, etc. Ultimately, it turns out that nominally sovereign nations do not have any sovereign power, but only the power to administer within the limits imposed upon them by the liberal constitutionalist, which makes the nation's sovereignty fictional, due to the fact that real power is exercised by liberal political elites, who respect the supporters of the nation's actual sovereignty as "populists."
- Model of non-liberal democracy. The concept of non-liberal democracy was introduced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who utilized it in 1 of his speeches in July 2014. It rapidly made a major career and began to realize alternate – although rejected by the European Commission and European judiciary – a model of Community democracy that respects national identity and tradition. In this model, whenever there is simply a contradiction between democratic and liberal principles, primacy is awarded to the former. Therefore, the founding state is an act of universal vote in which the sovereign nation elects parliament. The expressive will of the nation parliament stands above the principles of 3 divisions of authorities, individual provisions of the constitution protecting liberal (individualist) powers, stands above the global human rights pacts interpreted by global institutions or decisions of European courts ruling on what is or is not the regulation of law in the sovereign states of the European Union. Sovereign besides has the right to establish in his own country the desired media order, excluding tv stations promoting his views.
To which of these models is Russia and China assigned? Russia is surely not, has never been and will never be a liberal-democratic state, where liberal laws would dominate the welfare of the community. This doctrine is associated with the period of Yeltsynowska's “great sadness” erstwhile a group of oligarchs along with Western “investors” stole half of Russia, with the passive attitude of the ever-drinking head of state. Is Vladimir Putin's Russia a state of non-liberal democracy? Yeah. It is surely a democratic state, due to the fact that the president of the Russian Federation and Duma are elected in an equal and secret vote and it is someway not heard that these elections are falsified. They may not meet Western liberal standards, even due to the state media monopoly, but the vote itself is free. The Russians have for many years been focusing around Putin and authentically giving him majority electoral support, completely ignoring that their elector would disregard Western standards of liberalism, human rights, etc. As long as all 4 or 5 years, according to the Constitution, elections are held in which no 1 adds false cards, we are dealing with democracy, and that the practice of the state is not liberal, that is, non-liberal democracy.
We surely have a bigger problem with China due to the fact that the elections here are held in an archaic, communist way, that is, according to the expression "no substance who votes, it matters who counts". In China, we do not have a fair vote and a vote counting, and individual rights are not necessarily respected either. Therefore, it is hard to say that Xi Jinping's power comes from choices another than those conducted at the Chinese Communist organization convention. There is surely no democratic minimum in the European sense of this word, where it is associated with the authority of the parliament elected in multiparty and honest elections. Another issue is that many experts believe that China might not last democratic elections, due to the fact that the top could be taken by regionalist parties and straight secessionist parties, and voters could advocate the return of socialism and against free marketplace modernization, which is utilized by about 300 million Chinese - or about 1/5 of the population of the mediate State - who already live at Western level, while others are working in conditions of genuinely nineteenth century capitalism. In any liberal or non-liberal form, democracy would be hard and possibly impossible in China. Therefore, democratic dissidents from this country enjoy specified a large estim of American media and the CIA. Their coming to power could lead to the interior decay of this increasing empire. For this reason, we can talk about democracy in China, but not democracy.
Well, that's the one. democratisation? For respective 1000 years of its existence China had a monarchy strategy based on aristocracy. Like all specified systems, this besides was based on inheriting the rights to power. The sphere of power was closed to 97 or 99% of the people of the country. I compose about residents due to the fact that they would be hard to call citizens. The Chinese Revolution – both in the "nationalist" version of the Chang Kaj-Shek and the Maoist 1 – was a form of extremist democratisation, as it provided promotion on the political and social ladder to people of the people who could not even express their views in the conventional system, let alone rule. A individual as primitive intellectually and politically as Mao Zedong, in the imperial era could not do any career by virtue of his plebeic origin. Modern China is not democratic in its systemic sense, but it is socially democratized. Anyone can sign up to the ruling monoparty and cling to its structures, anyone can become an authoritative or military and cling to the structures of bureaucracy and the army. Anyone can be educated. In Chinese capitalism, anyone can besides gain and advance to the mediate class. State partitions have been clearly overturned and this breakthrough must be considered a extremist democratisation of social relations. possibly that for Chinese little ideologically infiltrated by Western ideologies, that is, for the vast majority of them, the change itself is considered democracy, even if the elections are fictional.
In this Russian-Chinese declaration, we find an effort to specify democracy: “The parties come out of the fact that democracy is simply a way for citizens to participate in the regulation of their own country in the interests of improving the well-being of the people and ensuring the regulation of the people. Democracy takes place in all areas of public life and within the national process, reflects the interests of all people, their will, guarantees their rights, meets their needs and protects their interests."
These sentences mention to “participation of citizens”, “improvement of prosperity”, “interests of all people”, “needs” and “interests”. It's a very broad and foggy formula. It is clear that the authors of the text wanted to specify as far as possible the word so that all 3 concepts outlined by us could be included: Western liberal democracy, non-liberal democracy and social democratisation. The author of this text takes the view that all culture and all nation has the right to choose their way and their model of political power. This is the basis for the actual sovereignty of the nation, or democracy. erstwhile we transplant the model of Western democracy into another civilization, it ends as in Afghanistan, Egypt and Algeria.
Adam Wielomski
for: https://www.modernmysl.pl/2023/03/18/liberal-liberal-democracy-nonliberal-and-democratisation/
1 A. Wielomski, Non-liberal democracy, Warsaw 2022. This PDF book can be downloaded free of charge from the site https://conservatives.pl/multi-democracy-non-liberal-book-to-download-in-pdf/.
Thank you for your interest in our magazine. We are counting on information support: your comments and polemics with our texts and sending your own articles. We can besides be supported materially.
Transfer data:
Pro Vita Bon investigation Institute
BGŻ BNP PARIBAS, Warsaw
Account No: 79160014621841495000000001
Data for abroad transfers:
PL79160014621841495000000001
SWIFT: PPABPLPK
