The future of our democracies has never been more in peril, and the peril comes from both without and within. As powerful dictatorial regimes such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey coalesce in a deadly hatred of the West, our democratic institutions are also threatened by radical political groups on both the left and the right. In his demanding but gripping new essay, The disillusionment of democracyFrench sociologist Dominique Schnapper examines this dual situation, which she considers very worrying for the sustainability of so-called free societies. Will they be resilient enough to survive this new reality filled with existential dangers? she asks.
The title of this ambitious essay refers to the work The disillusionment of progress (1969) by Raymond Aron, Schnapper’s father. The famous thinker, a great defender of liberal democracy in the face of the threat of totalitarianism, analyzed the dialectic of modernity and equality. His daughter — an honorary member of the French Constitutional Council — continues the reflection in a way, this time exploring the limits and repercussions of a model that has difficulty keeping its promises. Because it engenders an inevitable “frustration,” democracy is always disappointing, she emphasizes. This is because it remains a utopia that carries within it the possibility of its criticism, a notion of incompleteness as old as democracy itself, the author reminds us. However, the aspiration to freedom and equality constantly risks being diverted by the refusal of limits and control.
According to the sociologist, theHomo democraticus contemporary society is less and less accepting of the inadequacies of democracy, even though developments are moving in the direction of its demands, with progress making inequalities unsustainable. This paradox, already announced by Alexis de Tocqueville, would be the cause of a possible disintegration, Schnapper assures us. “It is when inequalities [ou les discriminations] “objectively diminish while those that remain – and, for some, cannot help but remain – become more and more unbearable,” she writes. The citizen who rejects the weaknesses of institutions therefore ends up fighting democracy in the name of democracy.
Although it is legitimate to criticize the way institutions function, it is their total questioning that poses a problem here. The author takes as an example the rise of nationalist and xenophobic populisms, such as the possible re-election of Donald Trump in the United States or the announced victory in the legislative elections in France of the National Rally, a far-right party. At the same time, the author insists on the excesses of a democracy that she describes as extreme (wokism), which feeds “limitless demands”. To avoid the worst, Dominique Schnapper calls for reason and this “need to respect democratic principles”.