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Continued from here.
§ 11 Civil Society and the Political Culture of Democratic Freedom
No single vision captures freedom fully, she is not the mental possession of any person, school of thought, movement or institution; she belongs to no political party. No government and no organ of public opinion, no agent or entity whatsoever is entitled to claim authority over determining what freedom is and what she is not. Liberty is essentially ideology-free. Liberty requires procedures guiding us in her discovery, but she is impervious to blueprints that dictate her shape and the nature of her fruits.
Civil society is the alternative to the politics by domination that has been the distinguishing hallmark of all eras prior to the emergence of freedom. Civil society takes the privilege of politics out of the hands of the few and divides it among the entire adult population. Civil society, which is the base of political emancipation and all formal channels of politics in modern society, is the result of a community where political domination of the population by a power elite is ruled out, not only in principle, and by constitutional construction and effort, but also by the fact that every individual is in very large measure effectively insulated in her everyday activities outside of politics and in the pursuit of her personal ambitions and plans from arbitrary tutelage by holders of power.
The political culture of democratic freedom represents the counter-model to the way in which politics is organised in a closed access society. It is the strict ban on any systematic efforts to exclude the adult population from decisions concerning the exercise of power and the determination of power's purposes that makes politics constitutive of freedom. Owing to the taboo imposed on exclusive political competence by an insulated and unchallenged minority and the concomitant possibility of mass political participation that it is a free society that is permeated by politics more comprehensively than any other type of society during the history of mankind.
Politics in a free society is submerged in a matrix of political culture, which, in turn, is submerged in the freedoms of autonomous individuals operating in civil society. While our attention tends to be focused on the signal features of professional and organised politics (elections, parliament etc.), it is important to realise that these are functionally hardened structures in the centre of a vast network of political inclination, license that emerges from the vast latitude that the individual enjoys vis-à-vis the strongest authorities in society. In a closed access society of highly centralised and and highly exclusive political activism nothing—in principle, and not much in practice— was allowed unless it was expressly authorised by the power-holders. A change of garment, a liaison, a new job, the absence in church etc—new and individualised action was ostentatious in that system, immediately detected and at once subject to the judgement and authoritative ruling of the powers-that-be.
By contrast, the political nature of a free society is rooted in the implacable rejection of political intrusion by a ruling minority and the resultant infinity of options for personal choice. Choice becomes a right, a tool, and an experience for everyone, and so does identity and political conviction and the participation in politics, giving rise to a multiplicity of voiceable skepticism, dissent, and counter-argument whose ubiquity and entrenchment in the practical concerns of the free are capable of outweighing any political force intent on old-fashioned domination.
The question is how did we get to cross the threshold between closed access and open access society? And are we liable to revert to old ways?
§ 12 The Changing Nature of Political Agency — From Closed Access Society to Open Access Society
In transitioning from a closed access society to an open access society, politics assumes an altogether new character. The right to take political decisions is no longer vested in a select group of privileged social status, instead political rights are democratised, i.e. they are dispersed more broadly among the population—increasingly so. The individual experiences political empowerment. But there is an all-important condition that comes with her elevation to the status of co-shaper of what counts as socially valid in a community. Previously political agency meant that the person eligible for it could determine the duties and other constraints binding on a clientèle subservient to her; the ability to wield political power was based on the subordination of other persons, requiring the exclusion of most other members of the community from a political status equal to hers.
The right to political action was an exclusive personal possession, constituting a prerogative for arbitrary discretion on the part of a small group of persons. Politics was autocratic or oligarchical. It was personal not in the sense of attaching to the person as such, any person—rather, it was assigned only to elect individuals, being strongly geared to furthering the personal concerns and ambitions, the fate and interests of the person in possession of political power. It entailed a wholly different way of life compared to the rest of the community.
By contrast, in modern open access societies, the personal character of politics takes on a different meaning: every person is empowered to participate in the game of politics that determines which actions are not and which are authorised by the community.
However, the nature of the right to political participation is circumscribed by formal rules that are generally binding and equally applicable to all.
The expression of personal political preferences is no longer a matter of being able to exercise arbitrary personal discretion by virtue of special status and superior power. Instead, political efficacy is contingent on social considerations embodied in the rules of political conduct.
Even if in a free society the upshot of political decisions may occasionally establish privileges for certain persons or groups, the exercise of political fiat takes place within a framework of social control and accountability that can always be used to challenge, repeal, or otherwise change a given political determination. The ultimate power to decide the legitimacy of a political issue is never ceded to the independent discretion of a person but remains tied to rules and principles reflecting the equal rights and equal duties of all participants in an open-access process of political competition. The individual participant is free to choose, express, and support her political preferences, but she is not free to enforce her choice by according herself a preponderance of decision power over all other participants of the political game.
The social order of an closed access society is determined by relations of personal dependence on individuals endowed with exceptional coercive power. To assert his personal advantages, the dominant personality must be strong enough to act in whatever arbitrary fashion is needed to support his power and reap the fruits of dominance; not only does he himself depend on this ability to act as he sees fit, but so does the subordinate populace, which depend for their fate and station in life on the personal ties binding them to the power-holder and the favours and disfavours dispensed by him. To attain the concrete, short-term objectives of maintaining and reaping rewards from power, the power-holder must be able to act flexibly, which is tantamount to wielding arbitrary power—get what he can get, manoeuvre tactically and make concessions to maintain as much scope for his own security and personal enrichment as he can.
At the same time, members of the ruling coalition are attracted to the world of more predictable and enduring security that is brought forth by the very norms that prevent arbitrary exercise of power. In closed access societies, there are incentives to move toward the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of (the powerful) man. However, giving up absolute power is dangerous and may give effect to (short-term) consequences too daunting to allow for change that yields greater net advantages in the long-term.
This is the threshold that has proven impossible to overcome for a long time in human history and keeps playing a significant role in the political development of mankind in the developing world, as well as yielding insight into the dynamics of regressive political developments in democratic states, where the stability and success of democracy may engender inordinate trust in the political system which gradually reverts to less carefully monitored, more authoritarian and oligopolistic forms of political dominance.
From the tension between (a) the need and the temptation to exercise arbitrary power and (b) the desire for security, including legal certainty, arises a trend in the natural state toward early forms of the rule of law, which, of course, tends to be restricted to the dealings of the power-holders amongst themselves.
Emerging Contours of the Rule of Law
Certain rules become more authoritative than even a powerful agent. The rule of man is being superseded by the rule of law. When power used to be vested in a specific person, powerful enough to assert his wishes and whims, now it stems from abstract determinations that are general and binding to everyone—enclosed in the budding sphere of law.
The most important among the first steps toward the rule of law is the depersonalisation of law and power. In fact, as the rule of law starts its rise, law becomes power—by virtue of replacing the coercive capabilities of a personal authority to enforce her desires through the fixed and impersonal content of general and abstract norms.
Law is no longer subservient to the special, elevated status and the superior power of a specific person.
Law is no longer serviceable to the needs of agents of governance whose advantages and dominance over others are vested in a specific individual—rather than in an impersonal function and office accountable to publicly determined and publicly monitored standards.
Law addresses a public concern, a good that is not the personal possession of an individual alone, but entails the promise and the duty to deliver a common weal that is commonly authored and enforced against objective standards.
Depersonalising Rights to Spread Personal Rights
The individual continues to be the benefactor of the law but only in so far as her demands on the law are compatible with those of other participants in the egalitarian regime of law, which projects a transpersonal, public purpose.
At the base of the rule of law, we encounter the depersonalisation of legitimacy, entitlement, and power. A king could declare himself legitimised and entitled to driving a car or holding a driver's license by virtue of his status as being a king, and he might enforce this self-asserted capability using the physical power he commands. Contrariwise, today anyone who has the right to acquire a driver's license is not herself the source of the legitimacy of the right, or the entitlement and the power to exercise it, instead she is eligible to exercising the right only to the extent that she satisfies criteria that define the right irrespective of the circumstances or desires of any specific individual.
Modern personal rights (such as the right to acquire a driver's license) tend to depend on a prior historical process of depersonalising rights. The larger the number of people that are to be eligible holders of a right, the more the right needs to be made independent of personal discretion in defining, awarding, enforcing and policing it.
Law Must Become Public before It Can Be Privately Effective
At this juncture, we encounter a feature that becomes indispensable when freedom develops in more complete manner: logically and historically, first the state—the unrivalled wielder of power—must become subject to legal rules curbing arbitrariness, before a private sphere can be defined and defended by rules that afford predictable protection against wilful transgression. The rule of law must tame, it must come to dominate, the (natural) state before it can serve as a productive force in private dealings made independent of the caprice of overpowering public and non-state agents.
Depersonalising law and power is tantamount to making them publicly accountable. For what is power if it is no longer in the possession of a person? It becomes a common project. And what does "common" mean? The term implies the political participation of the public, of every adult member of society. Ultimately, power and the law are being shaped by political efforts to whose exercise every citizen is invited in a free society. That is the meaning of an "open access society."
I now turn my attention to the threshold conditions that accompany the transition from a closed access society to an open access society—from a community where politics is a privilege for a narrow circle to a community that is fully politicised in that every member of it is entitled to make his concerns felt in the determination and supervision of law and power.
Continued here.
However, the nature of the right to political participation is circumscribed by formal rules that are generally binding and equally applicable to all.
The expression of personal political preferences is no longer a matter of being able to exercise arbitrary personal discretion by virtue of special status and superior power. Instead, political efficacy is contingent on social considerations embodied in the rules of political conduct.
Even if in a free society the upshot of political decisions may occasionally establish privileges for certain persons or groups, the exercise of political fiat takes place within a framework of social control and accountability that can always be used to challenge, repeal, or otherwise change a given political determination. The ultimate power to decide the legitimacy of a political issue is never ceded to the independent discretion of a person but remains tied to rules and principles reflecting the equal rights and equal duties of all participants in an open-access process of political competition. The individual participant is free to choose, express, and support her political preferences, but she is not free to enforce her choice by according herself a preponderance of decision power over all other participants of the political game.
§ 13 The Trap of Power — Personalised Politics
The social order of an closed access society is determined by relations of personal dependence on individuals endowed with exceptional coercive power. To assert his personal advantages, the dominant personality must be strong enough to act in whatever arbitrary fashion is needed to support his power and reap the fruits of dominance; not only does he himself depend on this ability to act as he sees fit, but so does the subordinate populace, which depend for their fate and station in life on the personal ties binding them to the power-holder and the favours and disfavours dispensed by him. To attain the concrete, short-term objectives of maintaining and reaping rewards from power, the power-holder must be able to act flexibly, which is tantamount to wielding arbitrary power—get what he can get, manoeuvre tactically and make concessions to maintain as much scope for his own security and personal enrichment as he can.
At the same time, members of the ruling coalition are attracted to the world of more predictable and enduring security that is brought forth by the very norms that prevent arbitrary exercise of power. In closed access societies, there are incentives to move toward the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of (the powerful) man. However, giving up absolute power is dangerous and may give effect to (short-term) consequences too daunting to allow for change that yields greater net advantages in the long-term.
This is the threshold that has proven impossible to overcome for a long time in human history and keeps playing a significant role in the political development of mankind in the developing world, as well as yielding insight into the dynamics of regressive political developments in democratic states, where the stability and success of democracy may engender inordinate trust in the political system which gradually reverts to less carefully monitored, more authoritarian and oligopolistic forms of political dominance.
§ 14 Toward Freedom — Depersonalising Law and Power
Emerging Contours of the Rule of Law
Certain rules become more authoritative than even a powerful agent. The rule of man is being superseded by the rule of law. When power used to be vested in a specific person, powerful enough to assert his wishes and whims, now it stems from abstract determinations that are general and binding to everyone—enclosed in the budding sphere of law.
The most important among the first steps toward the rule of law is the depersonalisation of law and power. In fact, as the rule of law starts its rise, law becomes power—by virtue of replacing the coercive capabilities of a personal authority to enforce her desires through the fixed and impersonal content of general and abstract norms.
Law is no longer subservient to the special, elevated status and the superior power of a specific person.
Law is no longer serviceable to the needs of agents of governance whose advantages and dominance over others are vested in a specific individual—rather than in an impersonal function and office accountable to publicly determined and publicly monitored standards.
Law addresses a public concern, a good that is not the personal possession of an individual alone, but entails the promise and the duty to deliver a common weal that is commonly authored and enforced against objective standards.
Depersonalising Rights to Spread Personal Rights
The individual continues to be the benefactor of the law but only in so far as her demands on the law are compatible with those of other participants in the egalitarian regime of law, which projects a transpersonal, public purpose.
At the base of the rule of law, we encounter the depersonalisation of legitimacy, entitlement, and power. A king could declare himself legitimised and entitled to driving a car or holding a driver's license by virtue of his status as being a king, and he might enforce this self-asserted capability using the physical power he commands. Contrariwise, today anyone who has the right to acquire a driver's license is not herself the source of the legitimacy of the right, or the entitlement and the power to exercise it, instead she is eligible to exercising the right only to the extent that she satisfies criteria that define the right irrespective of the circumstances or desires of any specific individual.
Modern personal rights (such as the right to acquire a driver's license) tend to depend on a prior historical process of depersonalising rights. The larger the number of people that are to be eligible holders of a right, the more the right needs to be made independent of personal discretion in defining, awarding, enforcing and policing it.
Law Must Become Public before It Can Be Privately Effective
At this juncture, we encounter a feature that becomes indispensable when freedom develops in more complete manner: logically and historically, first the state—the unrivalled wielder of power—must become subject to legal rules curbing arbitrariness, before a private sphere can be defined and defended by rules that afford predictable protection against wilful transgression. The rule of law must tame, it must come to dominate, the (natural) state before it can serve as a productive force in private dealings made independent of the caprice of overpowering public and non-state agents.
Depersonalising law and power is tantamount to making them publicly accountable. For what is power if it is no longer in the possession of a person? It becomes a common project. And what does "common" mean? The term implies the political participation of the public, of every adult member of society. Ultimately, power and the law are being shaped by political efforts to whose exercise every citizen is invited in a free society. That is the meaning of an "open access society."
I now turn my attention to the threshold conditions that accompany the transition from a closed access society to an open access society—from a community where politics is a privilege for a narrow circle to a community that is fully politicised in that every member of it is entitled to make his concerns felt in the determination and supervision of law and power.
Continued here.
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