New Delhi: Confucian ideas can address present issues better than the “dominant liberal-democratic” models, said Chinese political philosophy scholar Bai Tongdong during the 15th Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture organised by the Institute of Chinese Studies and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies held virtually, Wednesday.
The subject of the lecture was “Liberal Democracy and Confucianism”. ThePrint was the media partner of the event.
Confucius, born in 551 BCE, was a Chinese political theorist and philosopher, whose ideas are held in esteem and continue to be studied not just in China and the East Asian countries, but globally.
Bai, the Dongfang Chair professor of philosophy at Fudan University, China and a visiting professor at the New York University, Shanghai, proposed a hybrid model consisting of both democratic and meritocratic elements, from a Confucian perspective as a better alternative to the current liberal democratic political model.
“The liberal and democratic are conceptually different and in reality they often come in conflict. We see the rise of right-wing populism in a lot of democratic countries. When populist governments rise, they target the constitutions, rule of laws and human rights,” said Bai, arguing that both conceptually and in reality, the ideals of liberalism and democracy are in conflict.
According to Bai, to protect the liberal values of a nation, there must be limits on democracy. “Limited democracy in order to save liberalism,” he explained.
This idea of a limited democracy to save liberalism was the sum and substance of Bai’s argument, which he elaborated on through his lecture, to highlight what he considered to be the four fundamental problems of democracy and how a hybrid democratic-meritocratic model could be better for long-term governance.
The development of Confucian thought, Bai said, occurred during the warring states period – 771 BCE to 221 BCE – where Confucian philosophers had to grapple with the idea of establishing order in an egalitarian and mobile society of strangers. It was because of this era, Bai said that China faced early modernisation before the Europeans.
The warring states period was when the Kings of the Zhou dynasty in China moved their capital eastwards to Luoyang, in present-day province of Henan, until the successful conclusion of the wars of conquest by the Qin state in 221 BCE created a unified Chinese empire.
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Four fundamental problems to democracy
Bai argued that there were four problems with democracy. Firstly, he claimed that democracy often carries with it the belief that people can make the “best decisions”. The corollary is that, “oftentimes in democratic countries there is a strong suspicion and even resentment of the establishment”, he added.
Highlighting that this anti-establishment movement was the strongest in the US, the scholar alleged, “As a result there is really a strange and very disturbing phenomenon in this anti-elitist movement, namely a lot of American politicians ask the people to vote for them to send them to Washington in order to destroy Washington – because the establishment is evil.”
This self-defeating logic – “send me to a place I despise” – has led to surveys showcasing that the people respect the popularly-elected branches of government in the US the least, he claimed. There is more respect for the Supreme Court and the Military — both of which are unelected — Bai further added. “This is the general ideologically cultural issue” with democracy, he said.
The second problem, according to Bai, was the fact that all policies are held hostage by the voters despite the fact that policies also affect those who do not vote — like foreigners and outsiders.
This, he argued, limits the ability of a regime to solve long-term issues such as climate change, because voters only look at their own local self-interest, and are not too worried that Pacific Island countries are drowning due to global warming.
The third issue highlighted by the scholar was the asymmetry of power between voters themselves. “Some of them [voters] are more powerful, some of them are less so,” he pointed out.
“In a recently democratised state, the first thing that happens is ethnic cleansing. The majority tries to get rid of the minority,” he claimed. Whereas in a liberal democratic state, the minorities may not be persecuted because of the rule of law, but will be “suppressed in a more hidden manner,” Bai explained.
The fourth issue according to Bai was that, “democracy presupposes the rationality of average voters. But there are more and more political science and political philosophy literature that shows the idea of a rational voter is nothing but a myth”.
The scholar claimed that it was difficult for voters to be rational in a large public state, especially given the pressing needs of the average voter to work, thereby leaving them no time to think about complicated political matters.
Hybrid system consisting of democratic & meritocratic elements
Bai therefore presented his proposal for a state which was a mix of localised democracy and a merit-based selection system at the higher national levels of governance.
His argument was based on the assumption that in a “small local community, people know their neighbours very well and they can make decisions that are good for themselves… one person one vote should be the only mechanism to decide on local matters.”
At the higher levels of governance, however, Bai proposed there should be two legislative houses. While the lower house should be elected by popular will, the upper house should consist of members with “moral and intellectual” capacities.
The idea here on the selection of candidates would be through an indirect election or selected by legislators from the lower house. The second method by which a candidate could be selected to the upper house was through an examination system, similar to the one that exists for diplomats in the US, he said.
The problem, Bai conceded during the lecture, was that there was a difficulty in identifying people’s morals, but there are proxies that could be found — such as previous political records for example.
In the dual system proposed by him, he added, the upper house members would be term-limited to one term only after which the upper house would be dissolved and new members would be elected or selected.
“To have more meritocratic elements could address the issue of the uninformed, immoral voters having too much say in political matters to prevent the rise of populism,” Bai added.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)