"A doctor was diagnosing a patient, asking, 'Do you always snore?''Nope, only when I sleep,' replied the patient.""Often little or oven no airing have been given through the available institutional channels offered by democratic states when citizens give voice to truths and logic on the streets or pack assembly halls or share their ideas through the minority press," Jasmine went on as looking at Raden Saleh's painting, The Arrest of Prince Diponegoro."Such discourses offer new rhetorical strategies for expressing citizen desires, needs, and emotions that otherwise go unrecognized and unaddressed. They also offer impetus for new forms of deliberation and informed action that can result in real political change.As democracies become more democratic, they improve themselves and the political well-being of their members. Increased democratization further opens the public sphere to diverse opinions and thereby offers actors an increased stake in deliberative decision-making. Actors can rightly expect that their expressed interests and insights will be genuinely recognized and engaged by significant others, and so they are motivated to seize upon opportunities for meaningful input into matters of import to themselves and their progeny. All this and more creates a positive rippling effect across the political landscape that culminates in better informed and reflexive political action.The idea of increased democratization and the value it places upon the participatory involvement of actors in political institutions underscores a need for expanded arenas of public discourse. The importance of discourse to democracy points to a tension between the ideal of increased democratization, manifested in expanded deliberative arenas, and the realities of imperfect democracies which often work in ways contrary to the ideal. On the one hand, free elections, proportional representation, and majority rule all testify to the progress of democratic states and, indeed, serve as discursive props for the legitimation of existing state institutional arrangements and practices: competing programs of action are debated; the will of the people is expressed through elections; the reins of government are often exchanged; social conflicts are resolved by peaceful means. On the other hand, such outcomes and how they are discursively represented can disguise a tendency of democratic states to suppress some actors’ input as a means of protecting or advancing the interests of privileged others: debates over competing programs of action may be only partial and exclusionary of some (perhaps most) potential participants; the will of the people may be little more than an ostensive majority opinion expressed restrictedly in calcified aggregations of electoral result or representational apportionment; claims of conflict resolution may deflect attention away from chronic disparities in how power is distributed.The relationship between rulers and people who might disagree with them is a standard part of the political experience of every society. No government is completely supported in all that it does by all the people whom it claims to govern, and one of the major tasks of a political system is to find ways of balancing government and opposition. At the same time, the idea of organized political opposition as a normal and beneficial component of a polity is a surprising one, and seems quite out of accord with the traditional concern of political speculation: the search for a good state based on universal allegiance to correct principles and practices. Even in established parliamentary systems such as the British one, there continued to be reservations in the minds of at least some prominent nineteenth—and early twentieth—century intellectuals about the idea of a formally accepted and legitimate opposition. The effort in traditional political theory and practice was to create the best possible political system, and opposition was frequently seen as a disruptive rather than constructive force in that creative process.Democracy protects the rights and liberties of the people and recognizes the freedom of people to express their views. However, the 'will of the people' is very frequently plural, and democratic traditions provide many different ways of defining and managing opposition. The principles of democracy involve the right of individuals and groups to disagree with the government. Yet, there is always a sense of reservation about such disagreement. Although many definitions of democracy, for example, recognize the right, and in some definitions even the necessity, of opposition parties to exist, the phrase 'partisan politics' carries negative implications even in the conversations of those most convinced of the need for multiparty political competition. Even more broadly, there is the basic tension in political societies between the desire for harmony and stability and the need to provide some vehicle for the expression of disagreement.Opposition can take many forms, which range from revolutionary advocacy of the destruction of the existing system to varying levels of disagreement with the people in power in a political system. No government will allow open activity that is aimed at its destruction by violent means. There have, however, been governments who have organized, or at least cooperated with, as a part of some of the efforts of democratization, efforts to bring about the end of the existing political system and its replacement by a system based on different principles. Most of the authoritarian, one-party regimes of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union engaged in this cooperative self-destruction under the pressure of massive popular (and illegal) movements of opposition. Military governments in Africa repeatedly announce the initiation of efforts to restore civilian democracy, with varying degrees of commitment and success. However, the basic minimum requirement that governments impose on opposition is that they do not actively engage in violent acts to overthrow the government.Most governments place additional restrictions on opposition groups. In the 1950s and 1960s, in many states in the United States, for example, one of the conditions of employment by a state institution was taking an oath in which prospective employees swore that they were 'not now nor ever had been' members of a group advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government, even if the individual had never personally engaged in such activities. In this context, the basic standard of judgment is acceptance of the fundamental rules of the political system by the opposition. In the early 1960s, when military regimes were common in many parts of the world, an observation by Thomas Hobbes was often quoted, which stated that politics was 'like a game of cards: the players must agree which card is to be trump. With this difference, he adds, that in politics, whenever no other card is agreed upon, clubs are trumps.' The 'rules of the game' had to be accepted by the opposition; otherwise 'clubs' would provide the basis for power.Although the acceptance of democracy as a good political system is relatively recent and there have long been reservations (at least on the part of the rulers) about opposition to existing regimes, there have been many different structural and informal limitations on the power of rulers throughout history. No ruler has had absolute control over all things all of the time. Societies and civilizations developed important conceptualizations for limiting the power of tyrants, and these concepts reflect the distinctive heritages of different societies. Although the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, for example, may have been defined as a way of legitimizing the ancient Chou dynasty's claim to power and was an important part of Chinese concepts of imperial legitimacy, it also provided in subsequent centuries a ratio- nale for revolution against an imperial dynasty in times of instability and trouble.Revolutionary opposition to an existing political system is not what is meant in most discussions of 'political opposition.' In his characteristic manner, G. K. Chesterton put the matter clearly, 'It is absurd to ask a Government to provide an opposition. You cannot go to the Sultan and say reproachfully: 'You have made no arrangements for your brother dethroning you and seizing the Caliphate.' You can- not go to a medieval king and say: 'Kindly lend me two thousand spears and one thousand bowmen, as I wish to raise a rebellion against you.'' In most standard Western political thought, legitimate 'opposition' in a democratic context is understood in a special way. Most suggestions stress that opposition presupposes consent on fundamentals, that is, consent at the community and regime level. What the opposition opposes is a government, not the political system as such.This concept of opposition depends upon an underlying concept of a 'constitution,' or set of fundamental precepts that all people within the political system, including the opposition, accept as legitimate. The emergence of the idea of constitutional government is an important element in the development of the modern state, but it is a relatively recent development in the West. The concept of 'an impersonal and privileged legal or constitutional order' is frequently tied to the idea of the state in modern Western political thought, but 'it did not become a major object of concern until the late sixteenth century and the idea of a legally circumscribed power structure of power separate from the ruler and ruled with supreme jurisdiction over territory is a modern phenomenon.In standard modern Western political thought, acceptible opposition in a democratic system is closely tied to the concept of constitutional government, in which there is an underlying, fundamental consensus on the 'rules of the game' of politics. Opposition is the legitimate disagreement with particular policies of specific leaders within the mutually accepted framework of the principles of an underlying constitution that is either written or based on long-established practice. However, in modern Western political experiences, there is also a traditional radical opposition that is expressed in many different revolutionary forms.In modern Western European political history, there is a long-standing tension between two different understandings of democracy, and each of these understandings represents a revolutionary opposition to the other. The two competing visions were one that emphasized individual rights and limitation on government and another that stressed the popular will and collective structures of community. This is the continuing debate in the Western political tradition and is at the heart of any discussion of democracy.By the end of the twentieth century, revolutions, in the old traditions of radical violence, are no longer practical or effective in the globalized context of the politics of democratization. In current world conditions, democratic revolutions of the classical nineteenth-century kind are possible only when the political regimes maintain anti-democratic positions in the face of significant popular demand for democratization. In most countries in the 1990s, even the radical opposition is operating within a shared conceptual framework. Where there is an underlying difference in fundamental cosmology, as in the contrast between secular humanist political theory and political theory built on religious assumptions, there is the possibility of violent, anti-systemic revolution, but in most cases there is a broad acceptance of the fundamental assumptions of the need for liberty, equality, and popular political participation in some meaningful form.The broad consensus does not, however, eliminate the possibility of opposition or even the sense of the real need for continuing opposition if democracy is to be successful. In its most sanitized version in the context of liberal democracy, there is an insistence that the cornerstone of democratic governance is the right to conduct free and fair elections [defined by political scientist Robert Dahl as an election in which 'coercion is comparatively uncommon'. Coercion involves compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against that party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a desired response. These actions may include extortion, blackmail, or even torture and sexual assault. A free and fair election involves political freedoms and fair processes leading up to the vote, a fair count of eligible voters who cast a ballot (including such aspects as electoral fraud or voter suppression), and acceptance of election results by all parties. An election may partially meet international standards for free and fair elections, or may meet some standards but not others], that these elections should be open to multiple parties, and that the winning party should be able to form a government capable of fulfilling its mandate. It should also be willing to relinquish power if subsequent election results require it. However, in this vision of an opposition party, there is a strict limitation: when such a party comes to power, it should be forbidden to alter basic constitutional provisions in an effort to seize extra-constitutional powers or stop new elections.More broadly based descriptions of the need for opposition in a democratic system assume that no governmental system, not even a functioning democracy, is ever perfect. Because 'governments constantly change,' the effort of 'reinventing government' is not only conceivable but, in the views of many, necessary. Constructive criticism and opposition become an essential part of democracy, both in terms of the need for mechanisms that will allow opposition continued access to positions of leadership and in a more radical sense.Opposition as a simple statement of disagreement with the leaders in a political system is an ancient phenomenon. It usually was expressed through movements to overthrow or destroy the government and was, naturally, not recognized as a legitimate political option by the rulers. Opposition as an accepted option within a political system is in many ways a relatively recent phenomenon in world history. It is especially identified with the emergence of the modern ideas of democracy.Modern democratic opposition involves a number of basic assumptions. In general terms, there is an assumption of a consensus among all in the system on the fundamental construction of that political system. If that consensus is absent, it is assumed that legitimate opposition will not lead to violent and military efforts to overthrow the existing system and that any opposition that comes to power will not so alter the system that it could not subsequently be restored by nonviolent means. Legitimate opposition may be radical, liberal, or conservative, working for long-term system transformation, system development, or system preservation, but it must do this within the framework of recognition of individual and group rights and ultimate control by the people of the political system.We have discussed pragmatism about 'democracy is a way of life' as something too premature in the previous session, and in the next episode, we will discuss democracy, and also the opposition, from an Islamic perspective, bi 'idhnillah."
Citations & References:
- Michael Huspek (Ed.), Oppositional Discourses and Democracies, 2010, Routledge
- John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy, 1996, Oxford University Press
