The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present
David Runciman The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013If there is a single political topic that has been the subject of more intellectual and popular discussion, of more private and public concern and, on occasion, a greater cause of hope or despair over the past few centuries, I'd be interested in hearing what it is. Ever since the European Enlightenment (dates uncertain but probably not earlier than the mid seventeenth century nor much later than the late eighteenth century) purveyors of optimism and promoters of progress have insisted that humanity, despite our seemingly universal tendency to engage in the unpleasantness of racism, caste and class oppression and misogyny and so on, is not only capable of improvement, but destined for it.The Enlightenment by which, in the European case, is not meant a kind of vaguely metaphysical awakening to the spiritual meaning of the universe, but rather a rational, practical, scientific and increasingly technological approach to life. It was a revolutionary transformation not only of thought in Great Britain, the European continent and its several settler colonies in North America and elsewhere, but also of "elsewhere" as imperialism brought all the alleged benefits of European society to what those self same Europeans condescendingly called natives, savages or, in Kipling's charming phrase the "lesser breeds without the law" who lived "beyond the pale," never mind that Kipling was actually talking about Germans (Orwell, 1946) and that "the pale" referred to the limits of assured English control in Ireland in the fourteenth century.The promise of the Enlightenment was, at least in retrospect, was almost irresistible: science and technology portended an end to communicable disease and an increase in efficient communication and transportation; industrial development implied an end to poverty, initially at home and eventually abroad; the market economy was touted as the vehicle through which economic equity and affordable products could be made available to any competent citizen willing to adopt an ethic of hard work and deferred gratification (an attitude ascribed to Protestants above all) mass and, eventually, universal education would dispel ignorance and superstition; and, finally, gradual democratization would ensure the elimination of tyranny and ensure political constitutions increasingly committed to the rule of law, judicial due process, representative and responsible government with the right to vote eventually extended to all citizens. It was an impressive agenda.We are all, of course, aware of the roots of democracy in ancient Athens. We seldom recall, however, that it was a relatively short lived experiment and few of us acknowledge that among its most visceral opponents was the legendary philosopher, Socrates. Nonetheless, we seem willing to connect democratic Athens (in which not much more than 5% of the population actually had the right to participate, since women and slaves were not invited to the general assembly) to English parish meetings, New England town meetings, a few Swiss cantons and ultimately to electronic voting in Internet besotted North America today. We neglect to remind ourselves that the now common right to vote was recently deeply feared by aristocracies, passionately desired by an emergent bourgeoisie and a distant hope for women and the working class who, in their dreams, may have thought that being a majority of the population might one day work to provide governments more interested in assisting than in oppressing them.David Runciman's book, The Confidence Trap, tells the modern story of how democracy was won and how it (just barely) prevailed not just over the lesser angels of the demos or "the mob" to whom democratic institutions seemed to entrust final decision making, but also (by an even thinner margin) over the great totalitarian movements of the twentieth century headed by leaders as diverse as Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong and such lesser luminaries as Francisco Franco in Spain, Antonio Salazar in Portugal and any number of Latin American dictators to name just a few.