Поздравително слово
по повод 70 годишнина на проф. Янош Киш
представено на конференцията
The Morality of Politics - the Value of Democracy, JÁNOS KIS, 70th
An appreciation of his works and contributions, by former students, faculty and colleagues
CEU, Budapest October 4, 2013
It is my great honour and greatest pleasure to be here with you to celebrate Janos’ 70th birthday! And thank you for the generous invitation to share with you my thoughts on Janos’ many contributions – to philosophy, to politics, to teaching….
My first encounter with Janos, his teaching and his works, goes back almost 20 years – in the fall of the distant 1995. My husband Daniel, a PhD student at the Legal Studies Department at the time, smuggled me in in your seminar in political philosophy, as I was eager to see one of his favourite professors, teaching my favourite subject – political philosophy. I was struck by Janos’ style of philosophizing – I had not seen anything like it in my home philosophy department at Sofia. I was enchanted by the way Janos presented even the most complex arguments in lucid, crisp, elegant form without losing any of their subtlety. Adding to it was the richness of the topics he discussed – justice and equality, liberty, authority and power, legitimacy, the value of democracy…I immediately set my goal – I should apply to the CEU to read political philosophy and try to become Janos’ student. And I was lucky – in two years I was already a student of Janos! At that point I did not anticipate the challenges on the way - the sleepless nights doing endless readings in quantitative methods, research design, in microeconomics, comparative politics, (I am grateful for all these!), the exhausting take-home exams , even the way it took me a whole semester to overcome my fear of speaking English in public. And I did not know at that point about other dangers as well - like the freezing temperature in Janos’ office (18 degrees centigrade during the hottest summer). I only found out how seriously he takes Kant’s instructions (to keep one’s head cool!) after Janos agreed to become my MA thesis supervisor, and it took me a few colds to realize, that I am not such a faithful Kantian, after all.
Yet, my rewards were plentiful.
Janos introduced me to contemporary moral and political philosophy – and it was philosophy at its best.
He introduced me to the art of deep reading. One of my greatest pleasures here at the CEU was the reading groups Janos was regularly organizing – we were closely reading works that have just been published (and often even manuscripts of his friends from his academic circle) - Tim Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Derek Parfit Susan Hurley, Gerry Cohen. Thank you, Janos for these seminars – this is unforgettable. ….
I also learned from you how to be generous - to my colleagues, but, most of all, to my students.
I also learned how to set high expectations even at the risk of being disappointed.
And I learned from you to be able to go back to the fundamentals and ask the big questions – about morality, about politics, about morality in politics, and try to approach them in new, fruitful ways.
***
I would like to offer you some reflections on one of Janos’ major, in my view, contributions to political philosophy – his analysis in the Politics as a Moral Problem book.
I look at it through my experience of some recent developments in the Bulgarian political scene. The questions Janos is addressing in this tightly argued, rich work have always been important, yet they now present themselves to us (Hungarians, Bulgarians, Eastern-Central Europeans, Europeans) with a special urgency. What are these questions?
The central question is: Is it ever morally permissible for politicians to “dirty their hands” even for the sake of the greater general interest? What is the proper relation between political morality and private ethics? How is it possible that citizens tend to think the norms of political morality are simultaneously both more and less demanding than the norms of private ethics? Is it possible at all to explain these ambiguous attitudes of citizens toward this moral problem – or people are just confused? Is there a way of providing a coherent account of those ambiguous attitudes?
Why have these fundamental questions become so urgent – why the often neglected issues of political morality have taken such a central stage recently?
There was a point when some of us believed that with the end of the transition period, most of the work of democratic institution building is done, with possibly some fine-tuning yet to be completed. As we learnt (here, and in Sofia after the EU accession, and in wider Europe), this institution building was not enough, as some fundamental questions have not been properly addressed. Without addressing them the democratic institutions we have been building lacked a stable fundament. Busy in our eagerness to comply with diverse regulations, follow formal recommendations, develop institutional capacity in order to build a working democratic state with market economy and liberal protection of rights, we forgot to ask ourselves what kind of political community we would like to be, what relations between citizens and politicians we as a political community believe to fit a liberal democratic regime that treats its citizens with equal concern and respect – the only proper way of treating free and equal persons.
The economic, social, and, ultimately, moral problems raised by the transition process has led to a growing gap and increasing alienation between the “transition elites” and the “people”. Particularly neglected during the transition were the moral problems (and they were neglected to different degrees in different transition countries). In Bulgaria in the 90s, for example, the questions “Is the transition process carried out in a just way?” “Are its benefits and burdens fairly distributed?” were rarely asked by intellectuals (they were more in the business of solving “grander” problems – like geopolitical issues and what was called “the civilization choice” of breaking with the communist past and finding our place in Europe) . Even less were the problems of justice addressed by the political parties in their fierce political struggles for the hearts and minds of a deeply divided in its allegiances nation. When the end of the transition was announced (and it has been differently dated) many were left with a sense of irreparable loss – they felt betrayed by and alienated from the transition elites that failed to spread the benefits and burdens of the transition fairly. These “predatory” elites were perceived as the main winners from this painful for many others process. Most importantly, the moral sense of justice of the vast majority of citizens was hurt. The alienation between the political elites and the people not only erodes the popular support for the institutions of liberal democracy, but the mutual distrust it breeds erodes the very fabric of post-transition societies.
This growing alienation and distrust paved the way for consecutive waves of populism, as Janos has warned us:
No political regime is capable of containing the process of alienation unless it can infuse the citizens with a sense that as a community they matter collectively and that as members of the community they matter individually. This sense of collective sovereignty („together we decide the ultimate political issues”) evaporates if the public adopts the view that the political trade as such is corrupt and unresponsive. The institutions of liberal democracy lose their social support, and the public becomes susceptible to the temptations of what is called populism.
An apt illustration of Janos’ point is the political process in Bulgaria in the last more than 10 years – starting from 2001, we had three waves of populism. But I will look at some more recent developments, whose evaluation is more complex, and whose better understanding is greatly helped by Janos’ analysis in „Politics as a moral problem.” I have in mind here the two waves of mass protests that hit the country in 2013 – we have witnessed mass protests against both a centre-right and a centre-left government..
The anti-monopoly rallies in February brought down the centre-right government of GERB. These protests had socio-economic demands and were in general anti-elite oriented. They also demanded a fundamental change in the political system, responsible for the socio-economic hardships of a vast majority of the people.
The pre-term elections in mid-May produced a highly unstable minority centre-left government (coalition of BSP and MRF), following a particularly nasty electoral campaign. This government is currently relying on the nationalist-populist party ATAKA to secure its support in Parliament. The new Cabinet has been further discredited (beyond its being produced through a campaign and elections with omnipresent manipulations) already in its second week in office by a scandalous appointment - a controversial MP and media mogul,viewed by the public as an arm of behing the screen political and corporate interests, was appointed Director of the State Agency for National Security with the task of „clearing the state from the influence” of those same interests.
The apparent cynicism of this appointment (the predominant reaction of the general public to the news was – „this must be a joke!”) brough to the streets in Sofia and other major towns within a matter of hours tens of thousands of Bulgarian citizens, expressing their cross-party moral indignation with the appointment and their anger with the political establishment. The spontaneous reaction on June 14 grew to full-fledged anti-government protests.
The „transition” elite has betrayed the values of democracy and the rule of law, declared the protesters. This elite has corrupted the democratic state turning it into a mere facade for corporate interests, it has corrupted the state institutions, allowing the public institutions to merge with semi-legitimate economic groups, and following its behind the screen interests, it has been reneging on Bulgaria’s EU commitments, they argued. Their slogans are „No to façade democracy”, „Не на задкулисието! „ Прозрачност!” [No to behind-the-screen deals!], [Transparency!]]); „България в Европа!” [Bulgaria in the EU!]).
Thus their main grievances were not directly focused on socio-economic issues. Rather, they were of a moral character - some „red lines” that should not be crossed have been crossed. These protests showed that in Bulgaria something important was taking place. For the first time in more than a decade the civil society had begun voicing strong demands for genuine reform of the ailing state institutions, for “real” and effective democracy. The citizens demanded a “re-start” of the political system, so that it finally starts serving citizens’ interests, with these demands for deep reforms being home-grown, having grass-roots pedigree. Citizens seemed to have learnt their lesson: imported, ready-made democracy is easily corrupted. Citizens alone are the true guardians of the public contract and their future as a political community is in their own hands.
But have they learned the whole lesson?Anti-elitist sentiments are easily discernible and can be read in many of the demands of this second protest as well. As Janos is warning us, these anti-elitist sentiments may present a grave danger for the liberal democratic political order in the country. Instead of re-uniting the citizens with their state, with their societal institutions, instead of giving them a sense of genuine control over those institutions, they may give rise to populist „solutions”, urging to dismantle the liberal political institutions as the alleged culprit for the disowning of the Sovereign.
Populists, tells us Janos, often „present themselves as advocates of vigorous democracy, the main target of their attacks being the political establishment, viewed as a self-contained and self-selecting oligarchy”.
Indeed, „Down with Oligarch-ski government” has been the rallying cry of the protesters over the last 110 days and beyond. This cry raises justified concerns as to the direction the anti-government protests in Sofia are currently heading. Janos’ analysis of populism is very instructive in helping us identify the dangers ahead. His definition of populism is „a distortion of the democratic ideal due to a virulent anti-elitism”. This anti-elitism is present in both protests. As a rule, it is the result of deep, radical distrust of citizens towards their elites, due to the growing gap between them.
Citizens may harbour two types of distrust towards their political establishment, tells us Janos.
The first is a healthy type of distrust - it is a distrust that liberals advocate as important for the democratic ideal of self-government to be realized – it prompts citizens to press for „building such institutions and practices so that they combine moral with non-moral incentives in order to direct the office-holders towards faithfully serving the citizenry”. Through such institutions, that „economize on virtue” to use Janos’ term, it is possible to keep elected representatives accountable, as well as to press for their removal from office for serious breaches of important moral norms .
The second is a malignant type of radical distrust towards the governing elites. It is this type of distrust which is a fertile ground for populism, eroding the liberal institutions that give substance to the democratic ideal. Populists attack those institutions as allegedly breeding “elite” immorality and urge, as a necessary condition for restoring „the moral quality of politics”, that those institutions be dismantled.
Janos points out three principles of liberal-democratic politics, that usually come under strongest attack from anti-elitist populists: „party pluralism, the rule of law, and market-adapted social and economic policies”. When stated in these general terms, one hardly finds true populist in the current Bulgarian political scene, as few attack those principles head-on. Ataka, the arch-populist party in the country, does not directly deny either party pluralism or the rule of law. It does indeed ask for a revision of the transition process to rectify its injusticies, and after this cleaning of the slate –demands the introduction of what they believe are equitable socio-economic policies. These policies will often involve restrictions on the market (protectionist measures against multinationals in support of local producers and nationally responsible businesses, for example) in addition to massive redistribution from the nationally irresponsible towards the „responsible” nationals (excluding, most obviously, the roma), without altogether dispensing with the market.
However, we should not rest content, since populists pay only lip service to the institutions of party pluralism and the rule of law. Thus if we go into somewhat more detail, we do find clear signs of the dangers Janos is pointing at. And we find them exactly where Janos tells us they are.
These dangers come mostly from the moral problems the struggle for power, the necessary element of party pluralism, raises. The competitive nature of democratic politics (where the struggle for power may often be characterised by striking of immoral deals and building unholly alliances, by disloyalty and breaking of promises, etc.) is only acceptable for the average citizen if he believes in the moral integrity of the majority of the political competitors and they dirty their hands in citizens’ interests. The political struggle in Bulgarian politics recently leaves little chance to the public to preserve its respect towards the political class, however. The contestation of political ideas, the competition between policies and between alternative visions of how our collective problems are to be resolved, are substituted there by disgraceful procedural tricks, black political PR, smearing campaigns, and massive manipulations in a media environment of particularly low quality.
The political class itself is also a highly volatile entity, with most of its representatives rarely seeing themselves as professional politicians, willing to invest both in their own individual political longevity and in their high collective prestige. When as a result of the low quality of the media environment and the low quality of the political elite the public trust in the latter is lost, instead of an imperfect vehicle for promoting the common good, the democratic struggle for power is already perceived to only promote the selfish interests of politicians and is believed to harm the public interest. And indeed, in Bulgaria the levels of trust in the political parties and the other institutions of representative democracy are critically low (11 % trust in Parliament, the lowest since the 1996 political crisis). And this type of radical distrust does indeed provide a fertile ground for media - promoted populist assaults on the political system as a whole.
A great virtue of Janos’ analysis of the moral problems democratic politics is raising is that it does not stop at the diagnosis, he does not simply identify the source of the dangers these moral problems pose for democratic politics. He also offers us an elegant theory on how democratic publics should react to those problems in order to save their liberal-democratic institutions rather than dismantle them.
This is his „neoclassical theory of political action”. Janos rejects the realist thesis according to which politicans are permitted to act immoraly, provided this is necessary for achieving better overall consequences. Rather, his theory constrains realism by insisting that „at each level of overall compliance there are moral prohibitions that no consequences can lift (at that level)”. His theory, secondly, relies on a conception of indirect motivation that does not “fully displace virtue as a motivating factor [for political action] rather aiming at economizing on it”. The third component of the theory determines the proper place in political action of moral constraints: they are “objects of public controversy and common deliberation.” Citizens treat each other as equal moral persons only if they recognize that “they form a justificatory community whose members have the right to ask for, and the duty to supply, justification of their acts that adversely affect others”.
I find the indirect motivation conception particularly instructive. It concerns the way institutions should be set to promote political action in the service of citizens. On the wide interpretation of the indirect motivation thesis, which Janos favours, institutions are not designed so that rational egoists may be steered into compliance with such action. Rather, the institutions are to be set in such a way as to “sufficiently reduce the personal costs of compliance, so that a critical mass of moderately altruistic or moderately duty-inspired individuals choose to comply.” Such institutions allow starting a “virtuous circle”: once a crucial mass of moderate altruists begins to comply, this reduces the costs of compliance and increases its benefits for the lesser altruists, so that they also may choose to cooperate, and this process may continue towards the limiting case of full cooperation in the political action of even pure rational egoists.
Janos’ neoclassical theory of political action thus helps us see how to navigate the stranded ship of Bulgarian politics away from the shoals of radical popular distrust, away from the quagmire of the “easy” populist solutions.
The democratic citizenry should press the political elite to strengthen rather than weaken the liberal-democratic institutions. This strengthening of the institutions will only be possible if politicians are pressed to commit to comply with some moral minima. They should refrain, for example, from using black PR and smearing campaign even if they believe these are their most effective weapons in the political struggle and they believe they are their only way to serve the citizens’ interests. Politicians should refrain from buying off the media with public (and even with private) money to provide themselves media comfort, etc. When they fail to leave up to these moral minima, they must be held accountable by a vigilant citizenry and ousted.
One may indeed read such a promise for constant pressure on the elected officials in the anti-government protests. One of the messages the protesters are sending is that the resignation of the current discredited government will only introduce an armistice as they pledge to continue watching closely every next government and will be punishing it for crossing the “red lines” of impermissible political behavior.
Yet there is one important lesson yet to be learned. It is that citizens should of course be vigilant, but they should not expect too much from their politicians. They should not encourage the politicians (by voting for them) to give promises on which it is clear they cannot be made to deliver. They should not ask the political class for great sacrifices, for example, because they will necessarily be misled – by crooks, or, worse – by fanatics Or, in sum, they should not ask from the politicians to have higher moral integrity than are the citizens capable of guaranteeing through the use of various institutional instruments.The moral indignation may then rise further and the distrust may then sink even lower.
Thus the cardinal danger of the anti-government protests is that their main virtue – their high moral pitch – may turn into their major vice. It may radicalize distrust on moral grounds and may thus render populism the only game in town.
Thus one should, as I learned from Janos, set high expectations on one’s students, even at the risk of being disappointed. But a citizenry should not set higher expectations on politicians’ integrity than the citizenry itself is capable of guaranteeing.
Thank you, Janos!
по повод 70 годишнина на проф. Янош Киш
представено на конференцията
The Morality of Politics - the Value of Democracy, JÁNOS KIS, 70th
An appreciation of his works and contributions, by former students, faculty and colleagues
CEU, Budapest October 4, 2013
It is my great honour and greatest pleasure to be here with you to celebrate Janos’ 70th birthday! And thank you for the generous invitation to share with you my thoughts on Janos’ many contributions – to philosophy, to politics, to teaching….
My first encounter with Janos, his teaching and his works, goes back almost 20 years – in the fall of the distant 1995. My husband Daniel, a PhD student at the Legal Studies Department at the time, smuggled me in in your seminar in political philosophy, as I was eager to see one of his favourite professors, teaching my favourite subject – political philosophy. I was struck by Janos’ style of philosophizing – I had not seen anything like it in my home philosophy department at Sofia. I was enchanted by the way Janos presented even the most complex arguments in lucid, crisp, elegant form without losing any of their subtlety. Adding to it was the richness of the topics he discussed – justice and equality, liberty, authority and power, legitimacy, the value of democracy…I immediately set my goal – I should apply to the CEU to read political philosophy and try to become Janos’ student. And I was lucky – in two years I was already a student of Janos! At that point I did not anticipate the challenges on the way - the sleepless nights doing endless readings in quantitative methods, research design, in microeconomics, comparative politics, (I am grateful for all these!), the exhausting take-home exams , even the way it took me a whole semester to overcome my fear of speaking English in public. And I did not know at that point about other dangers as well - like the freezing temperature in Janos’ office (18 degrees centigrade during the hottest summer). I only found out how seriously he takes Kant’s instructions (to keep one’s head cool!) after Janos agreed to become my MA thesis supervisor, and it took me a few colds to realize, that I am not such a faithful Kantian, after all.
Yet, my rewards were plentiful.
Janos introduced me to contemporary moral and political philosophy – and it was philosophy at its best.
He introduced me to the art of deep reading. One of my greatest pleasures here at the CEU was the reading groups Janos was regularly organizing – we were closely reading works that have just been published (and often even manuscripts of his friends from his academic circle) - Tim Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Derek Parfit Susan Hurley, Gerry Cohen. Thank you, Janos for these seminars – this is unforgettable. ….
I also learned from you how to be generous - to my colleagues, but, most of all, to my students.
I also learned how to set high expectations even at the risk of being disappointed.
And I learned from you to be able to go back to the fundamentals and ask the big questions – about morality, about politics, about morality in politics, and try to approach them in new, fruitful ways.
***
I would like to offer you some reflections on one of Janos’ major, in my view, contributions to political philosophy – his analysis in the Politics as a Moral Problem book.
I look at it through my experience of some recent developments in the Bulgarian political scene. The questions Janos is addressing in this tightly argued, rich work have always been important, yet they now present themselves to us (Hungarians, Bulgarians, Eastern-Central Europeans, Europeans) with a special urgency. What are these questions?
The central question is: Is it ever morally permissible for politicians to “dirty their hands” even for the sake of the greater general interest? What is the proper relation between political morality and private ethics? How is it possible that citizens tend to think the norms of political morality are simultaneously both more and less demanding than the norms of private ethics? Is it possible at all to explain these ambiguous attitudes of citizens toward this moral problem – or people are just confused? Is there a way of providing a coherent account of those ambiguous attitudes?
Why have these fundamental questions become so urgent – why the often neglected issues of political morality have taken such a central stage recently?
There was a point when some of us believed that with the end of the transition period, most of the work of democratic institution building is done, with possibly some fine-tuning yet to be completed. As we learnt (here, and in Sofia after the EU accession, and in wider Europe), this institution building was not enough, as some fundamental questions have not been properly addressed. Without addressing them the democratic institutions we have been building lacked a stable fundament. Busy in our eagerness to comply with diverse regulations, follow formal recommendations, develop institutional capacity in order to build a working democratic state with market economy and liberal protection of rights, we forgot to ask ourselves what kind of political community we would like to be, what relations between citizens and politicians we as a political community believe to fit a liberal democratic regime that treats its citizens with equal concern and respect – the only proper way of treating free and equal persons.
The economic, social, and, ultimately, moral problems raised by the transition process has led to a growing gap and increasing alienation between the “transition elites” and the “people”. Particularly neglected during the transition were the moral problems (and they were neglected to different degrees in different transition countries). In Bulgaria in the 90s, for example, the questions “Is the transition process carried out in a just way?” “Are its benefits and burdens fairly distributed?” were rarely asked by intellectuals (they were more in the business of solving “grander” problems – like geopolitical issues and what was called “the civilization choice” of breaking with the communist past and finding our place in Europe) . Even less were the problems of justice addressed by the political parties in their fierce political struggles for the hearts and minds of a deeply divided in its allegiances nation. When the end of the transition was announced (and it has been differently dated) many were left with a sense of irreparable loss – they felt betrayed by and alienated from the transition elites that failed to spread the benefits and burdens of the transition fairly. These “predatory” elites were perceived as the main winners from this painful for many others process. Most importantly, the moral sense of justice of the vast majority of citizens was hurt. The alienation between the political elites and the people not only erodes the popular support for the institutions of liberal democracy, but the mutual distrust it breeds erodes the very fabric of post-transition societies.
This growing alienation and distrust paved the way for consecutive waves of populism, as Janos has warned us:
No political regime is capable of containing the process of alienation unless it can infuse the citizens with a sense that as a community they matter collectively and that as members of the community they matter individually. This sense of collective sovereignty („together we decide the ultimate political issues”) evaporates if the public adopts the view that the political trade as such is corrupt and unresponsive. The institutions of liberal democracy lose their social support, and the public becomes susceptible to the temptations of what is called populism.
An apt illustration of Janos’ point is the political process in Bulgaria in the last more than 10 years – starting from 2001, we had three waves of populism. But I will look at some more recent developments, whose evaluation is more complex, and whose better understanding is greatly helped by Janos’ analysis in „Politics as a moral problem.” I have in mind here the two waves of mass protests that hit the country in 2013 – we have witnessed mass protests against both a centre-right and a centre-left government..
The anti-monopoly rallies in February brought down the centre-right government of GERB. These protests had socio-economic demands and were in general anti-elite oriented. They also demanded a fundamental change in the political system, responsible for the socio-economic hardships of a vast majority of the people.
The pre-term elections in mid-May produced a highly unstable minority centre-left government (coalition of BSP and MRF), following a particularly nasty electoral campaign. This government is currently relying on the nationalist-populist party ATAKA to secure its support in Parliament. The new Cabinet has been further discredited (beyond its being produced through a campaign and elections with omnipresent manipulations) already in its second week in office by a scandalous appointment - a controversial MP and media mogul,viewed by the public as an arm of behing the screen political and corporate interests, was appointed Director of the State Agency for National Security with the task of „clearing the state from the influence” of those same interests.
The apparent cynicism of this appointment (the predominant reaction of the general public to the news was – „this must be a joke!”) brough to the streets in Sofia and other major towns within a matter of hours tens of thousands of Bulgarian citizens, expressing their cross-party moral indignation with the appointment and their anger with the political establishment. The spontaneous reaction on June 14 grew to full-fledged anti-government protests.
The „transition” elite has betrayed the values of democracy and the rule of law, declared the protesters. This elite has corrupted the democratic state turning it into a mere facade for corporate interests, it has corrupted the state institutions, allowing the public institutions to merge with semi-legitimate economic groups, and following its behind the screen interests, it has been reneging on Bulgaria’s EU commitments, they argued. Their slogans are „No to façade democracy”, „Не на задкулисието! „ Прозрачност!” [No to behind-the-screen deals!], [Transparency!]]); „България в Европа!” [Bulgaria in the EU!]).
Thus their main grievances were not directly focused on socio-economic issues. Rather, they were of a moral character - some „red lines” that should not be crossed have been crossed. These protests showed that in Bulgaria something important was taking place. For the first time in more than a decade the civil society had begun voicing strong demands for genuine reform of the ailing state institutions, for “real” and effective democracy. The citizens demanded a “re-start” of the political system, so that it finally starts serving citizens’ interests, with these demands for deep reforms being home-grown, having grass-roots pedigree. Citizens seemed to have learnt their lesson: imported, ready-made democracy is easily corrupted. Citizens alone are the true guardians of the public contract and their future as a political community is in their own hands.
But have they learned the whole lesson?Anti-elitist sentiments are easily discernible and can be read in many of the demands of this second protest as well. As Janos is warning us, these anti-elitist sentiments may present a grave danger for the liberal democratic political order in the country. Instead of re-uniting the citizens with their state, with their societal institutions, instead of giving them a sense of genuine control over those institutions, they may give rise to populist „solutions”, urging to dismantle the liberal political institutions as the alleged culprit for the disowning of the Sovereign.
Populists, tells us Janos, often „present themselves as advocates of vigorous democracy, the main target of their attacks being the political establishment, viewed as a self-contained and self-selecting oligarchy”.
Indeed, „Down with Oligarch-ski government” has been the rallying cry of the protesters over the last 110 days and beyond. This cry raises justified concerns as to the direction the anti-government protests in Sofia are currently heading. Janos’ analysis of populism is very instructive in helping us identify the dangers ahead. His definition of populism is „a distortion of the democratic ideal due to a virulent anti-elitism”. This anti-elitism is present in both protests. As a rule, it is the result of deep, radical distrust of citizens towards their elites, due to the growing gap between them.
Citizens may harbour two types of distrust towards their political establishment, tells us Janos.
The first is a healthy type of distrust - it is a distrust that liberals advocate as important for the democratic ideal of self-government to be realized – it prompts citizens to press for „building such institutions and practices so that they combine moral with non-moral incentives in order to direct the office-holders towards faithfully serving the citizenry”. Through such institutions, that „economize on virtue” to use Janos’ term, it is possible to keep elected representatives accountable, as well as to press for their removal from office for serious breaches of important moral norms .
The second is a malignant type of radical distrust towards the governing elites. It is this type of distrust which is a fertile ground for populism, eroding the liberal institutions that give substance to the democratic ideal. Populists attack those institutions as allegedly breeding “elite” immorality and urge, as a necessary condition for restoring „the moral quality of politics”, that those institutions be dismantled.
Janos points out three principles of liberal-democratic politics, that usually come under strongest attack from anti-elitist populists: „party pluralism, the rule of law, and market-adapted social and economic policies”. When stated in these general terms, one hardly finds true populist in the current Bulgarian political scene, as few attack those principles head-on. Ataka, the arch-populist party in the country, does not directly deny either party pluralism or the rule of law. It does indeed ask for a revision of the transition process to rectify its injusticies, and after this cleaning of the slate –demands the introduction of what they believe are equitable socio-economic policies. These policies will often involve restrictions on the market (protectionist measures against multinationals in support of local producers and nationally responsible businesses, for example) in addition to massive redistribution from the nationally irresponsible towards the „responsible” nationals (excluding, most obviously, the roma), without altogether dispensing with the market.
However, we should not rest content, since populists pay only lip service to the institutions of party pluralism and the rule of law. Thus if we go into somewhat more detail, we do find clear signs of the dangers Janos is pointing at. And we find them exactly where Janos tells us they are.
These dangers come mostly from the moral problems the struggle for power, the necessary element of party pluralism, raises. The competitive nature of democratic politics (where the struggle for power may often be characterised by striking of immoral deals and building unholly alliances, by disloyalty and breaking of promises, etc.) is only acceptable for the average citizen if he believes in the moral integrity of the majority of the political competitors and they dirty their hands in citizens’ interests. The political struggle in Bulgarian politics recently leaves little chance to the public to preserve its respect towards the political class, however. The contestation of political ideas, the competition between policies and between alternative visions of how our collective problems are to be resolved, are substituted there by disgraceful procedural tricks, black political PR, smearing campaigns, and massive manipulations in a media environment of particularly low quality.
The political class itself is also a highly volatile entity, with most of its representatives rarely seeing themselves as professional politicians, willing to invest both in their own individual political longevity and in their high collective prestige. When as a result of the low quality of the media environment and the low quality of the political elite the public trust in the latter is lost, instead of an imperfect vehicle for promoting the common good, the democratic struggle for power is already perceived to only promote the selfish interests of politicians and is believed to harm the public interest. And indeed, in Bulgaria the levels of trust in the political parties and the other institutions of representative democracy are critically low (11 % trust in Parliament, the lowest since the 1996 political crisis). And this type of radical distrust does indeed provide a fertile ground for media - promoted populist assaults on the political system as a whole.
A great virtue of Janos’ analysis of the moral problems democratic politics is raising is that it does not stop at the diagnosis, he does not simply identify the source of the dangers these moral problems pose for democratic politics. He also offers us an elegant theory on how democratic publics should react to those problems in order to save their liberal-democratic institutions rather than dismantle them.
This is his „neoclassical theory of political action”. Janos rejects the realist thesis according to which politicans are permitted to act immoraly, provided this is necessary for achieving better overall consequences. Rather, his theory constrains realism by insisting that „at each level of overall compliance there are moral prohibitions that no consequences can lift (at that level)”. His theory, secondly, relies on a conception of indirect motivation that does not “fully displace virtue as a motivating factor [for political action] rather aiming at economizing on it”. The third component of the theory determines the proper place in political action of moral constraints: they are “objects of public controversy and common deliberation.” Citizens treat each other as equal moral persons only if they recognize that “they form a justificatory community whose members have the right to ask for, and the duty to supply, justification of their acts that adversely affect others”.
I find the indirect motivation conception particularly instructive. It concerns the way institutions should be set to promote political action in the service of citizens. On the wide interpretation of the indirect motivation thesis, which Janos favours, institutions are not designed so that rational egoists may be steered into compliance with such action. Rather, the institutions are to be set in such a way as to “sufficiently reduce the personal costs of compliance, so that a critical mass of moderately altruistic or moderately duty-inspired individuals choose to comply.” Such institutions allow starting a “virtuous circle”: once a crucial mass of moderate altruists begins to comply, this reduces the costs of compliance and increases its benefits for the lesser altruists, so that they also may choose to cooperate, and this process may continue towards the limiting case of full cooperation in the political action of even pure rational egoists.
Janos’ neoclassical theory of political action thus helps us see how to navigate the stranded ship of Bulgarian politics away from the shoals of radical popular distrust, away from the quagmire of the “easy” populist solutions.
The democratic citizenry should press the political elite to strengthen rather than weaken the liberal-democratic institutions. This strengthening of the institutions will only be possible if politicians are pressed to commit to comply with some moral minima. They should refrain, for example, from using black PR and smearing campaign even if they believe these are their most effective weapons in the political struggle and they believe they are their only way to serve the citizens’ interests. Politicians should refrain from buying off the media with public (and even with private) money to provide themselves media comfort, etc. When they fail to leave up to these moral minima, they must be held accountable by a vigilant citizenry and ousted.
One may indeed read such a promise for constant pressure on the elected officials in the anti-government protests. One of the messages the protesters are sending is that the resignation of the current discredited government will only introduce an armistice as they pledge to continue watching closely every next government and will be punishing it for crossing the “red lines” of impermissible political behavior.
Yet there is one important lesson yet to be learned. It is that citizens should of course be vigilant, but they should not expect too much from their politicians. They should not encourage the politicians (by voting for them) to give promises on which it is clear they cannot be made to deliver. They should not ask the political class for great sacrifices, for example, because they will necessarily be misled – by crooks, or, worse – by fanatics Or, in sum, they should not ask from the politicians to have higher moral integrity than are the citizens capable of guaranteeing through the use of various institutional instruments.The moral indignation may then rise further and the distrust may then sink even lower.
Thus the cardinal danger of the anti-government protests is that their main virtue – their high moral pitch – may turn into their major vice. It may radicalize distrust on moral grounds and may thus render populism the only game in town.
Thus one should, as I learned from Janos, set high expectations on one’s students, even at the risk of being disappointed. But a citizenry should not set higher expectations on politicians’ integrity than the citizenry itself is capable of guaranteeing.
Thank you, Janos!
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