"The difference between democracies in the 20th and 21th century"

        Following last week’s topic “How much is too much democracy?”, this week, we’ll debate on "The difference between democracies in the 20th and 21st century".

After Greek’s democracy came to an end twenty-five centuries ago, the United States has had the longest record of democratic elections after its constitution in 1789. Long after that, other countries in the world started to implement their democracies in the late 19th and 20th century with great difficulties, especially so with the advent of totalitarianism and the two world wars. Eventually, most European countries seemed to have fared better and there was a "peaceful" period where “liberal-social-democracies” somehow flourished and certain political stability was reached within the European Union. 

Particularly in Spain, the newly established democracy in 1978 survived a coup d'etat attempt and years of terrorism. But after four decades of what appeared to be a stable democracy, political corruption, a deep economic crisis, and the good old independentists’ claims have brought about a climate of polarization which is calling the Spanish constitution and the quality of its democracy into question.

In the world, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 2000 Internet bubble, the 2007 supreme’s mortgage crisis, international jihadist terrorism, and, finally, an unexpected pandemic have become a litmus test to our democratic systems.

So now, when communication is massive, information is available for everyone, general education has increased, and electronic devices could allow us to participate more actively in the democratic process, it doesn’t seem like all this technology and “artificial intelligence” is working for us to the best of its ability. Conversely, it appears to be a manipulable object in the hands of some “invisible interests” which seem to serve certain ideologies left and right of the political spectrum (no pun intended).

So, what happened in the 20th century which propelled the civilized world to embrace democracy as the best means to reach welfare? And what’s happening in the 21st century, where we have all the technology in our favor, but it looks like democracy at its core is being questioned?

What’s happened to terms like pluralism, accountability, and participation? New authors in the 21st century have coined other terms like Friendly Fascism (Bertram Gross, 1980), Mass Dictatorship (Corner & Lim, 2016), Passive Participation (André Gorz, 1987), Authoritarian Nationalism (Akkerman, 2017), Agnotology (Culturally Induced Ignorance or Doubt), (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008).

Does it eerily really look like the four key raw materials in George Orwell’s 1984 are being resorted to now by some strange unwitting design? 1. Destroy family ties: tear down “patriarchy”; 2. Thought police: “cultural cancellation”; 3. The Ministry of truth to control of the past: “democratic memory”; 4. Do not think: “ideological discipline”.

Will democracy stand these tests or will it collapse as the ancient Greek one did? Join our debate as we’ll try to elucidate similarities and differences and discuss the main issues and possible outcomes.

References:
Democracy and participation in the twenty-first century
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY AND DOES IT WORK IN THE 21ST CENTURY