People use “democracy” to refer to our post-World War II liberal order, supposedly superior to all other systems, even though that order often protects military and corporate powers that undermine democracy.
Please don’t save democracy.
If you’re a politician — stop promising to save it.
Just stop trying.
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Because you can’t. Democracy isn’t something you save. The sooner we stop talking about saving democracy, the better off democracy will be.
Our mindless recitation of “saving democracy” — everyone from President Joe Biden to Sascha Baron Cohen has pledged its rescue — demonstrates how little we understand about the governing systems that organize our lives.
To start, the words “democracy” and “save” don’t fit together.
Democracy is not a penalty shot saved by a goalkeeper. Democracy is not a dollar saved by putting it in the bank. Democracy is not a file saved in Microsoft Word.
Democracy is not even the migrant saved from drowning in the Rio Grande.
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It’s easy to get confused about democracy’s meaning because we use the word “democracy” promiscuously. We use it to refer to things in politics or government with which we agree. We use it to describe the status quo in countries that think of themselves as democracies.
We also use “democracy” to refer to our post-World War II liberal order, supposedly superior to all other systems, even though that order often protects military and corporate powers that undermine democracy. We use “democracy” to mean elections, even though many countries with autocracies stage elections.
After 18 years of convening conversations about democracy around the world, I have found a more useful definition of democracy. Democracy is best understood as four words:
Everyday people governing themselves.
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When you think about democracy this way, you realize that democracy isn’t something you save. It’s something you do — with other people. When people in your neighborhood or city or nation are governing themselves — deliberating, making decisions, implementing policies — you are in a democracy.
Thus, democracy is, quite literally, work — and very much a do-it-yourself enterprise. The Christian philosopher G.W. Chesterton observed in “Orthodoxy” that democracy is like writing love letters or blowing one’s nose — something “we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.”
So when you judge whether a particular place counts as democratic, consider democracy as a spectrum, with “everyday people governing themselves” as its most democratic pole.
Soon, you’ll recognize that most democracy exists at the local level, in the smaller entities where it’s easier for everyday people to get together and govern. As Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “True democracy cannot be worked by 20 men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.”
Unfortunately, when asked whether they live in a democracy, people today don’t think of their city, but of their nation-state. They usually answer the question based on whether their national leaders are fairly elected and respect the country’s constitutional norms.
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The word “democracy” has become a synonym for a safe destination, the political-economic equivalent of a comfortable sofa where we can lie down and relax. From this sofa conception flows the idea that democracy can be “saved” — from authoritarians or foreign powers or misinformation that might tear us from our sofas.
This sofa perspective is also why peaceful and rich nation-states can call themselves democracies even though they are governed by small numbers of officials, interest groups or billionaires. In our planet’s largest so-called democracies, everyday people can only vote, occasionally, in elections dominated by the same powerful entities running the country.
But real democracy is not a sofa. It’s not cushy. Democracy, at least democracy on the spectrum of “everyday people governing themselves,” is not about voting for one powerful person. It’s about decentralizing decision-making power and handing it to regular people.
For this reason, President Biden’s pledges to preserve and protect democracy — coming from an officeholder with the power to govern by executive order and take military action around the world, without public notice or deliberation — will never be broadly credible.
The task of democracy requires us to get up off our couches. This is the wort of work that involves faith and competition and thus resembles a religion or a sport as much as a system of government. Democracy is maintained through practice; you lose it when you stop showing up. If people stop going to Mass, saying the rosary, and listening to the pope, Catholicism dies. If people stop throwing balls at rounded bats, there is no baseball.
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So, if you value democracy, practice it — wherever you can. Let the kids in your local Little League vote to choose the all-stars, instead of the coaches or parents. Let workers and customers make the big decisions at your company. Create assemblies of everyday citizens that write the local ordinances in your city or school district.
And please don’t waste another moment hoping your leaders will save democracy. Get out there and do it yourself.
Joe Mathews is a columnist and democracy editor at Zócalo Public Square, and publisher and founder of the planetary publication Democracy Local.
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