Opinion and Democracy

DEBATE

Is Public Opinion an infantile or senile ill within Democracy?
Le Monde 31.05.08.

The Pierre Mendes-France Institute organized, on Thursday May 29, a debate on Public Opinion and Democracy of which we are publishing the principal segments: is it here a question of a modern stage of development within political life or are we dealing with a form of degeneracy dangerous to the Republic?

Régis Debray is a writer, director of the publication 'Médium'; Jacques Julliard is a historian and journalist.

Jacques Julliard: The situation which I have sought to describe in la Reine du Monde (Flammarion, 128p.) - Queen of the World - is that we are presently witnessing a very profound shift in the nature of Democracy. The novel element which Universal Suffrage introduced, in 1848 and then with the Third Republic, was entirely based on a system of representation. Today all 'goes down' as if the notion of General Will were to be actualized in two concurrent fashions: on the one hand with elections and the designation of Representatives through Universal Suffrage, on the other through the increasing weight of Public Opinion. There have always been Opinion currents within political systems. What is new, is the on-going character of pressure from Opinion and especially that it now has the means of being heard.

The consequences are spectacular. Opinion is stronger than politicians, as we witnessed during the European Referendum on may 29, 2005. It is more and more stronger than Parliament: Polls are no longer a measuring instrument, they are political facts in and of themselves, like a vote, and every time a politician has to choose between his electoral mandate and the judgement of polls, he almost always goes with the latter. More serious from the point of view of Democracy,Opinion has the possibility to go against the Law and win over Republican Legality, as was the case with the Contrat première embauche (First Employment Contract) in 2006. Elections themselves are touched by the phenomenon, now that Primaries designed to choose candidates have come to take an increasingly important place.

In France at least, Representative Democracy was conceived from the beginning as a rampart against Universal Suffrage: once citizens have designated their Representatives, their duty is to be silent. This is what they no longer accept.

Régis Debray: The expression "a Democracy of Opinion" seems friendly enough: it is difficult to be against Democracy; as for Opinion, everyone has his or her own. It is a different matter when one speaks of a Republic of Rumour or of Appearance, or of a Politics-by-Polls system. Let us take the example of Polls. Are they conveyors of expertise? No, in reality they have become oracles and even referees: instead of opening up the debate, they close it down and have the last word, as if, beyond the numbers, there was no longer any need to talk.

Yet Democracy is not a dictatorship of popularity. Today, becomes legitimate only that which is popular and this is self-reinforcing. Who sponsors Polls? The media. Who comments on them? The media again. And who takes position with respect to them? Our alleged leaders. As for the politically committed, they vote for this or that candidate who looks good in the Polls. In short, Politics looses itself within Sociology; it is no longer a more or less reasoned choice of societal direction, after debate and deliberation.

But Jacques Julliard is right on an essential point. Democracy, at any given moment, will bear the marks of its technical supports: it appears in a society where there are trains, newspapers, and parties around newspapers. This is in fact the Bronze Age of Democracy. We are now in the Age of the Electron. After the printed page republic(election + education + newspapers), we have gone on with the fifth republic, to Television Democracy, that bonaparte-flavoured medium which works with the close-up and the "As for me". With the advent of Internet, we are witnessing the appearance of a new form of opinion, idiosyncratic, network-driven, and disseminated, which is anything but hierarchical and centralized.

It is the rule, every age over-runs the preceding media. We saw it with printing which disseminated the Bible to all and lead to the downgrading of the clergy. With the Internet, it is not "We are all priests" but "We are all journalists!", with a similar downgrading of opinion leaders, that brotherhood now dispossessed of monopoly in the representation of Opinion. We can glimpse at the horizon, the end of newspapers. Thus the end of the intellectual, that thinker who practices journalism.

The ensuing destabilization is considerable. Is it liberation? I am not at all certain. For that system is currently putting in place Democracy-by-Plebiscite, made more palatable by visual support and rendered acceptable in the day-to-day by the use of Polls. This temporal contraction, this disappearance of chronology in favour of the present instant, this dictatorship of emotion and first impression seems to me very dangerous.

Jacques Julliard: At risk of a drift toward Rule-by-Plebiscite? I am less of a pessimist than Régis Debray in his recent essay L'Obscenité démocratique (Flammarion, 86p.) - The democratic obscene. One should not be too pessimistic. Opinion is not always as mindless at it seems. It sometimes has a better sense of the General Advantage than the political class itself, imprisoned in its divisions. Further, there is a self-education process within Public Opinion, like there was one historically within Universal Suffrage. It is true that opinion has something emotional, versatile and badly-informed. Yet these are precisely the three criticisms levelled at Universal Suffrage in the 19th Century, whose adversaries thought was going to lead us to profound disorders. In effect it is Universal Suffrage which was, in France, the principal rampart against all forms of extremism, of both the the Right and Left. This is in line with the very thoughtful analysis offered by de Tocqueville on his return from America: for him, Public Opinion does not lead to division or extremism within society, but to an average opinion, massive and gel-like.

As for the fear that Public Opinion could be manipulated, it brings to mind Pierre Bourdieu's famous remark "There is no such thing as Public Opinion". It is true, Public Opinion is an artifact. is it for all that reprehensible? No, for Democracy itself and its central concepts (the People, Universal Suffrage, etc.) are artifacts. One can thus say here is no such thing as Public Opinion. But one cannot say that it is without influence. This is the best proof of its existence!

Régis Debray: Jacques Julliard paints for us the new smile of Democracy. I for one see a new frown. Once you have a broken-up public performance, fragmented audiences, Opinion in small pieces, and you add a terrific centrifugal force of the type corporation, region or confession, is there still a body of citizens capable of unity around a given spectacle?

This media-opinion dictatorship transforms the government into a day-to-day manager, tending toward the alleged desires of Opinion, to either anticipate or prevent. One thus witnesses, for example, the birth of a type of diplomacy which has an instantaneous emotional reaction to everything (Darfur, Ingrid Betancour, Tibet, etc.) to better deal in the long run with nothing, where one hops from one image to the next without memory and without aim. This augurs badly for the Republic, indeed for Democracy.

Jacques Julliard: Does Opinion-Poll Democracy mean the end of Politics? Maybe. I have a tendency to believe that Direct Democracy, whatever its form, means the end of what we have traditionally called Politics, that is a separate activity, founded on a cleavage between Representatives and the Represented. A certain universalist conception of Politics is dying before our eyes. One needs to take note of this in order to halt the disappearance of what comes with Democracy - and which Opinion-Poll Democracy does not guarantee: the protection of Liberties.

Régis Debray: Within a philosophical frame of reference, Opinion is the lowest form of knowledge, something like prejudice, a mental state which tends to agreement to something represented. It is quite the contrary to Conviction, which is not a question of agreement, but of existence. And here is the nub of the problem: Opinion does not share an equal playing field with Conviction. Does public-Poll Democracy stand up to religious movements, which are world-wide? I wouldn't think so, it is scissors against rock. It is in the field of International Affairs that public Opinion is completely off: we no longer know what the exterior world is because, in effect, opinion reigns.

Jacques Julliard: I do not disagree with the distinction made by Régis Debray between Opinion and Conviction. Opinion is Liberty and, from this point of view, I see no difference between Representative Democracy and Opinion-Poll Democracy, founded on pluralism and open debate. Of course there is here a handicap for these democracies - let us call them liberal - because they must take the time to debate and convince. But it is essential.

Régis Debray: I keep coming back to my belief in this matter: a promotion to Citizen for he who does not follow blindly; a promotion to Statesman for he who does not blindly follow Opinion. Even if, in a Democracy, things are not always clear-cut.

The debate was moderated by Emmanuel Laurentin (France Culture).