US in dire need of help in democratisation process

After decades of lectures, trainings and admonitions on democracy and its values by Americans, it is now clear that the US is in dire need of help in its democratisation, perhaps more than any other country. This, because no country has touted as loudly its democratic credentials, asserting itself as the world’s leading democracy, even when that democracy has not worked for millions of black, brown, poor and indigenous peoples.

For anyone who has followed American politics, the idea of “American exceptionalism” and an ability to “self-correct” seems hollow given the glaring weaknesses in the structure of its democracy, whose contradictions are now fully exposed.

Make no mistake, the democratic experiment is not perfect and is constantly in need of tweaking and improving to make it better for the weaker and marginalised. But a focus on the “software” or democracy — getting decent and reasonable people in charge who will do the right thing — at the expense of the “hardware” of democracy, which is creating strong, independent institutions and regulating the powerful rich, corporations and politicians, is hurting the US.

We have the opposite in Kenya: We have good hardware as designed in our Constitution, but extremely decadent software in those in charge whose thirst for corruption and raw power has made the hardware obsolete. This is why the idea of letting those who denigrate and demean the Constitution the chance to change it is repugnant. What we need is a change in software to those who can respect the hardware!

A functioning and effective democracy needs both the hardware and software. Watching the vetting of Brett Kavanaugh as Justice of the US Supreme Court exposed some of the real hardware problems that the US needs to fix.

First, the idea of lifetime judges is absurd and has been overtaken by events. Rather than ensuring that judges are independent, thoughtful and considerate, the current approach contributes to the cementing of existing ideological divisions for decades. One need not be brilliant, fair or objective to be a judge. All one needs is to be a sycophant and have political godfathers.

Sadly, our “software” problem led to the appointment of some judges whose loyalties seem to lie more with their political godfathers than to the law. The intensity of the battles over the Supreme Court comes from the weaknesses and gridlock in the Legislature, meaning that the Judiciary becomes important in policy-making as a way to get around these weaknesses.

The US Senate was conceived to be a dignified and collegial institution where compromise for the common good was expected. To be sure, it played that role especially during the Cold War. But today, it is more notable for the fact that it magnifies the power of the minority given that 70 per cent of Americans reside in just 20 states, meaning that people in Idaho, for instance, have way more power than Californians.  

But even more worrying is that electoral constituencies represented in the House of Representatives are determined by State Legislatures rather than by impartial and independent bodies. The room for bias and mischief is obvious, and the result is a debilitating gerrymandering that has made voting meaningless given the party structures.  

Third, the institution of the Electoral College contradicts the fiction of a popularly elected president, since it is this body, rather than the voters, that determines who gets into the White House. This was especially ironic in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won about three million more votes — more than the population of about 20 states — than Donald Trump but he got into the White House! In the last seven US presidential elections, only once has a Republican won the popular vote.

And like us, the US — founded on war, slavery, racism and divisions — suffers from the old archaic system of first-past-the-post, winner-take-all that encourages divisions and tensions. Many European countries have moved on from this system, using proportional representation and other forms of electoral democracy to ensure that all voices are taken into consideration in the making of policy and laws.

For many years, the US attempted to self-correct, to some extent, on some of its major problems such as slavery, which took a civil war to abolish before being replaced by segregation and legal racial discrimination. That took about 100 years to be mitigated following civil rights struggles, whose gains were minimised by war on drugs and mass incarceration that has led incredible numbers of black and brown people serving time in jail.

Today, perhaps the most insidious challenge to American democracy is the role of money in politics following the Citizens United case where the Supreme Court ruled that money was a form of expression and could not be limited. The result is that the rich have more power and voice than the rest, which is a mockery of democracy in any form or shape.

- The writer is former KNCHR chair. [email protected]