A dialogue about "Politics as Theater", and the skills needed for representative democracy

Over at the interesting blog Global Vision remixed by a new citizen of Melbourne (but clearly a well travelled global citizen), I enjoyed the recent post titled Politics in the 21st century and the art of doing nothing by talking a lot – from leadership to amateur theatre.

Urs discusses the degradation of much modern-day politics, such as "the whole discussion around the leadership in the ALP is another good example of how political leaders in this country here prefer to focus on themselves rather than on the political agenda and the many issues that would have to be addressed and solved." Perhaps this is a similar point to the one ex-finance minister in the ALP Lindsay Tanner made in his book 'Sideshow'.

Urs went on to contast this to his view of the dawn of the early democratic era in Greece, where he argues that one of the good parts of the Greek system was that they "selected (as political representatives) the ones they thought would likely be able to provide the best leadership and come up with the best solutions for their society and the cities they lived in."

I think this is a well-made point in some ways, but I also think that since Isocracy is also about fresh ideas to improve democracy and political economy, it's worth reflecting on a few issues here. I commented on these on Urs' blog directly, but the gist of them is:

1) Radical-Democratic Athenian vs Plato’s Republic

Urs' sketch of classical Athenian political culture sounds a lot like the ideal Plato put forward in his book The Republic – but in fact, Athens at least had a more radically-democratic system than us today, that included things like direct votes on legislation by all the citizenry (admittedly this excluded slaves, women, migrants, …), and rotating selection by lot for many of the key administrative posts.

That is, there has always been a tension in Democracy between "selecting the best to make decisions for all" and "involving as wide a swathe of the populace as possible in decision-making".

Indeed, today a lot of people keen on participatory & deliberative democracy argue that opening up / requiring everyday citizens to take on more democratic responsibility, not less, would be good for our society as a whole. See Participatory Budgeting for example. Or in the words of former German Social Democratic party leader and chancellor of the German Federal Republic Willy Brandt in the 1970s, we need to “dare more democracy” for progress to continue ;)

Of course, for this to happen we almost certainly need a more equitable spread of income, work time, and education resources so more citizens have the time to properly engage on issues … the sort of thing that would be supported by points 2, 3 and 6 in the Isocracy Plan.

Secondly, the idea of whether 2) 'Theatre' is bad for democracy.

I recently read the memoirs of the first post-communist president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel (To the Castle and Back), who became president by virtue of playing a leading role in the anti-totalitarian struggle for liberation there – and was a former playwright.

And in the book he said he actually had regard for the importance of ‘politics as theatre’, at least in terms of symbols and rituals and the role of the president. The reason for this was that he wanted to build up, as he saw it, a sense of public presence and purpose of a democratic state that people could connect to and engage with - to make a clear break from the 'faceless' technocratic totalitarian state he was seeking to help firmly replace.

Perhaps the issue is what type of theater we are talking about in politics. I.E. to me it seems the best theatre, including some of the classical greek tragedies, tries to get us to reflect on what being human is all about, both our strengths and our weaknesses, and our roles/responsibilities in society. But it presents this in an engaging way that maybe more people can connect to than long philosophical treatises (or even earnest blog posts) ;)

On the other hand, I’d agree Rudd’s type of “political theatre” since resuming leadership often plays to our baser instincts and wants to reduce complex issues like global asylum seeker problems with some simplistic melodrama of “us & them” - not to mention Abbott and his "3 word slogans". To continue the analogy, much of Abbott's public dialogue is perhaps more Punch & Judy than Sophocles.

Finally, I should acknowledge the invaluable reference to help improve my thinking about Democracy of David Held's book Models of Democracy, developed when he taught a course on the subject at the UK's Open University. Well worth a read as it does cover key ideas ranging right from Classical Athenian democracy through to republicanism, new right and new left democracy, and the challenge for adapting democracy in a globally-interconnected ecology and society.