Written by Eddi Bellando
Illustrations by Mark R. Taylor

Editor’s note: A political philosophy conference held in Turin, Italy, defined the current state of the world’s democracies and offered cures for some of its pronounced ills. Eddi Bellando was there for Supplement St. Louis to help us understand how it applies to our own volatile political world.

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Less than a month before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, political philosophers gathered to voice their strong impression that democracy is under threat from many sides. That mirrors the worries of millions of citizens and many U.S. statesmen and political scientists.

Turin, Italy, was a particularly appropriate host location as that old city in Northern Italy is where politically engaged writers such as Primo Levi, Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg lived and worked, and where political thinkers and activists such as Antonio Gramsci mulled over the political plight of the West. The city also has a long history as an industrial hub, known internationally as the Detroit of Italy. Due to the presence of FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino; started in 1899) and other companies, the city had robust trade unions and an active working class, which played a major role in opposing Fascism during the Second World War. Despite becoming evermore post-industrial, the area still maintains its anti-fascism tendencies and a positive orientation toward unions and the working class.

The two-day conference was named “The Twentieth Century according to Norberto Bobbio” in honor of the eminent political philosopher. Held at the Academy of Sciences, founded in 1783, and at Polo del ’900, a cultural institution founded in 2006 but housed in a building from the early 18^th century, attendees included political thinkers, people interested in current affairs and a contingent of high school students.

The state of the democratic state

The health of Western democracies is precarious, said Valentina Pazé, professor of political philosophy at the University of Turin, whose research areas include communitarianism, and theories of rights and democracy. Bobbio was Pazé’s mentor. Her comments addressed whether democracy still has a viable future. In recent decades, Pazé said she has witnessed a degradation of the quality of political parties, lower political participation by citizens, and electoral abstention, often with less than half of citizens voting (an estimated 59% of the voting-age population took part in the 2024 U.S. presidential election), leading to government not by the many but by the few.

Pazé  said that many democratic systems do not offer nor even seek answers to war, global warming and other dire problems. Too often, she said, the focus has been on short-term, local issues, neglecting the larger framework. Democracy was not designed to find quick solutions to single problems, she added, but as a system for finding shared solutions leading to peaceful coexistence.

Democracy is too often identified with the selection of the leader,
in a sort of elective autocracy.

There is also growing confusion about political ideals, Pazé said. Democracy is too often identified with the selection of the leader, in a sort of elective autocracy. Instead, she said, the leader should have a limited role, as advocated by Hans Kelsen (1881 – 1973), a leading legal philosopher; he was the principal architect of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, which, with amendments, is still in use. Kelsen wrote, “The leader is a leader only for a certain period and from certain points of view; moreover, leaders are only the equals of other members of the group and are subject to criticism. In autocracies, the ruling individuals are always regarded as superior and not subject to the social order; therefore, they are essentially irresponsible, whereas the responsibility of leaders is a feature of real democracy.” To many people, President Trump’s sidestepping of his multiple legal entanglements and convictions rings that bell rather loudly; his pardoning of violent January 6^th rioters rings it even louder.

In democracies, Pazé continues, power is too often concentrated at the top, and there has been an erosion of the tools of control over that power’s scope. In the United States, democratic guarantees have been weakened by the increase of executive orders and presidential memorandums, as documented in Phillip J. Cooper’s book, By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action (See also Dr. Brian Frederking’s essay “Maybe we’re doing it wrong?” in this magazine, https://supplementstlouis.com/2024/04/25/maybe-were-doing-it-wrong/). Pazé gave other examples, including President Emmanuel Macron’s use in 2023 of Article 49 of the French Constitution to change pension law without a parliamentary vote; and the actions of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who since 2010 has undermined democracy, weakened judicial independence and curtailed press freedom, transforming Hungary into what the European Parliament has called a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”

Political decisions are increasingly entrusted to unelected experts.

Too frequently, democracies have called for a strongman or a charismatic leader, as in populism, or for an expert, as in technocracy, Pazé said. She cited Irish political scientist Peter Mair, who has warned that political decisions are increasingly entrusted to unelected experts, technocrats within national bureaucracies (Elon Musk rings that bell loudly), and technical organs such as central banks. Doing this allows political leaders to abdicate important responsibilities, she added.

Conversely, Pazé said, American political scientist Jason Brennan has argued for a form of technocracy. In his book Against Democracy, Brennan says that ordinary citizens do not have the competence and scientific knowledge to deal with complex issues, such as global warming and nuclear weapons. Versions of this argument have been around since early conceptions of democracy: the people do not know enough to make good decisions. Brennan has argued that a new system of government – “epistocracy,” the rule of the knowledgeable – might prove better than democracy. However, Pazé said, interpreting politics in terms of know-how means to privilege those with specific types of knowledge, thus silencing the voice of ordinary citizens. Pazé instead advocated for trusting the best among us, as called for by philosopher and political activist Guido Calogero: “The wise man is not only he who has the best opinions, but he who is also able to convince others that his opinions are the best; that is, being able not only to think well, but also to lead others to think well.”

Pazé recalled that Bobbio thought of democracy and technocracy as antithetical: the equality of citizens versus the competence of the few. It was better to go back to Plato, who considered political virtue a quality that all citizens possess. In the Protagoras, Plato recalls the myth in which Zeus gave people two gifts so that humankind would not be destroyed: modesty and justice. Unlike all other arts, in which the expertise of a few is sufficient, modesty and justice must be possessed by all, and that is why every person is naturally endowed with these qualities; for the city to be able to stand, all citizens must have a share in it.

Some solutions?

Pazé reiterated Bobbio’s minimal but necessary requirements for democracy: six simple rules aimed at establishing who has the right to make collectively binding decisions and how they are to be made. Bobbio’s rules include universal suffrage; the principle of equal weight of the vote; the guarantee of freedom of information, expression, assembly and association; the existence of a plurality of candidates; majority rule, or the principle that the greater number should exercise greater power; and protection of the minority’s right to become a majority and govern. Although Pazé said that these requirements have often been disregarded, they can still be used to assess the level of democracy in a country.

Can democracies solve the problems identified and left over by failed communist regimes? Pazé asked. Bobbio raised that question after the 1989 Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown on Tienanmen Square demonstrators. In an article entitled “The Upturned Utopia,” Bobbio wrote, “The catastrophe of historical communism is before the eyes of everyone: communism as a world movement for the emancipation of the poor, the oppressed, the ‘wretched of the earth.’” Eastern European countries’ gaining of freedom “can only be a point of departure. But to go where?

“It is not enough to establish a liberal and democratic rule of law to solve the problems from which the ‘hope of revolution’ was born,” Bobbio continued. “In a world of appalling injustice, to think that the hope of revolution is extinguished means closing one’s eyes. Are the great democracies that govern the world’s richest countries capable of solving the problems that communism has not been able to solve?

“Democracy has won the challenge of historical communism,
but with what means and with what ideals is it
prepared to address the same problems?”

– Norberto Bobbio

“Historical communism has failed,” Bobbio concluded, “but the problems remain, precisely those same problems that the communist utopia had singled out. Do you really believe that the end of historical communism has put an end to the need and thirst for justice? Democracy has won the challenge of historical communism, but with what means and with what ideals is it prepared to address the same problems?” Nearly four decades later, democracy is still struggling to find appropriate answers.

A candle in the wind?

Another speaker at the conference, Massimo Mori, professor emeritus of the history of philosophy at the University of Turin, raised the problem of dealing with non-Western cultures. The Enlightenment, he said, gave the West a strong concept of reason as a faculty capable of dealing with all kinds of issues. Although he remains a disciple of the Enlightenment, Mori has reduced his estimation of how much reason can accomplish. Because of globalization, Western thinkers, who live in their own corner of the world, are now confronted with very different ways of thinking and debating. There are cultures with different conceptions of reason than the West and even non-rationalist ones. That is why Mori likes Bobbio’s and John Locke’s image of reason’s “dim candle” – a faint yet precious method for seeing things more clearly.

Luigi Bonanate, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Turin and author of Ethics and International Politics, said he feels we are living in dark times, that the Western world is collapsing. There has been a great trivialization of the way in which foreign news has been communicated, he said, with media giving widely different accounts of the same event. Social media, he says, has worsened this situation. How can true progress occur without an agreed foundation of facts from which to proceed? This problem is “one of the diseases of our time,” Bonanate added. Walter Lippmann had warned the newspapers of his time that not covering international events would cause democracy to suffer.

Moreover, Bonanate continued, when we think of international affairs, we are accustomed to thinking about war, to viewing war as “the queen of international relations.” Peace is seen as simply the absence of war, a fundamental prejudice in international culture. Wars end and carry an idea of conclusion. Peace should involve an idea of continuity.

Another prejudice is the idea that war is the continuation of politics by other means, Bonanate said. War is, in fact, the defeat of politics. War is not politics; politics is a technique for coexistence, the management of the common good so that we can live well together. Contemporary war has become a widespread spectacle. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have deluded ourselves that the world is moving toward a radiant future, he said, while, in fact, war has simply changed its nature. 

Bonanate concluded that the discussion of war and other major issues worldwide is of low quality, and that is a major impediment to an improved world.

Human rights neglected

Jurist Luigi Ferrajoli, professor emeritus of the philosophy of law at the University of Rome, expressed concern about “the crisis, indeed the collapse, of fundamental rights.” Ours is not an era of human rights, but of human rights violations. Rights are violated as much as they are proclaimed, he said. Inequality has grown exponentially, with the five richest individuals in the world more than doubling their wealth between 2020 and 2024. Soon, each of them individually could become richer than some countries in the Group of 20. There has also been a reduction in the right to health, and there is a new kind of identity in right-wing movements, as members bond on the basis of nationalism rather than class. Battles are being fought not against inequalities, Ferrajoli said, but against differences.

Battles are being fought not against inequalities, but against differences.

Lack of enforcement has caused landmark human rights charters to be ineffective, Ferrajoli continued. As jurist Hans Kelsen warned, in the absence of true guarantees, rights do not exist. If a right is not linked to guarantees, Ferrajoli said, this lack must be read as a crime of omission. The thesis that there are no alternatives to the prevailing viewpoint is ideology, not fact. The human rights catastrophes underway occur for lack of guarantees, but guarantees are indeed possible.

Globalization is characterized by an asymmetry between the international nature of trade, large enterprises, and governments on the one hand, and the local nature of politics and law on the other. There has been a reversal of the relationship between politics and the economy, with large economic groups influencing states legally and illegally. Fifty years ago, the state and the law had more power over economic and financial behemoths, with the law of the state imposing limits on the economy.

Saying that ‘man is a beast’ and that ‘war is inevitable’ are merely ideological stances that legitimize current circumstances.

Saying that “man is a beast” and that “war is inevitable” are merely ideological stances that legitimize the way things currently are, Ferrajoli said. An alternative, such as arms control and disarmament, is improbable but not impossible. All great ideas – the  abolition of slavery, equality of rights, the rights of women – were at first seen as utopian.

The lack of human rights guarantees must be read as an intentional omission, Ferrajoli said. An effect of the dominance of American thought is the identification of law with the present legal system, as if it were the only one possible. Unfortunately, the current juridical culture limits itself to describing rather than criticizing, which ends up justifying the status quo. Jurists must denounce human rights violations whenever and wherever they occur, call attention to the non-application of law, and insist that violations be redressed. They must criticize, show that alternatives are possible and utilize the law to set limits on reigning powers.

So?

Democracy has many flaws, conference participants agreed, but the flaws are more from misapplications of democratic principles by politicians than flaws in the democratic system. Politicians must hew to the tenets of Democracy – and when they do not, voters must push them to do the right things.

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Eddi Bellando was born in Turin, Italy, in 1955, and worked as a journalist in Italy and as a writer/editor for the United Nations in Nairobi and New York. Eddi’s time at the U.N. included stints as an election monitor in El Salvador and the Central African Republic. Eddi recently earned his PhD in philosophy from Stony Brook University. This is Eddi’s third article for Supplement St. Louis (Yay, Eddi!).

Mark R. Taylor studied performance art to hone his storytelling skills while a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design. He now spends his time shuttling his kids around, teaching in a public school and finding ways to keep his love for stories alive using pencils, paints and anything else he can find.  This is Mark’s first project for Supplement St. Louis.