Democracy’s Pillars
The pillars are:
- The citizenix – the individual who bears political and legal rights – not the racialised group member.
- The state –– the governing infrastructure of parliament, systems of law, education, health and so on, regulator of public resources such as water, foreshore and seabed, flora and fauna, radio waves . . ..
- The nation – at once a geographic entity and a symbol of a unified though historically diverse people who muddle along together in liberal civil society.
Each of these pillars is riven by a necessary tension – a tension arising from their inherent contradictions – contradictions which make democracy future-oriented, progressive – and vulnerable.
The contradictions are:
- As citizens, we have a duty to society but, at the same time, we have personal interests arising from kin, cultural, and other social loyalties.
- The state is simultaneously the capitalist state – generating economic wealth and inequality – and the secular democratic state – guaranteeing political equality and regulating wealth distribution.
- The nation is unified in facing the future, yet diverse in its past.
Democracy is peaceful battle within and between each of these three pillars. This bloodless conflict is only possible when individuals are partially loyal.
So what is ‘partial loyalty’?
Partial loyalty
I first came across the term in anthropologist, Alan Macfarlane’s The Making of the Modern World. It intrigued me and I have developed the idea further in the following way.
‘Partial loyalty’ can explain what it is about the modern individual who has contradictory loyalties simultaneously – identifying as a family member, a member of an ancestral group, a cultural group, a tribe, a religion, an identity group defined by leisure interests, sexuality, and so on.
This is civil society. From different, even conflicting interests how do we decide where our loyalty lies – is it to New Zealand? To an identity group? An ancestral group? To those ‘who look like us’?
The idea of ‘partial loyalty’ is a way into thinking about this question.
It is a question that someone in a tribal society, an autocratic society, a religious society would not have to ask, or be permitted to ask, because the answer is already provided.
Most societies demand total loyalty.
- Traditional tribal societies allowed one identity – fixed by birth status and and kinship ties – not open to individual choice. Loyalty was non-negotiable because total loyalty ensured the group’s survival.
- Autocratic regimes, both past and present, impose total loyalty – not for the survival of all, but for the elite – imposed by might and by ideological indoctrination.
Democracies are different in a fundamental way. They not only allow partial loyalty but require it.
In a democracy we hold many loyalties simultaneously – family and social groups where the loyalty is personal – creating a deeply held sense of identity and belonging – perhaps to a tribe, culture, religion, sport or other type of association.
And at the same time we are loyal to a diverse society and to its governing system that is not personal. Indeed loyalty to the democratic nation is loyalty to a vision – the idea of ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’.
These two different loyalties – one a deeply personal identity – the other a rational commitment to an idea – is why democracy is so difficult. It is much easier to fall back into loyalties of emotion, not reason.
The ease and attraction of total loyalty favours ethno-nationalism – it is profoundly anti-modern and anti-democratic – yet profoundly seductive.
(This is an extract from the speech I gave to the New Zealand ACT Party Annual Conference, in Wellington and Auckland, July 2022.)
