Situation of democracy | France Culture

What world do we live in, where are we in this confusion of benchmarks where we see the wind from the left voting to the right and the wind from the right voting to the left? Two divisions which blur the landscape and give rise to a third. How can we explain the existence of these three “blocks”? What about democracy today? What about its strange, unprecedented crisis affecting the Western world?

To discuss these questions, Alain Finkielkraut receives the political scientist Dominique Schnapper which makes it appear The disillusionments of democracy (Gallimard 2024) & Marcel Gauchethistorian and sociologist, author of The democratic knot. At the origins of the neoliberal crisis (Gallimard 2024).

A new divide

According to Marcel Gauchet, a new divide has emerged, which we can designate ideologically as the divide between what we would today call progressivism and populism. In his eyes, this does not mean that the left-right divide has disappeared: “lhe political difficulty that we find before us today is the superposition of two divisions which blur the landscape. And I believe that the French situation offers a perfect example. We have a left-right divide which remains and which, in my opinion, is destined to remain, and a new divide which blurs this first divide, since we see people on the left voting to the right and people on the right voting to the right. LEFT. There is a sort of confusion of reference points which is not for nothing in the situation.”

“We are faced with an unprecedented political difficulty which is the impossibility of giving shape to a collective project which is the principle of democracy” (Mr. Gauchet)

“The main problem is there. We are not on the eve of a civil war, I do not believe so, but we are faced with an unprecedented political difficulty which is the impossibility of giving shape to a collective project which is the principle of democracy, with a possible alternation of the two, and at the same time for the minority, the possibility nevertheless of accepting the law of the majority. It is intellectually this rule that is failing. And the suspicion of illegitimacy of the democratically appointed government is omnipresent in our social life.” Marcel Gauchet

A crisis today in the functioning of democracy

“There has been a weakening of the legitimacy of the institutions of the parliamentary Republic. there is no other historical example of a Republic than the representative Republic. It is the only idea we have, with all the limits and all the criticisms that we can make to it and that we continue to make to it. However, what seems striking to me, and particularly in the new generation, as many surveys show, is the extent to which the institutions which organize political freedom in democracy are accused of the illegitimacy of the election, to the political party, to the functioning of Parliament, to the relationship between the executive. And this is where we really have a crisis, not of the idea, we will surely come back to this, but of the functioning of democracy as it is taking place at the moment.“. Dominique Schnapper

Marcel Gauchet returns to the existence of these three blocks which he explains by the play of two cleavages which do not overlap and which result in a division into three instead of the binary logic which was that of our usual democratic functioning. “In fact, we can say National Rally, radical right, we are in a sort of classic logic. But opposite, we have people who are capable of allying the new Popular Front and the “Macronian” center: they are capable of allying electorally, but not capable of governing together.”

“And this is how we arrive at a situation of insurmountable division in a normal political mechanism. Basically, let’s simplify the equation, there is a majority to refuse the access of the National Rally to power and there is a majority to decide in favor of an essential part of the National Rally program And that is what is reflected in this tripartition, with the arrival, in any case, of a government which will be, from the point of view of public opinion, anti. -majority, with all the problems posed by an anti-majority democracy, which contradicts itself in its essence”. Marcel Gauchet

For Dominique Schnapper, the camp of good has defined, once and for all, the evil which would be that carried by the National Front. She insists on the fact that according to her there are a certain number of debates which must take place in a rational and political mode, “because immigration is one of the subjects on which there should be a rational discussion”, “because we are a country with a weakening, aging demographic. and which needs the arrival of foreign populations to renew the way of life which we find to be normal.”

This refusal of limits and borders which is one of the dimensions of the crisis of democracy

There is a problem with immigration that needs to be controlled, she reminds us, taking the example of these major immigration countries, including Canada which, at the same time, welcomes a foreign population, but at the same time sets a certain number of access conditions and then, conditions to promote their integration. “This is how we should discuss this need for immigration and at the same time an immigration that would be controlled both by the needs of the country and by the possibility of welcoming and integrating foreign populations. . The presence and the theories which are then extreme, which are part of the extremism of the National Front, make this discussion extremely difficult, they illustrate this refusal of limits and borders which is one of the dimensions of the crisis of democracy. And democracy takes place and is translated within national borders. They exist, we can have a metaphysical position on the question of borders, but they are part of the data that must be taken into account to try to deal as rationally as possible with the problems that arise.“. Dominique Schnapper

Bibliographic sources

• Dominique Schnapper, The disillusionments of democracy Gallimard 2024
• Marcel Gauchet, The democratic knot. At the origins of the neoliberal crisis Gallimard 2024
• Marcel Gauchet, Democracy against itself, Gallimard 2002
• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in AmericaGallimard, 1968
• L’Incorrect, Democracy, Anatomy of a Fall – Pierre Manent, Marcel Gauchet – review, October 2024