Third Assembly Keynote

Address by Ivan Krastev,
Center for Liberal Strategies (Bulgaria)

It is a real pleasure and privilege to speak in front of this audience, but to be honest I should tell you that in a certain way it is a mixed blessing. And it is a mixed blessing not simply because I am going to speak in front of people who in many respects are much more knowledgeable than I am on the problems of democracy, but also because most of us are very much confined to our own democratic experiences and always try to universalize them. This is especially very true for Eastern Europe. 1989 was such an unthinkable year—so many things changed for us, for our generation, for the previous generations, that we really basically tried to believe that in a certain way democracy was rewarding our part of the world.

And in forums like this you understand how limited this type of democratic experience is. And I do believe that this is one of the greatest advantages of meetings like this, because for us the South African struggle was simply the next Poland, what is happening in Georgia is simply the next Belgrade, but basically it is never just repetition, and in certain ways I do believe that one of the biggest challenges speaking now is how to try to reflect on some of our own democratic experiences in a way that is going to be relevant for everybody.

So in a certain way my short speech is very much inspired by the London Underground. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but any time the doors of the train are opening in the London Underground, there is a prophetic voice telling you, “mind the gap.” And I do believe this is extremely important because what we learned in Eastern Europe for the last decade is that maybe we have not been aware of minding the gap. So you have successful democracies now in our parts of the world, and to be honest democracy does not have an alternative; it is obvious for everyone. But in a certain way I don’t know what is worse: to have strong enemies or to have suspicious friends. And this is part of the problem with democracy these days, because I do believe that we are living in a time when many countries and many regimes simply want to be called democracies, but perceived through the eyes of their own citizens they are not providing more freedom, and democracy is about freedom.

I am saying this because I want to raise an issue which I do believe is important not only for us in Central Europe and in the Balkans, but it is of general relevance, and this is the growing gap between the democratically elected elites and the public. If you go to the public opinion polls in countries like Bulgaria, you are going to see that people do not trust their parliament which they voted for in free and fair elections. They don’t trust their government; basically the trust in political parties in Bulgaria is lower than the trust that there is life on Mars. So from this point of view, if the trust is not there we can see how fragile democracy is and we should ask the hard question: Why is this gap growing and what should be done about it? Of course, especially in Eastern European transitions you have very easy answers. Everyone is going to tell you that there were unrealistic expectations in 1989; they are going to tell you that there was a decline in the standard of living. You have all of these explanations but they are not enough because, for example, in the last six years in Bulgaria the economy has been growing, it averaged over 4 percent, and we have had economic growth almost all over the region. Second, you can see that it is not simply about the economy; it is much more about the feeling that people have felt betrayed by their own democratic elites. This is about corruption, but this is also the feeling that people cannot influence the way their countries are governed. You know that maybe the most important book written in Eastern Europe during the time of communism was Havel’s book The Power of the Powerless. If we are going to have a book like this these days maybe the title would be The Disillusionment of the Empowered. People do not have the feeling that they can influence policy and in a certain way I perceive that this is a huge failure for the civil societies in our part of the world.

Why don’t they have this feeling? First, to a certain extent, because of structural reasons. If you look at the transitional countries in Eastern Europe they are basically like oil regimes, but where state-owned assets to be privatized play the role of oil. In a certain way, new elites were not dependent for their success on the wealth of their people; they could be very cynical. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, when the modern West European states were formed, in order to succeed, in order to have armies, all these elites had an interest in reaching out to the people. Even if they stole, they stole from the pockets of the people, so they were interested in something in the pockets of the people. But if you are stealing from the store, if you are stealing basically from accumulated assets, you are basically forgetting that they are the assets of the people.

The second problem is very much international. To a certain extent, there is much conditionality, which is very much restricting the way policy is made in these countries. And as a result of it, the people have the feeling that they can change government, they can change the personnel, but they cannot change the policies. I am saying this because I do believe that the problem of the public, the liberation of public discussion, and how to keep the public involved with politics, is going to be the major challenge for fragile democracies, not only in Central and Eastern Europe. I do not believe that you can have democracy without citizens—voters are not enough. Most of us have a democracy of voters, but you need a democracy of citizens, which means informed people who are ready to participate in public debates, to make choices, and to be held responsible for their choices. Why am I saying this? Because in the initial period, to be honest, the choice was much easier; it was good versus bad; it was democracy versus tyranny. But now we are going to be making different choices. For example, we have a huge problem now with terrorist threats. And the problem with terrorism is a huge challenge for democracy on one side, but some of the responses to terrorism can also curb human rights and could be a problem for democratic development. Where is the borderline? And I don’t think that any of us can give the right answer; the only right answer can come from a very vibrant debate and discussion within society and this borderline is going to be different from society to society. If you don’t have this type of a discussion, I do believe you cannot meet this type of challenge because terrorism is a new generation of challenge where the very idea of society is going to be exploited, where if you react in the wrong way the terrorists are basically going to have what they wanted to have.

I’m saying this because even with the problem of corruption we have the same story. Corruption is a huge problem and I don’t believe that you need to live in any of our countries to know that to a certain extent corruption is the way through which people believe that everything is happening in our part of the world. But I do believe that some of the responses to corruption could also be a problem of their own because civil society, going on the very easy rhetoric of anti-corruption, basically reproduces this “us versus them” type of confrontation, which is so destructive for democratic societies. It is very easy to talk about corruption, especially when you are talking in the abstract, but in the ways in which we are talking about corruption we are undermining the very basic democratic governments because you don’t need to have any ideas now to be part of politics anymore. You are just simply accusing any government of being corrupt, and you are reducing politics to a war between the corrupt party and the clean party.

I am personally very much afraid of these types of primitive confrontations because democracy is about complicated choices, about complex relations, and if something is very simple it might be very dangerous. And I’ll now come to my last point, and it has a lot to do with the last two years and the way the United States has been perceived. I’m going to agree with many people who say that U.S. unilateralism could be a problem for democracy. I can of course be very worried by the fact that by being obsessed with some of the security concerns the American government has started to support non-democratic regimes, which could be friendly and helpful for fighting terrorism. But, to be honest, I am also very much afraid and worried by the fashion of anti-Americanism which we are seeing these days. And I am afraid because I do believe that anti-Americanism can very easily be used as rhetoric and as a politics to attack democratic achievements not only in our part of the world. It is very easy for certain types of governments that do not want to be pressed either from civil society or from outside to try to label any type of pressure for democracy as American influence. If we are going to allow this to happen, I do believe there is going to be less and not more freedom in the world.