The Centripetal Case for Direct Democracy in Centrifugal Multilingual Societies
Joseph Lacey
Opening Remarks
According to David Easton (1965), a political system is constituted by a symbiotic
relationship between the regime and the political community, where regime refers to the set
of rules animating an institutional structure for effective governance and political community
denotes the formal membership of citizens entitled to make demands on the regime. Political
systems are defined by the interplay between centripetal and centrifugal forces, the one
bringing people together and the other driving them apart. The day-to-day of any political
system concerns the manner in which individuals and groups within a political community
unite and divide around values and interests. In more stable political systems, instances of
conflict and consensus presuppose a wider commitment by all citizens to their membership in
a political community – a commitment that is often accompanied by some kind of “wefeeling” or collective consciousness (Easton 1957: 391). In other words, political stability is
premised on important centripetal forces keeping people together in the absence, or in the
face of, potentially divisive centrifugal forces. Political systems are made less stable when
centrifugal forces are constantly challenging and undermining the sense of “we-feeling”
undergirding the political community.
Despite their symbiotic relationship, both the political community and the regime can
give rise to very different centripetal and centrifugal forces. A corrupt or incompetent regime
can be just as destabilising as ethno-cultural tensions arising from the political community.
This paper focuses on the potential centrifugal effects of language in multilingual contexts
and the possibility of democratic institutions to serve as a centripetal force within these
contexts. More specifically, I wish to rehabilitate the idea of voting in general and direct
democracy in particular as ways of easing rather than exacerbating linguistic tensions. I begin
with an explanation of how and why language can become a potentially destabilising force.
Following this, to demonstrate why voting and direct democracy are in need of rehabilitation
in modern political theory, I outline popular criticisms from some of their main detractors.
Finally, I explain how a particular way of designing bottom-up direct democracy could serve
as the additional centripetal force required to deal with the centrifugal inclinations of
multilingual societies.
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Language in Multilingual Contexts
Historically, some of the fiercest battles within political systems have been between rival
religious factions. Religion is an intensely personal experience that, when shared en masse,
has the potential to serve as an important marker of identity that demarcates “us, with our
religion” from “them, with their religion”. Language also has a strong personal dimension to
it, with no less capacity for serving as a salient social marker of identity separating “us” from
“them”. Jacque Derrida, reflecting on his life as he nears its end, captures this point especially
well in a remark that is worth reproducing:
„And just as I love life, and my life, I love what made me what I am, the very element
of which is language, this French language that is the only language I was ever taught
to cultivate, the only one for which I can say I am more or less responsible‟ (Derrida
2007)
Despite these personal and social similarities with religion, language is unique in that
it cannot be disestablished nor separated from the functioning of a political system. While
religions can lose their members to a secular life and the church may be separated from the
regime, no person can do without a language and every political system requires a language
in which to operate. A language of communication is important, not only for political elites to
coordinate in making decisions on behalf of the society as a whole, but also for relating laws
to the political community. From a democratic perspective, where democracy is understood
as an ideal of self-rule under conditions of equality, a common language seems especially
important. Fluent communicative conditions allow citizens to engage in the kind of
deliberation and mobilisation required to influence decision-making on issues of common
concern.
In multilingual democratic contexts, language has the potential to be a major
centrifugal force. Most importantly, the ability of citizens to deliberate and mobilise together
is heavily curtailed as the unitary public sphere typically associated with the ideal-type model
of democracy is fractured into linguistically demarcated public spheres. Distinct media
systems cater to different language groups, the members of which are inevitably exposed to
different perspectives and political narratives than their linguistic neighbours and compatriots
(Mill 1862; van Parijs 2011). When and if these distinct processes of opinion formation lead
to conflict over economic or social issues, there is potential for them to be cast as part of a
more basic difference in linguistic identity, ultimately leading to a linguistic cleavage that
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calls into question the “we-feeling” undergirding a stable political community. Though I am
not trying to describe any particular case, we find linguistic cleavages taking on dynamics of
this kind in countries like Spain, Canada, and Belgium, among others.
Critiques of Voting and Direct Democracy
Once we recognise the potentially powerful centrifugal tendencies of language within
multilingual societies, the question concerning what centripetal forces may be employed to
maintain a sense of political community comes knocking. In relatively stable political
systems – where religious, linguistic or ethnic differences are non-salient – democracy is
generally considered to have strong centripetal tendencies.
Competitive and deliberative democrats provide two-counter-posing conceptions of
centripetal democracy that, nevertheless, wind up being sceptical of voting as a means of
decision-making. Competitive democrats emphasise the role of election in peacefully
selecting and removing leaders, with the quality of mass deliberation considered to be of
secondary importance at best (Schumpeter 1943; Bobbio 1987; Przeworski 1999). For
competitive democrats voting is the best way of carrying out elections, but they are reluctant
to endorse direct democratic practices given a) the excessive demands this would place on
citizen participation and b) the potential for civil strife that it may engender by bringing into
full public contestation differences between citizens that would otherwise be resolved more
discretely by elected elites.
Deliberative democrats insist that conflicts should be resolved through authentic
deliberation, with voting reduced to a last resort for when deliberative avenues are exhausted
(Christiano 2012). They argue that voting allows people to put their weight behind political
power that may be contrary to the public good without being required to justify their support
to anyone. Moreover, it is objected that voting takes personal preferences as fixed, bypassing
the possibility for individuals to be persuaded by the better argument. Such criticisms have
even led some deliberative democrats to deny that voting is a democratic way of decisionmaking at all (Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, et al. 2010: 64).
For competitive democrats the centripetal impact of democracy comes from citizens‟
political equality and the regularity of elections. Essentially, commitment to the political
community is thought to be built around citizens‟ observation that the distribution of power
has been fairly decided upon and the losers of this election have the chance to be winners at
the next. From the perspective of deliberative democrats, democracy‟s centripetal power is
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derived from its ability to produce solutions that aim at maximum consensus for all those
affected by a given decision.
Though I do not wish to deny these centripetal effects, it is not clear that they are
sufficient to tackle the centrifugal possibilities of language in a multilingual context. The
periodic elections emphasised by competitive democrats may provide a common deliberative
focus to the respective public spheres, yet to the extent that these elections are held
infrequently their potential for coordinating discourse across the public spheres is very
limited. Similarly, the pursuit of mutually justified reasons for political decisions advocated
by deliberative democrats can only be so effective when political discourse and media
systems are divided along linguistic lines. Something other than the traditional institutions of
representative democracy, it seems, is required to maintain a sufficiently strong sense of wefeeling across linguistic groups.
A Defence of Voting and Direct Democracy in Divided Societies
I believe one possible solution to this difficulty lies in the instruments of direct democracy.
My argument is based upon a rejection of competitive and deliberative democrats objections
towards voting beyond the electoral context. First of all, voting should not be seen as an
alternative to deliberation but as one of its most important instigators. Vote dates, whether
they are electoral or direct, set in motion an urgent process of deliberation as individuals must
decide together upon what to vote. Voting for political office or particular legislation is often
a high stakes game that commands the deliberative attention of media and citizens at large.
Second, it is not clear that direct democratic instruments place too many demands on
citizen participation. On the one hand, it depends how often these instruments are used. On
the other hand, if Philip Pettit (2012: 126) is correct that modern societies are too complex for
all citizens to be politically vigilant on all major issues, then a direct democratic vote that
mobilises only a fraction of the electorate need not be seen as a defect in participation, so
long as it is not the same sub-section of citizens who are always turning out.
Third, competitive democrats are correct to be wary of the divisive potential in direct
democratic votes, bringing to a head salient differences or making differences salient when
they previously were not. However, this observation is most true of only one form of direct
democracy, namely those that originate from a top-down process. Referendums held at the
whim of a majority government, or under pressure from a large parliamentary opposition,
have the potential to egregiously confront citizens with their differences. Bottom-up direct
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democratic votes, however, are at far less risk of such political manipulation as it is citizens
themselves who must create sufficient demand for a vote of this kind.
Indeed, it is not top-down but bottom-up direct democracy that I believe is most
amenable to multilingual societies, with the important proviso that demand for a direct vote
be demonstrated by members of all linguistic groups via a signature collection campaign
across linguistic territories. Let us consider the centripetal effects of this measure. At the
beginning of the process, trans-linguistic cooperation is launched by politically active
organisations and citizen groups with a view to collecting a small percentage of signatures,
say 5% of the respective populations from each side of the linguistic divide.
Once the signature threshold is reached and the question to be decided upon is
formulated to meet constitutional requirements, it will be very difficult to see the ensuing
vote as a product of the linguistic cleavage since it was demanded by citizens from distinct
linguistic backgrounds in concert. Then, just as with elections, setting a vote date serves the
function of synchronising the linguistically demarcated public spheres by providing them
with a common object of discourse. Finally, as citizens deliberate about and vote upon an
issue that both language groups have agreed upon, they are implicitly recognising and reaffirming themselves as members of a perpetual multilingual political system.
The more direct democratic votes of this kind, within practical and constitutional
limits, the more a sense of common political identity across the linguistic groups can be
assured. In Switzerland, an average of seven direct votes are held each year, typically on
three different dates. Having just one or two dates per year for bottom-up direct democracy in
other multilingual societies would vastly increase political contact between linguistic
communities with likely centripetal effects.
Closing Remarks
This account, of course, is a very basic and general sketch that would have to be modified for
different circumstances. My aim has not been to say anything conclusive. As I said at the
beginning, I have been primarily making a rehabilitative effort. I hope to have given some
reason for believing that there is more to voting generally and direct democracy in particular
than is often recognised. Once we identify some of these unique features, direct democracy
plausibly emerges as a worthwhile candidate to explore when it comes to addressing the
centrifugal forces typical of many multilingual societies. Perhaps, in some cases,
multilingualism is a reason for more democracy rather than an excuse for less.
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