Democracies captive to minorities

The tractor protest that is shaking several corners of Europe highlights important problems of democracies, whose balances of power and operating mechanisms are often so fragile that the determined action of a minority in a strategic position is enough to provoke transcendental political reactions.

Regardless of the greater or lesser validity of the various arguments of the agrarian protest, it is notable how the mobilization—instrumentalized by the right—has already achieved a strong impact on the political debate, with community institutions and national governments immediately willing to make concessions.

Agriculture is undoubtedly an important sector, with strategic features, but it represents 1.4% of the EU's GDP.

We will see how the negotiation ends, but it looks very likely that it will affect policies of enormous significance, such as climate change or trade relations with Latin America.

It is one episode among many.

In these months, Spain exhibits one of the most significant.

A party that came in fifth in number of votes obtained in one of the country's communities is, in view of the state of national politics, necessary to guarantee governability (unless it is understood that a parliamentary majority capable of legislate), and the crude barter that derives from it, still unresolved, monopolizes the debate and largely paralyzes the political capacity of the fourth largest economy in the eurozone.

Of course, in the recent history of Europe there are more cases of handfuls of seats that exert absurd influence, or of very minority sectors that, for one reason or another, have an exorbitant capacity for pressure.

This is democracy, it will be said.

Of course, democracy is the search for political consensus that allows majorities to be formed, and also to listen to the discomfort of socioeconomic sectors and react to it.

Democracy is also avoiding the tyranny of the majorities, an essential issue.

The founding fathers of the Italian Republic consciously designed a constitutional architecture that would fragment the political landscape with an electoral law of absolute proportionality and that would leave governments very exposed to the will of Parliament.

We all know why.

But, alas, sometimes the collective interest absurdly succumbs to the positions of minorities, weighing down democracy itself, its effectiveness, along the way.

Lately, more and more, for a very simple reason: because the brutal polarization and political fragmentation has generated an all-out war between opposing sides.

This prevents even the most basic consensus that would shield democracies from blackmail or pressure from certain minorities with tricks up their sleeves.

The United States, where the unblocking of aid to Ukraine has turned into an ordeal due to mere politicking, is another example of this.

Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, authors of the famous

How Democracies Die,

have recently published

Tyranny of the Minority

, focused on the political dysfunction of that country.

But other countries, in other ways, suffer from similar problems.

Democracy could be something else.

It could be that Republicans and Democrats would fight on many issues, but not on aid to a country attacked without any justification by a dictator and in whose territory the global geopolitical balance is at stake.

That PSOE and PP would fight on many issues, but would normally agree on a State policy through which, for example, Spain can participate with broad parliamentary support in a purely defensive European mission in the Red Sea, which is an important part of the construction of that autonomy that Europe so needs.

Without going to the extreme of governments with large coalitions, common and useful in other countries, but which have collateral effects and are unthinkable in others, is it really impossible to reach State pacts on issues such as water management, how to consider the introduction of new technologies in our children's schools and our young people's universities (not the question of whether they can carry a mobile phone, but thinking about the role of AI in education), or about how to respond to a dictator who has a war machine launched today against Ukraine, and tomorrow we will see?

It is practically impossible when certain thresholds of politicking, delegitimization, insults, and gross measures have been exceeded.

Given this, it is important to carefully discern several things: who started it, who has the greatest responsibility and also what it means to lower standards, since the other plays dirty, or directly respond tit for tat and tooth for tooth.

This weakness of democracies, which collapse or are paralyzed by the blackmail of minorities, which are incapable of building a few, essential, State policies, which are very slow and timid on key issues, are an enormous joy for the authoritarian regimes that Today, they pose to democracies their most brutal challenge in decades.

Putin is building a war economy.

If Trump wins in the US, the future of NATO is uncertain.

Would it make sense, apart from community action, to build state policies in the European member states on this issue, on how to prepare, how to deter bad intentions?

It looks like it is.

A more effective functioning of democracies is in the interest of all citizens.

But especially for those of us who believe in a progressive vision of society, made of redistribution of wealth, social cohesion, expansion of rights, because it is only through functional democracies that this can be achieved.

Polarization and frontist partisanship can achieve tactical victories.

But the deterioration and democratic disbelief that they produce little by little can turn into terrible strategic disasters, and when democracy is very dysfunctional it will be the most powerful who will cope best.

Certain calculations should be made on long-term balances, not short-term ones.

By the way: this Thursday, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin spoke again in a telephone conversation.

They have met more than 40 times in a decade.

And they have put, in writing, that human rights and democracy are relative concepts and that they want to change the world order.

Would a little more unity and political height, and a little less partisan politicking of millimetric flight, be appropriate in our democracies?

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