“The devil knows that he has little time,” it is said in the Apocalypse, and that feeling that we live in devilish societies is due to the fact that we are facing too many disruptions, on the brink of catastrophe, risking our survival, so politics You have no time to waste.
Faced with the end of the world, deliberation, respect for procedures, strategic design, consideration of the long term are a waste of time that cannot be allowed by those who have to ensure their survival.
Democracy as we know it presupposes the idea of continuity, that things do not go to an abrupt end (Jonathan White).
Conservatives and progressives shared at least that assumption, which implied a long historical time.
The liberal right has always defended the idea of the “trickle-down effect” in economics, that is, that the enrichment of a few will later affect the majority, which implies that the rationality of the system depends on having a future in which correct the dysfunctions of the present.
The socialist left also counts on the future, which is not a mere extension of the practices of the present but the time in which either its contradictions will foster a new order or a series of reformist transformations can be carried out.
Behind these ideological approaches, the continuity of history is taken for granted, a continuity in which, pressed by the urgencies of the present, it seems that we have stopped believing.
The current situation illustrates very well the drama with which the elections are experienced, a key element of political life, but which now becomes an agonizing combat governed by the last chance syndrome.
Elections, often understood as plebiscites, represent the last opportunity to save something valuable or to proceed to definitive change, to recover normality or make the desired rupture a reality, where the nation, democracy or humanity is saved, where all of this can be disappear definitively.
Let us remember that Trump used the slogan “America's last hope” in the 2016 elections, which was really only the penultimate one because he now maintains that the 2024 elections are the final battle.
This dramatization has many political consequences.
Continuity over time allows what has been called the “consent of the losers”, that is, the loser accepts the result because he knows that victories and defeats in politics are always provisional and that he will have another opportunity in the future.
If failure is not definitive, then it can be understood as an opportunity to learn, to renew commitment to political objectives and reflect on the convenience of modifying the strategy.
Whoever wins and who loses in this context know that political life is long and learn to combine commitment with patience.
But if we take literally the idea that there is no time to make mistakes, the idea of legitimate opposition loses its meaning.
If we are “the last generation” (like the so-called environmental movement in Germany), then there is no narrative that can justify any failure.
If the present is felt as a critical moment, which does not allow errors or learning and gives rise to irreversible situations, then actors begin to take seriously the idea that they only have one chance.
This explains the resort to the accusation of electoral fraud, as denounced in the assault on the Capitol in 2021 or the institutions of Brasilia in 2023. Where it is assumed that everything depends on a definitive coup, the temptation to win against anyone is very powerful. price or, if it has been lost, to accuse the opponent of modifying the rules of the game.
The main consequence of all this is that politics becomes emergency management.
Governing in a key of urgency erodes, above all, the democratic value of pluralism.
The idea that we do not have time represents a problem for politics because there is no room for disagreement or change of opinion, which are something very typical of politics in a democratic society.
Emergencies favor an elitist style of governing, a protagonism of the executive power, they expand the space of secrecy and weaken democratic control, institutions are seen as too slow and divided.
Of the possible examples that can serve to understand this mentality, I will refer to two taken from the pandemic and climate change.
One of the problems posed by the pandemic was the reduction in control procedures due to the urgency of the situation.
The mask scandal shows that when times accelerate, controls decrease.
The other example is the farmers' conflict, which illustrates the difficulties of combining the long term (the objectives of the fight against climate change) with the short term (the immediate interests of the sector).
We are failing to articulate two different times or, according to the slogan of the “yellow vests”, to reconcile the end of the world with the end of the month;
If we are facing the end of the world there is no reason to attend to the farmers' protests, but those who cannot make ends meet have more urgent concerns than the collapse of civilization.
What should we do to give democracy more time?
The answer is to strengthen the institutions.
Representative democracy has precisely the function of articulating various actors and interests, as well as different times, now and later, making attention to the requirements of the present compatible with the long-term perspective and giving the political process duration and continuity.
Institutions function to the extent that they are equipped with reflexivity and establish procedures and debates that provide political life with the necessary deceleration.
We will only respond adequately to the current crises and produce the transformations we seek if we are able to free politics from its two main defects: excessive personalization and excessive temporal urgency.
If we want transformative causes to produce the desired effects, they must be “depersonalized” and their weight must be largely transferred to institutions and processes.
Furthermore, social transformations are only possible if the haste is moderated and the duration of the interventions is ensured.
There are processes that cannot be accelerated without spoiling their nature, discussions or transformations that need time, insistence, continuity, negotiation and patience.
The real challenge for those who defend a transformative cause is not only to obtain social support in a time of special turmoil, but to maintain it over time.
That is the time we have to give democracy today.
Daniel Innerarity
is a professor of Political Philosophy, an Ikerbasque researcher at the University of the Basque Country and holder of the Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Democracy at the European Institute of Florence.
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