The role of Civil Society in Democratization

Gopal Siwakoti 'Chintan', Kathmandu

Civil society can be considered as a society of free citizens and communities where all are independent to express their views, manage their day to day affairs and be able to participate in all activities in the society that affect their lives. It is also an expression of a just, humane and more civilized society that if free from social and economic exploitation and political repression. A society cannot be considered a civil society where local peoples and communities have no equal rights and opportunities to participate in free and democratic political process, e.g. free, fair impartial, participatory and periodic electoral process for democratic governance; access to justice in an affordable manner, (e.g. an independent and efficient judiciary which is free from corruption, and guarantee of legal aid victims by the state) and the right to minimum and humane living standards, like nutritious food for survival, adequate housing and health care. This framework can be considered a combination of basic indicators, and not just limited to periodic elections as the only guarantee of a civil society.

The issue is also about whether we are advocating a civil society for individuals or for the society and the community as a whole. The general trend is that those who advocate for individuals rights are the free-market-style western capitalist model of civil society, and those advocate for the collective rights and interests are the proponents of a truly democratic-socialist one with a competitive economy and/or a socialist-communist society with a regulated economy in the larger interest of the general public.

Democracy and Democratization

To fully understand the role of a civil society in democratization, we first need to define what democracy and the concept of democratization mean for us. In the first place, we need to conceptualize the idea of democracy based on our own social and cultural environment, tradition, the process of decision-making and governance, the issue of social equality, economic justice and so on.

The definition of democracy varies from society and culture to culture. If the goal of democracy is to guarantee equal justice for everyone then there can be no single and universal model of democracy. The goal of democracy may be the same as to welfare of everyone in the society, but its objectives may be different, based on the needs and priorities of each society and the means to achieve them. As far as the present trends of democracies are concerned they can be classified as capitalist (western), socialist democratic (Scandinavian and some countries of Europe) and socialist (China and Cuba). We can also call 'parliamentary democracy' as a separate system which in itself is a western-style capitalist democracy based on the multi-party system as one of the (popular models) under the British constitutional monarchy. Therefore, it would be wrong to call the western-style multi-party system the only universal framework and model of democracy.

The blunder that countries like Nepal and others are making is the attempt at exactly copying the western-style of multi-party system as the only model of democracy. The consequences of such a mistake has been the creation of a so called new brand Third World Democracy where the people are asked to vote for the elite, and not participate in the process, and the elite are asked to rule their 'subjects' according to western economic and military 'masters'. In such a situation, the gap between the people and the rulers reaches a point where they will gradually be forced to resist by all means, leading even to community and ethnic violence. The past five decades of experience has shown that the main interests of western 'democracies' have been to suppress the voice of the local people for the expansion of the global market and the exploitation of countries' natural resources which has helped sustain dictatorships in many countries of Asia, Africa and South America – sometimes with fake elections as in the case of Marcos in the Philippines. So the basic issue for debate is: What kind of democracy are we talking about, and for whom?

Therefore, when it comes to the definition of democracy these days, the fundamental question is whether or not we want to separate political democracy from economic democracy. If we are talking about political democracy in isolation then it does not matter for the majority as to who is ruling and how.

On the other hand, if we are talking about economic democracy alone then the question is whether the goal of human life is only to survive or also live as a creative creation of nature. So the main dilemma and the challenge is whether and how we can maintain a balance between these two. It cannot be achieved by just copying a model of democracy, but only with the development of a balanced approach to both types of democracy in the local context.

Nepal is neither a society of reasonably perfect political democracy nor a country with adequate economic democracy. Our past experience with copying only the positive aspects from, the various systems has been rhetoric rather than a reality. Instead, we have gradually been loosing our indigenous knowledge and identity, at least at the community and ethnicity levels, as a nation with distinct and diverse cultures and distinct civilizations. On the other hand we had also experienced a Panchayati dictatorship that destroyed all the political and economic foundations in 30 years of autocratic rule in the name of unique party less and exploitation less society. However, the myth of a 'Third World Democracy' has neither been a system in itself not a model, but an abstract terminology. If we are to categorize democracies based on the economic system then there is no reason to argue for the concept of universalism only in the field of human rights.

Therefore, the challenge to the Nepali academia and intelligentsia is to first clear the concept of democracy, define it in the Nepali context and develop a framework for political and economic set up under which we can exist as a real civil society. Based on the past seven years' of multi-party experience, it would be in appropriate to state that we really have achieved something significant. One thing that we have definitely achieved is the new classification of the term democracy e.g. new democracy (Naulo Janabad), peoples' multi-party democracy (Janatako Bahudaliya Janabad) and multi party parliamentary system or free market democracy (Bahudaliya Sansadiya Vyabastha). However, none of the proponents or opponents of these various forms of democracies have yet provided satisfactory political and socio-economic framework and the peaceful means of struggle to achieve them. It needs a clear analysis of the current domestic and global class struggles and the socio-economic problems associated with them.

In Nepal, civil society has not yet emerged in which the majority could participate for real socio-economic and political change. It would be difficult to think of any civil society in the state of distrust and confusion that we are facing now in the absence of a real national agenda for change. That fact is that we cannot impose any type of democracy, particularly by ignoring the traditionally existing norms and values of governance that are still rooted among various ethnic and indigenous communities which are relatively based on the principals of equality, justice and non-discrimination. We need to think about the conceptualization of democracy in our own terms, and not necessarily on the speeches of western thinkers, philosophers or leaders who still reject the idea of human rights in social and economic fields. Therefore, it is fundamental to define the nature and scope of democracy before we define the role of a civil society in democratization.

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