DEMOCRATIE REPRESENTATIVE ET GOUVERNEMENT D’OPINION: . COMPLEMENTARITE OU CONTRADICTION
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF PUBLIC OPINION: COMPLEMENT OR CONTRADICTION

Summary/Abstract: Traditional representative democracy, firmly anchored in the institutions of the legal state, is contending with a serious rival in the direct manifestations of public opinion, a rival whose presence is ever more tangible and influential. But, that rivalry is not sufficiently definite because there is a possibility that it can be expressed in two ways: sometimes it involves something that is complementary, and in other cases it refers to a more or less perverted contradiction in terms of the representational system which, in principle, remains the core of every pluralist society. In the first case, public opinion intervenes in the period between elections: it adds refinement to democracy, enabling the middle class, “foundation” of society to express itself in a continued and selective manner, because certain factors (corporations, or various social groups) stimulate the movement of public opinion, depending on the specific topic, and that means that they have special demands. In the second case, the rule of public opinion endeavours to overrun the representational system. With its unique means public opinion endeavours to dictate “its own rules” to the representatives who received their mandate from the electoral body on the basis of the democratic postulate according to which it is considered that they express “the will of the nation”, in other words, the people. Essentially, but by no means exclusively, democracy is a political system that is codified as the legal state. In essence, political mediation is merely a technology which, nevertheless, expresses a certain philosophy. In order to avoid barbaric wars, resulting from the inevitable confrontation between different social factors, it strives to prevent their direct conflict. Democracy was created so as to wield a civilising influence on confrontation, at the same time recognising the legitimacy of differences. Hence, the integration and differentiation of two poles of democratic dialectics. The democratic struggle that takes place in everyday life is expressed by means of counterposing concrete and “specific” political projects regarding the development of society. Otherwise, confrontation would result in fighting with more drastic means. Thus, one arrives at the desired democratic result: an optimal one, and that means moderate conflictuality. And it is possible to regulate this with a general, impersonal legal norm that is established beforehand. The prestige the rule of public opinion enjoys today is such that there is an evident inclination to see in it the only, and that is, the positive aspect of things: the modernisation of the “old” representative democracy. In debates, whether political, or purely intellectual, not enough emphasis is laid on the critical idea which points to the danger of demagogy if public opinion is dogmatised. Public opinion is elevated, at the expense of the electoral body, to the degree that elections are subjected to the impulses of its examination. In that way, public opinion shows a tendency to become sovereign instead of the people, even though public opinion is not the people, far from it, as we shall demonstrate. The conclusion that there is a “crisis” or “twilight” of representative democracy has become a general position in political science. But, such a political view of the weakness of representative democracy is often onesided: it does not take into consideration the improvements that are carried out in the course of several decades and all the attempts at adjustment which we can perceive even today in all, and especially in the European systems of representative democracy. Furthermore, in referring to the “crisis of representative democracy” one forgets the fundamental democratic postulate which must always remind us of the fact that democracy is either representative or it does not exist. We cannot speak of the “twilight” of representative democracy and, at the same time, not be at all concerned about the future of our model of democracy. The movement that aspires to re-arranging representative democracy and which takes place upon the basis of legal principles and within the frameworks of its classical institutions has acquired a rival in the form of the parallel creation of a new phenomenon called the rule of public opinion. Instead of elections, this new form of rule relies on the examination of public opinion and, instead of the majority principle, upholds the illusion of unanimity. In it, public debate, which is the focal point of the democratic process, no longer has the same meaning it once had as the “institutional dialogue” in the traditional model of parliamentarism. From now on, different minority factors will proclaim their demands and values on their own. In the situation of the hegemony of public opinion, there lies the risk that the culture of subjugation will suppress the culture of participation, or even the culture of resistance. Hence, the need exists for a democratic alertness, whose role it is to confront “counter-facts” with facts, and that means events, numbers or images, just as in the model of representative democracy “counter-ideas”, projects or different policies are weighed against each other so as to give the people the possibility of choosing. Because, the true choice in democracy rests with the people (voters, consumers, readers) who make their choice in conditions of competition, and this should be as balanced and honorable as possible so as to instill confidence. All the more so, because choice, by its very nature, embodies subjective values as an unavoidable criterion. While political discourse in a pluralist democracy should propose a balanced choice between two opposing projects that encompass the goals and the means required to attain them, a moral discourse does not provide for the possibility of choice: it is impossible, legitimately to be against good and in favour of evil, or in favour of falsehood and against truth, (in the case when the discourse is not moralist but scientistic). It finally emerges that the question regarding the discourse of public opinion is essentially ideological: then the problem arises as to the general legitimacy of one of the participants, yesterday they were communists, today natioalists, then fundamentalists, or even integrists. But, in its essence, democracy, we repeat once again, is not an ideological but a political system. In a democracy it is believed that the fundamental ideological question has been resolved by a basic or systemic consensus; after that, the question of the legitimacy of the political factors is resolved by law, or the citizens decide on it by voting in elections. Hence, that question may be a part of the public debate, but it should be neither dominant nor constantly present. However, where the rule of public opinion is concerned, problems are posed much more as moral, scientific or ideological problems than as political ones. And that is why the rule of public opinion cannot occupy the central space of representative democracy. It can complement it, but it must not assume full control of it.

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