Liberal democracies are beleaguered nearly everywhere. One cause of democracy’s crisis is paradoxical: its astonishing success in the last few decades. No other system of government is now as legitimate as democracy
Autocracy, aristocracy, monarchy – none of them is a credible competitor. This is an unprecedented situation in history.
It is only in authoritarian countries, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to name a few or illiberal democracies such as Hungary, that it still is forbidden or dangerous to criticize the ruler.
In our time, one can criticize this or that failing of a particular democracy, but not the principle of democracy itself.
Democracy’s only and exceptionally dangerous rival now is another kind of democracy: ‘real democracy’ or a form of populism.
Hence the prevalent pattern of political crisis in so many countries is one where elites are challenged and discredited (often by other elites) in the name of the people, demanding greater power and representation.
The most recent instance of this pattern is now playing out in Israel but is far from the only country where this is currently happening.
The new government of Prime Minister Netanyahu has launched what it calls a ‘reform of the judicial system’ - aimed ostensibly at reining in the power of the Supreme Court and its ‘unelected judges’, reinforcing the power of the people and reviving ‘real democracy’.
The plan’s opponents call it a ‘judicial coup’ or ‘revolution in government’. Many Israelis, therefore, fear for their freedoms and way of life. The proposed judicial overhaul has provoked massive protests and street demonstrations.
The government evidently did not expect the intensity, broadness, and social composition of the counter-mobilization – ranging from top bankers, ex-chiefs of security and intelligence agencies, through leading jurists and economists, to ordinary people from all walks of life.
The overall impression is that the Israeli prime minister and leading government figures have been inhabiting a political bubble and hardly know and understand the civil society over which they purport to rule.
Israel is for now in a state of extreme uncertainty. But it may already have taught the world and itself one important lesson: the people are not necessarily a manipulable, amorphous mass that unscrupulous political elites can instrumentalize and inflame at will.
The people may prove that their role is not limited to voting periodically and that they may well formulate a choice of their own.
By Professor Hillay Zmora
Hillay Zmora is professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er-Sheva