Of the two volumes in Tocqueville’s classic, I enjoy most reading and discussing Volume 2, which is more a critical examination of the promise and perils of democracy and its culture, less about the institutional arrangements and inventive practices of the Americans, which Tocqueville celebrated and which is the focus of Volume 1 of his masterpiece.  But this year, Volume 1 has become especially interesting to me.  I hope for the students also.

I have taught the course many times.  The way it develops always depends upon what’s going on in the world, who is in the class, and how they connect their lives with the challenges of Tocqueville.  We don’t read Tocqueville for his insights and predictions about the details of American life, judging what he got right, what he got wrong.  Rather, we try to figure out how his approach to the problems of democracy can help us critically understand our world and his, democracy in America back then and now.

Assigning the Constitution

This semester, indeed, for the past two weeks, the course has taken an interesting turn.  As we have been reading Tocqueville on the American system of government, political associations and freedom of the press, i.e. Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2, I felt the need to assign an additional shorter reading, The Constitution of the United States of America.  I did this not because I feared that the students hadn’t yet read this central document in the story of democracy in America and beyond (they had), but because I judged that it was time to re-read the text, to note what is in it and what is not, to critically appraise the use of the document as a confirmation of the partisan passions of today, and also to appraise what Tocqueville had to say about American political parties of his day and how his observations apply to our circumstances.

A few days after assigning the reading, Ron Chernow’s op-ed piece in The New York Times underscored my motivation for the assignment.  The Constitution is a complex political document, the product of serious political confrontations and compromise.  “The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything… Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day…Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes.”

Thinking about Political Parties

Because the Constitution was a rich political document in its time, it does not decide the major political confrontations of our day.  Rather, it fuels them, as it did in the first years of the Republic in the tension between the primary advocate of an activist government then, Alexander Hamilton and along with him George Washington, and their primary opponent, Thomas Jefferson and later Andrew Jackson.  The competing readings of The Constitution served as the basis of the American party system (much to the regret of the Founders, opposed as they were to factions).

As my class and I moved on in our discussion of Volume 1, we considered the nature of the American party system.  Was it primarily about petty politics, as Tocqueville thought, in contrast to the big issues of European parties?  Or are there fundamental principles embedded within American partisan contests?  Obviously this is a matter of judgment of the observer. Tocqueville thought that Americans agreed on fundamental principles and argued only about details, that the days of great politics in America were over.  While my students generally agree with him, I don’t.

Considering the Constitution carefully and identifying what it has opened up, it is clear to me that major debates have raged about it since.  The relationship between the government and economic life is not settled by the document but raised.  The role of federal and local authorities is not decided, nor at first was the question of the relationship between freedom and slavery.  Such issues have led to competing legal opinions and decisions, but it seems to me, even more significantly, it has led to big politics, including civil war, major social movements and fundamental changes in the relationship between culture and power, in political culture.  Such issues have animated the actions of political parties in America, including right now.

It may seem that politicians are in it for themselves and that advancement in life is based upon not what you know, but who you know.  It may seem that American political practices are petty and cynical. Indeed, they are.  Tocqueville thought that major issues of governing fundamentals were settled in America and therefore it was the conflict of narrow political interest that would be the basis of American political conflict.  Some would advocate a more active role for government because it was in their immediate interests and others would advocate for minimal government, also based on interest.

But then as now there are those who see the political contest as a matter of fundamental principles, and they debate it accordingly.  There are those, such as Barack Obama and before him Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, indeed all the Democratic Presidents since FDR, who as a matter of principle see the democratic government’s positive role in the pursuit of the common good, and there are those who think the common good is best achieved by the invisible hand of the market.  This was the position of Reagan and his revolutionaries, and with post Reagan Republicans, at least in their rhetoric.

And now it is the position of The Tea Party, but they are on steroids.  The present day Tea Party Patriots seem to forget that there is an important distinction to be made between protesting the actions of a tyrannical government, and protesting and criticizing a democratic elected government that follows all the rules and procedures of the Constitution which they purport to revere.  There are competing principles and judgments, and not just competing interests.

What worries me most about the Tea Party and the Republicans and Independents that support it, aside from the craziness, is that they pretend that the debate was settled two centuries ago, in favor of minimal government and the invisible hand.  What worries me about my students’ appraisal of American politics, which I think they share not only with Tocqueville, but with the majority of their fellow citizens, young and old, is that they don’t appreciate what is at stake in the big political debate.

Andrew Arato is an expert in constitutions, a pressing topic in Turkey right now.

I read the news about the Turkish referendum on constitutional reforms with great interest. Turkey is a bridge between East and West.  Europe meets Asia in modern booming Istanbul. It’s a place where the commitment to democracy and to an open Islam is the official policy of the governing Justice and Development Party.  It’s a place of great hope and promise, where instead of the clash of civilizations, there is dialogue and reinvention. But it is also a place where people committed to secularism worry about the prospects for their modern way of life.  I tried to follow the news reports about what happened, but they were unclear.  I understood that a sweeping package of constitutional reforms were approved, that the referendum purported to bring the Turkish constitution up to European standards, but also that the opposition was claiming that the package was a systematic power grab.  Is this a sign of democratic progress as the ruling party spokesman declared, or is it, as the opposition declared, a significant regression?  I called my friend and New School colleague, Andrew Arato, a distinguished expert on constitutions, who has been working with a group of young scholars on constitutional issues in Turkey.  He agreed to answer my questions. I opened by asking him whether the referendum results were good or bad news?

I think bad. The successful Turkish referendum of September 12 was ultimately about court packing. Not only is the manner of choosing judges for the Court now altered, but six new judges presumably friendly to the government will be added to the Court within 30 days.

This is a point missed by almost all Western commentary on the event. Court packing is always bad business. The way is now almost open for the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, the ruling Party with leaders who have an Islamist, but are committed to membership in the European Union) to remake the country’s secular constitution entirely on its own.

I understand that it is never a good idea to have a political party, let alone a political leader, even one that we passionately support, to have the power to remake a constitution at will. FDR was one of the greatest Presidents in our history, but when he was having a hard time getting his New Deal reforms through the court and tried to pack it with his supporters, it was in retrospect a good thing that the American public and their representatives turned on him.  So the general concern I get.  But do you have particular reasons to be concerned?

It was indeed wrong for Roosevelt to try control judicial outcomes by Court packing.  But the meaning of this device is especially troublesome in potentially more authoritarian settings, for example, the introduction of formal apartheid in South Africa, and during Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency in India. In South Africa, the parliament was about to deprive the colored (mixed race) voters of their franchise, and the Appeals Court resisted. This was overcome by packing  both the court and the Senate. As to Mrs. Gandhi, at issue were both her so-called corrupt practices in an election, as well as the Court’s ability to defend rights against the easy amendment possibilities of the constitution. In the end the Court won, but only after a destructive emergency when the democracy was almost lost.  The packing of the court in Turkey is reminiscent of these two dangerous cases.

Further, it is not obvious that the Turkish electorate would have voted for this type of scheme had it been honestly presented. It was not. The Court packing and changing provisions were only two articles of a highly attractive twenty  six article package that the voters could approve or reject only as a whole. The people had to choose between all or nothing.  This tragically repeats the approach of the military dictator, General Evren, in 1982.  Then: vote for military’s constitution if you want one good thing (namely the end of the junta’s rule) or continue the military dictatorship.  Now: the population had to confirm an immense increase in the power of the ruling party if it wanted any of the many goodies in the package…

The AKP has operated as a moderate Islamic one (they say conservative) so far. But, there is no guarantee that it would continue to do so when it has the power to change the constitution of the country at their will.  The project to combine the secular traditions and institutions in Turkey with the religious commitments of the vast majority of the Turkish population is now apparently going to go unchecked by any political or social force other than the ruling party.

Why just apparently unchecked?

I qualify my judgment for three hopeful reasons. First, because even a packed Court may still act like a Court. The eternity clauses of Turkey’s present constitution concerning secularism and republicanism, plus the preamble involving the separation of powers (incorporated in an eternity clause) still gives the Constitutional Court a foothold to control constitution making, if it wishes to. While the apartheid regime did control its newly named  judges, Mrs. Gandhi in the end did not.

It’s possible that just as in the United States there is no guarantee that the appointed judges will act in the way their patrons want.  They may actually take their constitutional responsibilities seriously using their own judgment.

And there are the relevant European institutions, which until now seem to have been fooled by the package. But, once its real meaning becomes clear, I think they will not be fooled and the response could be devastating.

And further there is the matter of the Turkish electorate itself, it has means to respond and defend the constitutional order.

Nonetheless the key problem remains – the referendum permits Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul of the ruling party to pack the court.  The editors of  The New York Times naively call on them to “not pack the court with political loyalists and religious extremists.” I fear that was the very point of the exercise.

This Tuesday, we went a step further.  I introduced the project to some dear friends and colleagues at the annual opening party of the New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.   The party was a pleasure, as it always is.  I was especially pleased by the response to my developing blog, and the prospect that this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between TCDS and DC, a variation on an old theme.

TCDS and Me

The story of TCDS and my story are intimately connected.  It’s an example of the politics of small things, in which I am one of the central actors.  There is a long version and a short version.  I’ll start the long by highlighting the short with some quick headlines, and hope that we can continue the story’s themes in this new setting.

Elzbieta Matynia (who is the TCDS director) and I each worked on the sociology of theater in Poland, meeting there.   More details about this time later, for now just note that a deep friendship between Elzbieta and my wife, Naomi, and me developed and has endured, through major international and personal crises, martial law in Poland, changes in our social and political circumstances.  We developed parallel careers which met at the New School.  When martial law was declared in Poland in 1981, Elzbieta’s one-year scholarship to study at our university became a lifetime relationship: first as a visiting scholar, then as an adjunct instructor, now as the Director of the Transregional Center and senior member of our Department of Sociology and Committee on Liberal Studies.

The seeds of TCDS were planted when she and I met in Poland.  It was firmly rooted in the mid 80s, when, with her help, I established an unofficial, and in Central Europe clandestine, Democracy Seminar, chaired by Adam Michnik in Warsaw, and Gyorgy Bence in Budapest and me in New York. Vaclav Havel was to chair a section in Prague, but political conditions made this impossible.

In 1989, the clandestine met the open air and bloomed, and the small seminar that I chaired expanded beyond the three countries and beyond my administrative competence and imagination, and became first the East Central Europe Program, directed by Elzbieta.  Later, as our scope broadened to include South Africa, and most of the new states emerging from the former Soviet Union, including the Republics of Central Asia, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies was instituted and flourished due to her passionate and visionary leadership.

Chris Hani, left, with Nelson Mandela

All sorts of scholarly exchanges, incredible summer institutes in Krakow and now Wroclaw, Poland, in Cape Town and soon to be Johannesburg, South Africa; seminars, lectures, films, performances and conferences were developed, presented and flourished.  Tuesday, we were opening this year’s activities, but there was an unusual strained, though hopeful, note.  Elzbieta was off to South Africa the next day, as a Fulbright Research Fellow to conduct a study of the difficult case of the assassination of Chris Hani by the exiled, anti-communist Pole, Janusz Waluś, an assassination that almost derailed the peaceful dismantling of the Apartheid regime.  She hopes her study will include interviews with the incarcerated assassin.  How could someone who was associated with a liberation movement kill a hero of a similar movement?

As we wished her good bye and good luck, students and faculty who were returning from this year’s Institute in Wroclaw caught up with each, as did veterans of the Institutes past and other TCDS activities.  Ann Snitow, the co-editor of  the important, Feminist Memoir Project and author of the brilliant “A Gender Diary,” and the leading force behind the Network of East West Women, gave a quick and unfortunately dark account of how the commemoration of the Gdansk agreements went.  The commemoration of the great achievement of independent workers and their supporters against the Communist regime, she sadly reported, made little sense, was confused and poorly organized.  Ann, my beloved interlocutor in many past Institutes in Krakow, settled in conclusion on a colorful Yiddish term meaning all mixed up and without meaning, kitschy, overly ornate, “ungapotchka,” to summarize the event.

And I introduced DC, on a more hopeful note, inviting everyone to take a look and think of how they might add their voices, their insights, their deliberate considerations about the pressing issues of the day with meaning and to the point.  I was pleased by the excitement and anticipate that my many friends and colleagues who were at the New York party will join us, but also that the great number of TCDS alumni and participants from around the world will join in.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope that we can continue to discuss together serious problems, as we have done in Poland and South Africa, and in the many countries of East and Central Europe, and in New York.  Please do make a comment, ask a question, or just say hello.  I hope this venue will help us to continue the ongoing discussions that for me started so many years ago in Poland, and are now centered in New York, but can become active here.  I await Elzbieta’s first report about how things are going on her new adventure.   And I will further explain in future posts what I have done at TCDS and earlier in the Democracy Seminar, as it informs what I hope we will do at DC.