Chapter 2. Literature review
2.2 Paradox of Tolerance
2.2.3 Democracy
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other means can be employed to keep them in check they should be used first. In Czech Chinese relations it means to redefine the relations to be more balanced and equal not to reach for short-sided solutions like blocking the Chinese social media as the Czech Republic would lose its openness and become as intolerant as the PRC. This thesis thus will use the paradox of tolerance to draw new lines in the Czech Chinese relations especially in the spheres where the Chinese sharp power focuses the most.
2.2.3 Democracy
It is important for this thesis to also define what constitutes democracy. That has to be done because the first research question is examining whether the Chinese sharp power has an impact on the state of Czech democracy. The debate about what constitutes democracy is long and very broad.
In general, democracy is defined as a system where the people have the authority to pick their legislative authorities which then enact laws and policies on their behalf.62 Who are the people who are picking the authorities, what are the relations among them are the main questions of the democratic theory. Core topics of this issue are various freedoms, equality, minorities, and their position, voting and elections, and rights too.
Joseph Schumpeter defines democracy in a minimalistic way as a system where people can elect their representatives to perform their will on their behalf where the people elected are competing for the votes. 63 On the other hand, a more developed description of what constitutes democracy provides Larry Diamond who forms ten necessary conditions. The first is that the state controls key decisions which are all under the authority of elected civilian leadership. In a democracy, the executive power is constrained. No group that adheres to constitutional principles cannot be forbidden to form a party and participate in the elections. Cultural, ethnic, religious, and other minorities are not prohibited from expression. People have other means for expression than just elections. There are other sources of information such as independent media. Substantial various
62 DAHL, Robert. Democracy. [online]. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020. Retrieved from:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy. [visited: 17.5.2020].
63 SHUMPETER, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. [online]. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Retrieved from:
https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/Schumpeter,%20Capitalism,%20Socialism%20and%20Democracy.pdf. ISBN 0-203-20205-8. [visited: 16.5.2020].
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freedoms for people. People are equal in front of the law. Independent judiciary system protecting the liberties of people. Rule of law.64
Robert Dahl in his book Democracy and Its Critics from 1989 argues that no state in history did not achieve a democratic regime and he calls it a political utopia. From his perspective, he argues that to be truly democratic society has to meet five criteria. They are effective participation, voting equality at the decisive stage, enlightened understanding, control of the agenda, and inclusiveness.
The effective participation states that people must have adequate and equal chances to form their preferences and ask questions about the public agenda together with the expression of their reasons for one outcome of the other. The second criterion, voting equality at the decisive stage states that the judgment of every citizen will be weighted and counted as equal to everyone else. The enlightened understanding is concerned with equal opportunities for each citizen to be able to discover and confirm what choice would serve his or her interest the best. The fourth criterion, called control of the agenda states that demos must have the chance to decide what political issues and agenda matter and what should be brought up for deliberation. The last one, inclusiveness is concerned with the equality which must apply to all citizens as everyone has a legitimate stake in the political process.65
Another scholar conceptualizing the democracy was David Easton. He does not use a similar approach to the usage of the specific criteria that are normally associated with the democracy such as the need for elections, a list of specific freedoms, and other main points today referred to as the pillars of democracy. He noted that there are many definitions of democracy as every country considering itself democratic needs a different definition of what exactly makes it democratic. But he confronts this topic from the position that democracy is the regime type as a monarchy or authoritarian therefore has to have certain general characteristics. In his book The Political Analysis from 1965 argues that because it is a regime it puts constraints onto the people. These limits then can be put into three main categories: authority structure, values, and norms.
Authority structure means the formal and informal patterns in which political power is distributed and organized within the community. That means that even though every type of democracy is
64 DAHL, ALAN, SHAPIRO. The Democracy Source Book. [online]. MIT, 2003. Retrieved from:
http://pavroz.ru/files/democracysourcebook.pdf. [visited: 16.5.2020].
65 DAHL, Richard. Democracy and Its Critics. Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-3000-4938-2. Page: 221.
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organized differently, parliamentary versus presidential democracy, there are constraints of power present in each of them. Values are there to provide the boundaries for daily politics that can be formulated without violating the beliefs of the community. Lastly, the norms are the kinds of procedures and behaviors that are expected by the people and which are acceptable to the people.66 Another scholar who also attempted to conceptualize democracy was Richard Kimber in his paper On Democracy which builds on his previous paper from 1985 which he published with Keith M.
Dowding. He conceptualizes the democracy as a system that has three fundamental principles like Easton, instead of trying to name all the specific criteria and freedoms needed for a country to have in order to be democratic. Fundamental principles he presents are upward control, political equality, and the norms.
The upward control Kimber defines as the ultimate sovereignty resides at the lowest level of the authority structure. Even though it might appear that the individual cannot control the authorities there is a control in the sense that demos67 have the ultimate sovereignty and through actions can put restrictions on the authorities. In a democracy, it is about the possibilities for demos to express themselves and their preferences about public policies. There can be easily distinguished six possible channels for demos to express their will. Voting, campaigning, group activity, contacting, protesting, and violence, but of course not all of them are automatically compatible with the democracy. 68
This does not mean that an individual should expect that his or her needs and preferences will be the ones directly having an impact on the authorities and becoming the collective policy. It means that that individual should be able if he or she chooses to have means and the possibility to input their preferences to the process that determines the final views on the topic of authority control.
The specific processes are not needed to be specified the important is their existence and ability of choice for the individual. 69 It is apparent that the election on any level is a most common and yet also very limited method of control there are other processes which might be also very important
66 EASTON, David. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York, Wiley, 1965. ISBN 9780471229407. Page: 193.
67 The populace of a democracy as a political unit.
68 KIMBER, Richard. On Democracy. [online]. Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 12 – No. 3 1989. Retrieved from:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.1989.tb00090.x. [visited: 15.5.2020]. Page 204.
69 Ibid, [visited: 15.5.2020]. Page 205.
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that is depended on the nature of the particular regime for example in the representative form of democracy they have bigger importance than in the direct democracy.70
The second principle Kimber speaks about political equality. This speaks only about political and no other equality. This aspect of equality is in the terms that all members of demos are treated as having a political preference of equal weight. The second aspect Kimber adds is that there has to be an equal opportunity of exercising their rights. That means that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in the upward control. 71
The third aspect is the norms. Kimber points out that democratic regimes can carry out decisions which might be undemocratic. To ensure that this behavior will not be happened institutions are created and the legal system is put in place. Kimber argues that the legal system by itself is not enough as there is a need for accepted norms which will limit the decisions and behavior. That is because some democratic laws can intentionally or unintentionally discriminate against certain parts of the society which means that legal rules have an democratic effect by being anti-democratic in essence or produce anti-anti-democratic results under certain conditions. Further, no individual behavior cannot go beyond the principles of democracy even if that behavior is legal under the institutionalized and legal rules. Which means that this reason implies the general acceptance of the upward control and political equality and together creates kind of a meta-rule.
This then means that if the meta-rules prohibit some action or type of behavior even if that same action or behavior is legal under institutionalized rules that said action must be anti-democratic.72 It is apparent from Kimber's approach that this theory then does not require to provide a specific list of rights like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, academic freedoms, and freedom to protest, etc. He argues that is because they emerge naturally from the decision-making mechanisms such a free and fair election which are a type of upward control the free information is crucial as well as for political equality if demos decide to participate he or she should not be limited to freely express him or herself, therefore, freedom of speech is automatically given under this approach.73
70 KIMBER, Richard. On Democracy. [online]. Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 12 – No. 3 1989. [visited:
15.5.2020]. Page 208.
71 Ibid, [visited: 15.5.2020]. Page 209.
72 Ibid, [visited: 15.5.2020]. Page 211.
73 Ibid, [visited: 15.5.2020]. Page 212.
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The reason why Kimber's definition is the most suitable for this thesis is that Kimber's definition is not based on the standardized pillars of democracy because as the sharp power is defined as it does not primary target codified normative pillars of democracy as defined by Schumpeter, Dahl, and others. Because the tactics and goals of the sharp power are not to limit certain populations from voting which would be against one of the democratic pillars but rather it is to poison the information stream and to create the confusion. In other words, sharp power tactics are also not illegal but against democracy nonetheless, therefore, this thesis will be using term Democracy as defined by Kimber in this section.