Dark Side Of Democracy Research Articles

The concept of «The dark side of democracy» by M. Mann for explaining ethnic cleansing (Evidence from Jugoslavia and Ukraine)

The issue of democracy in the countries of post-Soviet space is of particular interest to the scientific and expert community. Not the last role in these processes was played by the escalation of the number of ethnic conflicts that have taken place in the territories of these countries. However, the American political scientist M. Mann has offered a new perspective on processes of democratization. He developed the concept of “the dark side of democracy”. According to the author, democracy can be seen not only in the traditional sense as “people power”, but as “the power of a particular ethnic group”. In the second approach, widespread ethnic cleansing that occur in the course of the development of conflicts at the national (religious) grounds. Аll the negative feelings, from class to religious hatred is a reason for the intensification of ethnic nationalism. In the case of escalation of conflict, he began to absorb particular components of ethnic confrontation (favoritism in respect of individual group members, discrimination against outsiders the existence of ethnic tensions, the presence of horizontal inequalities between culturally divided groups). While maintaining these trends, says M. Mann, we can say that the dark side of democracy is expressed in the perversion of the liberal or socialist ideals of democracy. According to M. Mann, at a time when certain ethnic or religious group (Turks, Hutus, Albanians) begin classify themselves as the true exponents of the popular will, is a perversion of the true democratic values and democracy as a whole. Referring to the experience of the Soviet Union, M. Mann notes that the role of such a “privileged” political actor in socialist societies the assigned classes. The analyst notes that a particularly brutal and bloody purge — a phenomenon of modernity, since in earlier times they were not as widespread as in the 80-90-years of the twentieth the twentieth century. As the most striking instance of the countries in which the concept of the dark side of democracy became widespread, the author of the article was chosen Yugoslavia (period 80’s-90’s of the twentieth century) and Ukraine (modern political processes in the country occurring since 2014 to present). These states were chosen because of the similarity of the processes of democratization, the presence of ethnic conflict (the confrontation between Albanians, Croats, Serbs in Jugoslavia and the Western and South-Eastern part of Ukraine), as well as the presence in both countries political actors seeking to justify pre-emptive right to the sovereignty of a particular territory.

INTERNAL POLITICAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE ROOT CAUSES OF CONFLICT DURING TRANSITIONS TO DEMOCRACY

IntroductionDemocracy has been linked to prevalence of peaceful societies. The theory that democracies do not fight each other led to a major push by the int ernational community to expand democracy globally in the wake of the anticommunist struggle of the Cold War era. The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, for example, routinely include the development of democracy and the rule of law in post-conflict countries. Recent reviews of UN peacebuilding have pointed out however, that peace and stability may not be well served by a too rapid introduction of democracy and other such liberal policy prescriptions.1Indeed, the nexus between democracy and peace has also been examined critically from various angles by scholars in light of internal conflict and violent unrest in states undergoing a democratic transition.2 Experts cautioned against the "dark side of democracy" and the rise of "illiberal democracy" (Mann, 1999; Zakaria 2007). During such transitions, the risk of inter-sate war may increase because emerging democracies typically go through a rocky transition period during which they become more conflict prone than states without a changing regime (Daxecker 2007; Mansfield and Snyder 1995). Daxecker notes that substantial change to democracy significantly lowers the risk of conflictual for eign policy behavior . As democracy deepens and strengthens, rates of conflict initiation decrease (ibid., p. 544).The transition to and deepening of democracy in Southeast Asia is by no means complete, and in fact is a slow, grinding process. Peou's categorization of the 11 polit ical r egimes in Southeast Asia at the end of 2014 clearly revealed the road that democracy had to travel in the region. He classified them as: " undemocratic states " under military dominance (Myanmar, aka Burma, though this may change after the November 2016 election), one under monarchical rule (Brunei), and those with one-communist-party systems (Laos and Vietna m); "more democratic" countr ies such a s those t hat ma intain hegemonic-party regimes, but that are not liberal - Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia; and four out of the 11 that can be considered " unconsolidated liberal democratic"- Indonesia, Thailand (until May 2014), the Philippines, a nd T imor -Leste (a ka East T imor ) (Peou, 2014). T his great variety of regimes, inclusive of dictatorial and one party States belied the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) purposive adoption of democratic governance as a regional norm in its 2007 Charter.Southeast Asia's multiple transitions to democracy in the last 20 years ha ve bor ne out t he linka ge between democratic transitions a nd int er nal political conflict. It is important for ASEAN, individually and collectively, to identify and address the root causes of conflict during democratic transition processes as the region works towards creating a completed security community, a people-center ed community and an economic community.3 The progression of liberal democracy is arguably an important aspect for the consolidation of all of these but it may well be in regression across the region, with the exception of Indonesia.This paper4 proceeds by examining the turbulent uptake in democracy, the risks of conflict and the principal factors giving rise to violent political conflict in democratic transitions.1. The Rocky Uptake in DemocracyThe region has experienced an impressive uptake of democratic governance. The Philippines' "People Power" routing of the dictatorial Marcos regime in 1986 was followed by Thailand's first democratic Constitution in 1997 and, a decade later, by the fall of the Suharto regime and Indonesia's first general elections in 1999. Malaysia's democracy also seemed to have taken a positive turn after the departure of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who was not shy of bending Constitutional rules (Majid, 2009). In Singapore, a slight opening up of political space followed the passing over of power from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong in 1990 and then to Lee Hsien Loong in 2004, though the ruling People's Action Party is assured to win and the opposition remains weak. …

Cleansing violence in the Tajik Civil War: framing from the dark side of democracy

This paper examines the violence in the Tajik Civil War (1992–1997). The actions of both sides mimicked ethnic cleansing as civilian settlements were targeted. The fragmented ethno-regional identities of the republic had historically lived together peacefully, so this style of violence was unanticipated. However, its patterns resemble similar events in the past 40 years that have been examined by other scholars. By conceptualizing it as a modern phenomenon that can be compared to, I develop a better understanding of this form of violence in the Tajik Civil War and place it within scholarly work on ethnic cleansing.

RELIGIOUS DEMOCRATIZATION IN INDONESIA: STRENGTHENING THE PRO-CEDURAL AND SUBSTANTIAL RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY

Inspired by the book of Michael Mann about the dark side of democracy that discusses the paradox between the ideality of democratic values and empirical realities of violence in the name of freedom (democracy), this paper begins with the exposure of the paradox, such as the rise of the violent conflict between groups of people (both ethnic and religious-based) and the high prevalence of violence between religious groups in Indonesia. Even worse, a very wrenching violence involves state actors (rulers). This paper tries to understand the roots of the paradox, with a look at how the relationship between state and religion and the religious community trend of Indonesia (especially Muslims). The author argues that the democratization of religion is a solution to the issues. To answer what kind of religious democracy lives in Indonesia, the author analyzes through a religious procedural (or constitutional) democratic dimension and religious substantial democratic dimension. The phenomenon of disobedience of law and system and the euphoria of law-making that reflects “intolerance” in several places in Indonesia display the fundamental issue in the religious procedural democracy. Whereas in the context of religious substantial democracy, the prevailing trend of religion that serves as a political and economic vehicle and ignores religion as a substantial aspect of the behavior of the Indonesian society has resulted in the marginalization of religious position and function. Then, the infiltration of the model of political Islam has also led to alienation of the character of the Islamic society of Indonesia, from a democratic pattern to a revival (radical) one. In this light, the author needs to present a strategy to encourage religious democracy in Indonesia, structurally through formulating the ideal relation model between state and religion and culturally through a substantial pattern of religion embedded with the character of Indonesian religious communities as well as the need to revitalize the true Indonesian Islamic model which will be intrinsically familiar with the principles of democracy.
 
 Key words: Democracy, religious procedural, substantial democracy, intole­rance, law and system of disobedience.

Majoritarian democracy and globalization versus ethnic diversity?

While some types of democracy can sustain ethnic and cultural diversity, others can clearly undermine it. In The Dark Side of Democracy, Michael Mann argues that extreme crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing tend to occur, or at least be legitimized, within a majoritarian democracy framework. This article broadens Mann's approach in two directions: first, it confirms that majoritarian democracy in plural societies can provide the pre-existing institutional context where conflict, nationalism and exclusion can thrive, eventually degenerating into self-destruction. Second, it focuses on the tendency by some governments to turn to patriotism and populism as sources of legitimacy at a time when the latter appears to be crumbling. In addition, the article questions both the ‘democratic peace’ and the ‘failed democratization’ approaches for their reliance on an ideal type and fixed notion of democracy, arguing that the latter has been weakened by neoliberal globalization, particularly as it interacts with the legacy of pre-existing forms of majoritarianism. The article concludes that these forces need to be studied simultaneously in order to have a broader picture of the contemporary weakening of democratic practices and institutions within some nation-states.

Symposium 5: Athenian Democracy & Networked Learning Communities

The Athenian democracy is worthy of study if for no other reason than that it was inspiration for many academic fields. This project highlights some institutions and policies of the Athenian democracy, during its flowering in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, in order to interpret them for the benefits of networked learning communities. Concepts such as ephebes and the power of reward can be applied to both the ancient and digital era, without implying an exact parallel. New members (ephebes) need training to create their e-portfolios, acquire digital literacy and epistemic fluency to be eligible to contribute to and benefit from community management. Discussion forums could be an arena for dialogue and information exchange. Allocating labor, e-community managers could fulfill the potential of technology-enhanced learning and tutors would able to select and distribute resources that could be useful and applicable. Praxis and democratic ideals are mirrored in the framework of an economy of knowledge. Epistemologically speaking, an economy of knowledge can be seen as a theory for acquiring the full benefits and costs of coming to know and use knowledge. This theory of knowledge could be a core concept in network learning. This theory does not presume full knowledge, but it does presume democratic social construction of knowledge. On ontological grounds, subjectivity implies that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose from in dealing with the world. The reliability of democracy increases as different points of views transformed into a socially ‘agreed’ way of interaction and participation. The dark side of democracy more closely related to NL communities could shade mainly the ideas of irrational decision, monoculture (single, homogeneous culture without diversity) and demagogy. To illuminate dark corners of democratic e-communities, a form of ‘aristocratic democracy’ is used as a metaphor for the social regime. The term, aristocracy, in the Greek sense of the word, means that the best rules in every domain. To top it all, cultural pluralism could light democratic e-communities, with creativity or conflict that can promote critical thinking and dialogue.Praxis and further research are required to test the validity of the theory presented.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Democracy and Nationalism

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Democracy and Nationalism

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, and: Moderne Zeiten? Krieg, Revolution und Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert [Modern Times? War, Revolution, and Violence in the 20th Century] (review)

Reviewed by: The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, and: Moderne Zeiten? Krieg, Revolution und Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert [Modern Times? War, Revolution, and Violence in the 20th Century] Vladimir Solonari Michael Mann , The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. 590 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 052183130X. $70.00 (cloth). 584 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0521538548. $24.99 (paper). Jörg Baberowski , ed., Moderne Zeiten? Krieg, Revolution und Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert [Modern Times? War, Revolution, and Violence in the 20th Century]. 205 pp. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2006. ISBN 352536735X. €26.90. The term "ethnic cleansing" entered the English-language lexicon in the early 1990s in reference to bloody events in the former Yugoslavia. In his 2001 book Norman M. Naimark argued that, though genocide was not the same as ethnic cleansing, the latter had a "terrifying potential" for the former. In particular, Nazi policy toward Jews, which started as ethnic cleansing, "seamlessly evolved … into a campaign of mass murder and industrial killing, the Shoah."1 In 2005, Michael Mann brought this thinking one step further: not only did he treat the Holocaust as a case of ethnic cleansing, but he also integrated its analysis into the quest for a sociological theory purporting to explain why and under what conditions ethnic cleansing appears and spills over into genocidal violence. Though Mann was primarily looking for similarities among various instances of ethnic cleansing, what his book really achieves is to alert its reader to the differences between those cases in which the government played the role of initiator and accomplisher of the policy, and those in which it primarily responded to the pressure from below. The Holocaust is the most obvious example of the former and the Yugoslav civil war of the latter, with other cases lying between them. Mann argues that all occurrences of ethnic cleansing and genocide should be seen as resulting from a protracted process of "radicalization" under conditions of war and perceived threat from the ethnic group that the perpetrators want to "cleanse." The terms that are central to his exposés are, besides "radicalization," "night and fog of war," "rival and believable claims [End Page 263] over the [same] territory" advanced by different groups, "descent into violence," "caging" (meaning the socialization of would-be perpetrators into a violence-valuing and violence-practicing milieu isolated from a wider society), and the like. Mann consistently refuses to believe any evidence that the governments might have contemplated and developed plans of murderous ethnic cleansing and genocide well in advance of when events started to unravel and talks in a way that suggests that they were always responding to social pressure and perceived threats. The same goes for ordinary perpetrators: it was not so much their ideologies or phobias as the way they were "caged" that developed their acceptance and taste for violence and cruelty, making them serial killers. While I have a lot of sympathy for all this, I am perturbed by how little attention Mann pays to the role of racial science and eugenics in the case of the Holocaust. True, Mann does acknowledge that this case does not really fit into his theory of ethnic cleansing (I do not think he uses the word "theory," but I do believe that it is what the book amounts to) for many reasons, but primarily because Jews could not be seen as laying any claim to German territory. But he argues this observation away by saying that Hitler himself believed in the paranoiac imagery of Jews leading Slavs to contest sovereignty over German land (503). Here, however, Mann confuses "Slavs" with Soviet communism: Hitler never claimed that the Slavs were enslaved by Jews everywhere—only those living in the Soviet Union were—but it was the Poles who contested sovereignty with the Germans, not Soviet Slavs. Besides, substituting Hitler's paranoia for a "credible threat over Germans' territory" which, according to Mann, had to be felt as such by many Germans before they would be driven to commit genocide against Jews, undermines the coherence of the theory itself. Aware of that, Mann argues that the Holocaust is too "unique...

Turkey: The Year of Living Dangerously

Turkish democracy passed its “maturity” test in 2007. The massive shift of power from the Kemalist establishment to the rising, mostly provincial elites and their allies culminated in the landslide victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the summer, which increased and consolidated its electorate after its first electoral victory in 2002. One of the main fault lines of the Turkish social and political order, secularism, took centre stage in the military's interference in the presidential election debacle, the ensuing massive demonstrations and the parliamentary and presidential elections that followed. At the same time, xenophobic nationalism, the dark side of democracy, raised its ugly head, fed further by the exacerbation of PKK violence. With the AKP's monopolisation of power, Turkey's politics are in uncharted waters and many of the givens of the republican era are being questioned. Unable to cope with the profound economic and social transformations and changing composition of the population due to massive migration, the old political structures are crumbling, yet the new political leadership, so adept at municipal government and so pragmatic in its approach to problem solving, has yet to offer the country a comprehensive vision of its politics.

Ethnic Cleansing and the Provision of In/Security

The phenomenon of ethnic cleansing has either been considered by analysts from the point of view of history, or (ethnic) nationalism, or interpreted as the dark side of democracy. Underemphasized in the literature has been the link between the expulsion of targeted communities and the policy and practice of security. Yet, at various times, ethnic cleansing has been used as a security-creation mechanism in the process of nation-state building. Prioritization of the state in security policy and practice has provided justification for drastic measures against targeted peoples. This article seeks to offer a critique of the official rationale for the expulsion of targeted communities in terms of security. It contends that ethnic cleansing is flawed as a means of securing national security. Indeed, not only has ethnic cleansing resulted in humanitarian catastrophe, but the attainment of its stated objective — namely, the provision of security — can be unfeasible. Although state security remains an important value, its acquisition may no longer be justified independently of the means employed in its pursuit.

The general hybridity of war and genocide

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Jürgen Zimmerer, “From the Editors: genocidal terrorism? A plea for conceptual clarity,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 8, No 4, 2006, p 379. 2 Mahmood Mamdani, “The politics of naming: genocide, civil war, insurgency,” London Review of Books, Vol 29, No 5, 2007. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html. 3 Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944). 4 Ibid, p 93. 5 Lemkin, quoted by Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell (London: Flamingo, 2003), p 51. 6 So named after the restatement by the early nineteenth-century jurist Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 7 Lemkin, Axis Rule, p 80. 8 Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 1. The Meaning of Genocide (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), p 51. See also my War and Genocide, Chapter 2 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003). 9 William Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p 34. 10 Quoted in ibid, p 35. 11 France et al. v. Goering et al. (1946), cited in ibid, pp 37–38. 12 Ibid, p 45. 13 Ibid, p 46. 14 Ibid, p 73. 15 Shaw, War and Genocide, Table 2.1, pp 42–43. 16 Lemkin, Axis Rule, p 79; see my discussion in What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), Chapter 2. 17 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 18 See my discussion in What is Genocide?, Chapter 8, “The missing concept: the civilian category and its social meaning.” 19 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p 2. 20 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p 5. 21 Mann, The Dark Side, p 7. Emphasis added. 22 Mann is the major social theorist who has been most insistent on distinguishing military from political power as a major type of power: see The Sources of Social Power, Vol 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp 10–11. 23 See my Dialectics of War (London: Pluto, 1988), Chapter 1, for a critique of this tendency in sociology. 24 Mann, The Dark Side, p 32. Norman Naimark similarly identifies war as the major context of “ethnic cleansing”: Fires of Hatred (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp 187, 188. 25 Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century (Boulder: Westview, 1995), pp 78–79. 26 Shaw, Dialectics of War, Chapter 3. 27 Shaw, War and Genocide, Chapter 2. 28 Jürgen Zimmerer, “The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism: a post-colonial perspective on the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination,” in Dirk A. Moses and Dan Stone, eds, Colonialism and Genocide (London: Routledge, 2007), pp 101–123. 29 Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1979). 30 Dirk A. Moses and Dan Stone, “Introduction,” in Colonialism and Genocide, pp vii–viii. 31 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Warfare in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). 32 René Lemarchand, “Genocide in the Great Lakes: which genocide? Whose genocide?,” Yale University Genocide Studies Program Working Papers, New Haven, 1998. 33 Philippe R. Girard, “Caribbean genocide: racial war in Haiti, 1802–4,” in Dirk A. Moses and Dan Stone, eds, Colonialism and Genocide (London: Routledge, 2007), pp 42–65. 34 Zimmerer, “From the Editors.” 35 Ibid, p 380. 36 Ibid, p 381. 37 Martin Shaw, “Strategy and slaughter,” Review of International Studies, Vol 29, No 2, 2003, pp 269–278, and Gray's reply in the same issue.

Taking Mann Seriously?

Michael Mann's two recent books offer a major contribution to the political sociology of mass violence. By developing and endorsing a comparative approach, the author wishes to explain the development of authoritarian regimes, above all fascist movements, as well as the phenomenon of ethnic violence. Considering the crucial and traumatic experience of the First World War as a cultural and social matrix, Mann's definition of fascism is particularly concise and enlightening. Mann's pages articulating the role of collective anxiety and even fear, prospering in a particularly unstable political, economic and international context and the security dilemma are among the highest achievements of the book. But what is disturbing in Fascists, is the deliberate choice not to take into consideration the historical and political realities of communist movements during the same period and ignoring Hanna Arendt's thesis on totalitarianism. The Dark Side of Democracy is a book more innovative and inspiring than earlier works. Contrary to mainstream genocide studies, Mann's work distances itself from the legal front. Sometime overusing the expression ‘ethnic cleansing’, a perverse definition of democracy can lead according to Mann to ethnic mass murders. In modern time, he notes, ‘the people’ has come to mean two things: demos (the mass of the population) and ethnos (the ethnic group that shares a common culture). Consequently, when an ethnic group claims ‘We, the people’, it can involve the rejection, even the eradication, of those who are perceived as aliens. But the murderous phenomena analyzed by Mann cannot be linked to the birth of modern democracy, but rather to a more general evolution, that is the formation of nation-states. What is at stake is not the dark side of democracy, but the dark side of the Nation-State in the modern democratic age. Another major contribution relies on the interpretation of mass violence based on the construction of a social imaginary. Before the massacre becomes an atrocious physical act, it is born from a mental process, from a vision of the other as a problem to be eliminated. It is crucial to distinguish more clearly than the author does two fundamental conceptions of ‘social purity’ that bring about two different figures of the ‘enemy’.

Demo-Skepticism and Genocide

Genocide studies have expanded rapidly over the last twenty years, impelled by events such as the Bosnian and Rwandan tragedies and aided by the interdisciplinary confluence between comparative politics, history, anthropology and other social sciences. The challenge from historical sociology is particularly meaningful and few scholars are better equipped to achieve this task than Michael Mann. His explanation, linking genocide to ‘democracy‘, is a relatively novel one. However, while scholars from various disciplines broadly agree on the link between genocide and modernity, the description of ethnic cleansing as the ‘dark side of democracy’ is more controversial. This article assesses Mann's claim, contrasting it with recent research in the field: after situating Mann's contribution within the structure–agency debate, I question whether causality and human responsibility are lost. I then explore the broader, recent trend of ‘demo-skepticism’ to which the book belongs. Its main weakness is a contraction of the concept of democracy into that of ‘majority rule’. This is accompanied by an intermittent overlap between the concepts of democracy, liberalism and neoliberalism, under the umbrella term ‘liberal democracy’.

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

Debate On Michael Mann's The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

On 1 June 2005 a public debate organised by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) took place at the London School of Economics. The subject of the debate was the recent book by Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The debate was introduced and chaired by John Breuilly. Three critical appraisals of the book were presented by David Cesarani, Sinisa Malesevic and Benyamin Neuberger. Michael Mann responded to the points made by the other speakers. It was agreed that Nations and Nationalism would publish a written version of this debate and this is what follows.

Mass killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945: a case for comparative research

Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–45 : A Case for Comparative Research

Review: A Century of Genocide, the Dark Side of Democracy

Review: A Century of Genocide, the Dark Side of Democracy

:The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.

:The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing

In his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell warns us about the terrible implications of a totalitarian society, wherein the proles (85% of this society) are kept from political decision-making.1 We can now breathe a sigh of relief. 1984 has long passed, and at no time since this literary masterpiece did Orwell’s doomsday prophecy become a reality. Instead, most of the world now basks in the glory of democracy. By many, democracy is considered as the final stage in the evolution of political systems. To question its absolute superiority over all other political systems is blasphemous.