The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 1, 2008.

Carl Boggs, in his book The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere (2000), writes: “Politics has become the most denigrated and devalued of all enterprises, robbed of the visionary, ennobling, and transformative qualities that not so long ago were associated with the great popular movements of the 1960s …”

Politics has increasingly become a dirty word, a form of self-aggrandizement at the public’s expense. The 2008 Israeli Democracy Index indicates that only 5 percent of the public regards Israeli politicians as honest. Unsurprisingly, “Israel today displays clear signs of anti-politics … The prevalent sense in the public is that the political system is impervious to the citizen’s voice and needs.’’ 81 percent assess their ability to influence government decisions as small or nonexistent. How can it be otherwise when citizens are compelled to vote for a party slate instead of individual candidates? Since members of the Knesset are not individually elected by and accountable to the voters in constituency elections, they can ignore public opinion with impunity between elections. They never have to worry about being called to account by a rival candidate.

To speak of the end of politics, however, is to imply the demise of democracy. The causal connection between politics and democracy can be formulated as follows. Politics is about the controversial, and only healthy democracies provide a platform for rational discussion about controversial issues. This requires at least two contestants for public office facing each other before the voters and debating basic issues. (more…)

Democracy literally means the rule of the people, which translates into the rule of the majority. Show me a nation in which the people, or a majority of the people, rule.

Consider the world’s leading democracy, the United States. There are about 200,000 million eligible voters in the United States, but as few as 35 percent vote in midterm elections, and little more than a majority vote in presidential elections—and even this is misleading.

A mere 15 percent of Americans polled by the PEW Research Center in July 1999 said they were paying very close attention to the Gore-Bush campaign, and the percentage was lower for those under 30 years of age.

The truth is that few Americans display any serious interest in politics. Carl Boggs reports that a 1997 UCLA poll of 252,000 freshmen at 464 colleges and universities around the country indicated that only 26.7 percent of the respondents said that it was important to keep up with public affairs. (more…)