People and sovereignty, democracy and liberalism. The profound transformations that the society of the beginning of the millennium is going through are also testified by the repeated, almost inflated use of these delicate conceptual categories and by the publications that are produced about them.
For example, the French political scientist Yves Mény returns to these issues, who has for some time mainly dealt with the evolution of public institutions and who, already in the past, had addressed the theme of the relationship between populism and democracy with particular attention to how this relationship has taken shape in our so-called "post-ideological and transnational" era, mainly identifying in globalization and crisis of traditional elites the major thrusts to the development of populist instances of which one is careful not to give a negative or anti-democratic meaning but, on the contrary, sees and underlines their "purifying" function thanks also to which a return to true and original principles and values is possible of democracy. With "People but not too much", his latest essay, he takes a step forward in addressing the vulnerability opened up by the disaffection of citizens towards those who governed them in the recent past and who he considers responsible for the crisis into which they themselves have fallen, paying own skin, the disastrous consequences in terms of economic well-being but not only. Politicians, rulers, parties, elites and markets are considered the expropriators of the power they held and administered in the past.
One could go on saying it with Churchill according to whom "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those forms that have been tried up to now" but, certainly today, representative democracy (the only one we know) is increasingly in crisiseven, according to some, it would be experiencing its definitive sunset. The paradox is given by the fact that one of the major architects of this crisis is to be found in what most paved the way for its affirmation in the modern and contemporary age. Liberalism, totally based on the defense of individual rights and freedoms, considered natural and the only justification of state authority, has certainly and meritoriously placed the individual at the center of the entire relational system and, therefore, made possible the spread of democracy as a power exercised by the people. But, liberalism itself, in this process of "individualisation" of society and consequently also of the economy and politics, has perhaps - and this is also Mény's thesis - a little "exaggerated", going so far as to destroy in one at once all those intermediate social structures that have followed one another, even in different forms, in the course of human history. Those ties between individuals, starting with the family, associations, leagues, parties, trade unions, have in fact been set aside by the absolutization of liberalism which thus ended up turning into individualism. Certainly, the technological revolution has played a fundamental role in this rush to pursue the idea that one could do without any mediation structure which, on the contrary, democracy cannot do without. However, it is not only democracy that cannot exist without associative structures, from the simplest to the most complex. In reality, no type of society can survive without ties, horizontal or vertical, between individuals. There is no family, there is no community, country, city, nation, there is no religion, there is no State, which can disregard interpersonal relationships. Here, then, is that the great topic of our day is not "simply" what the future of democracy might be in the face of the advance of populisms (which are a consequence and certainly not a cause of the crisis) but, we need to broaden our gaze to which it could be the future of a company that tries to do without any intermediate structure.
But there is another element that must be considered and investigated. What, for ease, we can define the excess of liberalism if, as we have seen, with one hand it is eliminating – or trying to eliminate since the game is still open – all the intermediate social bodies, vital organs for democracy and society, with the other it has produced a proliferation of institutions, above all supranational , which have in fact achieved an effective weakening of any decision-making capacity of known democratic institutions. So a pincer: from below, the destruction of associative structures and from above, the transfer of powers to supranational subjects increasingly distant and impersonal, but also unable to decide. So let us not be surprised by the disenchantment, the disaffection of citizens towards governments, held guilty, together with parties, elites and markets, of having expropriated them of their power. The effect could only be a frustration of what, with a certain hypocrisy, continues to be defined as the "sovereign people" and who, deprived of any social and decision-making function, choose to recover that sovereignty that has been stolen from them. A people that for this reason becomes cumbersome for a regime that has claimed to embody it but which in reality did nothing but deprive him of his authority only to then realize that he had lost it in order to look at it with a certain disdain using the category of "populism" in a derogatory way.
Thomas Stearns Eliot wondered if "it is the Church that has abandoned humanity, or is it humanity that has abandoned the Church". We could do the same today and ask ourselves whether it is democracy that has abandoned the people or the people that have renounced democracy. Of course, whatever answer you want to give, "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus". Just as the Church, which also needs to oppose a dangerous process of secularization, remains necessary and indispensable for salvation because it is the historical trace of God's plan, the salvation of humanity can only pass through the reconstruction of politics, its ability to decide, of its different community, intermediate forms. To do this, it is necessary to start correcting the excesses of liberalism which, by sacrificing the person to individualism, has dangerously eroded the foundations of society itself.
*Secretary General, National Association of Popular Banks
