Abstract
This paper analyzes the popular concept of democracy that is ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’. It explores the interplay between democracy and liberal cosmopolitanism. How democracy has practically played out inside states and how it tends to dictate a certain cosmopolitan behavior upon states within the community of states are also deliberated in the paper. The ideas of Carl Schmitt are the primary lens through which the topic is analyzed. The paper also discusses how the geopolitical tussle between the economic ideals of capitalism and communism kept failing the core ideas of equality and freedom to devolve and distribute power as espoused by the liberal democracy. It also unravels the smokescreen of liberal
democracy which in reality seeks to extend ‘liberal hegemony’ to other states, exporting its ideals of secularizing statecraft; inculcating liberal freedoms, legalizing LGBT, and opening markets to Western multinationals, among others. Finally, the wave of globalization also entrenches the supremacy of the West and Western way of life. Lastly it explores whether ‘power’ really stems from ‘people’ or are they only expected to ‘vote whoever you want, just obey’, as Slavoj Zizek puts it.

Keywords: Democracy, Liberal Cosmopolitanism, Capitalism, Communism,
Globalization, Developmentalism, Sovereignty.

* Geopolitical Analyst, Author of the book: Understanding Geopolitics; and Geopolitics-from the
Other Side.

Democracy and Liberal Cosmopolitanism

Who is the Sovereign?

Truth is, that there is no single framework of ideas or an agreed-upon theory that defines ‘democracy’. Meaning that you can’t say that you believe in democracy and know exactly what you’re saying, or exactly what you’re to do with the dictate you have uttered!

Even within the liberal democratic camp there is squabble upon exactly how to define democracy.  American political theorist Robert Dahl[i] in his book ‘On Democracy’ said that “there is no democratic theory – there are only democratic theories.” Jean-Paul Gagnon found more than twenty-two hundred documented adjectival descriptors of democracy[ii]. To base a whole nation’s political framework on an undefined idea that can be bent in so many ways, is no less than to erect an edifice upon shifting soil.

This essay will be an analysis of the essence of democracy as per one of its basic definitions that goes like ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’, and how democracy has practically played out inside states and how it tends to dictate a certain cosmopolitan behavior upon states within the community of states. Along with reference to others, the ideas of Carl Schmitt, will be the primary lens from which to scrutinize the topic.

The fact is that just pre-WWII (1939-45) the large part of humanity was enslaved under colonial empires. But there had come the time for receding of the imperial structures. And this recession was caused by factors like; their internal movements for liberty and equality; never-ending competition and battles for territory and resources between the imperialist; and unrelenting anti-colonial resistance in the colonies. By that time, already the culture of nationalism and electoral democracy had been brought into practice in most colonies. The freedom movements in most countries were based on nationalist sentiments, not because suddenly people had given up all other identities but because the electoral democratic system favored demographics over ideologies; casts over creeds. To ensure that electoral democracies were well in place before the imperialists left, the colonizers sponsored the education of a small number of people from each colony in English or French schools and later in universities in London and Paris, where these young men, strongly influenced by foreign culture and political ideas, could serve as interlocuteur evolues[iii], meaning the ‘evolved go-betweens’, and could be placed, at their return, at places of leadership of their people, for they alone would possess the language and vocabulary needed to negotiate freedom for their people. Several of these future-leaders later turned out to harbor the spirit of true freedom and sovereignty for their own people, yet the underlining systems, the ladders they were climbing to reach their goals was inevitably one laid down by the colonizers and one that would benefit them in the long run – for it was the ladder of electoral democracy – a ladder with more holes than steps!

Nevertheless, if we are to espouse the idea of democracy and if the international-order we reside in prompts us to imitate liberalism in parallel, it would be without question that we develop a deepest understanding of the concepts, for treading such paths blindly and forcing whole nations to follow suit, would be a criminal negligence of the highest level.

The writings of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) – a conservative German legal, constitutional, political theorist and a critic of liberalism, parliamentary democracy and liberal cosmopolitanism – are deeply enlightening and relevant in this matter. Schmitt lived through the two world wars and had remained a leading member of the Nazi Party under Hitler. Though much of his work is considered controversial in the eyes of liberal democrats, yet his unique ability of conceptualization of the political framework of his time, makes his work a statutory in the field.

In his 1922 writing ‘Political Theology’[iv] he describes how the ‘political is the total’, i.e., in political liberalism the state and politics are considered the ‘wholly other’ with respect to God and theology – and ‘as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision, irrespective of who decides and what reasons are advanced’. Meaning that in a political totalitarianism all decisions including whether to oust religion and God from statecraft will be a political one, whether the political system in place is a monarchy, a dictatorship, a democracy or any kind. Meaning also that God and religion would have been displaced from their seat of sovereignty and in their place would be crowned the secular ruler of the state, as the new ‘sovereign’.

Once God is out of the equation, the question arises, who in the state systems is the ‘real’ sovereign? This is a necessary question, because of the reason that all states, especially in an anarchic[v] international set-up as described by realist theorists, are prone to ‘exceptional’ situations every now and then, and at such times there has to be sovereign power to make tough decisions.

This because, states are a unity of individuals and territory that are bound within a constitutional legislature that is defended and amended by a body of representatives of the ‘people’. This legislature is put into practice via a legal system of jurisprudence. Such ‘legislature presupposes a general condition of normality’, Schmitt says, but if/when there is chaos or an ‘exceptional’ condition, legal norms cannot be applied and there comes a need to step out of the normal legal system and enforce extra-judicial decision to counter and control the chaos, so as to bring the state back to the normal.

Here Schmitt urges, the real question is, who is the ‘sovereign’ who will decide on the ‘state of exception’? First, Schmitt defines the ‘sovereign’ as the one who, without having a need of positive legal recognition, has the authority to suspend the law – this because the sovereign is the one who secures the normality required for the applicability of the law. Therefore, the Sovereign is over and above the law – one cannot be part of a system and control it! Now, the Sovereign is not only above the law, he is also the one who can decide when and which is the ‘state of exception’! All this seems to be a logically consistent and inevitable circumstance, but at the same time it presents an anarchic system wherein the sovereign can, at any time, call any situation an exceptional one, and exert extra-ordinary extra-judicial force to quell what he deems the abnormality.

And this is precisely the anarchy that the modern liberal democracy wants to eliminate. Typically defined, liberal democracy is a political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, operates in various constitutional forms. Based on classical liberal ideas, it espoused ‘separation of powers’, the ‘rule of law’, a ‘market economy’ with ‘private property’ and equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. The ‘separation of power’ ideally distributes and devolves power in such a way that any single person or any single position would not become the center of power, and all decisions would be made ‘under the law’, and with a ‘consensus’ between the representatives of the people.

Historically speaking, liberal democracy was an ideological base for the political face of a geopolitical strife between the West and the Soviet Union – between the economic ideals of capitalism and communism. And practically speaking, it has kept failing the core ideas of equality and freedom, and especially has failed to devolve and distribute power as it espouses to.

The reasons for the success of the capitalist ideal over the communist one, however, have been several. The geopolitical factor, wherein the whole of the West i.e., the whole of the global, white, Christian community was able to unite post WWII, against the communism espousing Soviets and their allies around the world, is a major one. The Cold War era was a series of proxy wars and political interference in allied states of the rival faction. The fall of the Soviets occurred in one such proxy war that the two side were fighting in Afghanistan. The socio-economic success of capitalism was largely due to, on one hand, the portrayal of western culture and development as the success story for everyone to follow, and on the other, covering the foxy nature of capitalism with seemingly nice ideas of democracy and freedom. The truth is that in general, Communism is really a kind of humanism, calling for shared happiness and shared rewards of life for everyone; and Capitalism’s call for the natural right of all people to produce, sell and buy whatever they want to, however they deem it correct, is also an idea close to nature, but as they say, the devil is in the details, in the practices and methodologies that embellish the two ideas, and in the ways these two processes have inflicted and exploited humanity.

Communism, also referred to as revolutionary-socialism, calls for the triumph of the working class (or proletariat) over the capital class (bourgeoisie), giving the proletariat control over the means of production, whereby forever erasing all classes – thus going towards egalitarianism, i.e., equal rights and treatment under the law – and going towards utilitarianism, i.e., ensuring the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Which is all very good, but the question is who is going to implement the idea and how. Surely the ‘masses’ are not at the same enlightenment level as the revolutionaries, and it would take generations to educate and train them into the ideal state where everyone is knowledgeably upholding the communist idea. So, for the communists, the answer was ‘the Vanguard Party’, the sovereign which according to Lenin, would be a party of professional revolutionaries, who would hold power post-revolution, and would be allowed to use terror and violence to eliminate dissent and level the ground for utilitarian egalitarianism. In the Russian Empire this resulted in massacres estimated as large as of 10million people, just to ensure that the Vanguard would remain firmly in power. Thus, for the sake of the so-called larger good of the people, the very notion of returning power to the masses was forsaken, fear became the teacher and unquestioning obedience the lesson.

Yet the revolutionaries did achieve a standard of utilitarianism by doubling the industrial workforce and collectivization of farms that turned feudal-style farms into cooperates of collective farms working under the direction of the state. But because such nationalization is not matched with human nature, that desires and prides in ownership, the ideal was practically abandoned with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the free-market was embraced in the ensuing decades.

Does Liberal Democracy then, bring to humanity the fruits it promises; does it bring to us equality in the eyes of the rule of law; does it present to us a free-market that is really free; does it give to all of us equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms – sadly, it does none of those. Rather like Richard Lichtman[vi] said, ‘Liberal democratic theory is the ideological expression of capitalism’ and its functions is to ‘justify the distribution of property and power which permits a minority of men to exploit and dominate the lives of the majority’. German political scientist Wolfgang Merkel[vii] wrote, ‘In representative democracy, participation and representation are (essentially) not ends in themselves. Their purpose is to open up procedural opportunities for pursuing the different interests in society in practical politics on a fair basis, opportunities for people and institutions who have been given a democratic and constitutional mandate to do so by the citizens. Fifty years after Robert Dahl asked “Who governs?” the question has taken a new turn in an age of globalization, Europeanization, deregulation, and privatization… financial markets, hedge funds, big banks, global companies, supranational policy regimes, and European institutions have become so powerful that important financial, economic, and employment policies are increasingly escaping the control of democratically elected governments… globalization, deregulation, and the withdrawal of the state from important policy areas have given other actors with little or no legitimation scope for deciding on the lives and chances of citizens and entire societies, scope that democratic principles do not place within their remit’.

In fact, Democracy, the ‘will of the people’ secured by the ‘vote of the people’ has remained an unattainable goal since ancient times, when Socrates declared that democracy within a community of unequally knowledgeable people and different strengths of character, would inevitably lead either to chaos or to populism, resulting in the ultimate demise of the nation.

In our times, the electoral process that is considered unalienable to liberal democracy, has become a hotbed for widespread electoral corruption of sorts. Powerful elites buy politicians and the ballot via horse-trading, floor-crossing, lobbying, bribing etc. The politicians herd the populace through sloganeering and popular promises that are never meant to be kept. In turn the common man, who has no deep awareness of institutional matters, economic policies, social reforms and of how the parliamentary offices work, has no choice but to judge the politicians from what they profess. This results in the election of representatives that really represent only their own vested interests. According to the World Values Survey, in the past 10 years, trust in governments and political parties all around the world has reached a historical low. It says, ‘We have entered a new period when governments must confront a public skeptical of their motivations, doubtful about the institutions of representative democracy, and willing to challenge political elites’[viii]. Rather, the political elites, in most cases, are just puppets in the hands of other power-sources that are ultimately controlled by the capitalist elites.

This is the aliment of liberal democracy. The ‘people’, who actually legitimize it, are becoming increasingly disconnected with the political process. They feel power only on the voting-day, in the rest of the five-year mandate period they have no ‘for-the-people, by-the-people’. Repeatedly testing the same political parties and individuals, their hope in positive change has diminished. And in the same time, the capitalist grip, not only on economy and property has tightened, rather, ‘capitalist thinking goes beyond simple profit-seeking. It breaches right into the territory of politics. It tries to lay siege on all authority that was originally created by the trust of the people, so that huge concessions can be extracted from shady corridors of power’. The question is, how long will this façade stand, and how long will the people go on legitimizing their own extortionists?

Notice here, who is the sovereign authority in the communist and the capitalist framework, and who is the same, behind the façade of liberal democracy? Coming back to Schmitt, he explains the difference between ‘commissarial’ and ‘sovereign’ dictatorship. The commissarial dictator is like the Roman dictator, wherein the absolutist sovereign, deciding upon the ‘exception’, would delegate his power to the commissars, who would then use dictatorial methods in his name – the purpose being to bring things back into the legal norms, under the written or unwritten constitution of the state or empire. A sovereign dictator, like in the revolutionary governments of Schmitt’s times, relied heavily on dictatorial methods, but their purpose was not to defend an already existing constitution, rather it was creating a new one, and doing all this not by his own authority but in the name of the people[ix]. This is where Schmitt concludes that sovereignty is not just compatible with democracy but central to it, as it is exercised whenever and wherever a democratic constitution is founded[x]. So, today’s sovereign dictators are those who exercise absolute power, decide on ‘exception’, exert extra-judicial force, ‘in the name of the people’. Most democracies have such sovereign dictators, but noteworthily they don’t usually want to put a new constitution in place, rather they keep adding amendments in it, to their comfort. 

Schmitt’s critique of liberal states is also interesting. In Schmitt’s view a political unity such as a state can exist only when its constituent members identify themselves uniquely compared to the identity of other states. Rather taking the idea to an extreme, Schmitt urges that this unique identity is possible only when there is a friend enemy distinction with other states, a value that is public not private. It is an utmost association or disassociation, to the limit that one identity group is willing to kill the other[xi], if matters call for it. And Schmitt recognizes that in the liberal state, wherein individualism is a core value, the political nation will slowly wither and die as a result of spreading de-politicization. It will succumb to internal strife, or it will be overwhelmed by external enemies who are more politically united[xii] – therefore, liberalism undermines a community’s political existence.

So, in essence, the liberal democracy ideal does many things to a state. It individualizes the person and de-politicizes him/her; now the greatest value for the individual is self-pleasure and personal happiness; the community has been built to fortify the individual and does not necessarily require reciprocation. The individual now, has the least interest how the state is behaving in the community of states as long as it is getting its own freedoms and pleasures, and if it doesn’t get those, then only it becomes politically active. Next, it establishes the free-market principal; which is ultimately controlled by the banks, the corporates and the political big-wigs. Furthermore, the ideal secularizes the state, making religion a personal endeavor, and ridding the moral framework of the people of any kind of fundamentals.

In fact, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, describes how society has ‘freedom’ in western liberal system; he argues that in the obsession for personal freedoms we have actually accepted structural servitudes that sustain our deeper unfreedoms[xiii]. In his writings, he emphasizes that while we are pursuing ‘freedom’ as a solution to social or individual constraints, the same ‘freedom’ also perpetuates a cycle of striving and dissatisfaction. And they may paradoxically lead to new forms of control; alienation; a sense of emptiness[xiv].

Now, taking the next step from liberal democracy at home to abroad – United State, being the flagbearer of liberal democracy, also exports liberal democracy into other countries. This has been going on throughout the Cold War and more so in the globalization era. Professor John Mearsheimer[xv], the founder of the offensive realist school, calls it liberal hegemony, meaning the pursuit of spreading liberal democracy across the globe. This because, as liberalism vouches for inalienable rights for individuals, it becomes a universalist ideology, vowing to bring its ‘positive rights’ and ‘social engineering’ thing to the whole humanity. Mearsheimer admits that nationalistic and realist forces in other states often resist such injections of liberalism, and that US’ desire to bring ‘positive rights’ to all, has often led them to foolhardy military adventures and foreign policy quagmires like Afghanistan and Iraq. But it seems like, in the desire to paint a pretty, philosophical face on top of US crimes against humanity, Mearsheimer neglects the facts that every step the US and the West have taken towards other states has been to exploit them of their resources and to bring them under their global political hegemony, and for this they have used all means, be it political interferences, military interventions, occupations, coups, assassinations. The US and NATO did enter Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of the democratic ideals they flag, but Afghanistan was to be used as a spring board into Central Asia and would be used to weaken Russia and China; while Iraq would become the path to facilitate the Arab Spring that would destroy the whole Middle East!

Nevertheless, wherever there is a liberal democratic handshake between the US and another state, that other state is expected to inculcate liberal freedoms in their societies, open their markets to western multinationals, and become their strategic allies against all those who refuse such a handshake.

Notice here, the same de-politicization that this ideology cultures in its origin states, is promoted in friendly pro-capitalist, democratic states. They are asked to secularize statecraft; they are asked to legalize LGBT, which is the complete annihilation of religion; they are asked to give the people freedom of expression and freedom of information, which is not so much as the freedom to express resent on genocides taking place in Kashmir and Palestine, no that is usually censored, but rather it comes out to be the freedom to access porn and vulgar content and express feminist ideas in media. All this makes the people more and more disassociated and dis-concerned with their larger identity, as a state, as a member of the community of states and as a friend of some and enemy of some – because the majority of the population is now self-indulged in their personal pleasures and displeasure – exactly what Schmitt had warned, of the slow death of the ‘community’s political existence’.

Schmitt implies that if a state does not make its own the distinction of friend and enemy nor makes the decision when and with whom to go to war with, someone else will be doing that for them, and that someone, a third party — be it a hegemonic state, an international organization, or an international court — will result in the state’s no longer existing as an independent political community[xvi]. And this in Schmitt’s view will invite greater disorder and chaos at a global scale. And this is where Schmitt criticizes the Just War Theory, because each waring party would consider itself as having the jus ad bellum, the ‘just cause’, and would, because of having the ‘just cause’ legitimize upon itself the breaking of the norms of jus in bellum and war would be fought to the end, to the complete defeat or annihilation of the enemy.

Schmitt recognizes that peace can be sustained if one territory or state has one shared political identity. This is in contrast to liberal values which are taken as universals by their beholders and whom they espouse to spread beyond borders. Such a de-spatialization of identity would, in Schmitt’s view, rearrange global communities into new identities taking humanity towards a global civil war, characterized by absolute enmity. Absolute enmity being different from ‘real enmity’ in the sense that the former cannot be resolved territorially while the later can be.

Surely, Schmitt writings are somewhat outdated now, on account of the great wave of Globalization that was at its crest post-Cold War, when the US became the sole-superpower having the maximum influence over states around the world. This was the time when the US in concert with its western allies and UN-affiliated international organizations, exported the idea of a free-market that would weave friendly states in a global supply-chain that would benefit all. But that, at the same time, would allow the bulks of profits to be taken away by western-based multinational corporations. All this was possible only if the US could paint itself as the progressive, universalist, sole intellectual solution-giver, whom only, was in the position to lead humanity out of its strife. And for this it had to export its ideology, liberal democracy, as the best possible practice, and the western way-of-life as the best way-of-life.

To achieve what the West had achieved, pathways were identified in the form of Developmentalism Theory, Modernization Theory, Dependency Theory and Globalization – all which in different consecutive times showed the developing and the under-developed world the reasons why and the methods how, to reach the ideals modeled by the West.

The Developmentalism Theory, which was extracted from Harry Truman’s inaugural address of 1949, famously known as Point Four[xvii], has four main ideas[xviii]. Firstly, it says that a nation’s economic performance is the central source of legitimacy of a regime. Second, it says that the role of the regime is to spread out the risks associated with capitalist development and maximize the national interest by combining governmental and entrepreneurial wills. Third, it asks for the separation of politicians from state bureaucrats. A separate bureaucratic leadership structure will serve in forming and maintaining strong international economic ties. The government, then, will deal with issues on a national level, while helping state bureaucrats maintain the internationalism necessary to develop the nation’s economy. Fourth, nations should utilize the capitalist system to advance in international economy. To gain privileged positions in capitalist systems, active responses to external affairs is necessary, and this will propel states from a position of being exploited to a position of exploiting others.

Notice how the liberal democratic universalist ideal under the Developmentalist Theory tends to, just like in liberal democracy, separate the political regime from the administrative regime – make the political regime not dictatorial but under the iron claws of the ‘rule-of-law’ – and make the administrative regime or the bureaucracy in direct contact with the US government and its development programs. Following are a few interesting excerpts from a USAID published[xix] document:

And to save the US from being labeled as the new ‘imperialist’, the US was going to implement such developmental programs under the United Nations’ several agencies like WHO, ILO, IMF, ITU, UNESCO and the World Bank. Now, in the new international system, the political leadership, the representatives of the people, are clearly not the sovereign. The elected president or prime minister is not the commissarial dictator, who would be delegating powers to different constitutional authorities to exact his commands; nor is he a sovereign dictator, who in the name of the people, has the power to bring forth a new constitution. He is a mere normalizer of the people – the foolhardy people, who tend to think that power stems from them and express their anger against their elected representatives and the established system, in the streets from time to time.

Does power stem from the people then? The democratic electoral process certainly tends to make us believe that! But is that not a façade! A big lie! The people are supposed to remain ‘normal’, follow the law, follow a pre-determined and predictable structure. The people need to present themselves as a homogeneous medium upon which the rule of law can be applied. They are supposed to agitate and express themselves, but only to a limit that does not make the homogeneous medium rapture into an exceptional state where normal law cannot be applied and where ‘the sovereign’ has to step in with his exceptional intervention. So, the people do have power, the power to vote, and to put it ironically in Slavoj Zizek words, ‘vote whoever you want, just obey’.

So, if nether the people not the elected parliament is the sovereign, then is it one of the constitutional entities, like the judiciary, the military, the police or the bureaucracy as a whole? Because for Schmitt, all that matters is whether there is a person or institution that possesses the ability, as a matter of fact, to take a decision on the exception. The Judiciary can be safely removed from the list. The work of the judiciary is to implement the already present ‘law’, to interpret it and in its light decide upon the wrongdoings of the people. The present law knows what to do in normalcy, it knows not what to do in exceptional, unpredictable abnormal situations. In such abnormal situations the law itself is in need of a protector, a force that can bring things back to normal so that it can act. The structure of the ‘norms of competence’[xx] that supposedly allow one constituent entity to delegate an action to another constituent entity, is also limited in its scope, as these norms interpret the present law and can exact law-limited and situation-limited delegation of actions. For instance, in a chaotic situation the Ministry of Internal Affairs can ask the Police Department or the Military to come an quell a violent crowd in a specific event, but there cannot be a general rule that the Police will do so in every such situation, nor is the Police privy to the information on individuals and groups that the Intelligence Department has. And as for the external, regional or extra-regional exceptions, only the Defense Ministry has the wherewithal to know how things are moving in the global chessboard, and they have to interact with the outside world via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Notice here the extensive red-tapping within and between bureaucratic institutions that tend to dilute power and action at every turn.

The Military, which is in itself an institution of ‘power’, a symbol of power, has shown in many states, the tendency to many times, intervene upon the constitution and impose a martial law citing ‘exceptional’ situation. But as Schmitt would say, the ‘sovereign’ must act ‘in the name of the people’, and in such case, the ‘sovereign’s decision needs to be supported by a sufficiently large and powerful constituency. The ‘sovereign’ needs to have an appeal to the political identity of the majority, and his exercise of violence needs to be identity-constituting. In this sense a martial law dictator may be sovereign but because of lacking the legitimacy that comes with the people identity with him politically, his sovereignty is unwanted and unsustainable.

But in times when there is no martial law, and in the democratic framework, can the military, being the holder and symbol of power, attain any form of sovereignty? The answer is ‘no’, but this answer come with an explanation. An explanation not sort from the ‘democratic theory’ but the ‘developmentalism theory’! Not from the ‘people’s power’ that works for the welfare of the ‘people’ and is yielded by the ‘representatives of the people’, no, rather it is the power not of ‘people’ within a ‘state’ but of a ‘state’ within a ‘community of states.’

This is the cosmopolitan world we are talking about. Wherein there is a cosmopolitan culture, defined by Craig Calhoun[xxi] as ‘a fashion’, the ‘class consciousness of frequent travelers.’ Liberal cosmopolitans with a ‘universalistic but abstract view of the obligations and rights of the “citizen of the world.’ But who are these ‘frequent travelers’, they are members of international organizations; they are the managers and CEOs of multinational companies; they are emissaries and foreign office holders that serve as messengers and deal-brokers between states; they are bureaucrats of the highest order, who are invited for foreign courses, international conferences and seminars; they are military higher-ups who are called for joint training courses by modern armies; they are also economic hitmen[xxii].

All these create a strong deeply-woven network of cosmopolitans that are entrenched in power, resources and key positions in the constitutional orders of their states. For the people they are the ‘deep states’, driven not by the welfare of the people but by the power they derive from the people. Sovereignty is a balance of where their vested interests collate; ‘exception’ is the abnormality where their identities are being exposed or their interests being damaged. They are an aristocracy that, from its hiding places, rules the people in the name of the people through the elected representatives of the people. Indeed, they are the ones most loyal to the state, for the state, the country, its resources and its people are their subservient prized possession, their fortress, wherefrom they derive their cosmopolitan identity.

And for the rest of the world, this deep-state aristocracy is the ‘real’ representative of their state. Out there they are in a completely different chessboard. This global chessboard has its own distribution of power, resources and positions. Billions are lost and recovered in the global chessboard; fates of nations are made or gambled away in this global chessboard. There are several sovereigns in this chessboard, but there are many who are willing to rent-out their sovereignties in return of huge rents. In that case the ‘exception’ will be decided by the entity that has rented-out that state’s sovereignty, and in doing so that renter-state will deem those situations as exceptional and abnormal where their identities are being exposed or their interests or those of their renters are being damaged!

This cosmopolitan liberal democratic system is not sustainable! It can be stretched to long lengths of time only depending upon how long ‘the people’ are willing to bear its burden. This takes us back to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, the large unruly creature, the nation, that needs a social contract to survive, that needs to bestow power to a certain entity, a hierarchy to control its anarchy. This also brings us back to the Israelites, who were not short of chiefs and hierarchy, but lacked a single ‘sovereign’ that could unite them as a nation and lead them in ‘exceptional’ situations. They said to their Prophet, ‘…appoint for us a king, that we may fight in the cause of Allah…’[xxiii]. Notice here the universal nature of the relation between the people and leadership, between identity within a nation and within a community of nations. Just like the United Nation’s resolutions, the Quran does not disapprove of war, rather it gives its own jus ad bellum, a jus in bellum and a jus post bellum.

The Quran says, ‘Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the cause of Taghut’[xxiv], Taghut being the act of exceeding the just, ‘normal’ order laid down by the commandments of Allah.  Meaning that for ‘those who believe’ the Sovereign is Allah, and the exceptional situation is the breaking of the norm set by Allah, and the extra-judicial power to be exerted within or outside the state is ‘in the name of Allah’ not ‘in the name of the people’. So, the friend-foe difference is clear from the onset here, it is the difference of believers and nonbelievers. The allies of the ‘believers’ are at constant battle with the ‘allies of Satan’[xxv], as Satan is the one that leads to taghut. And battle is called for only when ‘fitna’ arises. The Quran says, ‘and fight them until the ‘fitna’ ends, and the ‘deen’ is for Allah…’[xxvi]. ‘Fitna’ is a state of abnormality, of corruption, transgression and oppression; and ‘deen’ is the state of normalcy, order, wherein the constitution laid down by Allah can be practiced. There is also a clear jus ad bellum, the Quran says, ‘and Fitna is worse than battle’[xxvii] and a clear jus in bellum, ‘fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors’[xxviii].

So, if Allah is the sovereign, what about the will and welfare of the people? The underlying question here is, ‘what is the will of the people’, ‘who determines what the will of the people is and how?’ The idealist delusion is that wisdom is equally distributed among all voters and they will bring to power the best among them, who will know best regarding their will and welfare and make it happen. But reality is far apart from this ideal, in reality wisdom, chivalry, resources, piety, craftiness, deceit, treachery, remorselessness, all these are unequally distributed and it does not take much time for the crafty and resourceful to build glorious castles of lies to lure humanity into their schemes of thieving the people of all their resources and wealth. Even after centuries of voting experiences, nations find themselves at the verge of economic and social collapse, and closer to conflicts and wars then ever. How many voting cycles are needed to know that the will and the welfare of the people is in equal rights and equal opportunity; that what the people really want is a normal, healthy, progressive, knowledgeable life in a world free of violence, genocides, wars and destruction. The problem lies in the ‘sovereign’, the person or institution that holds all-power, that decide upon the ‘exceptional situations’; that constructs the constitution, the law; and whom itself is above the law and enjoys impunity. The problem begins when the ‘people’ imagine themselves or are led to believe that they themselves know what is best for them – and here are sown the seeds of anarchy that provides a playing field for the hierarchy wherein they can use this delusion to their vested interests.

When all such stature of the ‘sovereign’ is given to a human person or institution, the mere power of the position corrupts it. ‘Power’ works in concentration, it needs to build fortresses around it so that its essence is not diluted away. It needs to ensure its longevity, and its absoluteness. For this, circles of elites are established within the state and in the international front, and together they make the circle of a global aristocracy that believes in the religion of power and capital!

And the common man is led to believe the towering lie of a ‘system of governance’ made ‘by the people’, ‘for the people’ – no, there is no such thing, rather it is a system ‘by the people’, ‘for the elite’, the modern-day Pharaohs. 

And the Pharaohs have always stood against the sovereignty of Allah. Even when Allah offers a simplest constitution, based on equality, justice, mutual respect and peace. Even when He offers a religion of piety, humanity, cleanliness and knowledgeability; a religion of forgiveness and goodness. He says, ‘say: who hath forbidden the good things of Allah, which He hath produced for His bondsmen, and the things, clean and pure, which He hath provided for sustenance? Say: They are, in the life of this world, for those who believe…’[xxix].

So, this is a constitution wherein all good things are for all good people; the bondsmen, who have made their ‘social contract’ with the Sovereign. Wherein criminal offenses are defined and limited. Wherein only punishments[xxx] for murder, adultery, fornication, defamation (false accusation of adultery), have been determined, while punishment for other crimes like theft, alcohol-consumption, sodomy, and other smaller offenses are left for the jurists to decide. Wherein punishment is exemplary and thus effective, but wherein the prime factor for maintaining the ‘normal’ is every bondsman’s self-accountability as in the court of the Supreme Sovereign, which is channelized between the heart and its beloved Lord. Wherein the moral conduct is defined and simple, and is conducive of the ‘normalcy’ required by the Sovereign, a normalcy conducive of the true, sustainable, welfare of the people. A system of governance from Allah, for the people, by His true bondsmen.

References:

[i] Dahl, Robert A. 2000. On Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[ii] Gagnon, Jean-Paul. 2018. “2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy’s Ontological Pluralism.” Democratic Theory 5 (1): 92–113.

[iii] Note: Évolué (French), ‘’evolved one’ or ‘developed one’ is a French label used during the colonial era to refer to an African who had “evolved” by becoming Europeanized through education or assimilation and had accepted European values and patterns of behavior.

[iv] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, translated by George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, May, 14, 2010 ISBN 0226738906, 9780226738901 note: To be sure, Protestant theology presents a different, supposedly unpolitical doctrine, conceiving of God as the “wholly other,” just as in political liberalism the state and politics are conceived of as the “wholly other.” We have come to recognize that the political is the total, and as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision, irrespective of who decides and what reasons are advanced.

[v] Glenn H. Snyder, Mearsheimer’s World-Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), pp. 149-173, MIT Press

[vi] Lichtman, Richard. “The façade of equality in liberal democratic theory.” Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 12 (1969): 170-208.

[vii]Wolfgang Merkel • Sascha Kneip Editors, ‘Democracy and Crisis Challenges in Turbulent Times’, 2018, Springer, http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/55219/1/13.pdf

[ix] Dictatorship. From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle (1921), trans. by M. Hoelzl and G. Ward, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014

[x] Constitutional Theory (1928), trans. by J. Seitzer, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008

[xi] ibid

[xii] ibid

[xiii] Slavoj Zizek, WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL! FIVE ESSAYS ON SEPTEMBER 11 AND RELATED DATES, 2002, VERSO, London, http://rebels-library.org/files/zizek_welcome.pdf

[xiv] Freedom: A Disease Without Cure, October 5, 2023, Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN-10:‎ 135035712X, ISBN-13: 978-1350357129

[xv] John J. Mearsheimer on “Liberal Ideals and International Realities”, Nov. 30, 2017, Yale Macmillan Center, https://macmillan.yale.edu/news/john-j-mearsheimer-liberal-ideals-and-international-realities

[xvi] Constitutional Theory (1928), trans. by J. Seitzer, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008

[xvii] POINT FOUR BACKGROUND AND PROGRAM (International Technical Cooperation Act of 1949), COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES GOVEIWMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON 1949

[xviii] Bin Yu, Tsungting Chung, Dynamics and Dilemma: Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong in a Changing World, ‎ Pg. 20-23, Nova Science Pub Inc; UK ed. edition (January 1, 1996), ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1560723033, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560723035

[xix] Government and Capital in Point Four BY HAROLD H. HUTCHESON

https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pcaaa591.pdf

Government and Capital in Point Four, Volumes 25-26 of Foreign policy reports, Foreign Policy Association, 1949

[xx] Zygmunt Ziembiński, Competences and Competence Norms, Chap. 6, Poznan School of Legal Theory, Pages: 91–97, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004448445_7

[xxi] Calhoun, C. (2012). Cosmopolitan Liberalism and Its Limits. In: Robertson, R., Krossa, A.S. (eds) European Cosmopolitanism in Question. Europe in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230360280_7

[xxii] John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2004, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, ISBN 0-452-28708-1

[xxiii] Quran, 2-246, translation Yusuf Ali

[xxiv] Quran, 4-76, translation Sahih International

[xxv] ibid

[xxvi] Quran 2-193

[xxvii] ibid

[xxviii] Quran 2-190, translation Yusuf Ali

[xxix] Quran 7-32,

[xxx] Dennis J. Wiechman, Jerry D. Kendall, Mohammad K. Azarian, Islamic Law: Myths and Realities, 2000, AbeBooks