"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[Chaerophon]

First, a definitional matter; in my view, a substantive democracy is one in which dominant “truths” are perpetually subjected to the scrutiny of meaningful dialogue. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill once argued that “so essential is this discipline [democratic diversity] to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil’s advocate can conjure up”. I think that there is a great deal of merit in this articulation. Anyways...

What you are missing in your scenario is that most of our world nations are led by humanists, and not cold hearted economics alone.

I like to think of matters such as these from a perspective more cognizant of the fact that states merely serve as vehicles through which the voices of dominant elites are articulated. Those who control the discourse in which the state conducts itself are the true motivators of political agency. The fact of the matter is that, thanks to the structural control exerted by dominant elites in the United States over media and the economy, the people are constrained from diverse perspectives on the issues, and consequently, leaders are constrained from acting on any mandate derived from a truly substantive democracy (as described above). This is both a result of historical factors, such as America's revolutionary spirit of self-reliant liberal independence (as opposed, perhaps, to labour solidarity...), as well as the economic power of its capitalist agents.

The case of Germany, for example, is much different. The people there have access to more diverse perspectives at a political level. From a paper that I recently wrote:

"The case of Germany is a good one by which to measure the power of the nation-state to articulate the interests of political agents outside of the capitalist sphere. Stephen Vogel points out that Germany has “stalled on the road to the [neo]liberal market model” because it “maintain[s] greater cooperation between labour and management, closer ties between banks and industry, denser networks of relationships between firms, and closer coordination between government and industry.” In other words, powerful political agency has accrued to the forces of labour such that neoliberal reforms are limited by the power of their complex integration with business and state structures. Vogel points out that “one statistical index suggests that economic freedom did not rise at all in Germany from 1990…to 2001” (Vogel 2001, 17). While this is most likely a bit of an exaggeration, the fact remains that it is demonstrable that labour and other such forces can constrain neoliberal reforms in liberal economies and that these economies can remain viable and sustainable, even in this era of advanced global interconnectedness."

In other words, thanks to historical factors of political structure (i.e. the labour movement in Germany has historically been particularly strong; it is the birthplace of social democracy), the struggle for political agency and the articulation of political goals through the state form has been contested as labour has integrated itself as an impediment to neoliberal reforms. This has resulted in a more egalitarian society in Germany almost across the board, and it has also led to a much different sphere of acceptable "political discourse" in Germany where "bleeding heart" reform liberals, neoliberals, and even Social Democrats are allowed the floor in the popular media and at the state level without being disparaged or laughed out of the door. I would argue that in this sense, Germany is more democratic than America because a more diverse spectrum of viewpoints and perspectives are engaged in that country than in your own. With a wider spectrum of ideas comes a wider spectrum of criticism, and so popular ideas are better tested by democratic means.

Of course, it goes without saying that most extreme leftist countries (of which, I might add, Germany is not one) are undoubtedly shaped as much by such propaganda models as are more neoliberal models. However, it is a mistake to suppose that state leaders are not a product of the discourses in which their power is embedded. It's even worse to suppose that neoliberalism is a "logical" conclusion without considering the fact that it is an ideology embedded in a democratic framework, a supposed forum for a "hierarchy of ideas", that is particularly imperfect and one-dimensional (at an official level - just watch CNN, Fox News, or even NBC for the proof in the pudding.) in the North American context.