DEMOCRACY’S ‘CARELESS MOMENT’?

The Sheldonian Theatre filled up right into the galleries on November 25 to witness the inaugural Sheldonian Series, a termly event that will model what free speech and the vibrant exchange of ideas should look like in a University.

The first event, held in the 7^th Week of Michaelmas Term, took Democracy as its theme. Introduced by video-link by Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey CBE, the discussion was to a considerable extent propelled along by a distinguished panel of alumni, the moderator and chair Times political journalist Rachel Sylvester, (Somerville, 1988); the BBC’s Henry Zeffman (Brasenose, 2012) and Guardian/Observer writer Sonia Sodha (St Hilda's, 1999), and Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions in the Department of Politics and International Relations.

Joining the room by video-link in discrete segments were New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter (Worcester, 1980) and Nobel prize-winning economist Simon Johnson (Corpus, 1981).

Sylvester kicked things off by quipping Winston Churchill’s point that democracy is ‘the worst form of government except for all the others’, adding that in some recent surveys of public opinion as many as 42% of 18-32 year olds appear to favour military rule, a sure sign that there is a problem.

Ann-Marie Slaughter spoke to the Provost of Worcester College, lawyer David Isaac CBE, who asked her what the election of Donald Trump meant for democracy.

Caveating her view with ‘we just don’t know yet’, she then reminded the audience that a clear majority of Americans had voted to reject the current system, adding that it would appear to be ‘a very careless moment for democracy,’ and that Trump’s election would empower authoritarian populists elsewhere, who will all say that they are anti-system not anti-Democracy – that they in fact represent the majority over a small elite, instead of the other way round.

Historically this is not uncommon – consider all the plebiscites held by populist leaders such as Napoleon. But this is America in 2024, and Anne-Marie suggests that the framing of the rights of minorities within the American constitution is now at risk. The broader question is to what extent Trump is theatre – the takeaway being to consider what Trump does rather than what he says.

Henry Zeffman then spoke, arguing that every single incumbent leader went backwards or lost where an election was held in the world in 2024, which he believed to be unprecedented.

He speculated that this broad trend reflected inflation, intolerance and perhaps a larger failure of politics, adding however that such speculation amounts to a broader question.

Sonia Sodha argued the need for greater honesty by politicians with the electorate, whereas the current Labour government has rather settled on a ‘blame the last lot’ plus ‘we’ll fix the economy if you give us time’ mantra – not necessarily the basis for popular acclamation or subjective quality of life improvement, come the next election in 2028-9.

A question was put to Professor Ansell, about whether the electorate is the problem. He responded that democracy, in one formula, means a system in which certain parties lose, and also described the 1968 US election as being in some respects similar to 2024, suggesting ‘we’ve been here before, let’s not panic too much.’

Sodha, who is a gender critical feminist, worried about free speech both generally and on campus, and expressed concern at what can quickly become a hateful denial of a point of view, often on social media but often also the result of a minority asserting the rightness of its view over another party. She argued that in some instances the police have apparently behaved unlawfully in the UK for the manner in which they have waded in, in effect managing speech under the guise of cracking down on hate speech. The idea that an academic could be criticised by their own institution for criticising China was illegal as well as deeply troubling, she added, citing what had happened at another institution (not Oxford).

The role of technology became another broad theme and a second video link saw Simon Johnson questioned by Julius Grower, an Associate Professor of Law at St Hugh’s College. Johnson stated a huge concern about artificial intelligence (AI) benefitting the wealthy at the expense of the poor, whereas he argued it has to do the reverse. Not everything is already cast in stone, however. We make choices as a society so we now have to make choices about technology.

The broader consensus in the discussion was that technology had been very bad for politics, especially where the incentive structure of the internet had led politicians to only speak in soundbites and not really attend to a real debate with colleagues. Policy has suffered from this performative aspect of technology, which in a social media setting rewards point scoring over depth. 2000-2024 was broadly compared to 1900-1920 – we are back to the sort of global inequality of wealth distribution that prevailed under the Edwardians in England.

Towards the end there was a further discussion about the UK General Election held in July. This election saw the lowest three-party share of the vote ever recorded, indicating that millions of votes cast for other supposedly non-mainstream parties such as Reform and the Greens, barely materialised as seats, a problem for representative democracy and possibly the cue for a change to the UK’s ‘first past the post’ system. Sodha, recalling her MPhil thesis, reminded the audience that every electoral system has to work with the electorate. It was a fitting note to end on because no system of democracy is static. The concept can withstand different interpretations over time but it also needs to be defended against its enemies.