Episode 6: "Exporting
Democracy."
Guest: Paul E. Sum
Original air date: July 12,
2009, 5 p.m. central.
Why? - Philosophical Discussions about Everyday Life
is produced by the Institute for Philosophy and Public
Life.
A partnership of Prairie Public, The North Dakota
Humanities Council and The University of North Dakota, College of Arts and
Sciences.
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[Music playing 00:18 – 00:24
Jack: Can we encourage other countries to be democratic?
How different can democracies be? Why is trust so important to free societies
and can a legacy of Soviet-Eurocommunism ever be overcome? Join me, Jack
Russell Weinstein, and my guest, Paul Sum for an exploration of exporting
democracy and the discussion of his work in post-communist Romania here on
WHY – Philosophical Discussions about Everyday Life, broadcast live on
Prairie Public right after the news.
[Music Playing 00:52 – 01:05]
Jack: Hello everybody, welcome to WHY – Philosophical
Discussions about Everyday Life. I’m your host Jack Russell Weinstein, thanks
for joining us today. We’re going to be talking to Paul Sam about exporting
democracy and his experiences analyzing the democratic transition in Romania.
If you’d like to join the conversation, do so by calling 888-755-6377, that’s
888-755-6377 or if you prefer not to have your voice on the air you can email us
your questions at
askwhy@und.edu, that’s
askwhy@und.edu.
Exporting democracy, just the idea appeals to most of
us. Can we make another country democratic even if they don’t like us? Can one
force such a change or does it have to be voluntary? Is such a transformation
slow and deliberate or can it be fast? Can a country be shocked into a
democracy? The questions related to these issues seem endless but a good place
to start is to ask what democracy is in the first place and what it looks like
not only around the world but in America and in our own backyard.
And it is with this in mind that I keep reliving an
experience I had just last week. Rumor had it that a new store had opened up in
Grand Forks that sold exclusively Halal Meats. These foods meet all the
standards set forth by the Islam as clean and proper and blessed. Halal is for
Muslims with Kosher is for Jews. So out of curiosity and excitement, my wife
and I traveled up and down the road it was supposed to be on, until sure enough
located innocuously in a strip mall we found a store front advertising Grand
City’s Halal Meats. We parked and went inside and feeling like adventurers and
interlopers at the same time. The store looked like many I had seen growing up
in New York City but none that I had been in here. It was bare bones with a
handful of second shelves, there were few if any decorations and assortments of
foods to many of which we’re familiar, Quaker Oats, Dishwashing Detergent, that
sort of thing and some are more exotic. There was a freezer about the size many
of us keep in our basement and it was filled with frozen chickens, mutton and
other odds and ends. The store was not established with lots of money behind
it. It didn’t feel like it was a result of a business plan or marketing
surveys. There was a niche need in the community and the owners aimed to fill
it. Sitting at the front of the store, were a half dozen men all talking
adamantly, many of whom looked like they had been there for hours. Like most of
these sorts of places, the store would be more than a grocery, it would be a
community center, a place for men in particular to get together, chat,
commiserate, waste time, whatever. The place felt comfortable but tentative.
It was a new business that could go under at any moment but one that combined
promise, desperation, hope and fear. It was a place for more than just
immigrants; it was a place for refugees.
Grand Forks and Fargo have seen a large of influx of
Somali, Sudanese and Bhutanese refugees in the last decade. A former student of
mine, Sierra had the job of meeting them at the airport. Showing them their new
apartments but also buying them necessities, everything from toothpaste to
suitable clothes. Imagine coming to Grand Forks from Somalia in January.
Sierra loved the refugees, she attended their weddings and funerals, worked at
their fund raisers, helped them when they got into trouble or didn’t understand
the culture. She told me a fabulous story of dealing with one group who would
just slaughter the goat in their apartment complex parking lot. In turn, the
refugees respected and trusted her. She became a part of the community, an
advocate adviser, and friend. It was a pleasure to watch this young North
Dakotan woman encounter the world and do her best to create a moral and
welcoming community.
Frankly, it filled me with respect and awe and it
reminded me, and this is why I’m talking about it today, that in order to export
democracy, we also have to import democracy. We cannot just try to make the
world live like us, we also have to learn to live like the world. Sierra has
recently left Grand Forks for Graduate School. She wants to start her own
refugee resettlement organization based on the failures and successes that she
saw here. I miss her in part because she became a friend and in part because
her experiences were a window into a drama that is being acted out invisibly
under the radar. But it is being played out in Grand Forks and Fargo and all
around North Dakota. While we negotiate our relationship with the United
States, we are quietly building a similar relationship with Africa, with Asia,
with the world. What kind of citizens will we be? What will we give them and
what can they give us? And in the end, when they do give us things, can we
recognize these things as gifts or will we be hostile, suspicious, untrusting?
So we return to the question of exporting rather than
importing democracy. As we engage in our discussion with Paul Sum, we ask a
host of questions; questions about trust, cultural difference, capitalism,
charity, and community, education, uncertainty, and fear. At the bottom of this
discussion, is the expectation that the people who are transitioning to
democracy are changing their whole way of life. They are not just changing
political parties or considering a different answer on a political referendum.
They are instead creating a new culture, a new nation, a new understanding of
society and their place in it. This is true of the owners of Grand City’s Halal
Meats and it is also true of the Romanians, Paul will tell us about today. And
as we discuss the Eastern European experience, it is clear that the experiences
of Iraq, Iran and even China will always be in the back of our minds.
I therefore welcome Paul Sum, Associate Professor of
Political Science at the University of North Dakota. Paul’s a full-bright
fellow who’s going to spend the next year in Romania, teaching and engaging in
research to determine how Romanians are transitioning into democracy. Welcome,
Paul!
Paul: Thank you for the invitation!
Jack: It’s great to have you here. If you out there would like to
participate in the discussion with Paul, please do so. Call us at 888-755-6377,
that’s 888-755-6377 or send us your questions at
askwhy@und.edu.
So Paul, let me begin with a very basic question that
like these basic questions always sounds simplistic. What is democracy and why
isn’t it just majority rule?
Paul: Well, when you asked the question, it is simple because
democracy like any political system is a process through which collective
binding decisions are going to be made and so those decisions are of great
magnitude, they are of small magnitude, they will encompass many facets of
everyone’s life and democracy is a system through which no one has priority
above the law, there is no conceived special knowledge that is bestowed on
certain individuals and so it operates according to what we would call the rule
of law and so you’re making collective binding decisions according to the rule
of law. No one is above the law. Once the law is made, everyone is expected to
follow it. Democracy also includes the notion of popular sovereignty and so
those collective binding decisions that does not prioritize anyone above the law
are there going to be made through a process that allows for widespread, broad
participation by the citizens that’s going to be predicated on the guarantee
that individuals have substantial political rights. In other words they’re
going to be able to signal to leaders, to policy makers to any people of
influence, their desires, their preferences but they’ll also enjoy substantial
civil liberties and so that means that the state or the political system widely
understood is going to have very limited control over their day to day
activities in their choices and their livelihoods.
In addition to the idea of popular sovereignty, rights
and liberties, democracy is expected to be inclusive so that there is no one
that’s systematically excluded. It would include other things some people like
to include economic justice. Some people will include a certain state capacity
that the state is actually able to execute policy.
Jack: So there is citizen participation, there’s basic rights,
there’s all of these different interactions, economic sometimes as well as
social. Are there controversies about what democracy is? Are there people who
think its one thing and others have a radical different view or is democracy the
same across the world?
Paul: It’s radically different because different societies are
going to determine what sorts of activities are permissible and what sort of
activities are not permissible and so the extension of political rights is going
to be more limited in some areas and less limited in others. And a good example
is the State of Germany, modern State of Germany, where it is illegal to
participate in, to organize, to in any way affiliate your self with a neo-Nazi
radical right party. That is according to the constitution. I think many
Americans would find that important. They may not like the message, they may
not like the Nazi party or what it stands for but they certainly would defend
ones right to participate in that way and now if there’s violence involved, it’s
a different question. This is just simply being able to organize and meet and
so that’s the difference between Germany and the United States and then we can
multiply that across the globe.
Jack: So we have and we’ll probably talk about this later;
constitutional democracies like in Iran and then we have the transitional
democracies that we’re going to be talking about later. There is also the
social component, something that you and others call the civil society. What is
that?
Paul: Civil society can be simply defined as all organized
interests that are independent or autonomous from the State and are voluntary in
their membership. And so these are any sort of group, most often we think about
civil society in the form of interest groups and of course they’re an important
component of civil society and so in this country, an organization like the NRA
would constitute to part of civil society; labor unions would constitute as a
part of civil society; but there also including in civil society, other kinds of
social groups, and so these would be less formal, less politically motivated
groups. And so in this country, church organizations would be included in civil
society. No one I think is trying to make a claim that church organizations
have a first and foremost political motive. Their motive is spirituality and
issues related to spirituality but they do become politically activated.
Jack: So civil society is the way that we refer to these social
interactions that people have in the associations, The Lions Club, the churches
and synagogues and mosques, also the friendships, the families, all those sorts
of things as well.
Paul: Well, no. It stops at friendships and families. It might
extend to what a lot of people have been writing about, bowling leagues, it
might extend that far but there is a purpose to the group and that’s not to say
that there is not a purpose to a family but these groups are associations that
are organized for a specific purpose generally and they have a limited reach on
your daily life.
Jack: We’ll talk about why this distinction in a minute. We
already have our first phone call, Al from Mina, Al are you there?
Al: Hi! How are you?
Jack: Thank you for calling!
Al: My question is why do we continue to make the mistake of
calling the United States a democracy when if by definition is a republic?
Jack: That’s a very good question and it goes to the heart of this
discussion of what democracy is and the way that we see it in different parts of
the world. Thank you, Al! Paul?
Paul: Yeah! I appreciate that question and I hope you don’t accuse
me of side-stepping it. The way I’m using democracy is more in the political
science sense of the term and it’s really as a regime type. And so when I say
regime type, its how extensive rights and liberties are enjoyed by its citizens
and so democracy versus autocracy or something that is more limited in terms of
rights and liberties.
Jack: Now we’re going to come back to this question, we need to
take a break but when we come, we’re going to focus on the social aspect,
particularly the role of trust in democracies and I think that might bring out
some of Al’s concerns as well. What do we mean by democracy when we are talking
about the interaction between the political institutions and civil society?
We’ll be right back after this.
[Music Playing 14:50 – 15:11]
You’re listening to Prairie Public, a news
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[Music Playing 15:20 – 15:37]
Jack: We’re back with WHY – Philosophical Discussions about
Everyday Life, I’m your host, Jack Russell Weinstein. We’re talking with Paul
Sum, Political Scientist from the University Of North Dakota. We’re talking
about the nature of democracy. Give us a call at 888-755-6377, 888-755-6377 or
write us at
askwhy@und.edu.
Paul when we left we were talking about the different
types of democracy. This distinction between democracy and a republic and we
were bringing up the concept of civil society. That there is social’s fear that
acts as an intermediary or I should say a mid point between intimate family
relationships and government institutions. There is this thing that you write
about, that unifies all of these different spheres and you call that simply
trust. What do you mean by that and why focus on trust?
Paul: Well, if I may back up just a bit, civil society is said to
perform a number of functions for a political system and it usually involves
overcoming collective action problems so that individuals by themselves have a
difficult time signaling their preferences to leaders but through organized
groups they are able to get the leaders’ attention, perhaps even sway or
influence legislation.
Jack: Let me interrupt for a second. So by collective action
problem you mean that I as an individual have trouble having myself heard so if
I get together with other people with the same interest, but then I also sort of
disappear as an individual at the same time, right?
Paul: That’s right! That’s right! And that’s why your interaction
with a group is different than your family because your interaction with the
group is something very specific, often times its even time related so after a
legislative session you may not want to be part of that group anymore. You may
get what you want or you may not get what you want but you no longer find the
need for the group. And so for civil society, that is a very functional
component for a political system that’s a very functional component of civil
society. My interests are they rest with some of the deeper claims that
theorists have made about civil society. That civil society is more than this
functional component of a political system, that lots of virtues of citizenship
of humanity come out of associational life and it was Alex de Tocqueville, who
first made this claim about the United States, he said the United States was
remarkable because of the associational life that Americans enjoyed. He was
inspired by the fact that Americans seemed to organize at the least incentive,
they would execute large projects and then they would disperse again into their
communities and he felt that it was transformative, that this was not something
that was just functional but that people started to get a deeper meaning about
their community. They started to associate themselves with the community in a
way that brought the community together. And so it builds identity and it
builds what we might call social trust and when I say social trust, I mean the
idea that you trust or you somehow have faith in people that you don’t know and
especially people that are different from yourself.
Jack: So I belong to a group and it’s a group to clean up the Grand
Forks Greenway, or I belong to a group that likes to go running in the morning,
or I belong to a group that wants to make all guns legal. This helps me build
my sense in trust in other people, is that what you’re arguing?
Paul: It helps put a face on people you might otherwise oppose. It
helps you build solidarity in strange and unique ways that you other wise
wouldn’t build with people that otherwise you might not find connection with.
Jack: Sorry to interrupt here but when we learn about democracy, we
learn about voting out of our interests and being alone in a voting booth but
what you’re telling us is that there’s much deeper interactions going on in our
political system, especially how we feel about other people and how we identify
with them as members of a community, is that correct?
Paul: That’s right! That’s right! I’ll go back to the metaphor of
a bowling league; again it’s something that’s used by social scientists a lot.
Imagine yourself, you’re bowling with your friends; well, you’re not building
trust with your teammates. You already know them, you already have a
relationship but you have to bowl this Thursday night against Teamsters504. You
don’t like unions, you think that unions are detriment to the society, to the
economy; you have strong opinions about the unions. What happens during the
bowling league is you don’t suddenly say, “I’m all pro-union now. I met these
guys and they’re alright.” And you had these long talks with them and you
hammer out your differences, you find compromise, that doesn’t happen. You
drink beer and if you bowled at all, you would know that the teams generally
don’t interact. They don’t talk unless they know each other from previous
engagements; they generally don’t talk that much. They might say niceties but
you do observe each other. And you notice that I like a beer, they like a
beer. I have a family, this guy is talking about his family, he’s talking about
his kids, he’s worried about his kids at school because this is what really the
bowling experience is about. It is about bowling but it’s about much more and
you walk away not being pro-union but you have now eradicated or softened the
edges off from the political conflict. And so when you’re confronted with a
very important decision about legislation and how you feel about something
that’s going to benefit or hurt unions, you’re not going to change your opinion
but – and this is getting extreme, and it’s not something we normally see in the
United States, it’s something we see in other countries – you’re less willing to
call out the police and beat those people who are demonstrating. Because you
think back, you say, “Well, no! Wait a minute! I don’t believe that position is
good or that piece of legislation is good but what I do know is that I remember
that guy. I remember he is in some ways like me and I do not want to have him
in prison or I do not want him to face repercussions.”
Jack: So if I’m a strike breaker, it’s harder to hit a bowling
league partner over the head with a trencher.
Paul: That’s right!
Jack: These people become less mysterious; they
become people who we disagree with.
Paul: That’s right!
Jack: Now, could the pro-lifers and pro-choicers
bowl together and decide that the other team isn’t evil?
Paul: I would hope so! I would hope that that
would prevent people from going out and shooting them. So it doesn’t stop the
discussion, what it does is it takes the edge off that political conflict. And
why this is important for the political system more broadly is that this notion
of trust is at the very heart of democratic-free societies because ultimately
democracy is a leap of faith. Democracy is not about your individual freedoms
as a person. Everyone feels that they have enough sense, enough common sense to
use their freedoms responsibly. What a democratic system of governance entails
is extending rights and liberties to all citizens. And so you have to trust
that those individuals are going to use their rights and liberties responsibly,
in a way that is going to if not benefit the community, will not be a detriment
to the community.
Jack: So this is a very powerful claim because
what you’re saying then is that democracy is not about our freedom but democracy
is about other people’s freedom.
Paul: That’s right! That’s right! And to
accentuate it and maybe go over the top with the example, we wake up in the
morning and we do not imagine that someone is going to get in an airplane and
run it into a building. We have that faith in other individuals. So when that
happens, it shakes the very foundation of our political system because we are
suddenly questioning whether it is worth the while to extend those rights and
liberties to all people.
Jack: So when we talk about the terrorist
attacking us, we talk about the terrorist attacking our freedom but they’re
really not. They’re attacking our trust. You’ve inspired the people from Mina,
we have another conversation, is that Millie? I believe that’s Millie in Mina.
Millie, thank you for joining us!
Millie: Thank you! I just wondered and the
bowling team concept kind of intrigued me. And visualize if you could, to have
three teams, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish bowling. How can you process their
differences so that they would come to fundamentally respect each other and
democratize Iraq like they’re trying to do, would there be any validity to that
kind of a thing?
Paul: I think there’s a lot of validity and to
use the example of a bowling league, it is just a metaphor.
Millie: I realize.
Paul: But the idea is that through social
interactions that occur in civil society that individuals begin to see each
other more as human beings and so they are less likely to support extreme
options to further their agendas, further their preferences. And so in Iraq,
there has been an enormous effort to develop civil society based on this
assumption and this is a theoretical assumption that I’m making but there is a
lot of energy, a lot of money that goes into civil society development and it’s
not just Iraq, it’s in Afghanistan; it’s also in places like Romania. And it’s
been proven, well, that’s too - strike that. There is a co-relation or it seems
to have worked in some places and less so in others and really that’s the nature
of my work, investigating to what extent that process really occurs.
Jack: Millie, please continue.
Millie: I questioning myself right here because I
realized Iraq is such and ancient country, all of these people have not socially
interacted for many, many years. Is there hope that this concept will die down
a little and they can work together?
Paul: Well, I think there’s always hope but as I
think we all realize, it doesn’t start with civil society. It starts with basic
security, it starts with other things in life that are going well, that allow
for civil society to develop and that includes wealth, certain level of wealth
so that you’re not worrying about where your next meal is coming from. Once
some of the basics are taken care of, I do! I do hold out some hope because
although I think our image of the Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish conflict in Iraq is as
it plays out is quite extreme. There are regularly stories that come out of
Iraq about mutual respect, willingness to work together among these groups or
individuals that identify themselves as parts of those groups and so like any
society, there’s a lot of different people that are there and it’s putting the
more moderate, more tolerant people in a position to enter the conversation,
that’s the real challenge and I think there has been some success there in that
respect although a long way to go.
Jack: I know that in the Israel-Palestine
conflict, that what we’re referring to as bowling league is most frequently
termed as soccer or football. That getting kids to play football together has
been a major step forward. And this is a wonderful transition to next section
that we’re going to talk about after the break. And we have a question from a
long-time listener, Joyce from Washington, DC who asks, “Why is Professor Sum
taking his experience abroad when there are so many problems in the United
States?” and so we’ll be able to talk about that, right after this break. We’ll
be coming back to talk about Romania and your project and why you’re going away
for a year and our listeners, stay tuned and during the break, we’ll get to hear
the latest calendar of Institute for Philosophy and Public Life events.
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[Music
Playing 30:50 – 30:56]
Jack: We’re back with WHY – Philosophical
Discussions about Everyday Life. I’m your host Jack Russell Weinstein and we’re
talking with Paul Sum about democracy, civil society, exporting democracy around
the world. Give us a call at 888-755-6377, 888-755-6377 or write us at
askwhy@und.edu. Paul, let’s talk a little bit about Romania. Why Romania?
What you hope to learn there? What we can learn together about that? And if
you wouldn’t mind giving us a one minute complete history of Romania and
everything we need to know.
Paul: (Laughing) Well, if my Romanian friends
out there will tolerate that, I don’t think otherwise we can do it. I will be
going to Romania this year but I’ve spent a lot of time there already. I lived
there from 1995 to 1998 and I was part of a US information agency program that
was developing a political science program at a historic university in that
country. And that was part of democracy assistance. I became very interested
in the way that civil society was developing there. I appreciate Joyce’s
question and comment regarding the United States but there are certain
advantages to studying this concept in a place like Romania because of their
tragic history.
Jack: Let’s talk a little bit about that.
Paul: Yeah! Not going too far back but during
the Interwar period they had some experimentation with democratic institutions,
it seems they had some competitive political parties but they didn’t really have
a widespread political rights and liberties for their citizens. After the end
of World War II, there was a communist revolution; most would say that it was a
sponsorship of the Soviet Union. The communist party took the political system
by force, they elevated the communist party and Marxist Doctrine above the law
and so people lived under pretty oppressive conditions Nicolai Ceausescu was the
last leader of the country, perhaps the most brutal, certainly one of the most
brutal that the Eastern European countries had experienced. Their experience in
Romania and Ceausescu’s rule tells us something about civil society because all
over the region, the communists targeted civil society. Any group that was
independent of the State was disallowed. They understood the power of civil
society; that civil society would create alternative sources of authority
and structure that might at a later date challenge the regime and so they wiped
out, essentially wiped out civil society. I spent years looking for any
remnants of an independent organization that was out there in Romania during the
communist period. I found some caving groups that worked more or less outside
the purview of the state and was mostly because caving is extremely dangerous
and the communist operative that was assigned to watch the group didn’t like
going down in the caves with them because he didn’t trust that they would secure
the ropes, etc.
Jack: So when you say that there were none of these associations,
there’s no cooking groups, there’s no book groups, there’s no Lion’s Club,
there’s nothing?
Paul: There are groups that are registered with the State and they
have a communist party member who is then assigned to be a member of that
group. That person should be elected to high office in the group. And so if
it’s a chess club, they want to make sure that individuals are not talking
politics as they’re playing chess.
Jack: So are these people completely different from us then? I
mean are they so alien to our way of life that you know?
Paul: Well, no! You find ways to socialize. You find ways to
socialize acceptably under the watchful eye of the State. You find your family
and your close friends perhaps to be even closer and so in many ways the family
unit closed around itself. The ethnic problems we see all over the region has
in part because people fell back in their ethnic identity and their communities
may be a little bit more than what we may have naturally seen. And so there are
mechanisms to get by and something that I have to frequently remind people that
even in undemocratic conditions, and Romania at times was very austere but
people also share that piece of humanity that we all share. They have fond
memories of the communists’ times when it was their birthday, they all had their
first boyfriend or girlfriend, they all had an experience when they got in
trouble with the teacher. They had all of those experiences, life experiences.
But it was with the State always watching them and in many ways arbitrarily,
under Ceausescu was arbitrarily frequently sanctioning
them for activities that they didn’t like. This is a long introduction to
Joyce’s question because under these conditions, now you have really no civil
society to speak off. You’re starting from a blank slate and from a social
scientific point of view that is an advantage because now, the way that civil
society has developed since 1989, we can model it. With less static, with less
interference than a place like the United States that has it’s long, rich
history of associations which are very difficult to identify the causal factors
that go into this.
Jack: So this is almost a political skinner box or the attempt to
start completely from scratch, we get to see civil society built up from
virtually nothing so that we can learn at least in part how to cultivate our own
civil societies.
Paul: Finding the positive in the negative, yes! (Laughing)
Jack: (Laughs) To say, that’s my job! Do Romanians want democracy
because they want to be left alone? Do Romanians want democracy because what
they want more than anything else is just for the State to stop looking at them
or are they looking for something more? Something more complicated?
Paul: Well, first of all not every Romanian wants democracy. It’s
been better and we are talking about a country that joined the European Union so
the question of whether democracy, and this goes back to Al’s question earlier
in the program, what exactly do we mean by democracy and isn’t Romania just like
the United States really a republic, and why aren’t we talking on that level.
There are some that would fully embrace that idea that this is just a mechanism
for choosing leadership and nothing more. But a lot of Romanians have embraced
the idea of being in control of their own affairs and they have found that civil
society is a good way of representing themselves in a political system. There’s
a lot of problems that are still there. They deal a lot with corruption, they
are still dealing with economic inequalities and so they have some pretty severe
challenges ahead of them. Like everywhere else, they have been hit by the
global downturn. I’m speaking in very, broad, broad strokes here but they find
more or less democracy to be preferable to alternatives because they remember
the alternatives.
Jack: We’re going to have to take one more break, it’s the last
break of the show and when we get back I want to hear about your project
specifically and what you aim to learn and also what the Romanians think about
American style democracy, how they feel about the West in general if we can use
those terms and this relationship that America and Romania may or may not have
about similar institutional structures. We’ll be right back with Paul Sum in
just a moment.
[Music Playing 40:04 – 40:17]
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[Music Playing 40:56 – 41:10]
Jack: We’re back with WHY – Philosophical Discussions about
Everyday Life. I’m your host Jack Russell Weinstein, we’re talking with Paul
Sum, Political Scientist at the University of North Dakota who is heading to
Romania for a year to investigate the transition to democracy and the
development of civil society. Paul, tell us a little bit about your project,
what you hope to learn and how you go about learning it.
Paul: I’m interested in whether civil society in Romania has had
these virtuous effects on citizens. Those that are part of civil society, are
they more trusting? I look at also other indicators like tolerance and things
like that. And by preliminary research has first showed me, that if we take
civil society members as an aggregate, they are no different that anyone else,
than any other Romanian. So there is no statistical significance, difference
between the two groups. Digging a little bit deeper, you find that there are
certain members in civil society that are the real movers and shakers who I
would call activists. They are the ones who are the real foundation of most of
the organizations and I think if we think of our own organizational
interactions, we all know who those people are, they are the ones that make sure
that the fund raiser happens, they are the ones that make sure that the building
is open, they are the ones that make sure that the papers are filed, they’re
just conscientious, they are the ones that are really the heart of these
organizations. If we look at just those individuals, they’re off the charts,
they are much more trusting, they have all of the let’s say pro-democratic
attitudes that we would expect. Now unfortunately, this is a very small group
and when I found that, I thought, “Well, gee this is good stuff!” if we can as
the United States, as part of the democracy promotion, if we can target these
individuals and create more of these individuals, this is really getting
somewhere. And so then I started looking more closely at these individuals and
what I found is that in many cases, what we have is a selection process that
these good citizens didn’t come out of their organizational experience. What
they did was they were good citizens that found organizations, in many cases
they founded the organization that they lead. The question is where are these
people coming from and the implications are staggering because these are
individuals who grew up under the communist regime under very harsh conditions.
And so that’s really where my research is right now. Where did these people
come from? How under the austere, oppressive conditions of the
Ceausescu Regime did they make it out as such good
citizens?
Jack: So the core of your examination is really this important
claim that the key to democracy, the key to civil society is trust and how do
you find A, the most trusting people and if you can’t find them, how do you
cultivate trusting and trustworthy people. And so really what you’re asking is
how do we cultivate a character trait in an individual?
Paul: Well, cultivate or find, right? If we know they’re out there
in countries that are undemocratic and we start to see a transition and that
transition includes US foreign policy money for democracy promotion or democracy
assistance and that would be in the form of some sort of grant for civil
society. How do we build into those programs, something that will locate the
right people and that’s really the challenge? My very preliminary research says
that they generally come from families that were in the communist party, that
surprises a lot of people but they are rarely high level officials, they were
the bureaucrats, they were the worker bees of the communist party. Generally or
at least what they’ve told me is that their parents were trying to change the
system from within, that what they learn from their parents was not how to be
good communists, they learned the importance of public service.
Jack: So this would offer a theoretical foundation for why in Iraq
for example, we want the Iraqi bureaucrats and the Iraqi police to become the
new national police and the new national bureaucrats. It’s already in their
character to do this and the regime, now this seems surprising to me but the
regime is secondary to the job. They’d rather do the job first. A teacher
wants to be a teacher, it doesn’t matter who they’re teaching for.
Paul: That’s right! That’s right! So a low-level bureaucrat, the
people that make government work widely understood government are willing to
work under many conditions. What they see is they have a commitment,
oftentimes, they have a commitment to a better public life and they’re willing
to do it under a communist system or they’re willing to do it under some other
kind of system that allows for lots of freedom.
Jack: So this actually goes a long way to solving a philosophical
problem that we haven’t talked about yet which is how can you export democracy
and respect the sovereignty of the society as well. We’re not making the
Romanians democratic, we are encouraging the Romanians to be who they want to be
and if they can do it better in democracy, that’s fine.
Paul: That’s right! That’s right! But the dangers are obvious,
right? Although, I tend to be a pretty trusting person, I also understand the
people who lie to me. (Laughs) And if you start throwing money and people start
understanding that they need to say certain things to get the money. There’s
all sorts of programming limitations here but really the first step is to try as
much as possible to establish that this is a valid claim and if we can do that
then we can start working on tinkering with programs or designing programs that
would either find or cultivate; but probably find the individuals that would be
these activists.
Jack: We’re starting to run out of time so quickly, how do the
Romanians feel about your asking questions? How did the Romanians feel about
American Democracy and do they feel put upon when America tries to encourage a
particular political point of view?
Paul: They generally like to talk to me and…
Jack: Who? (Laughs)
Paul: Not everybody likes to talk to me but everyone like to tell
their story and generally I’m just asking them to tell me their story. So that
hasn’t been such a problem. At times, they do feel that America, the US Foreign
Policy is targeting certain types of things. There are certainly – we can get
into the specifics of programs and things that they’ll look at and they’ll feel
as jaded or really looking or trying to serve a US interest. So they’re not
always so trusting. But they generally like the United States, they generally
look to the United States as a counterbalance to the European Union and so
they’re not adverse to the United States’ programs as that the case in many
countries and again we start thinking about places like Iran, to a certain
extent Iraq, China as you mentioned and that becomes much more difficult.
Jack: Well, we have to call it a night. Paul thank you so much,
this has been very interesting and as I read through your work and as I
encounter these issues, I’m amazed, no I’m not amazed. I’m inspired by how
deeply these questions get to the nature of human character. So thank you so
much for coming and we hope to see you in a year when you get back.
Paul: Thanks for having me!
Jack: As we conclude this episode of WHY, it’s worth
thinking about what we’ve talked about today and what we’ve learned from Paul’s
experiences in Romania and what we’ve learned about ourselves as well as other
people. And the key it seems to me is that the core of democracy is trust and
associations with other people, that democracy is about relationships first more
than just voting, more than just taking a political position. In order to have
successful democracy, we have to have successful relationships, we have to
understand each other, we have to care about other people. We have to decide
that even if we disagree that the opponents aren’t evil or they’re not alien, or
they’re not so different from us that they have different problems as Paul
brought up. The Teamsters may be pro-union and we may be against but it doesn’t
mean that they don’t love their children and it doesn’t mean that they don’t
have the same needs and the same concerns and we can find a way to get through
this. This is the most dangerous consequence of describing America solely in
terms of red state and blue state because it divides us and prevents us from
having relationships with each other. It prevents us from seeing that the people
who have different political opinions are really the same as us. They may have
some different values, they may have some different priorities but in the end
they are, who we are with a different perspective and with some different
commitments. Sometimes it takes us a trip to Romania to see this; sometimes it
takes us the opportunity of a year of study and statistical analysis and
questioning and asking and talking to find out the most about ourselves. And so
it was a pleasure to have Paul here to talk about another part of the world that
seems to be going through the same things that we’re going through, the same
problems, the same issues and ultimately, it’s a question of trust, it’s a
question of social and civic associations and ultimately it’s a question of
relationships. I’m pleased that you’re all listening. Thank you so much for
your calls and for your emails. The relationship that we here at WHY
have with you is incredibly important to us and we hope to see you live next
week and we hope to hear from you in a month when Crystal Alberts will be
joining us for a discussion of Literature, in the Digital Age.
WHY will return on Sunday, August 9th
at five, Central time. Again Crystal Alberts will be our guest. Attend our
live taping on Saturday, July 18th at two in the newly renovated
Opera House in New Rockford. Thank you as always, Skip Wood, our producer and
Chelsea Stone, our intern. UND is a wonderful place to do philosophy if you’re
interested. But it’s very important to us you understand Philosophy as a day to
day activity, it’s everywhere you make it and we hope you keep coming back for
more.
WHY is
broadcast on the second Sunday of every month. It is funded for the Institute
for Philosophy and Public Life, Prairie Public Broadcasting, The North Dakota
Humanities Council and the University of North Dakota, College of Arts and
Sciences. Always remember as the Institute for Philosophy and Public Life says,
“There is no ivory tower.” Thank you and good night!
