Liberal democracy rests on a promise that is both simple and revolutionary: individuals are equal in dignity and rights. It does not claim to make them identical. Nor does it promise them the same destiny. As far as possible, it guarantees them an equal opportunity to shape their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But any sound idea can produce its own distortions when taken to extremes. Our time seems to be witnessing the emergence of a new stage of democracy, which I call \u201chyperdemocracy.\u201d This is not the fulfilment of democracy. Rather, it is an endogenous dynamic within democracy itself, when democracy fails to reflect sufficiently on its own foundations. It consists in seeking to extend individual rights without limit, without developing duties in parallel, and in gradually transforming equality of rights and opportunities into a quest for equality of individual situations , and even of outcomes. Tocqueville had already envisaged such an evolution of democracy, describing its possible distortions: the passion for equality could lead to conformity and to a preference for uniformity over freedom, with the risk of a \u201csoft despotism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The shift is a profound one. Equality before the law is a fundamental principle. Equality of opportunity is a demanding ambition, requiring society to combat social determinants and seek to enable everyone to develop their abilities. But equality of individual situations follows an entirely different logic. It is no longer a matter of fairness, because human beings necessarily differ in their talents, tastes, efforts, choices, commitments and propensity to take risks. By definition, such differences are not injustices. Yet hyperdemocracy increasingly tends to regard them as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This logic, initially distributive, soon spills beyond the purely economic and social sphere into the broader social and cultural realm: that of talent, merit and distinction itself. As inequality and difference become conflated, every asymmetry becomes suspect. Success is less often interpreted as the product of merit, hard work or personal responsibility than as the result of privilege or questionable conduct. It is therefore viewed with suspicion by default. Every hierarchy is instinctively seen as domination. Every form of authority as a potential form of violence. And every distinction appears as a risk of excluding those who are not the beneficiaries of it. Excellence eventually comes to be experienced as a challenge to equality. This logic can be seen at work in many areas of social life: in schools, universities and, increasingly, even in business. Sport seems to be the only sphere that has so far escaped it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is obviously not to deny the existence of unjustifiable differences, discrimination, abuses of power or harassment, all of which must be fought. The danger arises, however, when the legitimate fight against such abuses becomes the sole and systematic lens through which all human relationships are interpreted. And when every difference comes to appear unacceptable. Hyperdemocracy then no longer seeks merely to correct discrimination; it seeks to correct differences themselves. This evolution can lead to what might be called a post-democratic drive towards undifferentiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democracy then subtly but substantially changes its nature. It is no longer concerned merely with guaranteeing freedoms, protecting rights and pursuing fairness. It aspires to continually reorganise social relations, to remake society in order to erase and eliminate differences. And this can open the door to totalitarian tendencies. History shows the danger of such a constructivist ambition: whenever an ideology has sought to remake society from scratch and create a \u201cnew man,\u201d it has risked resorting to increasingly total coercion over individuals and society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, if every difference is presumed to be unjust, one must necessarily identify the hidden mechanism that supposedly explains this injustice. A never-ending search then begins for hidden forms of domination, symbolic violence and systemic inequalities. The search for culpability in our civilisation itself, as well as for designated groups of wrongdoers, tends to become the ordinary form of social criticism. Once one enters the process of creating undifferentiation, there is inevitably a need to identify invisible privileges, inherited wrongs and symbolic culprits on whom indignation and anger can be focused. Far from calming society, the drive to eliminate differences thus spontaneously generates new forms of violence and new victims\u2014often scapegoats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, this evolution risks weakening what precisely constitutes the richness and even the very capacity for survival of a free and democratic society: acceptance of differences, the plurality of individual paths, diversity of talents, the legitimacy of authority when it is grounded in competence and a sense of responsibility, and recognition of merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A living democracy can obviously accept neither privileges of birth nor discrimination. But neither can it regard every difference as an injustice to be rectified. For a democracy that can no longer accept legitimate differences ultimately becomes dangerously intolerant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps this is one of the greatest challenges facing contemporary democracies: remaining faithful to their promise without turning that promise into a project of generalised undifferentiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olivier Klein
Professor of Economics at HEC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liberal democracy rests on a promise that is both simple and revolutionary: individuals are equal in dignity and rights. It does not claim to make them identical. Nor does it promise them the same destiny. As far as possible, it guarantees them an equal opportunity to shape their own. But any sound idea can produce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,137,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bank","category-conjoncture-en","category-economical-and-financial-crisis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n