Martin Hirsch: "Seven proposals for a more differentiated, more personalized, more participatory democracy"

Grandstand. Our societies, our democracies, are being sorely tested by a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, the rise of individualism, the fragmentation of social groups, the loss of legitimacy of representations. On the other hand, the imperative of collective responses to today's main challenges: global warming, the fight against pandemics, the preservation of peace and social protection, the fight against deficits, competition international.

This contradiction, we see it at work, exacerbated in times of Covid-19, with the following question: to save lives, can temporary restrictions of freedom apply to all, to a minority or to no one? And can this freedom be conditional, subject to a health or vaccination pass? This contradiction between individualism and collective issues reveals another: the difficult reconciliation in a democracy of the fact of majority and the recognition of minorities. Democracy must protect minorities – ethnic, cultural, religious and opinion – and minority expression, without the majority fact being harmed by a minority blockage.

The rise of individualism and the feeling of non-recognition of individuals by those who represent them have several translations: low participation in professional polls and, increasingly, the rise of abstention in political polls; the rejection of reforms that respond to a general interest, in which part of the population does not identify; anti-system rhetoric, the “system” being seen as incapable of recognizing individuals and perceived as the confiscation of the general interest by an occult sub-group.

The solidarity linked to belonging to a specific category is lessened, because these categories are less homogeneous, are less clearly differentiated, have fewer common ideological references. Social networks, in the traditional sense of the term (belonging to an association, a community, a neighborhood, a company), are much less powerful and replaced by virtual social networks which, instead of cultivating a shared purpose, reinforce the individual in his singularity or in superficial or fictitious affiliations.

In addition to abstention and the rejection of traditional representations, the rise of individualism finds its outlet in populist responses. Populists know how to respond better to this "individualist drive", by setting aside the other, by making it easier for individuals to identify with those who seek their suffrage, by recovering the themes of defense of the individual (security, rejection of taxes and taxes, the denunciation of the "system"). They also reject the collective themes whose reality they deny: the “system” would have invented (or exaggerated) the pandemic and global warming. The rise of individualism feeds the opposition to the reforms experienced as a questioning of the rights and the situation of individuals in the name of a collective imperative. The movement of the "yellow vests" is an example of an "individualistic collective", which explains its inability to acquire representatives and even to bring out real charismatic figures, unlike other protest movements during the last decades.

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