Presumption Negates
1. We presume things false, this is why people donÕt believe
things like conspiracy theories.
2. There are an infinite number of ways to prove something false
and only one way to prove it true.
3. The neg burden is to deny the evidence of truth so if thereÕs
no offense as to why the resolution is true the neg has fulfilled their
burden.
Permissibility Negates
1. The aff must prove an obligation because ought indicates a
moral obligation. If an action is permissible, definitionally, no obligation is
present and you negate.
The standard is consistency with the categorical imperative. This
is the idea that maxims must be universalizable without contradiction.
The meta ethics is practical reason, the ability to set and pursue
ends, because practical reason is inescapable, since its constitutive of action
and escaping practical reason is an action. This means practical reason is the
most binding and determines morality.
Practical reason shows us morality must respect the equality of
individuals.
1. All
individuals are agents with practical reason. Even if people have different
capacities for setting and pursuing ends, practical reason is still binding
since every agent has some sort of action, even if this just means thinking
etc. Because all people are agents it means there canÕt be any morally relevant
distinction between people.
2. History:
Things like racism are objectively bad, because traits of someone's identity
donÕt affect how ethical someone is.
This means when you say something is obligatory youÕre saying all
practical reasoners have that obligation because you canÕt arbitrarily exclude
someone from ethics. Additionally,
a) It doesnÕt make sense to say somethingÕs a rule for you but not
others, I.e. 2+2=4 to me but not other people.
b) Anything else means ethics is non binding since if certain
people are in certain positions they don't have to follow rules, you can just
put yourself in those positions whenever you donÕt want to follow rules.
c) Identification of an obligation for oneself comes from our
understanding that I as an agent have certain obligations, this means we must
recognize this obligation for other agents too.
And, things canÕt be both true and false.
Gahringer, Robert. ÒMoral law.Ó Ethics, Vol. 63,
No. 4, July 1953, pp. 300-304. // (N8)
ÒWithin any deductive system the basic principle of criticism is
self-consistency. To show a deductive system inconsistent is to disqualify it. If it is
asked why be consistent, it will be answered that it is a basic condition of
having a system. And if we ask why this, it will be answered that [Without this] a
system would not be an intelligible unity in any other way. The demand
for consistency rests
ultimately on intelligibility; it is a condition of
intelligibility. Consistency may appear as a principle of the bare absence
of contradiction, and this may
be only a matter of the independence of elements. But consistency may go much
deeper. If someone suggests that we dispose of the principles of consistency,
we can ask the consistency of such a suggestion. If
the principle of consistency is the condition
of intelligibility, the denial of it (which must be an intelligible denial) denies in principle what it assumes:
it
is transcendentally inconsistent. The proposal to abandon the principle of consistency (the law of
noncontradiction) cannot be made within any system, since every
system presupposes it; and it cannot be made outside, since every proposal assumes it. This is, of
course, a material consideration belonging to logic in the larger sense.Ó
Thus our actions must be able to be universalized because all
people are equal, and still be possible when universalized since an action
canÕt be possible and not possible, I.e. an action must still be possible to
take when everyone takes that action.
This is a side constraint: even if you prove some other ethical
theory is good, it canÕt provide obligations that lead to contradictions
because it canÕt say everyone is obligated to do something and not do
something.
Prefer additionally:
1.
Regress: Any framework allows you to infinitely ask why, only my
framework stops the regress because once you get to the point of practical
reason, questioning it doesnÕt make sense, since to question practical reason
concedes its validity.
2. Performativity: We need freedom to make any arguments in
debate, this means answers to my framework prove it true because you exercise
your practical reason to try and contest it.
Contention 1)
Strikes use others as a mere means to achieve
the end of the strikers.
Fourie
17 Johan
Fourie 11-30-2017 "Ethicality of Labor-Strike Demonstrates by Social
Workers" https://www.otherpapers.com/essay/Ethicality-of-Labor-Strike-Demonstrates-by-Social-Workers/62694.html (Johan Fourie is professor of Economics and History at
Stellenbosch University.) JG
A further formula of the Categorical Imperative is "so, act
as to treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in that of any other context, never solely as a means to an end but always as an end within itself' (Parrott,
2006, p. 51). By this Kant meant people should be valued and respected as an
individual and not used for the benefit of others. Participating in a labor-strike demonstration/action is a direct violation
of this categorical perspective as it would not be ethically permissible
because the severe dependence and well-being of clients,
the effective functioning of the employer organization, and society is used to duly and
unduly influence the bargaining process for better working
conditions. In participating in the labor strike demonstration, the humanity,
and well-being of clients and society is not seen as
crucial and as an 'end', but rather used to demonstrate
the undeniable need for the skills and expertise of social workers. Furthermore,
through withholding services, social worker professionals demonstrate that the
well-being and welfare of society have lost its inherent importance/value.
Though the value of overall well-being is taught throughout the social work
training process and is enshrined in the professional ethical codes.
This impacts back to my framework because using others as a means
to an end isnÕt universalizable without contradiction since in order to use
others as a means you must be an end in yourself, but if everyone is used as a
means, no one can take the action of using others as means to ends.
Contention 2)
Workers agree in contracts not to strike, these contracts grant
employers the right to fire people if they strike and has been upheld by the
state. This means strikes break these promises.
"Employer Sanctions for Violation of No-Strike Clause:
Union Busting through Mass Discharge and Rescission." Yale Law
Journal,
digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8323&context=ylj.
Accessed 23 June 2021.
EMPLOYERS often secure no-strike clauses 1 in
collective bargaining contracts 2 with their employees' unions, 3 in order to ensure greater union
responsibility for the maintenance of stable production schedules.4 Under such clauses, the union promises not to
authorize or sanction any strike during
the term of its contract.' The employer is usually given power to discipline or discharge all the individual union members
who strike in violation of the no-strike clause.0
When confronted with a union-sponsored strike in violation of a
no-strike clause, the employer may be forced to accede to the union's demands
because of production requirements or the scarcity of replacement workers. 7
Alternatively, he may shut down his plant and wait out the strike, disciplining
the strikers when they return to work, subject to an arbitrator's review.8
However, if he believes his bargaining position to be strong, he may discharge
all the strikers, rescind the contract, and refuse thereafter to deal with the
union.0 The National Labor Relations Board has upheld such employer actions on the grounds that they are justified by the
union's prior material breach of the contract,' ¡ and that
strikers in violation of contract are not protected by the National Labor
Relations Act."1
This impacts back to my framework because promise breaking isnÕt
universalizable without contradiction since if everyone breaks promises they
have no bearing, but in order to break promises they must be valid for you to
go against them.
2
Interpretation: Debaters may not read util and extinction first.
Violation: ____
Standards:
1. Strat Skew:
2. Phil Ed:
Voters:
Fairness is a voter because the ballot makes debate a game and
without fairness youÕre voting for the better cheater not the better
debater.
Drop the debater to deter future abuse, b) if I prove abuse it
means substance has already been skewed. c) dta incentivizes abuse because
it takes longer to check abuse than to commit it.
Competing interps because a) reasonability has broad and
bidirectional brightlines that allow you to just keep shifting them to justify
any abuse. b) competing interps sets the best norms because you have to justify
your actual practice, so bad practices will lose. C) infinite abuse: d) it
collapses.
No RVIs
a) an RVI would mean any time theory is introduced the entire
debate comes down to it which kills substance eduation and all strategy because
in a world where thereÕs an RVI the debate would just be is this theory shell
true mooting everything else.
b) you donÕt win for just being fair or educational.
c) it encourages good theory debaters to be abusive so they
can bait theory and win off the rvi.
d) It means the aff can just sit on one shell for four
minutes, and auto win every round.
Peter Isackson 19 (Peter Isackson is an author, media
producer and chief visionary officer of Skillscaper. He is also the chief
strategy officer at Fair Observer and the creator of the regular feature, The
Daily DevilÕs Dictionary. Educated at UCLA and Oxford University, 8-29-2019,
"Is Democracy Sustainable Anywhere in the World?," Fair Observer, https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/democracy-capitalism-india-world-biggest-democracy-latest-news-32301/ ,1)//gh
There is cause to believe that elections — the standard means of
securing power and influence in modern democracies — have paradoxically come to represent
the most fundamental obstacle to intelligent political decision-making. And here the paradox becomes a
serious quandary. Is
it possible to have democracy without elections? Or could we imagine an
electoral system different from the models we now have? Are we even allowed to criticize those models
and amend them without being accused of subversion? When we look at the
resistance in the US to changing the antiquated Electoral College (to elect the president) with its increasingly
evident perverse effects, the prospects for improving democracy seem bleak. Historical Note Athenian democracy was possible
because Athens was a city-state, a small geographical entity with a restricted
notion of citizenship. Its operational governing body, the Boule, consisted of
500 men, 50 from each of what were called the 10 Athenian tribes. Unlike modern democracy, Athenian democracy had no elections
and was clearly not ÒrepresentativeÓ in the modern sense, in which legislators
participate in government to reflect the interests of their local constituency.
Tribes were not families, clans, guilds, corporations or social groups. They were more like political teams,
composed of diverse elements taken from a cross-section of the Athenian
population. Each tribe included citizens from the coastal, urban and inland
areas. This means that within a tribe, a diversity of interests had to find or
elaborate principles of cooperation and collective identity that did not
directly correlate with any group or individualÕs purely economic interest. Greek religion provided what amounted
to a fictional framework for the development of the tribeÕs group identity.
Like a modern sports team and its brand, each tribe established its identity
associated with a god oreponymous hero, around whom the members collectively
evolved their tribeÕs culture. This model of democracy lasted for approximately
200 years, until the dominance of the Macedonian kingdom of Philip II, followed by his son, Alexander the Great, built a Greek empire. Modern democracy
emerged in the 18th century in the context of the
expanding economic culture we call capitalism. It paradoxically included a notion
of empire akin to AlexanderÕs, though considerably more sophisticated. Capitalistic
European empires focused not on the needs of their people and even less on
those of its conquered people. They focused on the notion of ÒwealthÓ highlighted by
Adam SmithÕs ÒThe Wealth of Nations.Ó The notion itself derived from the Old
English word Òweal,Ó which essentially meant the well-being of a community. By the 18th century, ÒwealthÓ had
come to include notions of organization, management, control and exploitation
of resources as well as their translation into monetary value. In todayÕs
culture, wealth has been further reduced to a fundamentally monetary concept.
For some, it simply translates as gross domestic product. This evolution should
highlight the fact that capitalism is not only a set of laws about property and its
exploitation but also a culture. Because market value has become the measure of
worth, the notion of property itself has changed from something perceived as a
permanent attribute of a group or an individual to something temporary that can
be freely bought or sold: an asset. US President Donald TrumpÕs offer to buy Greenland
from Denmark provides the perfect illustration of the radical nature of the
change in cultural mentality at the core of the capitalist culture. The Danish
prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, whose capitalist culture is less evolved
than TrumpÕs, called the offer Òabsurd.Ó Trump reacted by calling that an
insult to the US. Only a few people cited in the media appear to be asking the
big question facing all nations and cultures today. A question whose urgency is
demonstrated in daily headlines, whether they concern Brexit; the yellow vest
movement in France; TrumpÕs
political racism; the incineration of the Amazon; the coalition of the month in
Italy; blockades and sanctions on national economies; or the rise of a clearly
undemocratic but, in many ways, the supremely capitalistic economy (but not the
culture) of China.
That is: Are democracy and capitalism compatible? People seem to have blindly accepted
the idea that voting means expressing oneÕs purely economic interests. In such circumstances, the common good is no longer in anyoneÕs sights
and the very idea of a ÒwealÓ or Òcommon wealth,Ó once a
fixture of nationalism, disappears
from the political horizon. Democracy itself becomes unsustainable because its
operating principle and logic become anarchic, chaotic. All forces diverge and only local
pockets of dominance can temporarily come to the fore. No principle of social
harmony exists. Which is why itÕs worth reflecting that ChinaÕs commitment to communism has
nothing to do with opposing capitalism and even less with imposing Marxism.
Chinese culture, whatever the regime, has never abandoned its ideal and core
value of harmony. India
is radically different. Many of the local cultures of the Indian subcontinent
(but not todayÕs Indian nation) may have had a sense of harmony in the past,
but the lasting effects of the caste system, the colonial experience under
British rule and the capitalist reconfiguration of the global economy have
damaged that sense beyond repair. When the two most populous nations in the
world provide, in contrasting ways, glaring examples of the dysfunction of the very idea
of democracy or peopleÕs government in a capitalist world, it is certainly time
for the rest of the world to rethink what they mean by both democracy and
capitalism.
Democracy will always lead to failure and
disparities – short-termism, short electoral cycles, failing
infrastructure and lobbying.
Moyo 04/26/2018 (Damnbisa Moyo isand international
economist, Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree at Harvard, DPhil in
economics from St Antony's College, Oxford University. ÒWhy Democracy
DoesnÕt DeliverÓ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/26/why-democracy-doesnt-deliver/ su/ )
Only 19 percent of
Americans
today say they
can trust their government
to do what is right. Meanwhile,
citizens in developing countries see authoritarian leaders as more trustworthy
than democratic politicians. Increasingly, it seems that people across the globe are
skeptical of the ability of democratic governments to act effectively — including as good custodians
of the economy. Indeed, the liberal democratic system is unwittingly
undermining the economic growth that is necessary for its continued survival.
At the root of the problem is a predilection for short-termism that has become embedded in the political and
business culture of modern democracies. By design, Western politicians have
relatively short political horizons; they are often in office for terms of less
than five years. So they find their duties regularly
interrupted by elections that distract from the job of addressing long-term
policy challenges. As a result, politicians are naturally and rationally
drawn to focus their efforts on seducing their electorates with short-term
sweeteners — including economic policies designed to quickly produce
favorable monthly inflation, unemployment, and GDP numbers. Voters generally favor policies that
enhance their own well-being with little consideration for that of future
generations or for long-term outcomes. Politicians are rewarded for pandering to votersÕ
immediate demands and desires, to the detriment of growth over the long term.Politicians are
rewarded for pandering to votersÕ immediate demands and desires, to the
detriment of growth over the long term. Because democratic systems
encourage such short-termism, it will be difficult to solve many of the seemingly
intractable structural problems slowing global growth without an overhaul of
democracy. One of the most fundamental obstacles to effective governance is the
short electoral cycle embedded in many democratic systems. Frequent elections taint policymaking,
as politicians, driven by the rational desire to win elections, opt for quick
fixes that have a tendency to undermine long-term growth. Meanwhile, they
neglect to address more entrenched, longer-term economic challenges, such as
worsening education standards, the imminent pension crisis, and deteriorating
physical infrastructure, that donÕt promise immediate political rewards. Navy divers survey damage to the I-35
bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007 killing 13 people. (Joshua Adam
Nuzzo/U.S. Navy via Getty Images) AmericaÕs failing infrastructure
encapsulates the problem of both public and private myopia. A 2017 report by the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the country a grade of D+ for overall
infrastructure,
citing 2,170 high-hazard dams, 56,007 structurally deficient bridges (9.1
percent of the nationÕs total), and $1 trillion in needed upgrades to drinking
water systems over the next 25 years. At a minimum, the ASCE suggests that a $2 trillion investment is
needed by 2020 to address the significant backlog of overdue maintenance and
the pressing need for modernization. The effects of increased infrastructure investment
on the prospects of low-skilled labor could be substantial. Investing in
infrastructure would have all sorts of other benefits, but the prevailing
democratic political system discourages the sort of long-term thinking
necessary to do so. Clearly there have been periods in the past when
governments have chosen to undertake large infrastructure projects without succumbing
to political myopia. In the United States, for example, the federal government
drove the rollout of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.
Launched under President Franklin D. RooseveltÕs New Deal to help address
AmericaÕs chronic unemployment, the WPA was AmericaÕs largest and most
ambitious project dedicated to constructing public buildings, roads, bridges,
schools, and courthouses. It was possible because the short-term political
incentive of reducing mass unemployment through the rapid creation of jobs
aligned with a long-term agenda. Today, when it comes to infrastructure, China
and India present a useful study in contrasts. Both countries needed roads to
increase productivity. China built them, but IndiaÕs infrastructure programs got
bogged down in red tape and political wrangling born of political fissures in
its democratic system. Because vested interests in India have a stranglehold on
policymaking and implementation, IndiaÕs democratic processes stifled decisions
that could have helped drive economic growth. In the 2016-2017 World Economic
Forum Global Competitiveness Report, India was ranked 68th of 138 countries for
overall infrastructure, well behind China, which was ranked 42nd. The effects
of underinvestment in infrastructure on the economy are real: For India,
spending 1 percent of GDP on infrastructure is likely to boost the countryÕs
GDP by 2 percent and create as many as 1.4 million jobs. A second major obstacle to effective
democratic governance is interest group lobbying, a feature in many liberal
democracies that tends to interfere with the proper allocation of assets. In 2016, more than $3.15 billion
was spent lobbying the U.S. Congress, roughly double the amount spent in 2000.
Across sectors, lobbying by special interest groups has a discernible impact on
public policy decisions in ways that negatively affect trade, infrastructure,
and ultimately economic growth. For example, environmental groups oppose
pipelines and new oil exploration projects, agricultural interests lobby for
farm subsidies, and American trucking interest groups oppose additional tolls
earmarked for road maintenance. Political cycles too often keep politicians beholden to the
individuals and corporate interests that help fund their campaigns and to the
vagaries of public opinion polling. And because democratic politics rests on
political contributions, it widens the inequality between rich and poor. It is the use of wealth to influence
political outcomes that helps inequality take root. Until democracies push back
on the use of wealth to influence elections and policies, initiatives to
address inequality will be blunted.Until democracies push back on the use of
wealth to influence elections and policies, initiatives to address inequality
will be blunted.
Democracy
is not efficient, people are too uneducated, leads to populism
Bakhtiyari 18 https://medium.com/futuristone/when-democracy-doesnt-work-anymore-cc15c1bdd951 PhD Candidate in Artificial
Intelligence
Democracy is a system of processing issues
in which outcomes depend on what participants do, but no single force controls
what occurs and its outcomes. ÒRule of the majorityÓ is sometimes referred to
as democracy. In a democracy, citizens exercise power through free and fair
elections in which every citizen has equal right and share by voting. This is
exactly where the problem begins. Almost all countries are claiming to be
democratic, and people are willing to have democratic governments. Some western
countries, on the other hand, are forcing non-democratic countries to move
toward democracy. However, democracy is not the best solution for all. Public Education The main
criticism against democracy is irrational voters, who make decisions
without all of the facts or necessary information in order to make a truly informed
decision. For
example, only after the Brexit election, the search on Google
over the advantages, disadvantages and the definition of EU was increased in
the UK. This clearly shows that a number of Brexit voters voted
without enough knowledge on the matter. Socrates was of the belief that democracy without
educated masses would only lead to populism, and it is the criterion to become
an elected leader and not competence. This would ultimately lead to a fall of
the nation. Freedom of political expression,
freedom of speech, freedom of the press and internet are important to ensure
that voters are well informed, enabling them to vote according to their own
interests, but they are not necessarily sufficient.
Do we need democracy? A majority of educated masses with a
proper knowledge is a strong requirement for a successful democracy.
Otherwise, the democracy would eventually shift the exercise of power
from oppression to manipulation. In some countries, where the Òper
capita readingÓ is low, democracy might not be a suitable solution. In
contrast, aristocracy, which is the opposite model of democracy, might be a
better solution. Aristocracy is defined as below: Ò the highest class in
certain societies, typically comprising people of noble birth holding
hereditary titles and offices.Ó Although aristocrats are not necessarily the
best class to rule society, they may have a more efficient government in
comparison with a democratic government with an uneducated majority. Has
this rebellion, sparked by economic mismanagement,
corruption and inequality, produced solutions? Not really.
Opinion polls suggest this weekendÕs vote wonÕt break the deadlock. Instead, it has
deepened divisions over Catalan separatism and boosted the far
right.
Studies cite leadership through
authoritarianism results in better employee–work performance-turns the
aff.
Wang & Guan 18 (Honglei Wang, College of Economics
and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China. Bichen Guan,
Department of Marketing and Management, Faculty of Business and Economics,
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia. ÒThe Positive Effect of
Authoritarian Leadership on Employee Performance: The Moderating Role of Power
DistanceÓ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5876282/ /su/)
In our research, we propose that authoritarian leadership would
enhance employee performance based on the following reasons. First,
authoritarian leaders can be effective by setting
specific and unambiguous goals to their subordinates. Authoritarian leaders always have
the last say in their organizations and provide a singular mission upon which
followers can focus on their job responsibilities, without uncertainty (Cheng et al., 2000; Schaubroeck et
al., 2017). According
to goal setting theory, higher performance levels are usually reached when
goals are specific, rather than ambiguous (Locke and Latham, 2006). As Locke
and Latham (2006) noted, when a specific goal is set for employees, goal attainment
provides them with an objective, unambiguous basis for evaluating the
effectiveness of their performance. Thus, although authoritarian leaders
exercise tight control and unquestioned submission, the underlying reason is to
promote followersÕ performance. Second,
authoritarian leaders typically enhance followersÕ
sense of identity as group members, which further motivates employees to perform at a high level (Schaubroeck et al., 2017). As Rast
et al. (2013) argued, authoritative leaders are more likely to provide a clear,
unambiguous, and direct prototype with their subordinates. They usually require subordinates to
obey their rules completely and punish them if they do not follow their orders (Chan et al., 2013). As a result, employees could gain a better
understanding of what they should do and should not do as a team member. Prior research also suggested that
authoritarian leaders offer a better sense of what it means in terms of
identity, attitudes and behavior to be a member of the team (Rast et al., 2013;
Schaubroeck et al., 2017). Authoritarian leaders are uniquely effective in this
respect since they offer an unambiguous identity for their team members (Rast,
2015). Taking on this identity is likely to encourage an employee to dedicate
effort to enhancing their performance. Third, some scholars believe that authoritarian leaders usually set high
performance standard expectations for their subordinates (Aycan, 2006). As Chen et al. (2017)
argued, authoritarian
leaders demand their subordinates to achieve the best performance by exercising
strict control, setting clear rules, establishing job responsibilities, issuing
punishment and rewards. Consequently, employees are motivated to perform
strongly, delivering excellent quality. Huang et al. (2015) also claimed
that authoritarian leaders, who emphasize discipline, obedience, and unity, are
likely to achieve operational performance by fostering a highly centralized
decision-making structure. Therefore, we expect to observe a positive
relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance.
William Lee Eubank and Leonard Weinberg 94 (William Lee Eubank is an associate professor of political
science at the University of Nevada, Leonard Weinberg is a professor of
political science at the University of Nevada, 1994, ÒDoes democracy encourage
terrorism?Ó Terrorism and Political Violence, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546559408427271?journalCode=ftpv20 ,1)//gh
It may well be then that the contemporary
linkage between terrorism and democracy is not an optical illusion or a
spurious correlation based on data gathering problems. In fact modern democracies
have certain characteristics that make them extremely vulnerable to terrorist
operations.
Schmid rounds up the usual suspects. In democracies there is freedom of movement; people are free to
come and go without the kind of surveillance that often exists in closed
societies. Similarly, there is freedom of association; the state does not
prevent like-minded individuals from forming private groups and organizations. Third, open societies furnish
would-be terrorists with an abundance of targets to strike. The legal systems
require the
presentation of evidence, proof of guilt and various due process protections before someone can be imprisoned for
participating in terrorist activities.
Schmid
also goes on to point out the relative ease with which potential terrorists are able to
obtain weapons and transfer funds from one anonymously-held bank account to
another as additional factors that contribute to the democracy-terrorism linkage.6 To say that democracies provide
settings within which it is relatively easy for terrorists to commit violent
acts is not identical to asserting that there is something about democratic
politics that promotes terrorist violence. Democracy, after all, provides a
wide range of means by which the aggrieved can make their voices heard in the
political arena without recourse to 'propaganda by deed'. Since the linkage
between terrorism and democracy is usually calculated through the use of event
data, it may very well be the case that the association is affected by the ease
with which groups whose grievances and modus operandi are essentially foreign
to a democracy may conduct their operations inside it. It was not, after all,
dissatisfaction with life in Jersey City that prompted the followers of Sheik
Abdul Rahman to bomb the New York World Trade Center in 1993 but, rather,
religious and political conditions in Egypt. Over the last 25 years many acts
of terrorist violence carried out in the democracies were committed by emigre
groups, for example, South Moluccans in the Netherlands, or Sikhs in Canada,
whose ultimate causes had little to do with their local circumstances. In addition,
during the same period groups from the Middle East, emerging largely though not
exclusively from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, found it desirable to carry
out attacks in Western European nations for reasons of convenience, variously
defined.7 If there is an abundance of terrorist events in the democracies
involving groups and issues external to the countries involved, so too have
there been many instances in which the targets of the attacks were essentially
foreign to the countries in which they were carried out. For instance, in various European and Latin
American democracies, Americans and American facilities of one kind or another
have been major targets of terrorist violence. Many of these attacks seem to have been prompted
by resentment over America's role in the World (as a successor to the European
colonial powers of the nineteenth century) and by the possibilities of
extensive coverage in the American-dominated mass media. For example, American targets have been
repeatedly struck in Greece by the November 17 organization because of
perceived US support for Turkey or opposition to Iraq. The condition of Greek democracy
itself was decidedly peripheral to these considerations. Democratic societies, then, seem to provide
environments in which terrorists from all over the world may conduct their
operations. However
justified this conclusion may be, it begs the question: what is the
relationship between terrorism and democracy? To what extent do democracy and
the politics generated by a democracy contribute to the appearance of
terrorism? Is 'home-grown' terrorism the product of some particular set of
social and political conditions existing in society that are thought to go hand
in hand with democracy?8 Several speculations come to mind. In authoritarian governments, where the rulers may persist
without being responsive to the fate of any but a handful of the elite, the plight of a few people held by
terrorists may be of marginal interest and met with indifference. Thus terrorists
may think there is no political advantage to be gained by activity in such
settings.
The terrorist may think, on the other hand, that the rules of democracy would
require democratic governments to be sympathetic to the troubles of its
citizens and would expect democratic leaders to be more sensitive to hostage
taking and bombings than their authoritarian counterparts. Terrorists might think that
democracies, being founded on the ideas of individualism and of responsiveness
by the leaders to the people would be more susceptible to 'blackmail' than
would authoritarian regimes. Thus for domestic groups that share similar grievances
such as economic disadvantage or social discrimination, the use of terrorist
activity may be believed to be more rational by those groups in democracies
than by ones in authoritarian settings.9 Further, as Sidney Tarrow and others
have called to our attention, capitalist democracies are susceptible to 'cycles of
protest' to which authoritarian regimes often may be immune.10 As episodes of mass protest in the
democracies subside, there is a clear tendency for terrorist groups to emerge
in their wake. Anyone familiar with the history of popular protest movements in
the 1960s can attest to the fact that, as these movements lost their momentum
in the following decade, any number of revolutionary terrorist bands formed in
Italy, Germany and the United States. So to the extent that democracies experience these protest cycles
they may very well be more likely to cultivate terrorist groups
thanauthoritarian governments unwilling to tolerate unconventional forms of
political expression.
Another consideration involves the stability of democratic governments. Democracies obviously differ with
respect to the support they enjoy among their citizens. In some cases
democracies have become so unpopular or so weak (e.g., Weimar Germany, Argentina and
Uruguay at the beginning of the 1970s) that the appearance of terrorist groups represents a
measure of their instability. Domestic terrorist activity may be an indicator
of the breakdown of the democratic regimes.11 At the other end of political the
inauguration of new democracies also may be associated with the appearance of
terrorist groups. Groups
seeking to prevent the stabilization of a new democratic regime in the context
of a newly open society may use terrorist measures as a way of convincing the
public that democracy only leads to chaos.