More than 80 years ago, German sociologist Max Weber had the following conversation with Erich Rudendorff, right-hand man of German general Paul von Hindenburg:
Rudendorff: "What is your so-called democracy?"
Weber: "In a democratic system, the people elect a leader they trust. Then, the elected leader says, `Now shut up and listen to me.' Thus, the people and the political parties cannot interfere in a leader's doings anymore."
Even though Weber's definition of democracy does not fit with the meaning of modern democracy, this "Now-shut-up-and-listen-to-me" kind of absolute power is more or less the unattainable dream of all elected leaders of nation-states.
Although the democratic utopia described by Weber is unreachable, most elected leaders never stop pursuing another form of absolute power. They hope that their parties will hold the majority in the legislature; that all their party colleagues toe their lines; that opposition parties are split into numerous factions and busy fighting each other. All the better if a few influential mainstream media groups can also be tamed to the point that there is no longer any dissent and thus politically correct values are strictly followed.
Every national leader, especially those with a strong sense of mission, is prone to this kind of dream. So is President Chen Shui-bian
But dreams are only dreams, after all. A democracy in which an elected leader has absolute power is either a fake democracy or a half-democracy. In a true democracy, national leaders have only relative power. There is dissent both in the ruling party and the opposition. But the leader can still govern well through his or her leadership style or ability.
Leaders with relative power must have a basic understanding -- people who have absolute power may rely on the "ethics of faith" as a set of criteria, but a leader with relative power must place the "ethics of responsibility" before "ethics of conviction." Otherwise, even the relative power he has may suffer a setback.
Simply put, what Weber called the "ethics of conviction" are totems or fundamental doctrines. But such ethics also come from an "I can't be wrong" mentality, which is strongly exclusive in nature. If the leader of a democratic country relies on conviction alone for governance and ignores the ethics of responsibility, his or her path of leadership will certainly be rocky and fraught with crises.
For example, many people believe Bill Clinton walked the middle way from the very beginning. This is not true. Clinton is a man with strong convictions. Clinton shifted to the middle way because fundamentalism is never enough to govern a country in the first place and because the Democratic Party had become a minority party in Congress.
The road Chen is taking now is exactly the opposite. After a few months in a "government for all the people," he found out it was a dead-end road. He was therefore forced to turn back and seek a new path. But where is the new path? Should he go back to the fundamentalist path? Should the ethics of conviction replace the ethics of responsibility? There are no answers to these questions yet. Everyone is waiting for Chen to make a choice.
But he is not in a hurry now. He is still waiting for the realization of his dream -- the DPP becoming the majority party after next year's legislative elections. He will then make a choice, when he has more power. But how can you govern a country if you don't make choices? Chen wants to wait, but can Taiwan?
Stop dreaming about absolute power!
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Francis Huang
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