Who governs in modern liberal democracies?

Résumé du document

"Imagination governs the world? said Napoleon Bonaparte three centuries ago. It may however, be difficult in today's world, to affirm who governs the world. Mankind has always been governed by numerous models. Thus, the Greeks invented democracy and were governed by the "demos", the Middle Ages consecrated the government of one person- the king, the following centuries saw the coming into power of the bourgeoisie, and that the last century saw the birth of the "modern" Welfare State. Through these changes, the state remains our reference to define power. The state is an entity that we are sometimes afraid like the Leviathan of Hobbes, but that we consider almost an autonomous entity nowadays. Indeed, the state has "the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order" (Weber, 1921/1978: 54). However it must be remembered that the world has considerably changed and is still changing.

Extraits

[...] However, it does not mean that we think that there is no answer to our problematic in a nihilistic point of view, but we will try to develop our own opinion later. We can have a look to the The term recursive machine is used by Dupuys (1992, p236) to define the system of liberal market described by R. Nozick. This very interesting analyse shows moreover, using the theorem of Gödel how this kind of autonomous machine in general asks logical problems of impossibilities after a moment. We could apply it to our reasoning: to be governed by something we do not control can become more and more absurd. [...]

[...] Who governs in modern liberal democracies? Imagination governs the world said Napoleon Bonaparte three centuries ago. If it is maybe difficult today to affirm who governs the world, the mankind has however been governed by numerous models. Thus, the Greeks invented the democracy and were governed by the the Middle Ages consecrated the government of one person, the king, before that the following centuries saw the taking of the power by the bourgeoisie. And that in the last century was born the Welfare State. [...]

[...] We can consider indeed that they can all light the process of decision making. Hence, the power is basically changing the behaviour of someone, but also controlling the political agenda and constructing a meaning, influencing the culture and the values. Its looks difficult for us to affirm that there is only one face that explain where is the power. For instance, if a decision has recently been taken in France to help the homeless, it is as much because the people pressured the government, as these people have been culturally influenced by their education or the Medias, and because pressure groups managed to enter the problem in the agenda. [...]

[...] Our objective was therefore to show this fact, to ask about the question of the autonomy of a system, the lost of control of the actors on their destiny. We however know that this attempt is to complete and precise. Many points will perhaps need to be nuanced or discussed. Nevertheless, we will happy if we managed to ask the question of the power in another form, refusing to reduce it to one of the problem. That could appeal a more ambitious essay which would complete our problematic, since we just tried to interrogate rather than giving a partial answer to such a huge question. [...]

[...] Consequently, it would perhaps be truer to speak of rather than the power. There are different kinds of powers, different influences, and each main theory in political sciences explains one of these powers. If we don't want to have a normative assessment on what should be the world, we see how difficult it is to honestly define who has the power. That is why we will try now to go beyond this point. II The search for a guide We will try now to define first if we can find something rather than someone which governs. [...]