Summary
Lev Grinberg’s term (Grinberg 1999) for a democracy that is imagined but cannot be realized, because a significant part of its population is denied equal rights, recognition or access to state power, so social conflicts cannot be contained by representation and Political Space stays closed to them (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.32, 50, 59-60).
Details
- Every democracy is imagined, and imagined twice: once because it imagines the national community, “the people”, and again because it imagines elected political actors as if they actually represent parts or divisions and conflicts among “the people” (PDF p.50).
- A working democracy materializes the imagined “ruling people” by implementing policies promised by elected officials, and civil society can mobilize, express discontent and change the government when they disappoint; if one of the enabling elements — basic freedoms, separation of powers, periodic general elections — is significantly lacking, imagined democracy becomes an illusion, a fake (Grinberg 1999) (PDF p.32, 50).
- Israeli democracy, Grinberg concludes, is only imagined and cannot be realized, because it denies the equal rights of a significant part of its population, mainly the Palestinians under military rule, and the Palestinian citizens not considered part of the sovereign Jewish people; the inflexible colonial political institutions created before 1948 to separate the two peoples still prevent democracy from materializing (PDF p.32-33).
- Settler societies are the clearest cases of imaginary democracies that formally close political spaces of representation to others: they established democratic regimes for European migrants but denied equal rights to the other native and non-native populations, drawing a sharp line between “the people” who deserve representation and the “non-people” who are not represented and denied basic rights (PDF p.50-51).
- On the whole, Grinberg argues, Israel is an imaginary or illusionary democracy, effective precisely owing to its success in legitimizing itself as a democracy, both locally and internationally; its repressive features are not unique, but occur in various forms in all democratic regimes (PDF p.59-60).
Related pages
Lev Grinberg, Political Space, Imagined Peace, Symbolic Violence, Moments of Resistance