Democratization and Occupy Wall Street

Last Friday evening St. John's Department of Government and Politics hosted a talk on democratization and Morocco as part of its regular series of graduate program colloquium. Our speaker was Dr. Driss Maghraoui, from Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Dr. Maghraoui's talk focused primarily on the structural constraints that were limiting the impact of the democratic reform movement in Morocco. As a semi-authoritarian state, with at least some of the institutions of democracy, such as a parliament, political parties, and organized labor, the February 20th Movement, as the democracy movement is known in Morocco, finds itself pushing for reform, rather than regime change as their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya had. The colloquium was held on our Manhattan campus in the Financial District, just blocks away from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, and since we had some time before the talk was set to begin, I suggested a quick walk down to see how the protests were progressing. Dr. Maghraoui, Dr. Azzedine Layachi, another faculty member from our department, and myself headed down. It was a rainy evening, but there was still plenty of activity in the park. In addition to drumming, there was a costumed group of "billionaires" holding a "tea party", a protester dressed in the traditional Depression era barrel and suspenders, and a vibrant buzz of conversation and debate. For the three of us, all professionally interested in the practice of democracy, the park was a fascinating example of popular participation and mobilization. Back on campus, listening to Dr. Maghraoui discuss the challenges of reform in Morocco, I couldn't help but think about parallels and contradictions with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

At a basic level, I would argue that Occupy Wall Street probably has much more in common with the February 20th Movement in Morocco than with the protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square, or Tunisia, to say nothing of the revolutionaries that overthrew the Gadaffi regime in Libya. Even more so than the February 20th Movement, Occupy Wall Street must focus its efforts on reform rather than regime change. Regardless of political frustration across the political spectrum, the United States remains a consolidated democracy. Non-democratic practices in the US have a marginal role in public politics. That's not to say that they aren't employed by some actors, just that the US political process remains fundamentally democratic. Which brings us to the question of how a protest movement like Occupy Wall Street fits into the democratic practice of the contemporary United States. Interestingly, the movement itself has shied away from making very specific demands. This lack of a list of demands points to the structural limitations on the movement. Protesting in a democracy can effectively only be a matter of expression, rather than demanding. In a democracy, demands can only be met through some sort of institutionalized system. 

That doesn't mean that protests are futile. There are plenty of ways in which the broader goals of Occupy Wall Street can be met, without making specific demands. The state can respond to the protests through varied applications of the rules, so long as it is within the rules, and elective representatives can respond to the protests through changes in their positions in the political process. Political actors, elected officials and candidates can adopt the positions of the protesters as their own, helping to advance the movement's goals in the democratic arena. And probably most importantly, the movement can foster a broader transformation in civil society. These goals do seem to be at the core of what the protesters want. According to a poll conducted by Douglas Schoen, 35% of the protesters cite "influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP" as the goal that they would like to see the movement achieve. (Strangely Schoen highlights the 4% who want a "radical redistribution of wealth" as the most important goal, even though, given his small sample size, he's effectively talking about eight people. But even the Metropolis blog on the Wall Street Journal itself has some issue with this.) In this sense, the protests clearly have an important place within the democratic process, but one that precludes making very specific policy demands. 

What this all comes down to, is the distinctiveness of the process of democratization within a democratic context. I would argue that democratization can occur even in consolidated democracies, if we think of democratization as expansions and adaptations of the democratic practice to increase levels of participation, accountability and inclusion. Even in places where democracy is consolidated, effectively "the only game in town", to follow on Linz and Stepan who in turn followed on Di Palma, there is nearly always room for improving the quality and expansiveness of the democratic practice, if only to adapt to changing economic, social, or demographic contexts. Returning to the original idea of linking the Occupy Wall Street movement to the democratization movement in Morocco, or even to the larger Arab Spring, I think it is clear that although all of these political phenomenon share a core ideal of the expansion of participation, the contexts in which they occur fundamentally changes both the possibilities of what can be achieved, as well as the constraints on what can not. That in turn will certainly impact the various tactics and strategies of the individual movements. For students and scholars of comparative politics, the comparative study of democratizations makes for a rich source of cases.