In his 2008 book In Defence of Lost Causes, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes the democratic process as a “big other”, a term taken from the work of Jaques Lacan. For Žižek, a “big other” is a pure embodiment of legitimacy and authority, which abstracts away from the imperfections and personal interests of fallible individuals. Democratic procedure can fulfil this role by taking the verdict of the masses and mediating it through a set of obscure, technocratic rules that, by virtue of their obscurity and technical complexity, confer a sense of impersonal rightness onto the choices of the “mob”. Populism is converted into democracy.
Žižek’s evidence for this is the reaction to George W. Bush’s election in 2000: even though Al Gore had won the national popular vote, Bush’s victory in the “big other” of the Electoral College meant that he was the legitimate, and indeed actual, winner.
In his 2008 book In Defence of Lost Causes, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes the democratic process as a “big other”, a term taken from the work of Jaques Lacan. For Žižek, a “big other” is a pure embodiment of legitimacy and authority, which abstracts away from the imperfections and personal interests of fallible individuals. Democratic procedure can fulfil this role by taking the verdict of the masses and mediating it through a set of obscure, technocratic rules that, by virtue of their obscurity and technical complexity, confer a sense of impersonal rightness onto the choices of the “mob”. Populism is converted into democracy. Žižek’s evidence for this is the reaction to George W. Bush’s election in 2000: even though Al Gore had won the national popular vote, Bush’s victory in the “big other” of the Electoral College meant that he was the legitimate, and indeed actual, winner.
Of course, Žižek’s view here is wrong: Bush’s victory was a source of outrage for many, and that it was grudgingly accepted may be explicable by virtue of the rigidity of America’s constitutional setup; we don’t need to perform a mass psychoanalysis. In general, populations tend to get outraged when governments, however theoretically legitimate, make decisions that fly in the face of public opinion: just look at Greece. But in looking at Greece, we may in fact discover another “big other”: people who know anything about economics.
The globe is in a crisis that is basically without precedent: the Cannes G20 summit has at the time of writing just ended without an agreement on increasing the EFSF, meaning that Greece’s (and now maybe Italy’s) bailouts are looking increasingly precarious. More broadly, the past year has seen Standard & Poor’s downgrade the United States’ credit rating, various leaders allude to the possibility of the breakup of the Eurozone, and the development of a global backlash that ranges from peaceful occupations in New York to riots in Athens. Very clearly, these are interesting times, in which the total breakdown of the previously existing international and national orders is a distinct possibility. Nonetheless, for most people, the processes by which this crisis has happened, as well as those which offer some hope of its resolution, remain opaque. While every taxi driver can tell you that we “spent more money than we had” or whatever, the number of people who can boast a detailed knowledge of, say, the merits of various different default plans for the Greek government, is vanishingly small when compared with the overall electorate. The implications of this for governance are wide-ranging.
For one, it means that almost no-one can get involved in the debate on how to respond to the crisis. The argument about what we should do inevitably takes place in complex technical terms, creating significant barriers to entry for anyone who can’t afford to hire hundreds of economists or consultants. Even Niall Ferguson, an economic historian, can be denounced by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as not having enough expertise to wade in to policy debates. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement can be seen as a kind of capitulation to this dominance: rather than try to engage their opponents on the level of technical detail, the protesters are content to be little more than a public nuisance, whose inability to meet the standards of technical expertise required by their opponents renders their short-to-medium term policy relevance essentially nonexistent. If anything, campaigns like these reinforce the impression that to oppose current economic policy is to oppose “rational” political discourses in general, opting instead for the symbolism of occupation and civil disobedience.
A defender of OWS might claim that it is important that people smash the hegemony of technocratic decision-making processes and allow everyone’s voice to be heard. This view, however, misses a fundamental point: the claim that “experts know better” is certainly a potent ideological device, but it is also, on its own terms, true. Experts on economics do in fact know far better than most people what the likely effects of various policy options are. While economists don’t necessarily have a better insight into questions of values or justice than your average protestor, we can’t do without this “big other” because any substantive political decision will require technical knowledge that only they have. It’s not enough, incidentally, to say something like “Let the democratic process decide the values, and the technocrats decide how to achieve them”, because the kinds of broad judgements on “values” that publics can make don’t help much in making fine-grade distinctions between policy alternatives.
In effect, we have little option but to defer to expert knowledge in deciding how to weather this economic storm. What this means is that we ought to take more seriously who these experts are. Inequality in education means that those with economic training have tended to be more white, male and middle-class than the general public. If most people are unable to second-guess economists, we can at least make sure that as many kinds of groups as possible are represented amongst their ranks, and thus able to make their case in the technical terms required. Perhaps then our “big other” can be slightly less alien.
Of course, Žižek’s view here is wrong: Bush’s victory was a source of outrage for many, and that it was grudgingly accepted may be explicable by virtue of the rigidity of America’s constitutional setup; we don’t need to perform a mass psychoanalysis. In general, populations tend to get outraged when governments, however theoretically legitimate, make decisions that fly in the face of public opinion: just look at Greece. But in looking at Greece, we may in fact discover another “big other”: people who know anything about economics.
The globe is in a crisis that is basically without precedent: the Cannes G20 summit has at the time of writing just ended without an agreement on increasing the EFSF, meaning that Greece’s (and now maybe Italy’s) bailouts are looking increasingly precarious. More broadly, the past year has seen Standard & Poor’s downgrade the United States’ credit rating, various leaders allude to the possibility of the breakup of the Eurozone, and the development of a global backlash that ranges from peaceful occupations in New York to riots in Athens. Very clearly, these are interesting times, in which the total breakdown of the previously existing international and national orders is a distinct possibility. Nonetheless, for most people, the processes by which this crisis has happened, as well as those which offer some hope of its resolution, remain opaque. While every taxi driver can tell you that we “spent more money than we had” or whatever, the number of people who can boast a detailed knowledge of, say, the merits of various different default plans for the Greek government, is vanishingly small when compared with the overall electorate. The implications of this for governance are wide-ranging.
For one, it means that almost no-one can get involved in the debate on how to respond to the crisis. The argument about what we should do inevitably takes place in complex technical terms, creating significant barriers to entry for anyone who can’t afford to hire hundreds of economists or consultants. Even Niall Ferguson, an economic historian, can be denounced by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as not having enough expertise to wade in to policy debates. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement can be seen as a kind of capitulation to this dominance: rather than try to engage their opponents on the level of technical detail, the protesters are content to be little more than a public nuisance, whose inability to meet the standards of technical expertise required by their opponents renders their short-to-medium term policy relevance essentially nonexistent. If anything, campaigns like these reinforce the impression that to oppose current economic policy is to oppose “rational” political discourses in general, opting instead for the symbolism of occupation and civil disobedience.
A defender of OWS might claim that it is important that people smash the hegemony of technocratic decision-making processes and allow everyone’s voice to be heard. This view, however, misses a fundamental point: the claim that “experts know better” is certainly a potent ideological device, but it is also, on its own terms, true. Experts on economics do in fact know far better than most people what the likely effects of various policy options are. While economists don’t necessarily have a better insight into questions of values or justice than your average protestor, we can’t do without this “big other” because any substantive political decision will require technical knowledge that only they have. It’s not enough, incidentally, to say something like “Let the democratic process decide the values, and the technocrats decide how to achieve them”, because the kinds of broad judgements on “values” that publics can make don’t help much in making fine-grade distinctions between policy alternatives.
In effect, we have little option but to defer to expert knowledge in deciding how to weather this economic storm. What this means is that we ought to take more seriously who these experts are. Inequality in education means that those with economic training have tended to be more white, male and middle-class than the general public. If most people are unable to second-guess economists, we can at least make sure that as many kinds of groups as possible are represented amongst their ranks, and thus able to make their case in the technical terms required. Perhaps then our “big other” can be slightly less alien.
