55% of Luxembourgers find it a problem that only a minority can vote (PolitMonitor Luxemburger Wort/RTL survey)
The election without candidate that we propose is a reaction to the pitfalls of representative democracy as it is practiced. Some of these pitfalls are consubstantial with representation, others are the consequence of a misuse of its principles and finally there are the pitfalls linked to exogenous factors and which limit its scope.
The inherent pitfalls :
Limited voting rights :
Only 26% of the working population of Luxembourg does not have the right to vote. In 1918, the censal vote explicitly recognised that democratic rights were reserved only for the wealthiest groups in society and at that time only 15% of the population had access to the right to vote. That is only 11% less than today.
This figure should be further reduced if we take into account a larger electorate which would also include young people (16-18 years old) who cannot yet vote, as well as people living in the greater region who are influenced by decisions taken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. However, a political decision always has a wider area of effect than the territory of the political body that took it.
Housing policy in the city has an effect on the whole region, as does the management of transport issues or fiscal policy, not to mention the impact that the Luxembourg way of life has on the climate.
Democratic individualism and political marketing :
Representative democracy reinforces individualism and gives primacy to the individual in his or her singularity and denies or undermines the interdependence of individuals. This individualism contributes to a relative disinvestment in traditional forms of collective action, to which is preferred more punctual, pragmatic and critical forms of commitment to delegation or network logics.
Thus, one gives one's vote as one buys a product or a service: on a market. This market is thus the place where political offers are confronted and must find a buyer whatever the cost. The result is an ever-widening gap between the costly and time-consuming political offers and the urgent needs of citizens, which sometimes requires profound changes.
One example illustrates the gap that can exist in the fight against climate change. When we look at the different political offers that are being made on the subject, most of them opt for techno-solutionism.
Thus the electric vehicle is presented as a solution to the problem posed by the thermal vehicle, whereas today the electric vehicle is essentially a coal-fired vehicle, not to mention the fact that it relies on a hoarding of metals whose scarcity will undeniably exclude some of the people who need mobility. Here and/or elsewhere. This techno-solutionism makes it possible to avoid the political issues related to transport, land use planning, etc.
Sociological profile of elected officials :
Representative democracy requires political parties to develop a political offer for the political market and to choose, according to sometimes opaque rules, those who will embody it. Future elected representatives are therefore chosen according to their commercial capacities, their ability to sell a political product on a competitive market. This is how we observe an ever-increasing gap between the sociological characteristics of the active population and those of the candidates.
Indeed, if we compare the profile of the candidates and that of Luxembourg residents, the latter are older, more male (35.78% women compared to 50% in the population), and Luxembourgers (85.2% compared to 56.96% in the population). The latter are older, predominantly male (35.78% women compared to 50% of the population), Luxembourgers (85.2% compared to 56.96% of the population), more active (76.3% compared to 63% of the population), and more civil servants (28.36% compared to 7.17% of employees in Luxembourg).
Misuse of democratic principles :
Democratic events
Citizens are invited to express their political preferences once every six years or to register to vote. A few weeks before the elections, the public space is saturated with political marketing. Politics is thus presented as an episodic event that should only be dealt with at specific times.
Citizen participation mechanisms do exist at national (petitions, referendums) or local level (consultative commissions, citizen platforms) but either they do not work or they are only consultative, in either case it is a case of ersatz democracy or Democracywashing.
We advocate the establishment of a direct local democracy, based on elections without candidates, which can exercise real political power throughout the term of office. Inspired by municipalism as defined by J. Durand Folco or M. Bookchin, we wish to develop demands while building the foundations of a resilient future society.
Electoralism and clientelism :
One of the forms of misuse of democracy is electoralism and its corollary clientelism. As a result of the commodification of democracy, we are witnessing a tendency towards electoralism, which is characterised by a demagogic orientation that flatters the electorate and masks the unpleasant aspects of reality.
This results in positions and programmes being over-determined by the expected electoral gains, but also by the trivialisation of various forms of clientelism (granting of unjustified advantages - subsidies, obtaining jobs, various facilities - in exchange for future political support).
Democratic formalism:
In some cases, a formally democratic framework exists but is underused (consultative commissions) or hijacked by autocratic practices. In some municipalities, the municipal council is reduced to a recording chamber for decisions taken in a non-transparent manner by a mayor who refuses to play the democratic game. This also exists in parliament (the establishment of the citizen's climate office is a good example).
Exogenous factors
Economic liberalism and democracy have foundations that are, if not contradictory, at least perfectly paradoxical. Indeed, the demos is the political body of a city, i.e. the whole of the citizens who constitute the sovereign power of a State. The individual is the smallest statistical accounting unit. The demos defines itself and lives in a defined territory. The client, on the other hand, moves where the market takes him, he must cross the limits.
There is an inflation of technical legal texts whose vocation is to guarantee less legislation/regulation and therefore more inequalities. The mission of an elected government is reduced to managing the state in a way that conforms to criteria set elsewhere, in treaties with supranational value. Conflicts are increasingly arbitrated outside the territory.