‘Psychology has a fundamental role to play in forging a politically constituted society of equals’

To kick off our conversation, Stephen Sawyer talked with Tetiana Shyriaieva and Evangelia Vergouli about how we maintain a society of equals, and how people have tackled the question of privilege while putting democracy at the centre of our histories of political modernity.

Your book is entitled Demos Assembled. Could you clarify what you mean when referring to demos and what the relationship between demos and democracy is?

The term is taken from what I consider to be its two most convincing and powerful uses in the 19th century: by Victor Hugo, and by Karl Marx. According to them, a 'democracy' or a 'demos' is a body of people that understands its relationships to others as politically determined. 

They both deny privilege based on things like race and, to some extent, gender… although they are less explicit about that. The relationships of people in the demos, to use the terms of Richard Worty, are 'made and not found'; they are fashioned, and in this sense, they are political. It's what I refer to as a politically constituted society of equals.

Once we have this politically constituted society of equals, the question is whether the best way of preserving it is through democratic government, an aristocracy, or some sort of mixed government, such as a Monarchy with a representative Parliament. 

The demos must govern itself democratically. You can be a politically constituted society of equals and not govern yourself democratically. I'd say we have examples of that today, and I would put China in that category: it is a society that emerged out of communism, it has fashioned itself, and yet has decided to be governed by a single party. Even though they do have elections, they are not entirely governed democratically.

The idea here is that there are all kinds of definitions of democracy. Still, two essential concepts are hidden within it: one is this concept of a society of equals, and the other concerns the way in which we maintain that society of equals.

Do you think this understanding of the word has changed over time?

The first sort of major invocation of the word demos in a modern context that I've been able to study is by Thomas Hobbes in his De Cive (1642). He says that a country has a demos if the people join together to decide who will govern them. Even if they go to sleep or disband, as long as they say that they will join together later, they are still a demos. Even if they're not the ones who govern themselves. So, for Hobbes, the demos is still always there, even if the group comes together and says, 'We've chosen to be governed by a dictator for the next 20 years'.

A few years later, the political philosopher Samuel Freiherr Pufendorf discredited Hobbes' ideas. According to him, 'to be a demos, you obviously have to self-govern'. Hobbes and Pufendord, who were both writing in the 17th century, wouldn't have been able to imagine the general critique of the aristocracy that emerged with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, which I understand to be a general critique of natural privilege. 

That was fundamental for defining how a demos functions. It is also an essential part of what's going on now in terms of the emancipatory movements against racial, gender, and sexual privilege. In many ways, the revolutions at the end of the 18th century, from Haiti to the US to France to the Netherlands and beyond, are characterised by the revolt against aristocracy or natural privilege.

What emerges then is this new concept of the demos, which is not just about politics, it's about a kind of society. That's what is new: this distinction between a society, on the one hand, and a political regime, on the other. 

But in order for that to happen, there was this first move towards realising that to be a demos, you have to govern yourself. The second move was the realisation that you govern yourself towards the maintenance of a society of equals, and that didn't emerge until the 19th century.

What would you say to people who believe the term demos is outdated and no longer applicable or relevant to modern democracies?

First of all, it's why I am engaged in a sort of three-part project to try to show what the term is and why the term is relevant. I think we need to think about what its value is and explain the relevance of the term and why we want to use it.

I would say it is true that you are seeing the word used more and more by academics. There is a sense in which the word speaks to people. There's a sense in which I say, "Oh, I'm a part of a demos". You know, the big question has been, is there a European demos? 

Some people say no, some say yes, some have come up with the term, or they haven't come up with it, and they are employing the plural of the term; they call them demoi. That is the answer. We are seeing a renewed interest in the term, but I think the burden is on us to explain why a term that we have inherited from the Greeks is still relevant.

Next up, Evangelia Vergouli asked Stephen about political mobilisation society.

Undeniably, the success of political parties depends on the extent to which they're able to mobilise the demos. What aspects of political communication do you think are critical for understanding the public's response to this influence?

The scale at which I tackle these problems is always slightly abstract. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the dynamics of how the publics form, when they mobilise, and when they don't. This culture of political mobilisation and revolt developed in France between 1789 and 1914, alongside the development of political parties – which, as we think of them, didn't actually develop until the late 19th century. 

What's interesting when looking at France's culture is precisely the new way in which popular mobilisation develops in 1789, 1830, 1848, and to some extent even in revolts in 1852 against Napoleon; people would often go to the streets because they were not very happy with a certain policy, and often, one of the things they were trying to achieve was to overthrow the entire regime.

Now, obviously, in terms of what marks public demonstrations today, I would say the pendulum has swung further to something that Sidney Tarrow has referred to as a 'political mobilisation society'. 

People are in the streets, kind of all the time, and they're not necessarily trying to overthrow the entire constitution; they're manifesting around a specific policy or issue or the injustice that they see happening somewhere in the world. We're seeing today an increased politicisation of many things, and that is transforming our parties, how we interact in public space, and what we try to achieve through demonstrations and strikes.

So, what allows for a message to be heard by people is, at some level, more significant mobilisation on their part. Something that you see in some social science literature – that I deeply disagree with, based on my historical work – is people saying, 'In periods of insurgency and social movements, you essentially have such a total critique of the system that the system starts to fall apart'. 

I think it's the opposite; the more mobilised and sensitive people are – sometimes even to the slightest word that somebody in a party will say – the more they open up to the possibilities of governance and political communication, the more reception there will be to what people are saying.

So, essentially, what is critical for understanding the public's response to influence is the level of the public's mobilisation. And the more mobilised and politicised the public is, paradoxically, the more our parties' actions will have an effect. Now, whether they'll have the influence they want, that's another issue.

What can psychologists interested in politics learn from critical perspectives on democracy or the history of democracy in relation to the study of contemporary political issues?

To my mind, all the disciplines of the social sciences – from sociology to psychology to history to economics – are historically linked to the rise of democracy. 

One of the philosophers who influenced my work the most, Bruno Karsenti, a French philosopher of social science, essentially argues that the birth of social sciences is part of a broader transition in political philosophy from a discussion that centres mainly on questions of 'political right': that is, law, constitution, sovereignty, natural law, the questions that occupy much of the early modern world, like, 'Are people born equal?', 'How should the king's sovereignty be interpreted?', 'How do we establish relations between states?'. 

The birth of social sciences, including psychology, resulted in a massive shift of focus on social relations and, by implication, a foundational understanding of democracy as something in which we constitute our relationships with others.

This understanding of democracy further suggests that we reach conclusions that allow us to better understand how we interact with ourselves as political subjects, and as people who make their world instead of just discovering it. Of course, specific characteristics of how individuals interact with groups, society, etc., are fundamental to that end.

I guess if you have an understanding of democracy that says, 'Well, democracy is great; you just have to have more elections, and we need to be exporting elections all over the world…', then you won't get very far. 

But suppose you have a critical perspective on democracy as a social relationship in which we are trying to make and decide how to maintain a politically constituted society of equals. In that case, psychology has a fundamental role to play in how we understand that relationship. Without it, we would be lost in understanding many of the basic dynamics and how that relationship is forged.

So, in closing, what directions do you foresee your research taking, considering the global political landscape and all the dynamic changes that we are witnessing?

My work over the last 10 years has really gone in two directions: I'm digging backwards, with a kind of genealogical aspect to it, and looking forward.

The going backwards part started with the first book called Demos Assembled, which looks the development of the democratic state in France in the second half of the 19th century. Then Demos Rising looks at the emergence of public power and public authority in the first half of the 19th century.

The work is primarily focused on France, but I don't shy away from trying to develop a more theoretical perspective on what democracy means based on that history. Thanks to Horizon Europe and a whole series of colleagues, I've had the opportunity to work on prospective projects D-RAD under the direction of Umut Korkut and the OppAttune project, which focuses more specifically on how we create dialogue between all extremes, and what attunement might look like.