13 - The Elusiveness of Political Causality

Summary

The chapter examines the role of causality in politics, demonstrating how democratic politics shifted from a top-down causality, from divinity to monarchy, to a bottom-up causality, from the public to its representatives. This shift is evident in the establishment of periodic elections and democratic institutions, which are designed to legitimize causality derived from human agency. Concurrently, horizontal causality emerged through entities like political parties, civil society, and social media. However, this democratic causality has been weakening over recent decades due to several factors: the diminished capacity of political institutions to represent political causality, the illusion of a direct link between politicians and the public, particularly through mass media and social networks, and the erosion of the concept of “the public” as a democratic entity. In recent years, the public has experienced political fragmentation and lacks unifying forces like ideologies, parties, and labor unions. Another contributing factor to the weakening of causality is the declining faith in science and expertise, which are now associated with elitism. This has led to a weakening of quasi-scientific causality in politics and a rise of the “charisma of ignorance.”