Wednesday, April 23, 2008
By MARY ALICE HADDAD
Why now?
Why is it this year, 2008, that we have the first serious black contender for president?
We have heard the theme come out as an aside or an undercurrent in candidate speeches and pundit analyses: generational change. The usual focus is young people and their high-technology ways of rallying support and raising money. But the analysts should be looking more toward the graying set to explain what is going on in this election. It is not the screaming youths who are going to be the significant factor in the 2009 administration, it is the new generation of leaders who will be increasing their ranks in government, business and in civic organizations.
A new generation is coming to power in American politics. Its only member among the current set of contenders, Barack Obama, might not win this particular election, but we will see more and more leaders like him in the years to come.
November 2008 will be the first national election in which a majority of voters will have received all of their schooling after the 1965 Civil Rights Act. These Americans are not free of racial stereotypes, but the stereotypes are not as central to their world views as they were for previous generations. Even if they attended mono-racial schools, they were not taught in school that particular races were mentally inferior. Separate-but-equal might still be practiced in some places, but, for the first time this year, a majority of voting Americans will not have experienced it as part of a national ideology.
We’re not alone
Ours is not the only democracy to undergo profound change with the rise of a particular generation. Analogous changes have recently occurred in Japan. In 2001, Junichiro Koizumi became the first prime minister to have experienced his entire education in a democratic Japan. He became the longest serving prime minister in 30 years, stepping down voluntarily after three terms rather than being voted out of office. In that country, generations that experienced their entire education in a democratic Japan became a majority of the electorate in 1990; they became a majority in the national legislature by the end of the decade and now hold more than 80 percent of the seats.
Although Japan has had all of the institutional requirements of a democracy since it promulgated its constitution in 1947, the past decade has seen sweeping changes that have enhanced that country’s democracy.
Wave after wave of recent legislation has enhanced Japan’s democratic institutions and practices: a 1993 change in the election law designed to enhance electoral competition; a 1994 product liability law that empowered consumers; a 1998 nonprofit organization law that significantly enhanced the ability of nonprofit organizations to gain legal status; a 1999 freedom of information law that increased public access to governmental information; a 1999 law promoting gender equality; a 2001 law that stipulated the creation of lay judges, the list goes on and on. Japan’s democratically educated generations have and are remaking fundamental political institutions and revamping politics in their country. We are about to do the same in ours.
The 2008 presidential campaign is about large policy issues facing the country — war, health care, the economy. It might also be about what we think our democracy should look like in the future; the kind of democracy that we will leave as a legacy to our children. No matter who is elected in November, change is afoot. This election is only the beginning.
X Haddad is an assistant professor of government and East Asian studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and author of the book “Politics and Volunteering in Japan.”