It is human nature to seek certainty and shun uncertainty. Uncertainty is something that we generally feel apprehensive about. Yet it dictates and dominates a large part of our existence and actions, notwithstanding the apparent preference for predictability and certainty. The combination of certainty and uncertainty, however, helps maintain the equilibrium of stability and change in our life, and in society at large.

No sooner had human beings realized the indispensability and importance of their social or collective existence that we started to wonder about the nature of its organising principles. We realized that one way to make life better is to eliminate uncertainties. From the vagaries of nature to the vicissitudes of human actions – we strove to contain them, predict them and develop a pattern around them. So, uncertainties, especially those uncertain aspects of life that are triggered by the whims and fancies of fellow human beings, demanded appropriate collective resolution.

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With this objective in mind, we all agreed to be part of a social contract. However, before human beings agreed to be part of an imaginary or actual ‘social contract’, life was governed by complete uncertainty. In the words of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, life was “nasty, brutish and short”. Social contract was basically aimed to protect ourselves and our belongings from arbitrary human intervention by bringing into existence a power that assured a degree of certainty. In return, we would conduct ourselves responsibly irrespective of our position, power or predilections.

Life and property of common people would be protected by basic rules and a superior power would be entrusted to govern us. Thus the foundation of the modern state or government was laid. Though social contract brought a semblance of equality among common people and secured their life and property, the relation of people with the governing power remained deeply hierarchical, unequal and at times fraught with uncertainties. So, our attempt to bring certainty through mutual agreement and institutional arrangements eventually generated a new set of uncertainties.

Questions were raised on how the governing power was to be attained, exercised and transferred. One of the ways to control the governing power and challenge the hierarchical power relation was to introduce and institutionalize uncertainty. It may sound contradictory that on the one hand we aim to reduce arbitrariness, at the same time, institutionalized uncertainty is encouraged. However, it is not contradictory, rather complementary.

Uncertainty does not always mean arbitrariness or whimsicality. It also implies fairness, equal opportunity and newer possibilities. Uncertainty is a question mark on the status quo. Uncertainty for wielders of power in a system works as a restraint on its arbitrary misuse. The argument becomes clearer when various systems of arranging power are explored. There was a time when monarchy, especially hereditary monarchy was the dominant form of exercising political power in most parts of the world.

It is a system where the access to power is determined by the accident of birth and succession of power remains confined mostly within the members of royal family. Privileges are enjoyed as long as the grip on power remains intact or certain. The sense of certainty of accessing power in a monarchy is only interrupted by occasional acts of regicide, rebellion and resistance which bring uncertainty in the entire process. However, in a monarchy certainty is as arbitrary as uncertainty itself.

People and their will are generally relegated to insignificance when a regime seeks certainty of power. Autocracy, dictatorship, authoritarianism – all these ways of exercising political power try to ensure one thing, certainty of power. Autocrats who ritually organize elections to legitimize their hold on power, ensure only they emerge as winners out of this process.

In a system where rulers are assured of their power, they show little concern for people and try to eliminate every perceived threat that may bring uncertainty or challenge their status. What is ironic is the fact that uncertainty also looms large on the horizon for autocrats as they never know how and when they would be unseated.

The more they feel uncertain or insecure, the more they try to control everything, the further they are driven into the abyss of uncertainties. It is in the tendency to eliminate uncertainty in favour of unassailable control that lies the seeds of totalitarianism.

Democracy, on the other hand, is the only form of governance where both certainty and uncertainty are institutionalized in a specific order. To call democracy a form of governance that institutionalized only uncertainty is an incomplete description.

Democracy has arranged certainty and uncertainty in way that ensures rulers are restrained and held accountable to the people. Periodic elections, the defining feature of any democracy, are events where we find the display of institutionalized certainty and uncertainty in equal measure. It ensures procedural certainty while keeping the outcome uncertain. In democracy the process lends legitimacy to the outcome.

Therefore, an election always needs to be defined by its procedural certainty and fairness. Similarly, uncertainty of outcome keeps the possibility of change open and most importantly change is not accompanied by bloodshed or violent upheaval. Still, many of us may like to see the uncertainty element in a democracy as a reflection of its weakness or indecisiveness. It can also be argued that democracy has failed to produce so-called strong leaders only because of its inherent uncertainties.

The seducing appeals of strong leaders often make many of us look at uncertainties as dispensable distractions. However, the apparent weakness of democracy actually serves as its biggest strength; it lends resilience to the system by shrinking the space for brinkmanship and widening the scope for different opinions and actors. It is like an open competition where the participants interested to possess political power take part in a process that is more or less fair to all and gives equal opportunity to everyone.

Moreover, the participants also know that in this competition no outcome – neither success nor failure – is permanent or certain. So, it can be concluded that the certainty of process and the uncertainty of outcome together make democracy work the way it does. However, when this order is reversed or upended, the future looks uncertain for democracy and those who believe in it.

(The writer is Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, University of Bankura. He can be reached at hazra.nirupam@gmail.com)