What is the place of popular protest in democracy? How should groups of citizens deal with undemocratic decisions by elected governments? How should the state deal with dissent? These are some of the questions that two distant parts of the world, France and Israel, have been grappling with for over a month now as hundreds of thousands of people have come out on the streets to defend what they consider their civil liberties and social rights.

A notable thing about these protests is their composition. Even though opposition groups are part of them to various extents, they are mainly led by non-political actors comprising civil society groups, trade unions and mostly concerned ordinary citizens.

In Israel, for over a month, thousands of protesters have been on the streets of the major cities to demonstrate their opposition to the judicial changes proposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. The changes would allow the Israeli executive greater say in the appointment of judges and limit judicial review of executive actions. For instance, the so-called “override clause” would allow overturning the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court through a simple majority in the Israeli Parliament.

The protesters say that in the absence of a written constitution, the weakening of the judiciary will remove an important check on executive power and risk turning the country into an authoritarian regime. They warn that the changes are aimed at giving Netanyahu and his right wing allies unlimited power without accountability. As of writing, an increasingly isolated Netanyahu has finally agreed to postpone the reforms.

In France, the retirement reform carried out by President Macron has led to unrelenting demonstrations since January. Led by the unions, protesters have gone on strike, crippling basic services in major cities. The government’s primary argument is that there are fewer French in the labour force contributing to the generous pensions France offers its citizens. Existing workers must therefore contribute for a longer period to prevent the system from going into a long-term deficit. This however has found little popular support.

The French fear that they will have to work longer for less. There is widespread worry that people would be forced to work even after they are unable to avoid getting penalised. After passing in the French National Assembly using a device designed for preventing discussion and voting, the pension reform will head to the French Senate for discussion and ratification. It is noteworthy that President Macron had proposed similar reforms in 2020 as well but had to back off owing to widespread protests and the Covid-19 pandemic.

This was not the first time that mass protests erupted in Israel or France, though the scale and intensity, especially in Israel, has been unprecedented. This brings us to the question of the place of protests and citizen mobilisation in democratic societies.

Democracies are thought to be “election-based”, people are said to elect their representatives, who take decisions and make laws on their behalf. There is a line of thought which gives primacy to the will of the people as embodied in the government. People have a right to protest laws and decisions which they do not like, but at the end of the day, the democratic mandate must carry through. Incidentally, one of the reasons given by Netanyahu was that frequent judicial review of government decisions subverted the mandate given to the government by the people.

There is another view which sees democracy as a living system which does not stop at elections. This view of democracy makes people active participants through ongoing engagement with the state. People should not be content merely with electing the government, but rather demand transparency and accountability of the government and strive to preserve the conditions necessary for democracy, such as freedom of the media and independence of the Judiciary.

Thus, a majority of Israelis may have voted for Netanyahu and his allies, yet if a section of Israelis felt that weakening of the Judiciary would undermine the democratic essence of the country, and entrench Netanyahu’s one-man rule, they had the right to take to the streets irrespective of whether they were in the minority or the majority. Democracy thus is not just enforcing the will of the majority, but rather a commitment to values and principles.

This conception of democracy helps explain why so many election-based democracies have regressed in recent years. They have elections but little more. One could put places like Brazil, India, Turkey and Hungary on this list. Speaking of India, which he calls an “election-only” democracy, historian Ramachandra Guha describes it as a state where elections at all levels take place remarkably on time and more or less freely, but there is little engagement of the people with the state. On the one hand, criticism of the government is not well received, and few people of consequence are willing to pay the price of speaking up. Even more importantly, the press and the media fail in their duty of providing credible information and asking the right questions. Unsurprisingly the country has slid down on most global indices of democracy since 2014, which, however, the government hotly disputes.

It was once thought that democracy was inevitable, that autocratic and despotic governments must sooner or later yield to democracy. Yet, just as the past decade has shown, neither is democracy inevitable nor do societies necessarily transition to liberal democracies through election based results alone. Above all, democracy requires a significant number of committed, well-informed citizens who hold their governments to the highest standards of accountability and transparency. Citizens in Israel and France may be doing just that.