Democracy is often presented as a product of a linear history: It was born in Ancient Greece, institutionalized in European modernity and eventually spread across the world, but this is only the male-dominated side of the truth. The political imagination of the human species is much older, much broader and much more layered.
When we go deeper into the layers of social organization, two major democratic veins emerge:
Maternal democracy, that is, the maternal politics of relationships, of care, of horizontal decision-making processes;
and patriarchal democracy, the politics of the state, rules, institutions and competition, that is, the politics of the dominant male.
These two models are the carriers not only of gender-based power relations but also of two different worldviews. Today's political crises - the crisis of representation, social polarization, sexism, ecological disasters - arise from the disconnection of these two lines.
Matriarchal societies, often misunderstood in modern literature, do not establish “women's domination”, but rather an egalitarian, circular, non-hierarchical political logic.
Minangkabau (West Sumatra, Indonesia) women's rights over land, the authority of Irokua “clan mothers” (an indigenous people living in North America), Rojhılat (Iranian Kurdistan) women's Jın, jiyan, azadi
The call, the astonishing equality archaeology of Çatalhöyük... All of these examples show the same thing:
Politics is a form of relationship before competition.
In fundamental democracies, power operates not by imposition but by legitimacy, not by hierarchy but by consensus, not by law but by mutual recognition.
This model draws on the cycles of ecology, the continuity of caring labor, morality-conscience and the resilience of community life. It is one of the rare structures where nonviolence and patience are recognized as political values.
Patriarchal democracy, on the other hand, emerges from the historical consequences of statehood. The male citizen model of Ancient Greece, the rational-legal systematics of Rome, the bureaucratic mind of the modern nation state... These are all manifestations of the same political DNA in different periods.
In this model, democracy is organized through an individualistic understanding of citizenship, a political culture based on competition, a law-based order and strong institutions.
Patriarchal democracy provides stability; it produces predictability. But it also creates a public-private dichotomy that fragments the human being by excluding emotional intelligence, care labor and community ties.
Matriarchal and patriarchal democracy are not just two different modes of governance, but two different “perceptions of reality”.
For the matrilineal model, society is a network, the relationships between nodes are everything.
For the patriarchal model, society is a contract and the rights and duties of individuals are decisive.
The first one starts with “we”, the second one with “I”.
The first sees nature as an extension of the body, the second sees nature as the domain of property.
The first works through harmony, the second through competition.
Both models are incomplete on their own; one is too flexible, the other too rigid.
Humanity today is caught between these two extremes.
Today's complex world-ecological crises, migratory movements, inequalities of the age of artificial intelligence-produces problems that neither matriarchal horizontality nor patriarchal institutionalism alone can solve.
A symmetrical democracy that combines both lines is therefore more inclusive.
Horizontal assemblies and communes at the local level; strong, accountable institutions at the national level.
While individual freedoms are protected, care work and community solidarity become political subjects.
Decisions are taken taking into account both the cycles of nature and scientific data.
The economy becomes a space not only for competition but also for solidarity.
This synthesis is neither matriarchal nor patriarchal. It is a dialectical fusion of the two, a new level of political consciousness.
Humanity stands at a critical juncture in the history of democracy.
Thousands of years of patriarchy, in which women, men, societies and nature have been cut off from each other, is no longer sustainable, ecologically, socially or spiritually.
On the other hand, a purely relational and horizontal matrilineal model cannot carry the institutional complexity of the modern world.
The future of the political is therefore the name of a new democratic social contract in which relationship and institution, care and right, consensus and representation, nature and reason can coexist.
For this reason, democratic society is an effort to reconnect the two political memories of humanity and to bring the politics of the democratic society of the future to a more holistic ground. The synthesis of democratic society, with women's freedom at the forefront, is philosophically centered on fundamental values such as equality, justice, conscience and morality in all areas of life, and is thus the construction of an egalitarian and sustainable democratic society in which both individual freedoms and social responsibilities are balanced.
Guest Author: Gürsel Karaaslan