“Democracy is the Worst Form of Government.” Discuss.

Written By Alain De Bossart (Oct 2005).

The quote is from Winston Churchill, a Prime Minister during the 2nd world war against Nazism and Fascism, and a Statesman during the growing tensions of the Cold War against Communism. The quote can be extended to, “Democracy is the worst form of Government but for all those others that have been tried”. What he was suggesting was that democracy has many faults, but relative to the faults of other political systems it is the best we have come up with, indeed in the title his words have been misrepresented. There will be discussion on the merits and deficiencies of the democratic system of governance with comparison and contrast to the principles as well as the merits and deficiencies of other types of governance, notably Autocracy.

Democracy

Democracy is the rule of the majority. It enables the individuals within the masses to voice opinions and concerns over events and practices that directly or indirectly affect them. It maintains the view that no individual or group of people have the right to be masters or slaves to others, it is often associated with liberty, the idea of personal freedom.

Democracy comes in two forms, the liberal democracy and the direct democracy. The Liberal democracy is based on the idea of individuals representing a mass of people in constituencies, a direct democracy is every person voting and deciding on every issue brought to the electorate.

Representatives

The most significant feature of a liberal democracy is perhaps the representative. This individual represents a collective of people and acts on their behalf in the decision making process. There is much fallibility with the concept of the representative. A great issue is who is the representative’s allegiance to? Theory says the electorate; his duty is to represent the views of his constituents. However, the very idea of a representative is that it takes pressure away from the electorate to pay attention to politics and so it can be said that the constituents are voting for the party that is represented and not the individual representative. With this in mind there is a view that the representative has an obligation to the party, largely irrespective of the constituents, and come the next election the constituents will vote for parties again not the representatives. To be a representative is a full-time occupation, this is probably not a pre-requisite in the theory of liberal democracy because it suggests the representative should be obligated to himself, and his career. So we have the obligations to the constituents, the party, and himself. These options are not mutually exclusive, indeed are finely interwoven. To lookout for himself he’ll want to carry favour with the party whom who’s name he trades under and so allies himself to party wishes, he wants to keep his constituents sweet as these people employ him and so must listen to them also.

Power?

The ambivalence around to whom the representative is obligated to follow, prompts another question of who really has power in a liberal democracy? The argument for the electorate holding the power is that they are ultimately empowered to choose their representatives and as such, they have the choice and the overall responsibility for whom runs the country. There is an argument that it is parliament who holds the power; they decide the laws, military actions, and the political infrastructure. There is just a short period of time where the electorate chooses who makes up parliament, but with the dominance of political parties amongst other characteristics, the electorate realistically has very little choice and little power. There is also belief that power is ultimately wielded by the PM and his cabinet. This view highlights the cabinet’s ability to push through its own legislation in the house. With an ability to control the behaviour of Parliament it follows that Parliament has diminished power, of which is transposed to those in the cabinet. Perhaps another suggestion to who holds power is that in view of the dominance of political parties especially at the national level, those in charge of these parties can exert a lot of pressure on elected officials; these are people like party chairmen and large party donators, this implies plutocratic tendencies into liberal democracy. If democracy can be a flow concept with power to the masses being the most fluid and an individual despot being most rigid, the connotations of a plutocracy is analogous to a bog, or a swamp; neither of which are particularly hospitable places to be.

Apathy

Another implication of the Representative is the downscaling of the importance individuals place in politics in their daily lives. The representative is intended to be more aware of the political discussion, better informed, to make a better decision on behalf of the people, so releasing the individual from their social obligations in order to pursue their own ends. But downscaling of importance of politics in an individual’s life will logically extend to political apathy. Political Apathy is where an individual opts out of the political debate by not participating when asked and by not informing themselves on issues. Nationwide political apathy is dangerous because the balance of power can be distorted more easily. With large majorities choosing not to vote, the extremist parties’ votes will be proportionately larger than they might otherwise be. This is based on the assumption that those who support extremist views are more likely to vote, and those who don’t vote hold no extremist views but are disinterested for some other reason. The question of why there is such apathy has many answers including dislike of available parties, contentment of current political scene and the likely future, and perhaps most prevalent the growing belief of self-importance in daily life. This goes into materialism, aggressive advertising-subversion, distorted thinking; but essentially the view that an individual vote will not change anything, an individual has only the power of one vote and so they cannot change anything, so why bother? That is ultimately the prominent excuse behind Voter Apathy. This is yet another fault with the liberal democracy that in theory does not exist.

Direct

Direct democracy is every person voting and deciding on every issue brought to the electorate. This method prevents the shortfalls of representatives, since there are none. It prevents loci of power, though only to a degree, Cicero in the direct democracy of the Roman Republic would sway the voters with impassioned speeches, much the same as Caesar and Cato among others too. It would eradicate Voter Apathy too, in theory, since each individual is obligated to vote and join the debate. However, aside from corrupt ancient civilisations and tiny principalities, direct democracy couldn’t work. Too much time would be spent on making decisions forgoing opportunities to pursue personal ends, either that or not enough laws would be enacted because time was deemed best spent pursuing personal matters and a form of Anarchism would prevail.

Autocracy

Autocratic states of the recent past have not been remotely democratic. The Soviet Union, a Coup in 1917, who remained until 1989, the numerous Soviet satellites, Castro in Cuba, the military generals in Burma/Myanmar presently. These places dispel the concept of the rule of many, and adopt the rule of one (or a few). Communists have used excuses, the Monarchs have used others, and some have not bothered with excuses as they have power so who cares? The idea of the rule of one, an autocracy, is that decisions can be made more quickly, and will remain focused on a particular plan.

But these decisions and plans are usually self-serving in motive.  Poor knowledge and fear of insurrection contribute to the poor running of autocratic states. Zimbabwe, for example, is facing ever reducing crop yields, and a failing economy; yet because power is not held by anyone else the Zimbabwean government can continue with what it wants to do. Those in power are explicitly corrupt, since there is little danger to their power they can undertake whatever self-serving interests they please, often involving money laundering and extravagance.

Conclusion

The autocracies of Russia, China and Cuba of recent years have all proceeded non-democratic governments, the lack of examples of democracies falling into permanent autocracies, and the large number of democracies in the world all point to a trend that democracy is best. Why could that be? If direct democracy is wildly impractical, and liberal democracies are fallible in respect to appropriate representation, power concentration, and apathy; why are they so persistent, and strong?

The unique nature of a democracy to any other form of governance is that power is spread out as evenly as possible so that no individual or small collective can abuse its position. Whether it be the power of the electorate every 4 or so years, or Parliament, or the PM; none have absolute power to control the others, despite the rantings of cynics.

Although democracy has its flaws, unelected people with degrees of power, ambiguous roles of representatives, voter apathy; it is generally the most favoured because it gives the most safe environment for people to live in, which we have come up with. This is the key, an individual wants to feel safe around others, too many laws and suddenly you are confined and not safe, “A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady.” Voltaire, with not enough laws, people have no direction, anarchy exists. In democracy the power to decide matters is the most evenly spread of any form of practical governance, quite simply democracy is the ‘safest’ possibility. Having said all that the man who said democracy was the best of what we have so far, also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill