A real discussion on Democracy
How direct and representative democracy works? How democracy has changed overtime?
Democracy is certainly one of the most used definitions in today’s politics environment. It is usually portrayed as a measurement to the success of a nation and the happy life of its citizens. From every source of news, every article we read about human rights, democracy will appear at least a dozen times. So are we living in a real democracy? Or is it just the illusion of choice.
First and foremost, what is democracy? How does it work? Democracy, by meaning, comes from the two separated Greek words: “demos” mean “the people” and “kratia” mean the “power of authority”. “Democracy” means the power of authority belongs to the people. It appeared a long time ago, even before when we really invented the word. For example, a tribe can make a decision based on the vote of every member of itself. The only downside of this is mob mentality.
Let’s discuss this more thoroughly. Imagine if you have a big house and many other valuable assets. An original democracy, just as the word means, is when the people vote to take your properties and share it among them, you have the obligation to do it. An original democracy living with the meaning of its own words led to many great scientists killed in our history because the mob thought they were witches and voted to execute them. Often time, the decisions within these society were made by the mentality of a mob rather than the laws. This original type of democracy is called a direct democracy, in which every person in a society has an equal voice to each other, no matter how ridiculous their idea is.
Democracy took a wide turn when the American founding fathers created a country in which they prefer a new system called representative democracy where representatives are chosen by the people to make a decision for them. By this way, every decision is made by more knowledgeable, more experienced representatives chosen by the people and therefore, make a wiser choice. This representative democracy prevents something that a true/direct democracy has failed to do: mob mentality.
However overtime, the representatives that were originally chosen to represent the voice of the people started to lose their touch. Having been in an elite position for so long, those representatives tend to forget how peasants deal with difficulties on a daily basis. The chosen people, when become elite, seldom consult with ordinary people but rather make the decisions on their own. This led to a widespread belief among people today that they have never been living in a real democracy where the people they elected actually listened to their voice. On the other hand, low voter turnout also causes the lack of touch between the people and their representatives. Since not enough people vote, the elected person might not represent the will of the majority. We are all sharing blame in this.
In order to answer the question I raised at the beginning, theoretically speaking, we are living in a representative democracy and it works. We do have the ability to choose people to make decisions for us. The problem is, in reality, there are not enough individual in the population who decide to vote, therefore, tearing apart the idea of a representative democracy from the beginning. Moreover, many elected people are corrupt and will make decisions that benefit them the most. Whether or not our democracy is an illusion of choice is based on our ability to get as close to the perfect condition, where the majority of the population get to vote and the representatives listen to the voice of their own people, as possible. This can be achieved through education and social interaction between the local government and its people.
