My issues with Democracy
What I feel is wrong with a Democratic system of government, and what could we do to fix it?
A personal collection of thoughts and opinions I have about why a Democratic system of government might not work, and the factors leading to its non-performance.
The “People” are Key for a good Democratic function.
The Government you elect, is the Government you deserve — Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln hit the spot when he said Democracy is a form of government by the people, for the people, to the people. The keyword here is people. You can tell how intelligent the public as a collective is in a particular city/country, simply by observing what kind of people get elected into parliament and eventually form the government.
If you have a population that is intelligent and smart enough to study the candidates, understand their strengths & weaknesses, their personality, and what kind of work they could do if elected; the public would eventually vote for relatively good-quality candidates. These candidates should be able to take better quality decisions as lawmakers, and the overall parliament(both the government and the opposition) should be able to do a few things right.
Instead, if we have a population that is easily swayed by emotions, rhetoric talk, and exaggerated promises(example:- caste/race of the participating candidates, which shouldn’t even matter in the first place!); they can be easily influenced to vote for candidates who have the above but would not necessarily be the better choices. As a result, the quality of people in our parliament will go down, and the resulting government and opposition will take a number of incorrect decisions and continue to rely on false, exaggerated statements/promises to keep their vote-base intact for the upcoming elections.
A real life example I experienced regarding this point:- In a state-election in India, some voters interviewed post-voting said they wanted party A to win, but didn’t believe the party had majority support. So they instead voted for B since they didn’t want their vote to be “wasted”! In a democracy, you simply vote for the candidate that you want to see win! Even if they lose, the candidate can see the true number of supporters they have and can be motivated to work harder next time. Here, party A will poll for less votes than their true number of supporters, and this can demoralise them thinking they don’t have support of the people. Here is a video explaining this.
Show me progress in 5 years!
Democratic systems have timely elections — usually every four or five years — to re-elect the government. This is the opposition’s chance to wrestle back power from the ruling party, by pointing out their mistakes.
But unfortunately, this can lead to certain problems. There are areas where the fruits of our decisions today can only be felt several years down the line. An example would be Education. Reforming the school system, we will need to wait until the present generation of school kids can go to college or enter the job market to get a complete picture of whether the reforms were successful or not. We can’t promise if the same party will be in power until then. If the opposition ends up winning the next election, they will be motivated to remove these reforms because they will see it as a policy of their opponent which they can never support even if these reforms would be good for society.
Create issues to win votes
The democratic system can force political parties to make issues out of non-issues in order to make the public feel like there’s some grave danger if the other party remains in power.
As an opposition party, I have limited time to change the opinion of the people against the ruling party. Even if things are going well, I need to create some sort of “fear” that things are going crazy and we need to change the ruling party or else our country is doomed! This can lead to me opposing literally every policy decision from the ruling party, including the ones that are supported by experts who have studied it’s impact. Even when the government listens to the advice of economic advisors and experts, the opposition can claim that the decision will mess up the economy and we are all doomed.
This is why I’ve always wondered how the ruling and opposition parties never see eye-to-eye on even a single issue. How can they be so opposed to each other? Isn’t there at least one thing they can agree upon?
On a side note: This is why I really admired John McCain supporting his opponent Barack Obama during a campaign event in 2007, when supporters address Obama as “arab” and “anti-american”. It was a rare gesture of humility and respect taking precedence over one’s political ambitions.
People don’t have the time or patience to follow politics
The best argument against Democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter — Sir. Winston Churchill, probably!
(I couldn’t confirm this quote to Churchill, but it’s a good quote nonetheless!)
This ties back to the first point I made about People. It is my responsibility on election day, to vote for the candidate I feel will do the right thing. But do I really have the required knowledge and understanding of ALL the candidates to make the right choice? Have I taken the time to go through all the manifestos of all the candidates, studied their past work, seen some of their interviews to gauge their behaviour and attitude, checked to see if any of them have criminal charges against them, etc.?
If I have not done the above thoroughly enough, I don’t think I am making a 100% informed decision. I bet you that if you go to a polling station on election day and ask a bunch of voters about who did they vote for and why they will give vague answers that clearly show they haven’t done their homework.
People simply don’t have the time or patience today to be able to do all the above-mentioned studies. When I come back home from my 9 to 5 job, I just want to crash into bed, or order dinner and watch a movie or something. In a week/month, I might not get time to follow politics or see what the candidate representing my constituency has been up to. As a result, come election day I really haven’t done my homework to be able to tell which candidate I should vote for.
I either agree with EVERYTHING you do, or NOTHING you do
The Ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all — JFK
I remember many times when politicians assume that they have full support from a community just because they won an election. Yet in my experience as a voter myself, that is rarely the case. It’s extremely impossible for me(or for any voter) to be 100% in line with every decision a government takes.
Come election time, I have only one vote and cannot convey my disagreement with certain policy decisions while agreeing to others.
Hypothetical example:- How can I inform my government that I agree with their decision to raise taxes, but disagree with their decision to cut down a nearby park to build a shopping mall? I just have one vote, and can’t decide if I should vote for them in support of the tax decision, or vote against them in protest against the shopping mall decision? There are means like protesting near the park site, raising my voice on social media, etc. but these work only if the protest is “loud” enough. A few thousand people protesting or sharing facebook posts won’t do much(usually). We need several thousands(esp. in the big cities) to take up the cause in order to make the government take notice. I sometimes feel powerless when indulging in such protests as more often than not, governments tend to get their way eventually.
A few of my Solutions to the above issues
Verify the knowledge and understanding of the voter during elections
This might sound too extreme, but I feel we should only allow those voters who have a minimum standard of knowledge about the candidates and the issues, to go ahead and vote. This is simply because Democracy relies on the PEOPLE to be its foundation. If the People stumble and start voting with poor or limited knowledge, it’ll stop genuinely good candidates from coming forward in elections. Since the People are so key to a democracy’s success, we should check the quality of the People voting.
Maybe have some sort of an exam that a voter has to give before casting their ballot. If they get less than say, 50% of the questions right, their vote will be cancelled or “not counted”.
Have Elections for several issues, rather than just once in 4–5 years
I want there to be more opportunities for me to inform my opinion of the government’s decisions, than the one I get every once in few years.
Can we have some sort of mini-elections for people to cast their vote on how the government should proceed regarding a particular decision? I understand the people can’t be consulted for issues concerning international diplomacy or border disputes, etc. But issues like Taxes, construction of National Highways or Railway tracks through sensitive regions, managing of government-run educational institutes like Schools and Colleges, etc. are things that directly affect the people and hence we should have some sort of mini-elections for each of these for the people to vote and inform the political class of their opinions.
Compulsory Town Hall meetings with the public
This doesn’t happen here in India, enabling candidates and constituency representatives to run away and show up only for votes every five years.
But candidates and constituency representatives should have compulsory town hall events held in a public place where they get to face the public face-to-face. The frequency could be say, once every six months. People should be able to pose questions anonymously(so as to hide their identity) which the candidates have to answer. People should be encouraged to tune in and watch these events. These events should be given priority coverage by the media, and maybe even streamed live online.
Introduce Qualifications for candidates
If a private company can have minimum requirements for its employees to filter out candidates with limited skill, why not politicians? Just like how a Tech company has conditions like “At least 2 years of experience in coding in C++ or Python”, we ought to have minimum qualifications in Politics.
Running a state/country, or even representing a small constituency/county is a difficult task, and we must ensure that person on the job is fully equipped to carry out the responsibility. Maybe, we should have conditions like,
- The Sports Minister should be someone with prior experience in the country’s sports, not necessarily as an athlete but even as a coach or an administrator;
- The Agriculture Minister should have experience in the field, either by an educational qualification/degree in a field related to agriculture or by having lived or being raised in a farmer’s family with experience in farming;
A private company CEO wouldn’t want to hire someone just because they have a lot of money or seem to have the right connections. They’d want to screen the candidate for actual skills that they’ll need to execute the job. Nobody can expect to be hired as a Software Engineer just because they watched a few YouTube videos on the subject. You’ll have to work at it and develop some experience in a few projects before an employer can be convinced that you could do a good job and hire you.
It’s high time we introduce something similar into politics.
Conclusion
If you want to improve or get good at something, you only need to find others who are better at it and observe them or talk to them to learn how they did it. If I feel that the Democratic system(at least here in India) has too many faults, I only need to look at other Democracies that are doing well. Observe other democratic countries that are far ahead of India in terms of development, income, wealth, the standard of living, etc.
Examples that come to mind are Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Ireland, Taiwan, etc. Sure, these countries aren’t perfect and their population will call out several faults of their political system as well. But if they are doing better than us, there is something for us to gain by observing them.
Personally, I feel that for countries like Singapore the public seem to be more involved in politics and the candidates proactively reach out and talk to the voters more frequently. It is impossible for me to show my face only during election time, and run away for the remainder of my term! Singapore relies on its human resource, which is its only “natural” resource. It needs smart and informed citizens who can take the country forward. If its population start to decrease in their understanding of politics and begin to vote purely on emotional rhetoric rather than the genuine merit of the candidates, it can become difficult for the country to survive.
The above example is also true to a large extent for countries like Korea and Japan. A good democracy is always built on a foundation of people who are smart, intelligent, patient and curious enough to learn more about their political candidates before making decisions that can affect how their country is governed.
To the Reader: I started writing on Medium, as a means to open up myself to the world and give me an outlet to express some of my thoughts, opinions, and experiences. The opinions expressed in my articles are purely personal opinions, formed based on my observances of the world around me. I would like you to share any feedback you have with regards to my writing — critical, positive, suggestions for improvements, etc. because I want to become better at it. I am currently pursuing this part-time, writing non-membership(meaning free to read) articles and would like to explore the option of doing this more frequently. Thank you for taking the time out to read this article :)
