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I’m a big fan of democracy as a concept but there a several things that trouble me about the way in which democracy is implemented in society. The purpose of this series of posts is to think through some of the potential issues with democracy that exist today.
Let’s start at the beginning. What is a democracy?
Democracy is something that is often seen as an ideal for Nations to aspire to. It is a form of society where the rule is by the people. Whilst there are many forms of democracy, in its simplest form a democratic country is one where the people have the power to participate in the decision making of their country.
In some forms of democracy the people have direct power to make decisions on, for example, laws and in other forms of democracy the people have the power to elect officials to represent them in making decisions. The latter is called a representative democracy and is the form of democracy in, for example, the US and Australia.
In general there are four key elements that make up a democracy:
- Free and frequent elections by which representatives are chosen by receiving a majority vote by the people;
- An equal society where people are rewarded on merit and not by wealth, privilege or status;
- People have the freedom to make their own choices subject to the laws of their country; and
- Limitations on power exist to ensure that Governments, Institutions or other powerful societal figures/forces cannot limit the civil liberties of the people
After listing out these key elements, how many of us agree that the democracy we live in today meets these criteria?
In part 1 of this series, I thought we’d start by discussing the first element.
Voting by the people is definitely seen as one of the key elements of a democracy and I do believe democratic countries put a lot of emphasis on ensuring they have a strong process / system in place to allow for free and frequent elections. This is meant to ensure that the representatives are kept in check by ensuring they act in the best interest of the people or risk being voted out in the next election.
In a representative democracy, the country is generally divided up into voting geographies where people that reside in that geography vote for their local representative. These local representatives are, in general, part of a larger political party and the political party that ends up with the largest number of elected representatives ends up forming the Government for the elected term.
Ok, so far, so good but where can this go wrong? Firstly we have ‘strongholds’, which are geographies where the people are firmly aligned to one political party. In these strongholds, the majority of people generally always vote for the same political party regardless of the merits of their local representative. This makes no sense in a democracy, as the people’s vote is meant to hold their representative to account and not just reward them based on their alliance to a particular political party!
So why does this happen? It happens because geographies are a poor construct for fair voting, as it groups people with similar backgrounds and beliefs together and then expects them to vote in an unbiased way. Affluent geographic areas may have people with one kind of bias and working class areas may have people with a different bias. Hence the formation of the strongholds, as political parties position themselves in ways to ‘speak’ more to one demographic than the other. In the US the creation of geographic voting boundaries to bias the outcome of an election is even given a name (i.e. gerrymandering)!
In some countries, the strongholds can be so well established that the voting in the minority of geographic areas end up determining the outcome of the election. Take, for example, a theoretical country with 100 geographic areas that have representatives in an election. Let’s now say that 45 are strongholds for one political party and 45 are strongholds for another political party. In this example the 10 ‘swinging’ geographic areas that remain will always determine the outcome of the election. Does this really make sense in terms of what democracy is meant to be? Should voting in the minority of geographic areas have the power to determine the outcome of an election? This also means that these geographic areas get more focus and investment in order to sway their votes!
Another potential issue is when the outcome of an election is close between two political parties. In this instance a minority of people can end up determining the outcome of the election.
In the 2010 Australian election, both the Labour party and Liberal party won 72 seats out of a total of 150 seats, which resulted in a hung parliament. In order for a political party to win a minority Government a minimum of 76 seats are required. In the end 4 representatives that were not aligned with the Labour party decided to side with the Labour party to determine the outcome of the election. Does this really make sense in the terms of what a democracy is meant to be? Should 4 individuals have the right to decide which Government wins an election? If the people that voted for these representatives had known that they would have sided with the Labour party, would they have still voted for them?
One of the key elements to a democracy is that representatives and, in turn, the Government that is formed is based on a majority vote. Based on some of what we see happen during elections, can we honestly say that this element of democracy is working as intended?
