Failures of democracy.

Democracy is “government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic” (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996). If you look at the definition of democracy, you can feel that it is a half complete system. It is not a direct democracy, meaning each individual has direct involvement in the decision making process. It says that democratic process is by popular representation, popular remaining questionable since it a process of holding the most votes of an elected candidate that will make the decisions for the people, sometimes not even amounting to half of the population voting for the same candidate. And often times, the most popular candidate does not equate to the most capable candidate.

What’s going on here? How is this democratic? The system is discriminating against citizens who were not part of the “popular” vote. The political individual counts for less and less, as a unit of democracy and as the population rises, there is a threshold for political influence. An organization representing a fraction in thousands of ordinary citizens is unlikely to have any political importance. Furthermore, the unorganized individual is even more politically marginalized. Minorities in our democratic system will always be outvoted by the majority at a local level and more so at a national level.

Our democratic system does somewhat guarantee basic rights for minorities, but that is all. They cannot guarantee minorities, a society built upon their values. Democracy often means minority groups living in a society, which they find morally unacceptable. Guarantees of civil and political rights cannot compensate minorities for living in a society which they consider ethically intolerable. Yet the democratic process does not recognize conscience, or the moral autonomy of the person. If no fundamental ethical differences exist within a society, then there is no problem. However, issues like racism, culture, religion, abortion, euthanasia show the limits of democracy.
The system cannot resolve ethical issues, nor can it sustain a balance of values between ethnic groups. There are many unresolved ethical issues in developed nations, much greater in third world states. If there are two opposing parties dealing on a specific issue, the legislature must either accept or reject the demand. There is no third option other than delaying the legislature which is another kind of rejection of demand. Either way, some people will live under laws, which they cannot morally accept. The outcomes are usually unfortunate, it either makes the individual feel helpless and if the political arena fails for their voices to be heard, it’s usually resorted to violence.

It is futile to say that candidates that are elected to represent an entire population of a state will ever embody the needs of all people of the state. Therefore, I believe the complete participation of a citizen within the state is the only way politics in civil society will matter. Participation leads to state responsibility, thus responsibility of citizens to make the right choices that in effect will affect all citizens within society.