Has democracy gone too far or not far enough?

According to Socrates and Aristotle, we are not smart enough for democracy. In an era of political upheaval, rising populism, and widespread discontent, trust in the system of representative government is eroding. As democratic institutions face scrutiny one question looms large: has democracy gone too far, or has it not gone far enough?

One of the principal issues is how personal politics factors into democracy. Greed has become a defining characteristic of politicians and, by extension, democracy in itself. Money talks louder than ever in today’s politics, creating power structures as the impression is given that the rich have more power than the poor. Trump is a failed businessman, and Rishi Sunak an investment banker. Philosopher Erica Benner describes modern democracy as a contest to win as much power for your side as possible via a monopolistic or closed-club system.“For most of their history, democracies were some sort of monopoly – boy’s clubs, freemen vs. slaves clubs, middle-class clubs excluding the poor, ethnic-group-first clubs”, She tells Green European Journal. By opening up decision-making power to politicians who are constantly in need of money for elections, democratic systems are prone to becoming captured by the wealthy. So, it is not just personal politics that puts democracy at risk, but electoral competition and inherent egotism also. 

Democratic electoral competition in America has certainly reached a fever pitch in recent years. Whilst democracy is supposed to promote equal opportunity and distribute power, it has sharpened societal divisions rather than emphasised consensus and unity. In Europe, angry populists are positioning themselves against well established parties, and in India the ruling party has played up Hindu nationalism in ways that aggravate divides within the society. What's more, voter ignorance fuels democratic dysfunction. In 2010 Iceland’s Best Party, promising to be openly corrupt, won enough votes to co-run Reykjavik’s city council. And in 2013 a quarter of Italians voted for a party founded by Beppe Grillo, a comedian. Democratic dysfunction - however - goes hand in hand with democratic distemper. If democracy’s diagnosis is disorder ridicule, the cause is public trivial remiss. 

Within the West, democracy has too often been associated with debt and dysfunction. This is largely due to the financial crisis of 2007-8. The damage the crisis did was institutional as well as financial, exposing weaknesses within the West’s political systems, undermining its confidence. Democracy’s inherent weaknesses lie in its structural faults, and fear of whether politicians/political parties will win re-election. Due to their electoral cycles, democracies struggle to focus on long term problems and usually remain mired in short term policy approaches. When they do manage to look beyond their myopia, democratic politicians are averse to imposing near-term pain for long-term gain because of their need to keep voters happy for the next election. On top of this, the United States’ democracy is corrupted by gerrymandering (drawing constituency boundaries to entrench the power of incumbents), disenfranchising large numbers of voters. To overcome the accusation of democracy as a convoluted and unjust system, there needs to be limits on the power of the government (and a system of checks and balances of the distribution of power) and a guarantee for individual rights. 

As clarity on the agenda and institutional framework of democracy  subsides, society runs the risks of falling to democratic backsliding. Many nominal democracies have shifted towards autocracy, maintaining the visage of democracy through elections but without the rights and institutions that are equally important aspects of a functioning democratic system. From Russia and Turkey to Venezuela and Zimbabwe, it has become strikingly common for authoritarian leaders to seek to legitimate their rule via elections. As such, democracy is paradoxical, providing the space for its greatest enemy: dictatorship.

It has become increasingly apparent that Plato’s great worry about democracy, that citizens would “live from day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment”, has proved prescient. Democratic governments got into the habit of running big structural deficits as a matter of course, borrowing to give voters what they wanted in the short term, while neglecting long-term investment. Political entitlement has led to an egotism that overlooks the threat of climate change, technological risk, nuclear waste, and public debt. When Britain colonised Australia in the 18th and 19th Century, it drew on the legal doctrine now known as terra nullius – ‘nobody’s land’. Today our attitude is one of tempus nullius: ‘nobody’s time’. Put simply, we treat the future as domain ripe for pillaging and exploitation. In a world where people can support a petition with the click of a mouse, parliamentary democracy, where elections happen only every few years, appear more and more anachronistic. We need to write long-term thinking into the fabric of future democracies.

Modern democracy, especially in wealthy countries, has enabled us to colonise the future. This is nonetheless problematic as representative democracy systematically ignores the interests of the younger generation. Future generations are disenfranchised in the same way that slaves or women were in the past. This is why there has been an increase in young activism. It explains why hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren worldwide, inspired by Greta Thunberg, have been striking and marching to get rich nations to reduce their carbon emissions: they have had enough of democratic systems that render them voiceless in the political picture. This in turn sparks the debate around how if there is a minimum voting age, why is there not a maximum one? The older generation can vote selfishly, as permitted by sheer mortality. It is the voiceless who must then grin and bear the predetermined consequences.

Benner also identifies democracy as “an imperfect scheme for sharing power with people who have very different goals, not a machine destined to perfectly realise one ideological programme”. One of the most basic design elements of democracy is the assumption that voters know what they want, and can vote for candidates who pursue such policies and deliver results. Political Scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartles offer a theory, however, that contradicts this; they suggest that voter behaviour is determined by socio-cultural factors and partisan identity rather than independent thought. Alongside the vast number of people who do not vote in elections, it seems voter ignorance and lack of political education/ accessibility make up one of the pitfalls of democracy.

As dissatisfaction with democracy grows in America, an appreciable number of the population are open to autocracy (a form of government without checks of balance on that authority). This is alarming in itself, urging a reinvigorated and modern approach to democracy. It is becoming increasingly clear: the issue lies not with democracy as a form of governance, but with the outdated model it follows. With revitalisation, the shortcomings of democracy can be amended and flourish once again. What is overt is that democracy in the 21st century is at a pivotal point in its history. The once direct path has morphed into cross-roads and the path we choose next will define the future of democracy.