Democracy: Success or Failure

[Drogue]

But if they're a good leader, why is the dictatorship that bad? A dictator doesn't have to be like Syria. A monarchy can be benevolent and competant at running the country. Indeed, if (and only if) it is a better ruler than the one chosen by democracy, why is it bad?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Azazel
Spiffor: The EU isn't a technocracy.

The EU is a would-be technocracy.

The immense majority of issues are discussed as "technical issues", and descision-making is made by civil servants who aren't linked whatsoever to the electorate, because they are deemed the most able in this field.

A very convenient way to make underhanded deals without the pesky intrusion of the people or of their MEP representatives is to consider it a "technical issue". Only the most clearly political issues are decided by politicians (Ministers or chiefs of State).

The role of the European Commission is especially telling in that regard. The leaders of the European Commission are politicians, who are chosen by Member-States governments. However, the whole administration behind them is a pure accumulation of civil servants.
Only the Commission has the competence to write drafts for any EU decision. The Parliament is deemed unable to do this complicated task. So is the Council (but there are some subtleties).

Both lowly organs can sure request a project to be written by the Commission, but that would mean the initial draft will be written by "experts" having consulted with "experts".
Very often, there are not enough servants in the EU administration to do the job properly, and the work is mostly done by outsourced "experts". (More often than not, these experts are gently pushing the agenda of some lobby )

The whole haggling process that is done in the Council thereafter, is made by civil servants. Only once the project is through the haggling process does it arrive on the desk of the elected rabble of the Parliament.

BTW, except in Britain, the position of national Parliaments over a European issue being haggled doesn't trouble the negociations at all. If the Parliament agrees with its country's hagglers, they're emboldened. If the Parliament disagrees with its country's haggler, he ignores it.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
I don't understand how anyone can 'like' democracy.
I'd rather have a government which is effective and capable of reaching long term goals. I can just imagine what a circus it would be in Europe with a system based on the American one. The senators there don't care for the Union, they care for the state they in fact serve. Hence the socalled porkbarreling. Also imagine how erratic policies would be with an elected President. One would go from one extreme to another. Think of the major change the United States has undergone from being run by a Democrat to a Republican. All the goodwill shown to Clinton, has been squandered by Bush. Imagine that the EU would one year be friendly towards Russia, and hostile towards America. And the next year vice versa.

Also if Europe had indeed been a democracy, the political fallout over the Iraq affair would have been much worse. No European countries would have joined the war.

OK, it comes from the Europe thread, but I think the topic belonged to here much more than there.

As I can't be arsed to repeat all the lengthy arguments I wrote in this here thread, here is a short summary:

- I think representative democracy doesn't live up to its expectations, and worse, that it prevents people's rules too much. Electing leaders should not be the be-all and-all of democracy. Voting on important issues is.
When you say "if Europe was a Democracy", I agree with you that European countries are not satisfying democracies. In the case of a EU-Democracy, I'd hope for something more ambitious. Unfortunately, it is unrealistic to hope for better than a variation of representative Democracy for the EU, for the time being.

- I support the idea of long mandates, provided the citiens have a say in the policies conducted by the incumbents. I think such system is highly efficient, because it allows long-term strategic planning without turning to elective despotism (that would be illegitimate and wouldn't get the popular support or at least apathy that is needed in every modern political system).

Despite a significant unstability in the style of its leaders, and despite the utter stupidity of some of its leaders, the US are doing quite fine being a democracy. If you want to say "democracy leads to failure", at least take actual failures

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by Patroklos
The solution, which was actually in the original theory of all the modern democracies, is reduced electorate. Sufferage is free, and thus by definition worthless. I personely believe government service is needed to vote. Not just military, but any government service

When I did read this, I had a deja-vu.

And I have now remind where I read that originally. It's the main idea behind that far-rigth novel, Starship troopers.

(well, but IIRC in the novel only the military counts).

Anyway, the fact is life under democracy is much more tolerable than under anything else... I'm not sure at all whether I want to change the system.

Go democracy

[East Street Trader]

A thing which has been pissing me off with democracy as it operates in the UK is that politicians need to win votes and they set out to be all things to all people. Faced with someone complaining or demanding some benefit they do not say - "get lost, that is nothing to do with me". Instead they say "I will sort that out for you".

Why does this matter? Well it matters because in order to sort the matter out the politician will exercise powers. And the thing about democracy is that we will all just let that politician exercise those powers without being on our guard. We believe that because we have the power to vote this guy and his buddies out he represents no great threat.

But, in fact, he represents a huge threat. About the only people who could make any serious inroads into all our personal freedoms and happiness are the politicians that we place in power over us.

Under less developed forms of government the governed are very jealous about the power they allow to theose who govern. No king in England could hope to be trusted with the powers we cheerfully allow our elected governors to exercise. Nor ever was.

Now until recently I did not worry about this because it seemed to me that, in practice, successive elected governments had somehow nevertheless been kept in check. Mrs Thatcher was an arrogant woman well capable of abusing power. But somehow she had never been allowed to do so and when her arrogance became really objectionably obvious the system proved fully effective at removing her.

But my faith has gradually evaporated under our present administration.

That is not because - until the Iraq war - they had done things I dislike. In fact some of the things they have done I like a lot. But it is the fact that there is no credible alternative to them - that neither the Cabinet nor his partry operate as any check upon Tony Blair's entirely personal exercise of power - that the House of Commons is nothing but a large rubber stamp without an ounce of personality, backbone or worthwhile dissent in it and that his government has somehow managed to outmanoevre the press at every turn so that the press actually represents some sort of extra bastion to the government rather than something which subjects its activities to worthwhile srutiny.

And look at the result. No one contends that there was popular support for the Iraq war in the UK. Blair acknowledged that he was taking us to war on the basis of his own judgment alone - he simply did not care, indeed rather gloried in the fact, that there was virtually no one else in the country who agreed with him.

Now that is naff.

OK, for now he is not abusing his position to oppress me or anyone else within the UK. For now he submits himself - within our borders - to the rule of law.

But that is grace and favour on his part. It is not a feature of our political arrangements that he is subject to compulsion on that from us.

A feature of my life which makes me feel extraordinarily privileged is that I have always fely myself to be a wholly free man. For the first time I now also feel that this freedom is under challenge.

And I really do not know how on earth to meet that challenge.

I do not believe that democracy will meet it for me.

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Despite a significant unstability in the style of its leaders, and despite the utter stupidity of some of its leaders, the US are doing quite fine being a democracy. If you want to say "democracy leads to failure", at least take actual failures

The Americans are free to chose their own form of government. All sovereign nations are. All i'm saying is that I don't think it is neccesary to reform Europe into a democracy since it has worked out rather well so far. So why fix it when it ain't broke?

Also I would hate it if a European President would have to invent a war just to win an election. I cannot see how a technocracy would possibly benefit from war. Democracies are too warlike and provocative for my taste.

Also Imagine if a really unfortunate man was chosen, er elected, as president. Would that not provoke nationalist uprisings, possibly terror?

Also even though the elite is fluent in several languages there are several people who don't speak other languages and they would be left out of the cross-national debate. they wouldn't read the same newspapers and the same television.

Also if Europe ws indeed a democray it would be hard for the American administration to influence European nations to their corporatist views. Hence that would further the division between Europe and the United States. As it is now the political elites in various countries provide an opening, since their motivation is basicly of a pecuniary nature, and they might be manipulated by offers of money in the form of corporate contracts. If the corporations were to be exclude from this, they would have to turn to the Pentagon to provide military pressure.

Also if the EU was indeed a democracy I doubt if GMO foods would ever be allowed in Europe. That would mean a loss for American farmers. Think of the consequences.

[Whaleboy]

Drogue: Agreed, and for an example, look at Singapore. Admittedly thats still very authoritarian, little free speech (though lots by most dictatorship standards). The problem is that dictatorships have been synonymous with totalitarianism, but that is not necessarily the case. In the case of an AI government, or benevolent dictator, I see no reason why one cannot have freedom of expression and association etc. Of course, there is a place for democracy, for example, how the people would like to be ruled, i.e. style of government, the further the specific decisions are from the will of the people, the less the democracy fallacy applies.

[David Floyd]

Majority rule is awful, UNLESS the majority is prohibited from legislating away the rights of the minority. The solution, as I see it, is to have a Constitution that cannot be changed, and strictly lays out both what the governnment can do and cannot do - most likely through a clause stating that "any power not specifically listed is prohibited", or something along those lines, and then make sure that the grants of power are SO tightly worded they can't become new Commerce Clauses (ie, imaginary grants of unlimited power).

When you have that, voting becomes much less important, because the politicians can 't really do anything.

[Cruddy]

Democracy? Success or failure? Compared to what?

Life is what you make of it, old bean.

[Patroklos]

Rah,

There would be no reason to increase government "pork" or size as if, if as you say, they are doing it to increase their own power all that would do is expand the electorate, and thus reduce their power. If you are happy with class and wealth being the sole measure of public success, well then you are just advocating the current system with all its flaws.
But since your onpinion seems to be common, we just won't let anyone still in govrnment service vote until they leave (I menat to include that originaly, but missed it). That should solve most of your objections.

Right now voting rights AND citizenship are worthless, as nothing is nessecary to get it besides bieng born in the right place at the right time. Teere is a reason why people don't vote (America) and why you actually have to make it required b law in other countries to get people to. I don't particularly believe that chance and luck are good guidelines to determining who gets political authority.

Starship Troopers uses elements of this theory, but alot more movies use elements of democracy The author of Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein, was a political theorist who put his ideas into some pretty decent SciFi novels (they were written inthe 60s afterall) to deciminate his ideas to the young. Sort of propogada if you think about it, but no worse than advertising companies. Anyways, as good as that book was, I am not basing my theory off of it.

-Pat

[Patroklos]

Dictatorship = some being very happy vs some being very unhappy politically.

Democracy = Everyone bieng unhappy politically

-Pat

[David Floyd]

If we're going to have qualifications on voting, then my preference would be a property requirement. We could probably avoid wealth transfer programs that way, too.



(I'm kidding, of course - voting should be universal if it exists)

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Azazel
I agree with Spiffor. But just because the science of Economics is flawed, it doesn't mean that it can't be fixed. It will be fixed. We all know economists are very often wrong. But once economics will be approached as a technological field, a field that is constructive in it's essence, rather than observatory, then will the change come.

economics is inexorably linked to human behavior. so I don't see how u plan on making it purely deterministic.

haha edit oops

[Patroklos]

Care to back that u Floyd?

Just curious what you think

-Pat

[David Floyd]

Back which part up?

[Patroklos]

Why universal sufferage is better than a restriced on the model I described.

-Pat

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
Also if the EU was indeed a democracy I doubt if GMO foods would ever be allowed in Europe. That would mean a loss for American farmers. Think of the consequences.

The US would continue to subsidize its farmers and so would we.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Right now voting rights AND citizenship are worthless, as nothing is nessecary to get it besides bieng born in the right place at the right time. Teere is a reason why people don't vote (America) and why you actually have to make it required b law in other countries to get people to.

This is coming from an "intellectual ****er of the uni" who happened to study the question.

1) Few democratic countries force their population to vote. Belgium does that. NL used to, but doesn't anymore. That's about everything I can think of.

2) There are very high differences between participatory levels. In Malta, participation is on average 94-95%. In Australia, it is only a bit smaller. In most countries, participation is about 60-80% In the US and in Switzerland, it is 50%.
You believe the situation is similar in every country as in the US, but this is a misconception.

3) There are a variety of reasons that have been discovered that could explain lack of participation. Distrust of the parties, lack of stake in the election, weaker party bonds... you name it.
To believe there is ONE reason, or even one superior reason explaining the lack of participation is also a misconception. It's common to believe that one cause can explain an effect as a whole but it simply ain't true.
Else, explain me why almost all the Aussies go to polls, despite not being forced to, and despite they get the right to vote "just by chance" ?

[C0ckney]

i'm pretty sure voting is mandatory is austrailia, which perhaps explains why they get such a high turn out

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by C0ckney
i'm pretty sure voting is mandatory is austrailia, which perhaps explains why they get such a high turn out

Oh ok. Then what about the Maltese, or the Austrians?

[Patroklos]

The Maltese and the Austrians haven't been voting very long, plus it isn't too hard to motivate a small population to vote, as their vote is more than .000001% (maybe too may zeros there) of the decision. I stated above mass democracy works in a small state, but fewer states can be classed in that category as time goes on.

Australia has legeslated voting.

-Pat

[Spiffor]

I guess Switzerland and its 50% is a gigantic state then

[David Floyd]

Why universal sufferage is better than a restriced on the model I described.

Better in what way? Not letting poor people and old people vote would be better, in that it would largely prevent social welfare programs, so I'd be all for that, EXCEPT that it would not be free.

Universal suffrage, then, is better because it is the most free system of voting.

The institution of voting, in itself, is not what I am primarily concerned with. I am primarily concerned with liberty, and if the institution of voting happens to exist, then it should exist in a manner consistent with liberty.

[Az]

Originally posted by yavoon


economics is inexorably linked to human behavior. so I don't see how u plan on making it purely deterministic.

Only the consumer part of them. and in those cases, demand and preference for products can be seen the same way it's predicted today, through test groups, etc.

[Whaleboy]

Compulsory voting:

If people have so little interest in the way their lives are run that they can't be bothered to vote (as opposed to making a conscious decision not to, as in my case as of recently), then I dread to think of who they would vote for were they forced to!