“Representative democracy is a muddled compromise.” Explain and assess this view
In considering the view that representative democracy is a muddled compromise, there is a broad range of topics to be discussed. This paper discusses the key areas of representative democracy, direct democracy and that of dictatorship.
Representative democracy is a system of government where citizens elect representatives to make decisions for them. This system is present in the United Kingdom, where representatives, i.e. Members of Parliament (MPs), meet in the House of Commons to discuss issues and pass laws. Each MP is elected to represent a small area of the country, called a constituency. The voters in a constituency vote to hand over the decision making to a representative.
A dictatorship is a totalitarian political system that mainly has a dictator ruling a government. It refers to absolute rule that is unbounded by law or other factors such as public opinion. Dictatorships can provide some degree of stability to government as they can make long-term plans safe in the knowledge that no other party will be elected to change things around.
In stark contrast to a dictatorship, a direct democracy is the idea that citizens should be able to vote on all issues. This view believes that the citizens should represent themselves and not have a representative. A majority decision by the citizens would, for example, result in say a law being passed with the support of the majority of the participants. Whilst they accept the decision, they may not of course agree with the outcome.
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Was ancient Athens truly democratic? Do you agree with Rousseau?s criticism of representative democracy: (?The people) is only free when is elects its members of parliament; as soon as (the representatives) are elected, the people is enslaved?? Overall, which type of democracy is best? The origins of democracy and its attempts to involve citizens in the process and decision making of government ...
With all these three systems being available, to consider the argument that representative democracy is a muddled compromise, we need to explore the way in which these systems actually operate in practice.
Taking dictatorship first, one of the main advantages of a dictatorship is that it is very simplistic because only a few people make decisions. These decision makers claim to be in a better position to judge than ordinary citizens, which justifies the autocracy of a dictatorship. The people are forced to accept the decision of a government mainly because there is nothing they can do to change it.
In contrast, a direct democracy is an attempt to maximise the autonomy of the individual. But this is a difficult and very complicated task, which will never reach a perfect situation that satisfies every whim of every person. It allows everybody to have their say, but the issue is how to get millions of people to properly debate a decision. Many people are also not willing to participate in every single decision made by a government. The commitment it would take to attend regular meetings and to keep up to date with political topics is viewed as being far too much. A representative democracy tries to simplify this by allowing the people with the better knowledge of politics to participate in parliament, whilst still allowing participation by the public through media, pressure groups and lobbying MPs.
In a representative democracy, it is very hard for the people to influence the decision makers. People often lobby MPs, perform demonstration marches and join pressure groups. But this is often to little avail, as politicians tend to act in accordance to their conscience, or from party guidance. However, public views do occasionally have an impact on decision-making in a representative democracy.
Public demonstrations and lobbying can help provide the politicians with a clearer understanding of the peoples view, allowing them to be more informed when acting upon it. This year, actress Joanna Lumley used her public profile to great effect and was successful in the Ghurkha Justice Campaign. By skilful use of the media, she took a petition to Downing Street and managed to get the support of the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown then arranged a policy change that appeased the public and Joanna Lumley. As this situation proved, the public can influence the government. But occasions like this are few and far between. Demonstrations, when they become violent, can sometimes ‘back fire’ and sway public opinion back to the original policy. The compromise in a representative democracy allows the public to have some say in decision making, but like a dictatorship, the decision making process remains in the hands of the politicians. In order to increase the say of the regular people, it would be beneficial to find a better compromise by allowing a regular use of referendums to decide important issues such as the EU or a change in the voting system. This would allow for some decisions to be voted upon as a separate issue. The challenge then comes from who decides which issues require a referendum to take place. Because of these problems, expenses, time constraints, pure democracy is hard to attain, so democracy will always be a compromise, even a muddled compromise.
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One of the main features of a dictatorship is that governments are rarely removed from power. This provides a degree of stability of government, focused on long-term aims. For example, Stalin’s policy of collectivization was a long-term policy to improve Russian agriculture for the better. The short-term problems were significant – the huge loss of life through famines – but in the end, Russia benefited from such a long-term goal, with trade being boosted and more efficient farming methods being implemented.
This example essentially highlights what long-term goals can do, and why there must be a political system that allows long-term aims. Governments in a representative democracy mainly look to pursue short-term goals and then seek re-election. This is because most policies past the maximum government term of five years will cause success once the party is out of power, causing the rival party to get the credit. Therefore, a compromise must exist between short-term and long-term goals. We can see that a muddled compromise has occurred in a representative democracy in the length of governance. Short-term goals are still evident in a representative democracy – governments can call for a re-election at any time during the five-year governance limit. They can also look longer term beyond their five-year governance if they are certain that there will be a successful re-election. However, the muddle is that, with re-election, confidence is not often present, and the focus will turn to short-term goals that can be achieved before an election.
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One of the main problems of a direct democracy is the “tyranny of the majority.” JS Mill, a philosopher, argued that in a democracy, the vast majority of people could come to tyrannise over minorities, thus making them conform to the wants of the majority. Mill’s view declares that the 51% of the people could rule and tyrannise over the other 49%, purely because they have a majority. For example, if there were a vote as to whether civil partnership should be allowed, the results would favour a majority. However, roughly 10% of the UK population are gay, making them a minority. If the vote does not favour the gay people, they are forced to conform to the majority’s wishes, even though it is not beneficial to them. Therefore, a direct democracy may be dependent on how knowledgeable and informed the people are, and therefore be better positioned, such that they are better positioned to consider the wider impact of their decisions.
The success of representative democracy is much dependent on who is represented. This boils down to the electoral system. In the UK, there is primarily a three party system. These are parties who claim to cover the majority of the views of the minor parties and dovetail them into their own manifestos. With the three major parties often taking over 90% of the seats in parliament, it means that there are many ‘wasted’ votes on some of the smaller parties who do not obtain seats due to the electoral system present in the UK of constituency seats. Therefore the minorities are not proportionally represented in parliament.
This electoral method is where a compromise exists. If there was a pure representation, i.e. votes proportional to seats, many small parties could have a say in parliament. This is a huge movement towards a direct democracy. However, this proportional electoral system would rarely produce a decisive result. Due to the confrontational nature of parliament, a party proposing a bill could find itself outvoted, as it does not have a majority. This again produces the problem of tyranny of the majority, with the minorities being ignored. This would result in an uphill struggle for any party to get things done by securing the majority of votes in parliament. Therefore a compromise exists in order to allow parliament to operate smoothly and prevent too much tyranny of the majority. The current coalition government of Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, being a case in point
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One of the big problems with a system of dictatorship is that having so much power usually corrupts governments. Therefore a compromise has to exist to find the balance between giving a government too much power, and not enough power. Because dictators have so much power, they usually become fearful that this power will be taken away from them, so they set up a police state to terrorize their own people, as Stalin and Hitler did in Russia and Germany respectively, most visually in the Second World War. Hitler is a good example of how someone gained power largely by persuading the country that democracy was a ‘muddled compromise.’ [A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History, 2001]
A direct democracy would result in a government not having enough power to get a law passed. It would need the support of the majority in order to be successful. This would inevitably result in a law, or piece of legislation being put on hold, should the population fails to reach a true agreement over possibly a hugely important issue.
In conclusion, I sympathize with the view that representative democracy is a muddled compromise, but not entirely. The simplicity of a representative democracy is achieved through people knowing exactly how the system works – that they vote a representative into parliament for their constituency, who then looks after their interests. The length of term of the representatives is a result of a workable compromise, allowing flexibility to choose when to have an election if the public demands it, whilst also having enough time to implement long term policies.
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The power of the government is relatively well defined, they are accountable to the people who elected them, and they must work within the law. They may want to do radical things, but knowing that they would not then be re-elected by the voters at the next election, they find themselves in a compromise position. This short term and long term dilemma, is the best compromise between giving a government too much or too little power.
The tyranny of the majority still exists in a muddled way in the UK, with the biggest muddled compromise in a representative democracy being that of participation. There is no clear method to change the direction of the politicians that are in power and ensure that they carry out the majority wishes. Lobbying and pressure groups are indeed a way to be heard, but whist occasionally successful, are not a reliable vehicle and so in essence are a relatively ineffective method of changing the governments direction.
Any two parties in disagreement can head towards a compromise more readily if the two points of views are considered without prejudice. Sharing the pros and cons of any given situation, allowing people to listen, debate and reflect against an informed backdrop of clarity, compromise can be reached that appeals to, and is supported by, more people than is the case when the argument is not understood.
I feel that representative democracy has the potential to be a muddled compromise, but it can be lessened by the right behaviors, and a willingness and desire by key players to reach a sensible conclusion. Failure to compromise would create an ineffective regime, and fuel the argument to head towards a dictatorship, and all of the problems that this would attract.
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Bibliography:
Jonathan Wolff – An Introduction to Political Philosophy – OUP Oxford; 2nd Revised edition (19 Jan 2006)
Held, D – Models of Democracy – Polity Press; 3rd Edition (20 Jun 2006)
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Goodwin, B – Using Political Ideas – John Wiley & Sons; 5th Edition (30 Mar 2007)
Rosenthal, Loomis, Hibbing, and Kurtz- Republic on Trial: The Case for Representative Democracy – CQ Press (1 July 2002)
A.J.P. Taylor – The Course of German History – Routledge; 2nd edition (18 May 2001)
