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Tuomas -> RE: Hitler as a Leader (5/25/2007 9:58:41 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Faramir
quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy
...please define democracy. Do we mean a system where each individual vote is as meaningful as every other one? 'Cos if so, there isn't a single democracy on the planet. Electoral colleges and similar distort the value of individual votes according to the agenda of those who set them up. So, what did oppose what Faramir calls 'every other political model'? Capitalism perhaps.....monetarism maybe....but not democracy.
Thanks for your question philosophy.
As Tuomas points out, democracy is a demos kratos, where the villagers (demos) has the power (kratos), just as an aristocracy is an aristoi kratos, a single hereditary leadership system is a mono kratos, etc. As a practice, we have typified political systems by who has power (kratos) within a given polity.
So one form of democracy is direct democracy (limited in franchise) like Attic democracy. That's what you're talking about, but there are many variations in democracy. Consider the Westminster system, which forces compromise (what you call "distorting" the value of individual voters) by creating party blocks. While direct democracy doesn't work well--direct democracies were unable to compete with monoarchies and aristocracies--the Westminster system as it evolved in England was phenomenally succesful. It allowed the greatest empire the world had ever seen to peacefully transition from an aristocracy to a democracy, and the system was so succesful that it was widely copied. Head to head the Westminster iteration destoryed monorchy, the final battle in that clash of systems being WWI--after WWI monorachy was no longer a viable option. The field was left open to democratic systems and the Soviet experiment in socialism.
As good as the Westminster system is, it is inferior to the US two-party iteration, which via the Electoral College forces even more compromise (what you casll distortion). In the Westminster system, you still have single issue parties/blocks. The two dominant parties in any Westminster nation, one of which always represents the electorate's need to redistribute ("liberal") and the other the need to grow and take risks ("conservative"), still have to constantly appease several fringe, single issue groups to maintain their majority.
The EC system excludes marginal voices, and forces ayone who hopes to win on a national level to be able to appeal to a decent number of liberal and conservative voters. This has a bad side, in that people who are not in the mainstream, you end up very dissatisfied and powerless (Ralph Nader taps intot hat base of people every four years). It has a good side though, in that the system forces you to at least appear to be willing to meet the two big ticket issues in any polity: the redistribution of wealh and power so as to ameliorate social tension, and the need for the electorate to allow for growth, wealth accumulation and individual risk taking and rewards.
I think you are right, in that our EC iteration of democracy distorts the value of individual votes, but since America has been steadily gorwing in relative dominance to the rest of the world, that apparently is a really effective system.
From an axiomatic approach, democracy demonstrably works.
NB. I don't classify economic systems as political forms. Sure, it is called "political economy" for a reason, and there is a link, but the possession of capitalism isn't the same thing. So a capitalist system (true laissez-faire) could also be an aristocracy (eg early Victorian England), a socialist system could be either an autocratic or oligarchic system (pre/post USSR). Look at America right now: an EC variant democracy that straddles the line between capitalism and socialism. Much of our capital is private, and yet much of our capital and production are state controlled. We have a sort of balance between the laissez-faire "fuck you" and the socialist "Get in line Komrade."
Wow. I liked the Faramir of the books, but it seems there is a real-life equivalent, too...
There is another system, that might be a sub-set of the Westminster system, and is known as the "binomial" system. I don't think it's very widespread, but it's point an purpose is to create a broad selection of different parties. It works by allowing parties to "trade" votes at an election through a coalition, which means party coalitions can put up a lot more candidates and still win. The process works in Chile, where there are six major political parties (and four other "fringe" parties), all with a significant level of national representation. These parties are lined up into two major coalitions: "left" and "centre right". In an election, each party will run up to three candidates. When the results are in, the candidates who don't get the most votes can pass their votes on to another member of their party or coalition to ensure they win the seat. So, instead of being forced into an itinerancy between "conservative" and "liberal", people have the choice of a much broader range of candidates, and as such, a much broader range of political ideologies. Another aspect of the binomial system is that it guarantees minority representation, by providing an "opposing" post for everyone elected.
This causes two significant differences:
While there still is the traditional "left"-"right" battle for who holds the major offices (President), the actual president could be from any of the parties in the coalition, depending on how many votes he gets. That way people can choose different "degrees" of "liberalism" and "conservativism", instead of being forced to support the one candidate the one major "left" or major "right" party puts up. (For example, in the US where people were forced to vote for Kerry despite not liking him, soley because he was the only candidate that had a chance of taking out Bush).
The other significant effect of the binomial system is that it allows for a much broader spectrum of politics. Political parties can adopt a much wider range of differing popular opinion, and better represent the different thought patterns of the populace. Both coalitions have "conservative" and "liberal" wings. They also have people who support free-market, and people who support State regulation; there are people who advocate decentralization while others centralized bureacracy... and depending on what the people feel the country needs at the time, they can choose to enphasize any one -or several- of these ideas.
When a candidate is finally elected, they cannot afford the luxury of ignoring any one of their "bases", because each differing opinion has the backing of a major political party. That way, all the parties ultimately get representation. For example, the current cabnet. The President is from the Socialist Party, but her cabnet is comprized of members from the Christian Democrats, the Party for Democracy, Radicals and Independents, along with representatives of her own party.
Considering that Chile has maintained an average economic growth rate of four times that of the US since the sytem was implemented, and that it is the most stable country in the region, less corrupt than the US, has the broadest free-trade network in the world and will be joining the OECD shortly... I think the system works[:D]
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