Why Democracy?

Assuming that humans are essentially submissive, we both want and need to be governed by one exterior force or another. This is contradicted by the human need of feeling that we are intelligent beings superior to others and able to lead ourselves. This paradox is satisfied by democracy: a form of government which allows human beings to have the impression of being involved in the decision making process while also being sufficiently dominated.

This essay is going to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the implemented democracy in our society in comparison to totalitarianism and anarchy. It will also define the areas to which the authors of this essay think that the rule of democracy should be confined.

To start with the latter, the authors of this essay think that the government should control the things that are to do with the large, collective parts of society that go beyond the needs of individuals and small groups. These collective parts of society are things such as issues concerning the majority of the population of the state, agendas addressing global cooperation, and policies of phenomena that are meant to be the same for every citizen of the state (e.g. healthcare, education etc). Thus the democratic state should work mainly as a nightwatcher state, where things concerning the minority or the single individual are left to be determined on that level.

To move on, one of the major problems with democracy is that there is a great risk for minorities of becoming oppressed, since the majority is the ruling body in a democratic society. This is the complete opposite from a totalitarian regime, in which it is usually the minority oppressing the majority; in an anarchist society, this issue is nonexistent because in such a society, nobody has the right to govern anybody else. Another apparent issue with democracy is that of making everybody take their share in the decision making process; there is no means dominant enough to force every individual in a society to take their responsibility and voice their opinion when that is needed, meaning that the results obtained in, for example, an election could be shifted from what the opinion of the actual majority is. Neither of the species of government in comparison have this problem: when the popular opinion is never needed or asked for, there is no way that it may be false due to possible passivity. Furthermore, assuming that humans are, apart from submissive and wishing to feel able, also selfish, it is reasonable to say that decisions made democratically may not always be in the best interest of the majority of the affected entities. Assuming further that humans also have the wish to not exert more energy than is absolutely crucial, it is also possible to argue that the decisions made sometimes are ill-informed: as John Simon has expressed it, “Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant”.

Although problems like the above mentioned exist, democracy is still considered the superior form of government. This is due to the strengths of democracy, which heavily outweigh its weaknesses. If our assumptions concerning the human nature are correct, democracy satisfies all our essential needs. It allows us to feel like we contribute to society when we take part in the public displays of affection that referendums and elections really are, while providing us with a sufficient amount of rules and regulations and dependence; in short, it allows us to fool ourselves that we are independent beings in a really sophisticated way. It also enables us to elect a smaller group of people that are to take the larger part of the responsibility for our society. This lets a group of people with a larger need of feeling involved and a smaller need of being submissive satisfy their needs while also taking unwanted responsibility off the plates of the others. Finally, the administrative part of democracy provides jobs which are not in any way needed in anarchist or totalitarian societies; makes people aware of the world around them because they need to be reasonably informed in order to take part in the democratic process; and largely decreases the risk for war, as two true democracies never hitherto have been known to fight a war against one another.

As Winston Churchill has expressed it, “has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried from time to time”. This sentence shows that, despite a certain number of weaknesses, democracy is still the form of government which is the most likely to function properly.

Creds: the iPebble. Uppsats skriven för ToK, i par.