A recent study into the state of democracy in Britain has warned it is in “long-term terminal decline” as the power of corporations keeps growing, politicians become less representative of their constituencies and disillusioned citizens stop voting or even discussing current affairs.
The report found evidence in many other areas where Britain appeared to have moved further away from its two benchmarks of representative democracy: control over political decision-making, and how fairly the system reflects the population it represents.
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, the report’s lead author, warned that Britons could soon have to ask themselves “whether it’s really representative democracy anymore?” Membership of political parties and election turnout has fallen significantly in the last decade, with only 1% of the electorate belonging to a party, and just over six out of 10 eligible voters going to the ballot box in the 2010 general election and barely one in three in European and local elections. But the depth of public disillusionment and the range of ways voters are turning away from politics revealed by the latest study shocked even those involved.
Problems with democracy are not just restricted to Britain, across the western world be it the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or the cradle of Western civilization – Greece, voter apathy, electoral fraud, the influence of interest groups and corruption are all too common. This is a shocking indictment of a system of governance that started as an experiment in Athens over two thousand years ago and eventually pervaded every continent and every land. For every political problem, we are told, lies a democratic solution. For every civilization, for every country for every tribe, for every time – goes the mantra – democracy is the claimed answer to all our ills. The last decade has seen the West send its sons to Iraq and Afghanistan to spread democracy, whilst at home its people are shunning democratic politics
Today democracy means different things to different people, Western secular societies do not have a monopoly on claiming democracy as their own. Many communist countries during the Cold War era described themselves as democratic republics; and even Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had Presidential elections. Others view democracy as more than just elections – that democracies should be characterised by other values and institutions. That alongside regular elections there must be liberal values, a functioning legislative chamber, a vibrant opposition, a free media, civil society and an independent judiciary. However whatever the minute differences, democracy is more than just elections and all those who believe in democracy take the political system that institutionalises legislative sovereignty – in either the people directly – or in their elected representatives to be the basis – i.e. the ability to choose and enact legislation is the key characteristic of democracy.
There are some fundamental flaws with this system of governance, which makes it unsuitable for the Muslim lands. As these issues are with the fundamentals of the ideology, no amount of reform can fix them.
Democracy equates to mob rule
Democracy in Europe and the US is coming under heavy scrutiny and apart from the antics of MPs and congressmen, it is sliding towards oligarchy, with increasing overtones of autocracy. Money and its power over technology are making elections unfair. The military industrial complex is as powerful as ever, having adopted “the menace of global terrorism” as its casus belli. Lobbying and corruption are polluting the government process. Expenses fraud, ex-Ministers being “cabs for hire”, cash for influencing legislation and loans for peerages are all examples in the UK alone. The alleged attempted sale of a Barak Obama’s Senate seat in Illinois and a congressman with thousands of dollars in his fridge in the USA were similar shocking episodes
The developing democracies don’t fare better. Elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have all yielded a corrupt elite, and Russia’s conversion to democracy has produced an oligarchy more interested in making money than serving the public. In essence democracies in country after country favour the elite while continuing the propaganda that everyone has the same power within a democracy.
Elected representatives are by definition not bound by their electors. In essence the voters role in democracies is confined to periodical voting as well as lobbying on individual pieces of legislation. Though individuals are free to lobby, their lobbying effort is vastly outnumbered by more wealthier and powerful concerns. For instance in the last decade the financial sector according to the Centre for Responsive Politics spent nearly $4 billion dollars in lobbying congress. Ordinary members of the public have to make do with an email or a phone call and are therefore largely ignored.
Many of democracies forefathers outlined the problem of mob rule in democracies. The concern was that laws would not be decided on the basis of societal benefit by the majority but would instead be rooted in self- interest and emotional passions in an attempt to usurp the rights of the minority. As Thomas Jefferson stated “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine”.
Acknowledging the weakness of this fundamental flaw, Western societies have sought to mitigate some of the harsher effects of a ‘mob rule’ by a variety of constitutional and political checks. In the US the presence of a Supreme Court, a supermajority before any constitutional changes can be made and the presence of multiple checks and balances have been applied, but at the expense of core democratic principles as well as causing a plethora of other problems. Gridlock, corruption, the disproportionate control exercised by special interest groups and short term electoral considerations trumping long term challenges are just some indictments of modern day democracies. The expenses and lobbying scandals in the UK are symptomatic of a political class who have forgotten what serving the public should be about.
Regular elections favour the elites
Whilst all would agree that their leaders should be elected, the reality of democracy is that regular elections favour those with money and adversely impact tough long-term decision making. Politics becomes about serving the elite not the public. The problem with frequent elections is that the more elections there are the more there is a requirement for money. Money and politics is one of the major cancers in democratic politics. The frequency of elections biases politicians against tackling long-term challenges and instead incentivises them to focus on short-term popularity. While a country’s planning horizon should be measured in decades, political horizons are focussed on managing the 24-hour news cycle and how to win the next election.
As an example an elected member of the February 2010 US House of Representatives, from day one, has to plan to raise a million dollars or so for his/her re-election campaign in two years time. Therefore you spend an inordinate amount of your time raising money, getting close to donors, and getting people who you may not like to write cheques. In addition you try to avoid any tough votes since in all likelihood the benefits will only be seen years down the road and why risk antagonising people who could vote you out in two years time. Running up deficits, not tackling longer-term challenges in education, the environment, pensions, energy or inner city poverty is the norm. All of these issues require tough choices and statesmen like solutions, but taking such decisions is akin to writing an electoral suicide note.
The expenses scandal in Britain, with its Westminster parliament considered the cradle of democracy faces a crisis of massive proportions. However, people disagree about how to solve this crisis and many of the other cases of corruption and corporate interests in legislation. Many believe that the West can clean up the system by introducing reforms. However this solution stems from a misdiagnosis of the problem. The system is not corrupt because there are corrupt politicians; rather politicians become corrupt because the underlying system is corrupt and flawed. If it was a case of a few rotten apples in one country or the politics of a particular democracy were worse than all the others, one might make a case for reform. But fundamental problems exist in every secular democracy, advanced, emerging, large, small, western or eastern. They all show the same thing: they serve the elite and not the public; their politicians are largely corrupt; wealth remains confined to a tiny minority; and long term challenges are consistently ducked.
Laws can always be changed or suspended
Legislative sovereignty is at the very heart of Western civilisation, the ability to create one’s own laws, change them, adapt them and suspend them is held high as one of the bedrocks of liberal democracies. Since 9-11, democracy has slaughtered so many of its sacred principles, democracy was theoretically, supposed to oppose: corrupt, paranoid and tyrannical rule. However since the events of 9/11 the West has suspended some key principles and rights. We have seen the suspension of the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the right to be aware of the evidence that is being used to imprison you. These key rights, enshrined in Western maxims and used to extract other laws have been altered at will, even though they are supposed to be the bedrock of Western political tradition. Many in the West argue that in the interests of national security certain laws can be suspended and are necessary. The rationale of protecting the nation’s security is the perennial argument used by dictators and tyrants through the ages and is used constantly by regimes from North Korea to Zimbabwe to defend their draconian policies. However these regimes don’t pretend to be something that they are not and nor do they seek to promote their values abroad.
Majority decisions do not necessarily make good laws
One of the fundamental pillars of democracy is that legislation is arrived at through majority voting. In the absence of any divine text, the need to derive legislation must be sourced from elsewhere. However the source of legislation and how laws are passed are subject to rigorous debates. In essence a variety of models could potentially exist.
The ability to change laws has produced very toxic laws. To ensure such a reality never occurs laws are restricted by constitutional concerns. No laws for instance can be passed in contravention of a nation’s constitution without some kind of super majority. For instance in the United States a simple majority of both houses of Congress could not reintroduce slavery, even though this would be democratic, this would require a change to the constitution. To prevent democracies from committing such abuses, various anti-democratic checks such as supermajorities and an unelected Supreme Court are put in place, an explicit acknowledgement that pure democracy can produce toxic results. Having a Supreme Court provides a failsafe option, as the abortion debate in the US has proved. Having a number of judges decide what is right or wrong is in effect anti-democratic and invalidates the whole principle of having legislation underpinned by popular consent. Judges should interpret laws and hold people to account not play the role of backstop legislators.
Trials are judged based on the quality of evidence not on the numerical superiority of witnesses on any particular side. If people, as they did in the 1930’s, vote for a populist leader who would later kill millions of Jews and start a world war, does this validate their choice just because they constituted a majority at a point in time? No it doesn’t. Scientific progress is not decided on numerical majorities but the strength of the science. The fact that the majority of people once believed the sun went around the earth or believed that the world was flat does not mean much when it comes to deciding what is scientific fact. Why should important legislation therefore be any different?
The toxic nature of how laws are passed in democracies was well understood by Western philosophers, leaders, and influential voices over the ages. Socrates and Plato raged against democracy in ancient Greece. Jefferson and Adams understood the dangers of pure democracy, which is why the US is a republic and why pure democracy was opposed.
Conclusions
The mantra of democracy continues to be the excuse for western military intervention in the Muslim lands. Whilst at home both the US and Britain as well as France, Germany and Italy are all experiencing the toxic results of democracy, but continue to spread this corrupt system of governance in the Muslim world. The excuse from the West is it’s the best we have and there is no alternative. From the fall of the Berlin wall and the ‘end of history,’ to now ‘it’s the best we have,’ shows democracy is in terminal decline. The Arab spring has shown the Muslim world is working to take its destiny into its own hands, this has worried the western world, who in their attempt to defend their way of life present democracy as the only war forward. They do this by conveniently omitting the problems with democracy at home. Islam on the other hand has many details and has been written about throughout Islamic history. The Islamic system of governance – the Khilafah, which will be outlined in future articles, has the following key aspects:
1. Justice is achieved with an independent judiciary and fixed laws, so all citizens know where they stand
2. Islam has built in and established rigorous measures of accountability
3. Corruption is rooted out through completely separating money and politics
4. Societal cohesion is maintained through the implementation of Islam rather than the secret security services
For further reading see report: Democracy in crisis