Europe

[Furunculus]

Aww man, I wish. I wish we, or anyone, had a truly representative democracy. I wish society was able to cope with such a thing! Frankly, wishing for proper democracy and representation is wishing for a utopian ideal, you might say as crazy as wishing for a working form of communism.

On what basis do you think elections are won? Issues and Manifestos? Emotions? Personalities? Marketing? What the media say? What the people who own the media want?

The elected representatives, according to what criteria are they put forwards? Impartiality? Suitability for the job? Internal party politics? Who they know? Who they pay off?

And what about the electorate? Do they have the first clue about the consequences of political and budgetary decisions? Is there any way they can be appropriately informed by a sensationalist, commercialised and news-as-entertainment media?

1 single example, look at the responses to the spending cuts requried by the recession: everyone says it is neccessary to cut government spending, but won't actually take the hit on Education, Health or anything else that they value! How helpfull is the "will of british people" then???

IMO you have to be a loony or a complete tosser to go into politics, but ultimately the poor buggers in office are faced with some seriously difficult decisions. At the best of times they will always p!ss someone off and ultimately those decisions will all snowball and they'll end up faced with an electorate who are bored with their face and voice, and want some other prat to talk ernestly to them!

As Churchill said: democracy is not the best form of government, but it is better than the alternatives (or something simmilar).

But don't for one second kid yourself that it's anything to be particularily proud of. It can only ever be "less bad" than something else.

there really isn't a useful response to this other than to say; no kidding.

i agree and concur that these are the problems faced, but that will not stop me advocating a political system that does its best to represent the will of the people, because the alternative is tyranny, and varying intermediate steps on the way to tyranny.

[al Roumi]

i agree and concur that these are the problems faced, but that will not stop me advocating a political system that does its best to represent the will of the people.

Honestly, I find it hard to seperate what you advocate from anarchy or government by plebiscite.

Neither of which are at all guarantors of the stability you applaud. Stability has historicaly been maintained by the haves, and undermined by the have-nots (who would like to have, and thus have a jolly good -and unstable- upheaval during or as a result of their acquisition).

If the UK has been stable as you assert, its because it was definitley not a plural and open society. Historicaly, the UK gave little and selectively enough to dampen social upheaval and maintain the staus-quo for the haves.

The ruling parliaments of GB were cautious to learn from others' mistakes -as in the French revolution (which started as a power grab by middle class property owners, which GB celebrated as freedom from tyranny, and was co-opted by working class/artisans, which horrified the ruling class of GB).

[Furunculus]

Honestly, I find it hard to seperate what you advocate from anarchy or government by plebiscite.

Neither of which are at all guarantors of the stability you applaud. Stability has historicaly been maintained by the haves, and undermined by the have-nots (who would like to have, and thus have a jolly good -and unstable- upheaval during or as a result of their acquisition).

If the UK has been stable as you assert, its because it was definitley not a plural and open society. Historicaly, the UK gave little and selectively enough to dampen social upheaval and maintain the staus-quo for the haves.

The ruling parliaments of GB were cautious to learn from others' mistakes -as in the French revolution (which started as a power grab by middle class property owners, which GB celebrated as freedom from tyranny, and was co-opted by working class/artisans, which horrified the ruling class of GB).

i fail to see why you think i have a thing for anarchy or direct democracy.

I am a fan of neither, i am in fact a fan of letting the government take the tough decisions that people (as a crowd) would always shout down. but for this to work the people have to be able to weigh the decision makers on the merits of their decisions and then cast a vote of approval or disproval at the next election. that is neither of the ideas which you suggest i hold.

Where my enthusiasm for representation comes from is when the system described above fails; i.e a consensus forms between the two poles of politics that a given policy is-the-way-forward and the disatisfaction of the voter is to be disregarded.

it is a contemptuousness of the voter that will only breed contempt from the voter for his political 'masters'.

and you can tell when this has happened in a stable polity like Britain because the poles of British politics no longer dominate the ballot sheet results.
examples of this include:
> both parties letting too many immigants into the country (particularly labour) which has resulted in 1,000,000 BNP votes at the last euro election. only now are senior Labour figures beginning to admit they made a mistake after 12 years of chaos.
> both parties holding a greater enthusiasm for ever-deeper-union than its electorate, and repeatedly lieing to the voters about each new level of integration that wasn't happening, thus do we have UKIP.

this is a failure to represent because there is no opportunity to punish a bad decision within the mainstream of politics, and thus do the les pleasant and less credible fringes flourish. if you can't kick out those who hold with decisions with which you disagree then you are not represented.

so please, control any urge to travel further down this intellectual dead-end about direct democracy or anarchy as the only end-result of being enthusiastic about representative democracy.



here's a clue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

The representatives form an independent ruling body (for an election period) charged with the responsibility of acting in the people's interest, but not as their proxy representatives; that is, not necessarily always according to their wishes, but with enough authority to exercise swift and resolute initiative in the face of changing circumstances. It is often contrasted with direct democracy, where representatives are absent or are limited in power as proxy representatives.