Democracy is Not the Best Form of Governance - Essay Example

Democracy is not the Best form of Governance Democracy refers to a form of government under whichcitizens have either direct or indirect participation in governance processes. It involves economic, cultural, and social conditions that enhance the equal and free involvement in political self-determination. Therefore, democracy can be referred to as a form of government under which foremost power is bestowed on the people. The people exercise this power either directly or indirectly through a network of representation that are elected through a system of periodic elections. Democracies can either be direct or representation. In direct democracy, the public is allowed to directly participate in their government. In representative democracies, citizens are always allowed to elect representatives who will represent them in the decision making processes. Despite being popular, democracy cannot be referred to as the best form of governance. This paper aims at proving that democracy has greatly failed as a form of governance. Democracy can be said to be faulty in the sense that it is a form of governance that it is always determined by what the majority wants and not what is good for the country. The question here is what will happen in a situation where the majority is wrong. This will mean that whatever will eventually take place will not be the best thing for the country at large. The majority can always be wrong as a result of misinformation or being fed with completely wrong information by influential figures for their own selfish gain. This will definitely lead to a governance error that might haunt the country for decades affecting even generations that were not part of the faulty decision making (Diamond and Plattner 184). Democracy can also be said to be a highly expensive form of governance. There are a lot of resources that always go to literal waste during democratic processes. A country always spends a lot of money just trying to make sure that democratic elections are always free, fair, and accurate. Despite all these efforts, there are always complaints about elections not being free and fair. This would raise the question of whether democracy is really governance by the people as is commonly referred to. Other resources also go to waste in the form of resources used during election campaigns. These resources are usually used for the purpose of influencing the choices of the public during political elections. The resource used during the political campaign would rather be used for other activities that are much more profitable and productive. In comparison to a monarchy form of governance, democracy would be definitely unreasonable expensive. Democratic processes can also be said to be faulted by baseless preferences of leaders. Democratic elections involve a battle for supremacy of races, ethnic groups, religions and many other forms of grouping. People will always vote for certain candidates on the basis of their ethnicity, race, religion, and not their capability to be good leaders. This leads to situations where the ethnic, racial, or religious groups with the highest number of citizens always carry the day. The obvious result of such an election is a government that lacks diligence and expertise. As much as one group might pride of being successful during the elections, the consequences of having incompetent leaders will be faced by the whole country( Adler and Weismann 221). Democracy can lead to the imbalanced development in a country. Since the leaders are always elected by the majority, they will always strive to those who voted for them at the expense of those who did not vote for them. For instance, if a leader was highly voted for in a certain region of the country and rejected in others, they will always tend to favor those who voted for them when it comes to developmental projects. This is mainly due to human nature, which makes it almost impossible for a person to respond to bad deeds with good ones. In the same manner, it will be almost impossible for a leader who never got votes from a certain region to care about the region in the same way they care for the region that voted for them. This will result into a situation in which there is an imbalance in a country’s development, with certain regions having an unfair advantage over the others. Democracy has also proved to be ineffective in various countries. As a result of the fact that democracy always favors the majority, the minority have always felt like they are being left out in the governance process. This has in many occasions led to civil wars especially in developing countries. Everyone would like to have a leader being from their own ethnic, religious, or racial group. As a result of this desire, the minority will always fill sidelined especially in cases where a certain majority grouping has always been the one to produce the leader (Samons 102). As much as the other forms of governance such as monarchy lack this type of equality, democracy makes it worse because of the way it instills the sense of equality into the citizens. Those who advocate for democracy have over the years that democracy enhances freedom. Apart from the freedom of the citizens to choose their own leaders, there is no other reason as to why citizens cannot enjoy freedom under an autocracy. This proves that claims that democracy enhances the freedom of the country. Furthermore, the freedom of electing leaders of their choice is only enjoyed by the majority and not the minority, and in most cases the majority always turns out to be completely wrong. Other forms of governance such as autocracy have proved to be more effective in bringing economic growth, as opposed to democracy. Under democracy, there are always many hindrances that stand in the way of development. Such hindrances include legislative processes, public opinion and many others. These processes are always time consuming, costly, and in most incidences driven by selfish ambitions. This is something that cannot happen in an autocracy form of government where the government makes decisions for the general well-being of the whole country. Democratic processes such as referendums are always costly and semi-productive especially due to the involvement of the public, whose majority rarely has sufficient information on the policies that are being contested. Democracy might have initially shown signs of success in its earlier stages, but that is completely the opposite of what is happening in the modern democracies. Initially democracy was aimed at making sure that the public was involved in the governance of their own countries. However, currently democracy has been turned into mere intergroup and interests contest. As much as opinion and decisions of the public is the main pillar of democracy, in the modern world it is always just an inter party, race, religion, or ethnic context. This is a clear indication of the fact that democracy is no longer about what the majority wants but just about the candidate that will be able to influence the decisions of the highest number of citizens. The focus has been shifted from the public to the convincing power of the candidates during political campaigns. Democracies have only been able to give people a false sense of involvement in their own governance. This is proved by the high number of conspiracies that arise in democracies on a daily basis. There are a lot of secret deals that democratic governments involve in without involvement of the opinion of the general public. This will only mean that involvement of the public in their own governance is still an illusion yet to be achieved. As much as they spend time voting for leaders of their choice, there has never been any democratic government that could be said to have fully represented the interests of their electorates. At the end of the term people go back for election and after another term they just have the same complaints despite having chosen new leaders in the governmental post to represent them. The notion on the dissatisfaction of electorates can also lead us to the fact that democracy creates a culture of over expectancy amongst citizen. Democracy puts emphasis on the power that the public has in shaping the way they are governed. This might lead to over expectation from the public. The funny thing is that the expectations of the public vary with age, social class, ethnicity, race, and religions. It is practically impossible for services by a given government to be satisfactory to these entire dimensions. This is also evident in autocracy and monarchy but is only worsened in democracy because of the fact that the public always have high expectations. The support for democracy can be justified in various ways just as its criticism can be justified. The other forms of governance also have their own strengths and shortcomings. . People have always mistaken the fact that democracy is the most popular of the forms of governance to mean that it is the best. The argument in this paper, however, is not that there is any of the other forms of governance that is best but that any form of government can be best depending on where it is being applied. Thus, it would only be wrong to conclude that democracy is the best form of governance. Work Cited Adler, Mortimer, and Max Weismann. How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization. New York: Open Court, 2000. Internet resource. Diamond, Larry J, and Marc F. Plattner.How People View Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Print. Samons, Loren J. What's Wrong with Democracy?: From Athenian Practice to American Worship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Internet resource. Read More