Lately it seems criticising democracy has become more fashionable, so here are my responses to the two arguments that come up most frequently.
Since the so called ”Mueller report” was released by special counsel Robert Mueller about a year ago and especially after the Covid-19 pandemic made governments across the world instituted lockdowns, I’ve found that discussions about democracy has become more prevalent. This could just be a case of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which is when something one has recently become aware of seems to appear more common as one seems to encounter it improbably often since learning of it. These discussions tend to be disparaging of democracy, either directly by for example complaining that democracies are unable to respond fast enough to crises, or indirectly by for example being worried that Russian hackers or trolls will interfere in the democratic process to the point that their efforts will impact the outcome. In this post I want to confront democracy’s shortcomings and try to give a reminder as to why democracy is less bad than all other forms of government.
It’s understandable that people want their governments to act fast and decisively, especially during a crisis like the current pandemic. I don’t dispute democracies being slower to react than autocracies, of course a more centralised system with clear hierarchies will be able to act faster than organisations which have to deliberate and vote on decisions. Is speed such an important quality? One could argue that President Trump was quick to capitalise on China’s issues with dealing with the then epidemic two months ago, and similarly Prime Minister Johnson was both quick in settling on the policy of pursuing herd immunity and subsequently dropping the idea. Speed can be pointless or counterproductive if the policy which is implemented with speed is flawed, sometimes being slower and more thorough is better. Being fast is important when dealing with a pandemic, but so is being right and I feel that people who criticise democracies for being too slow when dealing with this pandemic should take a broader view. Pandemics are rare, and most countries aren’t dealing with crises most of the time so having a form of government which is slow to react in the context of a pandemic doesn’t make that form of government inferior to other forms of government.
The fear that malevolent foreign actors are able to interfere with democratic processes is well founded, after all the Mueller report found that Russians did interfere in the 2016 US Presidential election. The notion that democracies are flawed due to foreign interests being able to have an impact is ridiculous though. Democracies are specifically and intentionally designed so that a large part of the population has a say I how the country is run, so the ability for groups to be able to be heard is a feature, not a bug. I don’t want to minimise the potential threat that operations with the aim of interfering in democratic politics can pose, just explain that such a risk exists in every system as bad actors are able to influence decision makers even if they weren’t democratically appointed. I find that these types of arguments about foreign influence in democratic systems can easily drift in to elitist and classist territory where there’s a group of “them” who are not educated enough or in some other way not prepared to spot an influence campaign and therefore are likely to unwittingly help bad actors. In the end I don’t think it’s possible to prevent foreign influence, but that’s a small price to pay for a system where your voice is heard.
Finally, I want to reemphasise that I recognise that democracies might be ill-equipped to handle some of our current challenges but they are still great at handling daily business in normal times, and times tend to be normal most of the time. Democracies are slower, but also more stable and less prone to violence. In the words of a certain Mr West: “no one man should have all that power”.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover Photo by Element5 DigitalfromPexels
Comments