Democracy Discussion

“Democracy creates stability”

While democracy currently is “practiced” by many countries in the world, to the extent that any form of government not comprising of democracy is condemned, it does not mean that democracy is the “ultimate” form of governance. Throughout the course of history, examples have shown how democracy has in fact caused much of society’s upheaval. For the purpose of discussion here, stability refers to social, economic and political stability.

First let us look at the case studies of how democratic states have become much unstable. In Asia itself, we already have case studies of how democracies have brought a standstill to the nation. An obvious example would be Taiwan. In the past, Taiwan was a one-party ruling state. When democracy came in 1996 in the form of the first presidential elections, the change was welcomed by the people. However, 8 years down the road, the Taiwan we see now is full of internal conflict between the 2 major opposition and ruling parties. While the president is from the ruling party, the opposition holds the majority of the opposition camp, thus when Bills have to be passed, the opposition boycotts them and leaves the legislature log-jammed. Taking advantage of the principles of majority-rule, the opposition has left Taiwan’s political and economic situation to a standstill.

Then let us look at America, the champion of democracy, world superpower built on the basic fundamentals of ‘power to the people’. Despite it’s seemingly good track records of human rights, ask any man on the streets of what America’s weakness is and chances are they will tell you it lies in the great divide between the blacks and the whites in America. This racism and prejudice, however condemned, is not fully constitutional and somewhat contradictory to America’s pledge to a human’s basic rights, which includes freedom of speech, thought and action. But why do I saw this? This is because since all man are created equal, so no one should be favoured in one way or another, or prejudiced in another form. However, America’s freedom of thought yet allows individuals to have the freedom to discriminate, resulting in the deepest divide in America’s society.

So far, I have been bringing up case studies of how democracies have caused instability instead of the expected stability. However, we must not forget that democracies still have resulted in many stable societies throughout the world since their transition into democracy. However, if we go back to the key fundamentals of political systems, we realize that these systems are theorized based on each camp’s notion of Man’s rationalization. Similarly, whether a democracy creates stability once again depends on Man’s rationalization. This can be said the same for other political systems such as communism and socialism. However, ultimately, in the case where leaders of either political system are equally rational and fair in governance, then democracy will result in more stability basically because the people are given more freedom and rights to fulfill their individual rights as humans.