Current Affairs Does democracy work?

[Bruce Wayne]

A thousand times this. If anyone needs any further example than reality, they should take a look at the Norway Debate of 1940 to see what the party system results in.

To set the scene, Great Britain has just seen the utter disaster of the 1940 Norwegian Campaign take place; its Prime Minister is held in contempt by almost everyone and had to sit through two days of the most well-informed and savage criticism from a sequence of MPs, some of whom held high military rank and were well aware of what state the armed forces were in. Others were themselves serving in the armed forces and almost to a man slated the way he (and the Government) were conducting the war. Most of the rest had military experience in the Great War, or had helped win that conflict in other ways, or had experience in government or the Empire. Members had more evidence and personal experience available to them than almost any other MPs have had, before or since, of how badly wrong things were going.

281 of them, a majority of 81, backed the Government.

Far be it for me to stand up for politicians, but I am a believer that our environment shapes our behaviour. Take the inherent dishonesty in politics at the moment. There was a stat the other day comparing Trump and Clinton, for instance, and it had around 35% of everything Clinton said as being untrue, with Trump up around 90%. Now put yourself in Clinton's shoes. If we assume that honesty usually sounds less appealing than lies, if she was 100% honest whilst Trump was 100% dishonest, then that's hardly a fair fight and Trump would quite probably wipe the floor with her.

Now you could say that the media have a part to play, in that in some noble tradition the journo exists to uncover the truth and so on, so they should be calling out lies and telling an honest story, but I think we can all appreciate that this is a fantasy. The reality is that we have a heavily partisan media that often helps to fan the flames of dishonesty in order to appeal to their core audience and sell more copy/ad space. They're commercial entities after all so I don't think we can rely on them to police matters.

I think we can all agree that democracy works best when voters are given honest information to work with, so do we need some kind of regulator/arbiter whose sole job is to ensure that what we are told is the truth?

 

[chrismpw]

The biggest problem we have in this country is the idea of voting for your PM vs voting for your local MP. If the system was different and the focus was squarely on the local MP, I think folk would be a lot more engaged, as it would more directly affect them.

imo my MP speaks for me and my constituency in parliament. There should be no referenda - the MP is my proxy vote, whatever they vote for speaks for the whole constituency. If folk don't like that, vote for a different candidate.

What ruins the idea of voter representation is the whip system. Most mps, who want a position of power at some point in the future, will do whatever the pm wants, when the whip makes him, not what his or her constituency wants.

 

[The Cowboy]

What ruins the idea of voter representation is the whip system. Most mps, who want a position of power at some point in the future, will do whatever the pm wants, when the whip makes him, not what his or her constituency wants.

A concept that I'll admit I only learned of relatively recently (when looking up what 'three line whip' meant). I suspect many aren't even aware of the inner machinations of party politics, and how crooked it all is.

 

[abelard]

A thousand times this. If anyone needs any further example than reality, they should take a look at the Norway Debate of 1940 to see what the party system results in.

To set the scene, Great Britain has just seen the utter disaster of the 1940 Norwegian Campaign take place; its Prime Minister is held in contempt by almost everyone and had to sit through two days of the most well-informed and savage criticism from a sequence of MPs, some of whom held high military rank and were well aware of what state the armed forces were in. Others were themselves serving in the armed forces and almost to a man slated the way he (and the Government) were conducting the war. Most of the rest had military experience in the Great War, or had helped win that conflict in other ways, or had experience in government or the Empire. Members had more evidence and personal experience available to them than almost any other MPs have had, before or since, of how badly wrong things were going.

281 of them, a majority of 81, backed the Government.

but only after the PM (Chamberlain) resigned and was replaced by Churchill, no?

 

[Prevenger17]

Democracy has failed. It's now political theory's answer to Emmerdale

 

[Boss_Blue]

Democracy has failed. It's now political theory's answer to Emmerdale

What are @steken1's thought's on this?

 

[GlosBlue]

To a degree, in that we are better off than a lot of countries ruled by dictatorships.

 

[chrismpw]

A concept that I'll admit I only learned of relatively recently (when looking up what 'three line whip' meant). I suspect many aren't even aware of the inner machinations of party politics, and how crooked it all is.

I absolutely abhor the system. If I ever sound cynical and distrusting of the establishment in any post, it comes down to this wholly undemocratic principle.

 

[tsubaki]

but only after the PM (Chamberlain) resigned and was replaced by Churchill, no?

Nope, this was before and what helped trigger Chamberlain's resignation. The vote after Churchill took over was 381-0 in favour of the replacement.

 

[abelard]

Nope, this was before and what helped trigger Chamberlain's resignation. The vote after Churchill took over was 381-0 in favour of the replacement.

So debate over unpopular leader is held; "Over a quarter of Conservative members voted with the Opposition or abstained, despite a three line whip, and this made it clear that support for Chamberlain in his own party was crumbling;" whereupon unpopular leader resigns, new leader is elected.

what is the problem?

 

[Toffeelover]

There's an interesting piece in the New Yorker about democracy, and in particular how effective it is in a world in which so many voters seem so ignorant of the things they've voting for.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

"around a third of Americans are incapable of naming even one of the three branches of the United States government. Fewer than a quarter know who their senators are, and only half are aware that their state has two of them."

I'm sure we can think of many examples from this side of the pond too. Does democracy fail in the face of such ignorance?

Bruce that is nothing to with the principle of democracy. It is folk not wishing to participate and enquire.

 

[tsubaki]

Far be it for me to stand up for politicians, but I am a believer that our environment shapes our behaviour. Take the inherent dishonesty in politics at the moment. There was a stat the other day comparing Trump and Clinton, for instance, and it had around 35% of everything Clinton said as being untrue, with Trump up around 90%. Now put yourself in Clinton's shoes. If we assume that honesty usually sounds less appealing than lies, if she was 100% honest whilst Trump was 100% dishonest, then that's hardly a fair fight and Trump would quite probably wipe the floor with her.

Now you could say that the media have a part to play, in that in some noble tradition the journo exists to uncover the truth and so on, so they should be calling out lies and telling an honest story, but I think we can all appreciate that this is a fantasy. The reality is that we have a heavily partisan media that often helps to fan the flames of dishonesty in order to appeal to their core audience and sell more copy/ad space. They're commercial entities after all so I don't think we can rely on them to police matters.

I think we can all agree that democracy works best when voters are given honest information to work with, so do we need some kind of regulator/arbiter whose sole job is to ensure that what we are told is the truth?

The dishonesty (and corruption, fwiw) and the lack of exposure of it largely comes from the party system, though. If we were talking about individual MPs that were coming out with fibs, its very unlikely that the media would fail to report those fibs because the MP would not be able to punish them for it.

However a party, especially a governing party, has all manner of options available to it to deal with journalists - cutting them off from sources, pressurizing their bosses, taking legal action against them, inciting other hacks against them, inciting its own supporters against them etc - that they don't like. Peter Oborne correctly pointed out in his "The Rise of Political Lying" that the tellers of the biggest fibs are invariably governments because they know they can usually get away with it.

 

[tsubaki]

So debate over unpopular leader is held; "Over a quarter of Conservative members voted with the Opposition or abstained, despite a three line whip, and this made it clear that support for Chamberlain in his own party was crumbling;" whereupon unpopular leader resigns, new leader is elected.

what is the problem?

The problem is that two hundred and eighty men looked at Chamberlain, looked at the war situation, listened to the debate and still voted for him.

They did that for no other reason than because of Party (either because of loyalty, or because of the whip). They didn't know what would happen after the vote; indeed if Margesson had done a better job, or if Chamberlain had responded better, and the Tory rebellion was of a smaller scale he could have remained there until the end.

 

[TheFinnFan]

Does democracy work?

Well, good indicator of it will be if BREXIT really happends. There clearly is will to try to overturn the will of the people.

 

[RaleighBlue]

Democracy doesn't work.

But none of us live in democracies. Because that would be terrible. Mob rule? Nah. I'll take some protections from that, thanks.