Political Issues
"Democracy creates stability in a society"
The above motion will be discussed by Liu Jiahua, Sang Shaofei, Cui Jianqiao, Soham Ghosh and Shayan Mahfooz Ansari ( author of this blog), in the comments section, which can be accessed be clicking on "comments" at the bottom right hand corner of this post. Please do not comment unless you are one of the persons mentioned above.
On a side note, I do not understand how is it that Soham Ghosh's and Sang Shaofei's comments were deleted as I certainly did not delete or attempt to delete them. However, they can still be viewed by clicking on "comment deleted". In case they are completely removed, I have saved them on a word document.
posted by shayan @ 9:36 AM
26 Comments
26 Comments:
After reading the article "Why Democracy is Good for Development" I realized that the consensus is one of the main factors which contribute to the stability of democracy. According to the political culture of Switzerland, Belgium or other democracy countries, it is obvious that the democracy requires varying degrees of consensus to be built rather than just a mere political democratic majority. It is because the consensus is always keeping an essential function as effective protection of the minority rights from political or economic domination by majority. Since the consensus, as one main character of democracy helps to motivate the communication and agreement between the majority and minority, the conflict towards most of the issues would be ensured to reduce or even eradicate. So the stability is surely created.
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I agree with Jiahua's opinion. It is correct that the consensus can help keep the society in stability. Except of consensus, I also think one of the most important factors that lead the stability is equality of human rights. When I search the word "democracy” in Wikipedia, I find one of the principles that any definition of democracy is required to have. It says that all members of the society are having equal access to power. This means that all members of a democratic society have equal rights. I think it can really help to avoid the racialism or discrimination against minority and can also protect benefit of minority. Hence I think equality is also one of the main factors which can help to create stability of society in democratic countries.
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Democracy and stability
Democaracy is basically the rule of the people by the people, for the people. In this case, what the majority thinks will happen. But the minority, even if a very less population, is not addressed properly. And this, as we know, may lead to disastrous results in terms of conflict.
The concept of democracy states that people have equal access to power, which, often, is impractical in certain scenarios. Yes, it is true, that democracy, which involves the role of the goverment and also opposing parties' decision. This may bring about an overally accepted decision. This may or may not bring about stability.
But the question remains, how do we define stability in a society. Is it just simply economic stability? In that case, why is India, one of the greatest democracies not the richest country? So for that, democracy may not be able to really create economic stability, whereas authoratarian China is ahead of India. If stability is to be political stability, that may be achieved in some scenarios. In terms of social stability, again, it may not be true.
Stability is often confined to the country. Taking, the exxample of India Pakistan conflict, we cannot say that political stability is always attained in a democratic country, because of international intervention.
Stability in society can also be referred to as utopia, which in this case is impossible or not feasible.
Over and all, I don't fully agree to the statement that democracy creates stability in a society
Jia Hua said that it is because democracy can achieve consensus among people, then due to the consensus, the society becomes stable. But what is stability? Does it mean that all men living in the society pursue one common goal? Does it mean there is no potential destabilization within the society? If so, I don't think democracy itself can achieve such achieve such stability.
Because the "consensus" itself is undefined. Every one, with no exception, accepts the others' opinion. The collective aim which is also the orientation of the whole society enable all society members to live social harmony and cohesion.
Do you think it is possible?
I always believe that limited democracy makes it possible to build a relatively stability.
People are different. They have different social status, so they have different social demands and different orientation of life. Democracy is partially implied in referendums, so the results absolutely will divided into two factions according to their numbers respectively,majority and minority. But only one government will be established, what they are going to resolve this division is to ask for consensus.Then the governer will still come out according to the majority's willing. Generally majority will become the side that influence or even control the current political situation. Not only the resentment felt by the minority but also the things the majority are doing which are not validates to be the right things both lead to the potential destabilization of the society. So I never believe that consensus will be built successfully between two beliefs.
Of course the majority government cannot completely satisfy the needs of the minority, but the harmony they maintain between each other depends on what the government are doing. So I prefer a limited democracy implemented. Limited democracy is one where you may only vote for those things which are acceptable within the framework of a constitution. This kind of democracy prevent the illegal events the government will do because the unlimitation of their rights. In this way, relatively stable society will be built.
Maybe it is true that sometimes minority rights are deprived by the majority due to their rights are protected from the “tyranny of the majority”. However, democracy is not only a form of government but also a political philosophy. In this ideal philosophy, we want to achieve relatively equal rights. Popular sovereignty is common but not the purpose for establishing a democracy. Just like Jianqiao have said that he would prefer a limited democracy where you may only vote for those things which are acceptable within the framework of a constitution. Hence the minority right can be protected by the government. Of course it is not real to achieve an absolutely ideal utopian society that everybody has equal rights. And it is also true that a totally democratic society is only a venerable mirage. But democracy can help to achieve a relatively stable society as Jianqiao says.
I also want to continue to discuss that how democracy can help to built stability. The principle of democracy also requires that all members to have the freedom to live their lives as they want to. The freedom of speech is also allowed in democratic society. According this principle, we can say that freedom is provided in democratic society. This is very important to keep the stability of society. For example, in totalitarian DPRK (North Korea), human rights were abused by the government. Citizens do not have rights to choose their religion and cannot freely travel around the country or go abroad. Citizens are not allowed to freely speak their minds and the government. The only radio, television, and news organizations that are deemed legal are those operated by the government. These kinds of politics have made country still stay at poverty which can cause the instability of the country.
I want to add one factor that can help to cause the stability of a democratic society. Democracy allows every member of the society to participate in the process. This can build a society that most members are willing to have. But of course everything has its pros and cons. This kind of factor can also cause the instability of society. It is because that every citizens have rights to participate in the process, the result will be influenced a lot by majority group because of there is no power taking a position of dominance in pure democratic country, the minority’s benefit can only being protected by subject group. This may be harmful for those members of minority who will think it is unfair to them. Hence a conflict may be caused and the stability of a country may be damaged.
For my opinion that I first published, I want to correct that I have said equal access to power can help to avoid the racism or discrimination against minority and can also protect the benefit of minority. As Soham said that the equal access to power may bring an overall accepted decision by majority and this may not cause stability, I quite agree with his opinion. But except of this, the equal access to power also can cause stability by decreasing the argument among the whole society because most of people are happy to the result they finally achieve. And also a limited democracy can help to protect the minority’s benefit.
I would like to begin a new point. In my opinion,the freedom of voting, which is one of the main part of“democracy", could not effectively contributes to stability. The point “freedom of choice”(in terms of voting) is mentioned in all three particles. In the article “How can Democracy be bad for you?” the writer has listed basic types of democracy, which is all based on the freedom of choice, the choice of determining the representative act on behalf of you, or a specific policy. However, because the result of voting could only represent the majority and satisfy their types of life, the minority still could not get any benefits or only a little, especially in the unlimited democracy, as the rights of majority is abused. That is also one of the key why the conflict in northern Ireland happened and is still not being solved.
Next, I want to continue to talk and elaborate the issue about political limitation of democracy which shaofei has mentioned above. In a limited democracy, the voters could only choose to vote the thing accepted by constitution. This condition could certainly restrict the majority to abusing their rights, or set up whatever they want. It also protects the fairness of the minority. So, I have reached another point that only limited democracy could probably create stability.
As I have mentioned before, even limited democracy could not create an absolute stable society. Though people could implement their rights within the limitation of constitution, the constitution is not qualified to be the principle.No constitution can provide absolute equality to all social members.So when people vote to certain policy or apply policies to the whole society,how can we make it to be consented by those who can not get any benefit from it?
I have a doubt about democracy being stable by itself. Considering Pakistan, the country, which is said to be democratic had often transformed to be fascist or militant governments, which may not favour the country.
Moreover, the issue about voting. Politicians adopt techniques to 'buy' votes. This may be often unfair, and not effective, as the most deserving goverment is not chosen.
So there remain questions about the stability of democracy by itself.
Consensual democracy was the first draft of democracy, and essentially the most effective mode of democracy. In such a form, we might have stability, as fa as protection of minority rights is concerned. But this is a rather utopian concept.
I don't believe that democracy can be applied in the real society. In theory, democracy itself is an ideal means to achieve happiness,prosperity and progress, but other than the possible unfairness emerged in real democratic society, many other problems may come out and hinder the democracy from achieving its goals. Democracy can be applied within a small group, then stability can be built more easily among the group members. But as the members increases,the risk of the failure of democracy also increases. So when the whole society come together to vote or share opinions, democracy may fail during application.
It is true that there are still remain some risks in democracy. But comparing with other kinds of society such as authoritarian or totalitarian, democracy is much more better I think. Although it is much easier to dictate in short term. But in long term, democracy can offer much more stability. Since democracy provides rights to most of members, hence there will be less argument in a democratic society than those societies without equal rights distribution.
Taking into consideration what all four of you have written, i shall now list down the various points that have been and analyse the debate and discussion as a whole and also add my own points.
On of the main points of this discussion is about whether minority rights can be protected through democracy and whether minority and majority can be treated equally. If yes, then Democracy can create stability in a society, but if not, democracy is not only a failure but it will also fail to create stability in a society.
Why does it fail to create stability and how do you define stability?
Stability actually contains three situation under the ideology of democracy--social stability, polotical stability and economic stability. It must ensure the rights of both minority and majority simultaneously; if not, the situation is considered to be a failure of creating stability. Based on this stand, I agree with Shayan's opinion.
What is stability? In my opinion that stability can be define as less conflict between majority and minority. Also, all the members can have equality,freedom and human rights. I think democracy can fail to create stability because of unlimited power of members of society. And democracy may be abused by majority. Hence I think except of a system, we also need a supervisor to help to protect minority and keep stability in society. I prefer limited democracy which can help to decrease abuse of democracy.
To answer the latter question, stability has so far been defined as society where there is little or no discrimination or tensions or conflict that may cause the society to break down and therefore destabilize. Therefore, stability would occur when there is peace in the society.
However, this definition of stability can only be defined as a social stability. As soham has pointed out, what about the political and economical stability of a society?
I suppose that economic stability means relatively equal economic benefits between majority and minority such as equal opportunity to get job,etc.And politic stability means fair election and everyboday has freedom of voting.
The article "Why Democracy is Good for development" is clearly in favour of democracy as better for development. It says that democracy offers us political and economical choice. This means that there is a free expression of political preferences and demands on an accountable, transparent government.
Such will eradicate poverty and and other man-made calamities enforced by the government to its people.
Can anyone find a link between free political, economical choice and development because I do not understand how such will create economic stability.
Looking at the defination of democracy you will find out that the freedom of voting has been specifically hinglighted. Voting is actually an efficient way to choose the economic policy by the whole citizens. Since the economical framework has determined by the whole country, it could possibly have a high chance to bring stability.
But what if voting rights are infringed or even if minority rights are not protected, there might not be stability. I will again emphasize on Jiahua's first point, that is that a consensus will induce stability. But what about countries like India, which has been repeatedly attacked by terrorist groups from Pakistan and even some from China. So how does democracy ensure that a country will not be attacked or have its sovereignty encroached upon.
Voting rights for all citizens of a country are a requirement for democracy, if these rights are infringed for certain people, then the whole voting process is no longer democractic and the form of governance is no longer a democracy. So why talk about something that is not democratic?
As for the points on terrorism, Sometimes terrorist attacks are totally external and may have not have anything to do with democracy itself.
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