The
meaning of the word has never been fully clear, and its centrality to
constitutions even less firm. I argue that democracy began its definitive
process in antiquity, and continued it in Renaissance times, especially in Britain.
But Britain, despite creating democracy’s definition,
has often failed to fully grasp its essence.
The path of true democracy never did run smooth…
Although
a Greek word, democracy as we know it was not too favourable to the Ancient
Greeks. Even the liberally minded Aristotle called democracy a ‘deviant’
constitutional arrangement, since it let the poor and uneducated rule over the
rich and educated.[1]
But his advocacy of a mixed constitution—a ‘polity’ of middle-class citizens
ruling over the ‘polis’ or city-state—reflected the participatory nature of
Athens at the time, where a large number of citizens could participate in the
decision-making process. The Romans found this form of ‘direct democracy’
rather difficult to implement in a large empire, so used an early form of
‘representative democracy’ instead, where the ‘people and the senate of Rome’ (senatus populusque romanus: SPQR) was
the empire’s banner.[2]
Two
millennia later, one former part of the Roman Empire was re-discovering its
political roots. But, despite its ‘renaissance’, England was simultaneously
redefining democracy. Having created a Parliament which was beginning to hold
the monarch to account on a number of issues, the little country was allowing
obscure, poor people like Thomas Cromwell rise to become powerful figures in
British politics. The ‘deviant’ constitution of democracy was beginning to take
hold, and by the 20th century, ordinary people were allowed to vote
regularly, secretly and freely on their chosen representative in government
from a particular political party. Although the American founding father James
Maddison beat the British to a ‘bill of rights’, constitutionally embodied
rights for all British citizens were made explicit in the 1998 Human Rights
Act, while the media and judiciary had already gained their independence.
Hence, the British created a de facto definition
for democracy as a system of (1) regular elections involving the secret ballot
and different participating parties[3], (2)
a broad spectrum of liberties, and (3) an independent media and judiciary. There
is no objective definition of democracy, apart from the word’s etymology as a
system where the ‘people’ (demos)
have some impact on their ‘ruling’ (kratos).
But there certainly is a subjective definition which can be agreed upon by, at
the very least, the countries where ancient and modern democracy
originated—namely, the European and North American states.
Nevertheless,
the British have never owned the essence of
democracy as a representative institution.[4]
Hence, it is unsurprising that there are some essential flaws in the British
‘democratic’ system that, although meeting the definition of democracy, fail to fully grasp its essence. One such flaw, forming part of
the UK’s democratic deficit, is the omnipresence of the monarch. The use of a
possessive pronoun in Her/His Majesty’s Government is blatantly at odds with
the concept of democracy as an institution of shared sovereignty. Whereas
Thomas Hobbes[5] or
Niccolò Machiavelli[6]
would have approved of the ability of the Queen to oversee governmental policy
and maintain her ability to
intervene, the American ‘founding fathers’[7] most
probably would not have approved. The Queen’s very job description as a monarch
can be seen as a philosophical insult to democracy: the Queen may not be what
democracy really ‘stands for’.[8]
Nevertheless, the Queen lacks de facto
political power, in that she does not have the ability to change legislation,
influence who gets elected to the legislature, or select who forms the decision-making
Government. Therefore, the Queen may be a symbol of monarchy, but would
probably not be seriously understood to be a ruling monarch by Plato, Aristotle
or Hobbes.
Furthermore,
although meeting democracy’s definition,
another institution undermining democracy’s essence
in the UK is ‘first past the post’ (FPTP). Under this system, the House of
Commons is made up of representatives from each British constituency, meaning
that, if the largest party’s votes were equally distributed, it is possible
that a party will win every single seat with, say, 52% of the vote. Although
this never happens, since different parts of the UK vote differently, anomalies
are frequent. For instance, the Liberal Democrats won only 1% of the seats with
8% of the May 2015 general election vote. By contrast, the Conservatives won
51% of the seats with only 37% of the overall vote. Therefore, a Conservative
vote was more powerful than a Liberal Democratic vote, meaning that the
Conservatives benefited disproportionately from FPTP whereas Liberal Democrats
suffered disproportionately. In essence, this undermines to some extent the
democratic principle of ‘one person one vote’ (OPOV), since someone’s voting
power is largely dependent on where they live in the country. Of course, FPTP’s
advantage is that it allows MPs to represent their region, not just their
party, but Germany solves the problem by having a two-tier political system of
regional representatives chosen by regional elections and national
representatives chosen by a proportional part list system (an ‘additional
member’ system).
On
the other hand, the essence of democracy is thoroughly grasped by the embedding
of democratic institutions. For instance, despite the fact that the Polity
Project[9]
ranked the UK as a democracy beforehand, the 1969 Representation of the People
Act secured the democratic institutions of OPOV, secret ballot and regular
elections. Moreover, continual consolidation of democratic institutions shows
that the UK has grasped democracy’s essence and that democratic norms are still
alive and well. In 2011, another Act of Parliament made sure that elections
were held on a regular basis—every five years—demonstrating that UK governments
continue to pursue a democratic UK in both mere definition and essence. This
reflects the reality that democracy appears to form a continuum, where even
‘democracies’ can be more or less democratic.
Overall,
democracy is a state-level institution defined by its comprising the following
intra-state institutions: (1) competitive, regularly-held elections with a
secret ballot with a choice of multiple parties; (2) independent media and
judiciary; and (3) a variety of rights and liberties. The UK is definitively a
democracy, since it contains these structures, but it lacks some total
democracy in some areas. Although the institutions
are generally present, sometimes democratic norms
such as completely independent media fail to operate. Also, although one person
has one vote, sometimes the FPTP system denies the practical effectiveness of
this principle by favouring certain geographical regions. Moreover, the culture
of secrecy lives on. Overall, therefore, the definition of democracy was met by
the UK in the early twentieth century with universal suffrage, but the essence
of democracy was yet to be fully consolidated. Indeed, it is democracy’s
essence to be continually improving and continually consolidating, as mistakes
appear to be part of human nature. Therefore, even if a ‘perfect democracy’ is
never achieved in the UK, a ‘good’ one certainly can by maintaining the
political desire to make HM Government more
representative, more responsible,
and more accountable to the people of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
[1] Miller, F. (2008).
Aristotle's political theory. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
[2] Crick, B. (2002). Democracy: a very short
introduction (Vol. 75). Oxford Paperbacks.
[3] This constitutes ‘representative democracy’.
[4] Op
cit.
[5] Hobbes,
T. (2006 [1651]). Leviathan. A&C Black.
[6] Machiavelli, N. (2010 [1532]). The prince.
University of Chicago Press.
[7] Hamilton,
A., Madison, J., Jay, J., & Goldman, L. (2008). The federalist papers.
Oxford University Press.
[8] Docherty, I. (2016). The Queen: cherished but not chosen? INK,
Issue 11. Retrieved from: http://www.inkstudents.co.uk/article/the-queen-cherished-but-not-chosen
[9] Marshall,
M. G., & Jaggers, K. (2015). Polity IV project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800-2015. Center
for Systematic Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment