Pros And Cons Of Modern Democracy

Modern day democracy traces its origins to ancient Athens. The Athenians were the first people to come up with a democratic form of governance. Since the dawn of the modern democratic era in the early 20th century, democracy has expressed itself through national parliaments and nation-states. Today, almost three quarters of the world’s governments profess to be democratic and it has been touted as the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Despite the broad range of its acceptance as an ideal form of government, it still has its inherent flaws as a system of governance and critics have been quick to point out a myriad of factors that make it unsuitable as a governance system. Critics have long claimed that democracy is morally

Modern day democracies are bedeviled by the excesses of the politicians and political wheeler dealers who use it to accumulate wealth and acquire power hence disenfranchising the voters. This is a sure recipe for anarchy in the society. The notion that winning the election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases has been the bane of many a democratic experiment. A recent example is the Egyptian case where Mr Morsi on taking power treated democracy as a winner takes all situation, thereby granting himself unlimited powers and packing the Egyptian upper house with a permanent islamist majority. To avoid the chaos occasioned by democratic transitions, it’s essential to put limits to the powers of the majority and also provide guarantees for individual

The fact that democracy requires regime change after every four to five years has a been a cause of much economic instability. Different governments coming into power have their own policies with regard to the economy and more often than not will do away with the policies of the previous regime. Such changes have the ability to stunt economic growth. As Doucouliagos & Ulubaşoğlu (2008) observes, democratic governments often indulge in the habit of sunning big structural deficits due to borrowing in order to fulfill election promises while neglecting long term investments. The recent financial crisis in 2008 starkly exposed the fallacies and unsustainability of such debt financed economies. Countries like Greece had to contend with austerity measures which resulted into popular uprising against the democratically elected