Importance Of Democracy Essay

Essay Topics

Please select one of the following topics.

Democracy is an impossible system of governance. Discuss.

Former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”. The idea of democracy looked great on paper, and was utilized as a primary government system for generations, but has democracy really proven to be effective? Are democratic systems really forms of government where power is ‘in the hands of the people’? We can only tell by going over the main assets that democracy represents and stands for. Democracy depicts five main ideas:

The people are sovereign—they are the highest form of political authority.

Power flows from the people to the leaders of government, who

Even though there’s no direct relationship between democracy and economic growth, CIPE (Centre for International Private Enterprise) elaborates upon how in the long term, democracy principles of redistribution of growth produce a stable and positive environment for innovation and investments that lead to prosperous economic growth. As most principles of democracy, this looks great on paper, but in reality, it’s catastrophic. After all, as explained by Professor Blair on the New York Times, democracy isn 't an economic system; it is a system of self-governance that has slowly been taken over by capitalism. For a democracy to deliver, a stronger union of people acting together for common causes and issues is necessary, not a union of corporate interests and endless economic growth at the expense of the people. Our inclusive democratic rule is a matter of capitalistic democracy played by the hands of massive corporates. This is not what a democratic nation should stand for. Let’s look at Asia’s two largest nations. In 1980, India and China were both in relative autarky. By 2007, India’s GDP had almost doubled, but China’s increased seven-fold. How could the largest autocratic nation is the world have a better-growing economy than one of the world’s leading democratic forces? In poor countries, democratic systems have failed in boosting economic growth over and over in countries like Venezuela. Even though the relationship between democracy and economic growth looks brilliant on paper, eventually, we have to let the numbers speak. Thailand, a nation of boasted educated middle class, one of the best-performing economies in the world, and a relatively robust civil society, was once a world economic leader and an example of social and industrial prosperity. Years after its democratizing, Thailand looks less like a success story and more like an example of how democracy can fail.