Can democracy be saved? Zakaria & other scholars on future of democracy

30/7/2012

Watch the video below and take notes (for yourself). Write a 250 word blog response (submitted as a COMMENT to this post) about an idea or ideas about democracy and the challenges to democracy discussed in this video that made you think. We all watched the video--no need to dwell on what was said. Please tell us what you THINK about what was said.

16 Comments

Andrea

26/8/2012 07:53:30 am

We were influenced to think that the United States is a democracy, that Americans live in a pluralistic society. We naively believed that the working class had a say in elections and in society. All of this, unfortunately, is a lie.
The truth is, that power is held by only a few, the elite, those that have the power in big business and government offices. Such people are not interested in the working class or in health care, education, having something to eat, or where to live. The elite cares about profit, and will even use the working class and pay them low wages, or cut benefits.
These elites have control over the common people, or the "working class". The government can make decisions that affect their lives (ex: set wages) and the common person will never be able to take on these corporate capitalists. Yes, anyone can say that in a pluralistic society it is always possible to start an organization. However, the working class does not have the means to do such!
In the Communist-Manifesto, Karl Marx says that the state appears to be nothing but an "executive committee if the bourgeoisie". The government is nothing but an executive committee! It may look like a government, but it is just a committee that manages the country for the elite.
The state creates an appearance that makes everyone believe that it is open and democratic, but hey, guess what, the truth is it is not.

Daniel Pinho

26/8/2012 09:21:34 am

First of all, democracy is a two way force. The first one is the candidates and the second one, who votes. Doesn’t matter how fancy you can get from what democracy is, this simple formula will be the backbone of any democratic system.

However politics (which democracy plays a role) guides a nation economically, socially and all the “allys” one can imagine that relates to population’s welfare, stability and security.

Based on the fact that only a few people detain the majority of the world’s money, democracy – which basically says how this money will be used – could not be something for the people. What happens is that media, also owned by the few ones who have the big chunk of money, make people think we are represented in order to keep people conformed to results. Whoever has control to media will have the power.

I would even say that we live in a kind of feudal system. But God now is this so called democracy and the people who vote (just like who thought praying would do something) are the peasants that struggle in a life of inferiority. The people in big corporations are the clergy, but more charismatic just to make the pain feel better.

Going back to the formula, candidates we vote on will always give the same speech of fairness for all, peace and love for all with a cynic smile. We, the voters, are going to be trying to elect the one in between a few that could help us to really obtain this perfectly designed happiness.

But the media will make the candidate that would be best for us look
bad in the eyes of standards so that he stays disbelieved and the ones who don’t will be perfectly acceptable so that this same media continue in power. It’s a whole manipulation game. Not to mention that there’s any doubt that institutions actually can change election results to keep things in order.

To sum up I make mine the words of one of the commentators of the movie, I myself could not make it simpler:

“Democracy is ruled by propaganda. Whoever holds the power of mass media determines which issues are in the public's mind, as well as what the spectrum of acceptable debate is. Coupled with global capitalism and unaccountable intelligence agencies, it has become a form of secret autocratic governance guised under the illusion of spontaneous popular will.”

And there’s also a very funny cartoon (in Portuguese):

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/181152_342497792498217_1299006436_n.jpg

Daniel Pinho

26/8/2012 10:03:22 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnsbZzJ2H_k

RELEVANT.

Liz Costa

26/8/2012 09:26:35 am

There is a trend to ever more democracy, but will it go on forever? It is democracies that have been hurt by the economic recession, unemployment, discontent is high, it is now very hard to advocate for the democratic political system when it is hurt by so many problems. The current problem with democracy is the inability of the politicians to impose any short term pain for a long term gain, every time there is a short term pain revolt happens, candidates loose popularity and policies do not go through. The problem with democracy is that union and groups have there own particular interests and when policies are being made on group will always be negatively affected, however no takes one for the team, revolts occur, revolts win and policies are not put in place. Democracy suffers of democratic flaw, every group and union has too much power and, in the end of the day, nothing gets done. Another issue raised by the specialists was that instead of democracy controlling the money the money controls the government, I personally believe that the government should never control the government but that the government should never be controlled by those that control the money or else it takes the autonomy of the people. The government overweight’s the interests of select groups and underweight’s the importance of society in general. But still, with all of these flaws I manage to believe that democracy is indeed the best political system currently in the world.

Alê Silveira

26/8/2012 12:52:04 pm

Thatcher Syndrome

I agree with the lady in this video. Especially in regards to the unrealistic expectations of electing senators or any political representatives as true exemplifications of the population who elected him/her. See, lets say these senators are hugely backed by multinational corporation who indeed have very explicit conflicts of interest with the government, all the senator needs are the votes, beyond the point of election he/she goes on to represent those corporate interests and then advertising a local adopt-a-hamster event to seem human. The worst is that now with the super pack, senators wishing to continue on to try their shot at the Presidency don't even have to declare their sponsors. For all we know there could be, on a hypothetical basis, a governor running for office this year who is largely supported by the most extreme conservative corporations or institutions known, which if revealed, could make him give up the race.

For some reason I'm strongly against most of the things Thatcher has done, even after watching The Iron Lady. In this video, it shows how Thatcher was able to manipulate the people in believing that they were having less government intervention, which in reality just led to the disruption of democracy within Britain. By deregulating the markets, Thatcher allowed the government to be controlled by the corporate world, further breaking the relationship between the people and the government within a democracy. In that sense, I also do agree that given that the government is so far away from the people that it is so much easier for it to be manipulated by private interests as opposed to the pure form of democracy which would be from the people.

Gaëlle

26/8/2012 08:37:29 pm

“What is the best democratic system for the 21st century? For a world where communication is instantaneous, travel is fast, and search is efficient? A world where people are all connected, are able to read and write and can look up information themselves?”

In order to predict the future, we must look back at the past since history as proved to repeat itself. According to the Chinese speaker, democracy has several historical phases. He claims that democracy was a Chinese invention that was later reinvented in the West, and carried on to the East. The final culmination of historical inevitability is represented in the Eastern democracy. Even a cursory glance at the history of democracy shows its fragility and its corrupt ideals. We may notice in the past that democracy has been killed by war, by the breakdown of class agreements, and also by pauperization; even the panic of elites can destroy democracy.

Democracies are no longer the idealized form of government in which every citizen gains political and economic freedom, in fact, it has been verified that there is a decline in both and in addition, a freedom recession around the world! In the past, the first models of democracy, probably about thirty or forty years ago, were mixed regimes in which the government had elements of both aristocracy and democracy. The long term vision of society was the main goal at the time, and they expressed it despite public opinion. Nowadays, no democracy outweighs public opinion for long term concerns. This is causing a real crisis in the Western world: the fundamental inability in every western society to do one thing: impose any kind of short term pain for long term gain. Whenever the government tries to propose some kind of pain, there’s a revolt and the revolt is almost always successful.

Like the first man put it, why do political parties even exist? Parties are supposedly the conduit between citizens and government decision making however they are clearly breaking down. There is an eventual possibility that parties will play a marginal role in government. Another useless part of government is the elected representatives whose role is to listen to the people, take their advice, and lead openly and frankly and to accept after a term in office the final verdict. In the present, they are so absorbed by power that they are on the margin of criminality because of how they are funded, in addition, new candidate all try to manipulate the votes. Besides the political dishonesty, the role of money is corrupting the democratic effort especially in developing countries.

Gabriella Goldenstein

27/8/2012 05:40:43 am

As Liz restated already, Zakaria suggests that there is trend to ever more democracy. There is clear evidence that in the 1900s democracy was legitimate in only small handful of countries. However, today about 100 countries have democratic systems that are considered legitimate. Will this continue? This is a very good question to be raised taking into consideration the development and modernization of countries from the east and communist ideas (specially China). Another specialist suggests now is not a strong moment for democracy since it has been hurt by unemployment in country, people are discontent, politics in individual countries are very polarizing and bitter. This makes it hard for people who are not living a democracy to look up at it when they think of events such as Guatanamo or the War in Iraq. Not only this is the problem but since a democracy is ruled by people and people unfortunately will let themselves be influenced by their excessive ambition, the main goal will not be the common interest. A democracy can easily become a dictatorship-like government, where the dictator is in fact a select group that has all the power (which lies on money). This is caused because of the extreme inequality that is the result of a democracy While one group will have wealth and a lot of influence in the government, another group will have terrible living standards.

Tiago Fonseca

27/8/2012 06:07:40 am

As I watched the video I kept thinking on the fact that we do not live in a true democracy. Like it was said on the video, a democracy is where the president hears the will of the people and represents that will. That is not what is happening in major countries, such as, USA, Russia, Brazil, etc. In countries like them, the elites are the ones that rule over the people, not with them. They take advantage of the situations for personal gain. They selfishly focus on what can benefit them now, rather than what can benefit the people in the long run. Of course anyone can run for any political seat, but the government will never allow a working class person to be amongst them. They will favor their friendly political parties, or anyone who thinks like them. The trick is that political candidates focus on getting votes, and for that they give benefits for the people that will only benefit them in the present, because if electors are happy now then they will vote for the one who “helped” them. The fact is that it is not supposed to be that way, because that does not show that he is committed to help the people, it only shows he cares more to get the vote. Once in power the one that got elected will not benefit the people, he will just be another politician that cares more about getting self-privileges, than actually helping the people. This democracy we are living is nothing more than a scheme, to make it look like we live in a democracy, but we are actually living an aristocracy, wee the elites rule for their own benefit.

Nilo

27/8/2012 07:16:29 am

Right off the bat, these political scientists brought up a very important fact. Democracy is not the idillic form of government that it used to be. It is being torn apart by corruption, money laundering, governments are not able to fully use it, and it is incredibly fragile and easy to manipulate. More and more, we see nations that claim to be democratic, but cannot carry out the freedom that accompanies many democracies. Countries like China do not accept public discontent against its government. We can see that in the USA, corporations and large industries can simply hire lobbyists and corrupt politicians to rule in favor of them. In Brazil, politicians are concerned in gaining rapid money and power through illegal means.

I agree with what they have said. Democratic rules have focused on short-term gain instead on long-term improvement. Sometimes the people have not allowed this to happen due to the sacrifices that need to be made. Sometimes governments choose short-term power due to the fact that there is little time to do a lot of work. In an aristocracy or a dictatorship even, there is more incentive for long-term plans, but freedom is much smaller in a dictatorship. What has to happen is a consensus between the people and the government where both agree to seek the better future of their nations, not only the present.

Thais Oliveira

27/8/2012 09:06:01 am

A Stagnant Democracy

Democracy has been losing its essence as the corporations gain more power in the government, and politics become less about the people and more about money. Corporations basically run the world, and the openness democracy establishes becomes a flaw as corporations take advantage of it to gain control. Corporations start manipulating people’s conceptions through media and the government stands behind them as they gain more that way. Hence the future of democracy is worrisome. If the people, the very own foundation of democracy, are being disregarded and taking advantage of, how can democracy go forward? It was stated that “democracy can only be fixed with more democracy”, well when is it enough, for democracy is going downhill rather up.

Democracy is becoming an easy way to run the world. Now days many of the politicians represent the interests of elite individuals instead of the people. Hence the outcome is a frustrated population and an even richer elite. Then how can this be fixed? Zakaria suggests that currently what hurts democracy is it’s openness and in order to fix it less people have to be involved, but isn’t that defeating the purpose of democracy? How can citizens be sure that their voices are being heard in the government? If it were to close the doors for all individual purposes (corporation control in the government included) and the politicians serve for the greater need (the country and its population), solving these issues would be possible. Furthermore more freedom and equality would be achieved and democracy improved, but there is no way to guarantee such, hence the current halt in democratic advances and the uncertainty of it’s future.

Julia Souza

27/8/2012 12:05:59 pm

One of the challenges faced by democracy is what Zakaria had named in his other video as the “tyranny of the present over the future”, in which government are sacrificing their country’s long term interests for short-term ones. An example given was the immigration issue in Europe. Europe need a young working population to thrive economically, but this will only be accomplished through immigrants. As a short-term solution, European governments choose to bash out the immigrants, but they aren’t thinking of the bigger picture, which will be their necessity in the future.

I strongly agree with Zakaria’s democratic flaw that there are special interests, usually big corporations, in a democratic country that don’t allow things to happen. Democracy gives the power to so many different elites that it undermines the importance of society in general.

Hilary Wainwright claims that in the ideal democracy, representatives would be elected and challenged, therefore presenting another obstacle to democracy. However, what truly happens is that after people gain bit of power, they never let it go and their influential status never leaves. This is viewed is many countries, especially Brazil. It is clear how in Brazil there are a few people that influence the country’s decisions and there is a minority dominance that goes against democratic ideologies.

I don’t agree with John Keane that democracy is not a historical necessity. As pointed out by the modernization theory, as societies become more modern they will inevitable become more democratic. What we see in our world are countries becoming more modern every day and those that aren’t and still haven’t embraced the democratic principles are condemned by international society. A great example of such is China. Even though they consider themselves as socialists, their market economy is going through some democratic and capitalist reforms, and so they are freer than it ever was. Modernization is linked with better education, weakening of hierarchy and a rise of the middle class. With a strong central government, which is not the case of democracy and liberalism, it is harder for people to thrive economically and these areas to be invested on.

Regarding the future of democracy I don’t believe it is extremely threatened in any way. Democracy may be passing through some time of discrediting among nations due to the economic recession and foreign policies, but the tendency as Zakaria defended, is for it to continue growing.

Alana Cavalcanti

27/8/2012 01:07:50 pm

The video starts questioning us if it is the best of times, due to all the innovative things in the field of democracy or the worst of thing, due to the unsolved problems that threated democracy and the lack of solution for theses issues. All speakers point out distinct points of view of the crisis of democracy in the Western World because of the fragility of the democratic system. There is no doubt that revolutions and wars “injure” the democratic system, as can be shown in history and more recently in the Arab-Spring. But not only wars can cause this injury, but panic of the elites and class agreements which all of lead to the decline of the political and economical freedom. I agree with the idea that when dealing with long-term solutions, the democratic system have a tendacy to become a aristocracy since it forgets or do not consider the public opinion. Actually, in some cases, not even in the short term solutions the population is heard as it should be and as the democracy proposes. Political parties are definaltly breaking down, we can see for example now in the streets with all the campaigns the thousands of poltical parties that exist. The fact is that these political parties are lacking in principles and in a near future they wont have more ain impact. All types and ways of policies re dictated from above and constantly are in the margin of criminality because of private interests. The role of money is corrupting democracy, as we know the desire of being rich is often seen in politics due to the easy access of money if you help the rich and powerful people personal and private interest, the Mensalao is a perfect example of this situation. Since there are a lot of personal and private interest and a lot of people willing to help them achieve what the want, nothing actually gets done. How to get things done is so open and all the other parts of the system too that it has a negative inpact in rulling. With all the global recession due to politics and unemployment it is had to believe in democracy. People that do not live at a democracy and see the negative stuff of a democracy like Iraq war, do not idealize democracy as their governmental system. Actually, it makes me believe that opening up the system by giving more transparency does not have a better form of governemt as a mandatory output. The result of the transparect tends to be a greater polarization, lack of public believe and due to all that a worst political system. The cure of democracy is not more democracy. Democracy is more than elections, is giving the public the right to monitor and truly be in the name of the people, but currently it is not that. The question that it popped on my mind when the video finish was “how will we achieve the basic principles of democracy correctly?”

Leonardo de Lucca

31/8/2012 01:01:24 am

Fared Zakaria mentions that we are experiencing a unique moment in history when an Information Revolution takes place. Over time, information no longer became restrict to the leaders, such as during the Middle Ages in Europe, when religion contained all the knowledge of a nation and was also the government. With that, society agreed with norms and rules since they did not even have the opportunity to think differently. Religion and faith made people less critical in relation to government and all they were subjected to. With time, Renaissance provided an educational reform to those who could afford, and with that, the world was able to question the place they lived more and more.
Nowadays, globalization made individuals from all nations to be aware of what is happening on the other side of the globe. This effect was encouraged by the development of Internet and formal education, which broadened the access to that information, attending a much greater public. With that, people were exposed to different ideals, which were not necessarily those of their nations. The principles of democracy seem extremely tempting to those in a non-democratic nation, given that it involves liberty, equality and individualism, which of course, is humanly pleasing to everyone. All that public support was added to economic need, as more and more nations develop towards democracy. The world is now is more globalized than ever, and a more open market is a question of economic necessity to many nations. China for example, even though it is not a democracy, has applied opened its market to the world over the past years, which resulted on the formation of a great power. Zakira mentions that no consolidated democracy has ever had a regression. Once in democracy, it is extremely difficult to step back, considering the global demands and that the people would hardly give up their support.

Nevo Mantel

19/9/2012 09:44:48 am

For me the system Democracy, can only work in a specific country with two specific things/powers, which are good or capable of doing good things; the first one are the electors, if we have an immense amount of electors voting seriously and learning about the candidates before voting we are half way there. The second thing/power is the competence of the candidates, which need to make the right decision, in which they help their country or fool around and steal money.

I agree with Fareed Zakaria when he says, that the government does a long term of pain to the people so that companies and the government would have a long term gain. I relate his words with a theory that big corporations or "The Giants" are financially controlling the government. I can give a distinct example of it, which is the control that gas companies have over countries, since even with the creation of cars moving on water, air, and even chocolate gas is still being bought in large quantities, and You Know Why? Because what happened was that those companies bought those ideas and buried or destroyed them, since they would lose billions with those inventions, while the people would've gain a lot with them.

The companies are a force of manipulation and the way they evoke this force is through the media, everything they want to put in the people's head can and are being passed in the TV causing us to get manipulated and agree with them even knowing it is bad or even knowing that they are "dirty". Democracy is based on freedom but we can't affirm that we have a 100% democracy since we don't have the freedom of watching what we want when we want, causing us to watch what they want and when they want us to watch.

Victor

22/9/2012 10:18:00 am

The real democracy that was discovered/invented by the Greeks in the old times is a different model from what we have right now. In our current society democracy doesn’t really exist, the lower classes don’t have a voice that is actually head, all the power is controlled by a small group of people, it is possible to say that we live in an oligarchy. However, I understand with it happens and I defend the idea that just a few – in this moment- hold the power of the voice. According to Aristotle, there was no absolute perfect republic; instead, each type of society would have its perfect model. On our society, not all of the citizens have complete awareness of politics and several voters just vote without understanding its importance, therefore, the perfect republic would be a aristocracy, but, it should be clear for all, that it is an aristocracy and this type of government would only look for the common wealth, however, none of those things actually happen nowadays. When we are born, there is already a set of “prerequisites” that are implanted in each one of us, the idea that United States of America is a synonym of democracy, liberty and freedom. Karl Marx says that the executive branch of the state is just formed by the bourgeoisie which transforms a government in an enterprise, is a company, and since we live in Capitalism, the production of profits is the most important thing, so what governments look for is money, money and more money, the blood and sweat of the working class is just meaningless in comparison to money.

João Soares

4/10/2012 01:34:08 am

BRAZIL AND THE END OF DEMOCRACY

I agree with Fareed Zakaria in that the present times present a serious threat to democracy. Not in the form of terrorist organizations that proclaim jihad and act according to the sharia law, but rather as a result of the series of small problems and, most importantly, the “tyranny of the present over the future”.
A clear example of the threat that democracy brings is in Brazil. After years of dictatorship and control of the government by a select group of individuals, the people united in commotion and a strong national identity against the current regime was formed. The shared sense of nationality allowed the nation to prosper in the years following the dictatorship, with the Plano Real and the end of hyperinflation helping families to recover jobs and homes. However, the current trend towards fragmentation brought by the “immediacy” of democracy is already destroying the newfound unity. Violence and criminality rates are sky-high, cities are trashed, and the exaggerated division of payments that allow the C class to consume indicates an impeding economic catastrophe as soon as most of the population has what they need.
The blame for this process is two-folded. On one hand, it is in the individualization of society and the loss of trust among the population. On the other hand, it lies on the hands of the politicians that abuse democracy by treating it as a day job, instead of as a long-lasting commitment to political security. At the end of the day, democracy will be seriously endangered if the current practices continue.

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Can democracy be saved? Zakaria & other scholars on future of democracy

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