Definition Of Elections In Democracy

Dalil Harchaoui

Professor Hudson Meadwell

Teacher Assistant Fouad Sherif

POLI 212

09 April 2014

Elections in Democracy

As the world observes an electoral tsunami, with most of the modern countries holding national or sub national elections every once in awhile a big question imposes itself: Are elections a necessary and sufficient condition for democratic politics? In fact, we can look at the coming April elections in Algeria, where Abdelaziz Bouteflika will probably win the elections with a striking majority of the votes, although he has obvious health issues that will clearly prevent him from ruling the country effectively. This quick example shows the relevance of the question regarding elections in democracy. Depending on the answer of the question, some regimes can be characterised as democratic without giving the power to the people. This has enormous impacts on notably the legitimacy of a regime and of the power holders in all countries. Being appointed by the people and viewed as such certainly makes actions and decisions more legitimate. This is why I will argue that election is necessary for democracy to hold, but it is far from being a sufficient condition for democratic politics. In this essay, I will start by defining democracy and base my argumentation around it. After, I will discuss the necessity of elections in a democracy and finally, I will argue that elections are not sufficient in order to hold a democracy.

Definition of Democracy

In this first section, I will define what is democracy. This is an important point to make, because the entire essay depends on what constitutes democracy. In other words, the arguments and explanations rely on the assumptions that the definition provided in this section will make. ...

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...s to the people. Even though they are necessary, elections are not sufficient to have a democratic states. Alone, they cannot channel political aspiration of the voters into a system that will respond correctly to their demands. Other conditions have to be met in order to have a real accountable democratic state. These conditions include, universal suffrage, respect of civil and minority rights, and the respect of “the rules of the game”. All of these conditions and more, clearly expose how elections are necessary but not sufficient in defining democratic politics. Furthermore, elections are means to come to an end – which is democratic rule of officials – therefore, it would be interesting to see if other means can come to the same results without the elections’ negative points. Yet, it is still the only way that democracy has to function effectively and properly.