The Pros And Cons Of Representative Democracy

529 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Political polarization throughout the years

It is human nature to separate into different groups. This is a rollover of the initial human instinct to operate with a pack mentality to survive. The problem that arises with this is determining how a group that large will function. There are many different options, such as a dictator or monarch, but one seems to prevail in the modern world: representative democracy. Yet, representative democracy has many downfalls that prevent it from being the best way for a group of people to operate. Representative democracy leads to leaders and rulings that are separate from the needs of the people, it causes rampant corruption among its ranks, lead to legal corruption, and grants corporations a dangerous amount of power. Representative democracy is not a …show more content…

They feel like their world is now confined to this tiny little bubble that only a few people can understand. They receive exemptions and protections that the common man doesn’t have. They no longer relate to the problems of the working man. They are now instead something much larger. Their problems start to become grand in scale. They’re problems that plague an entire nation, and in some cases even the world. This also means that with this amount of power, they lack the personal experiences that the rest of the country faces. The minute-to-minute interactions in a workplace or between a low-class family are not things that the modern politician relates to. It is not something that they can understand, and is thus not something that they can help. The feelings of the proletariat are not the feelings shared by the people voted to represent them. The problem with representative democracy is in the name. The elected politicians should represent the role of the people who elected him. Yet, this is not what human nature indicates will happen. What human nature indicates will happen is that even in the rare instances where the politician is born from the lower class, they will start to forget these struggles

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Konstantin Pobedonostsev's Reflections Of A Russian Statesman

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Reflections of a Russian Statesman, Konstantin Pobedonostsev starts off his discussion by describing democracy as a system that is built on falsehood. He notes that the most fictitious principle of democracy is this idea that the power lies at the hands of the majority. Instead, he believes the concept of popular sovereignty is merely an illusion created by a delegation of leaders that in reality, “are in no way restricted by the opinions of their constituents, but are guided by their own views and considerations…” (RORS 4). This claim is Pobedonostsev’s attempt to show that a democratic state is disguised under the phrase “the will of the people” but instead is ruled by the interests of a minority that consists of a body of elected representatives such as Parliament. To advance his arguments, Pobedonostsev refers to countries that have incorporated the parliamentary system and how its members have failed to satisfy any of their promises. In theory, they care about public welfare, but in practice they formulate lies to get elected and gain personal wealth and fame. To Pobedonostsev, Parliament is a despotic entity that fools people into believing in a fantasy where “the representative as such, surrenders his personality, and serves as the embodiment of the will and opinions of his constituents” (RORS 5). Lenin, however, disagrees with Pobedonostsev’s criticisms of democratic representation. His revolutionary scheme, which involves the proletariat takeover of the bourgeoisie state, consists of a small private unit of party leaders executing the socialist policies that the larger public unit of workers’ demand. In the excerpt What is to be Done?, Lenin labels these two distinguished committees as the Organization of Revolutionists and the Organization of Workers. Unlike Pobedonostsev who thinks a

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Proportional Representation (PR)

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    The results of recent elections in Britain raised many significant questions about current political situation in the country, particularly concerning electoral system. Therefore the problem of “crisis” in democracy of Britain was the subject of wide speculation among analysts and political scientists over last years. In addition it is widely recognized that the traditional electoral system in the UK-first past the post- is the main cause of that crisis and should be replaced as part of a plan to reconstitute the democratic culture (Kelly 2008). By longstanding critics of the system, opponents advocate the use of proportional representation (PR) for selecting MPs. Due to this problem it is going to be a referendum on changing the electoral system of the country's parliamentary elections. Arguments in favor of the adoption of proportional representation in UK have been made much more widely in recent years than in the case in favor of maintaining the current system of the majority vote. In this essay I would like to help restore the balance pointing out some misapprehensions in the critique of the plurality vote and to indicate some disregarded advantages of the present electoral system in Britain.

    Read More

  • The American Oligarchy and the Pretense of Democracy

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, seldom is this the case with American politics. There are far fewer politicians then there are low class workers or unemployed, and yet these politicians decide upon most all of the important decisions the country is faced with. The only time the rest of the people are involved is when these politicians spew out money and promises in an attempt to gain the p...

    Read More

  • Direct Democracy Vs Representative Democracy

    950 Words  | 2 Pages

    Direct Democracy vs Representative Democracy The term Democracy is derived from two Greek words, demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning rule. These two words form the word democracy which means rule by the people. Aristotle, and other ancient Greek political philosophers, used the phrase, `the governors are to be the governed', or as we have come to know it, `rule and be ruled in turn'. The two major types of democracy are Representative Democracy and Direct

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thesis statement: The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of the state’s Senate and House of Representatives delegations; at present, the number of electors per state ranges from three to 54, for a total of 538.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    A woman newly turned 18, the year in which adulthood begins, stands at a voting booth to make one of the most important decisions of the year: voting for a president. She runs her hands through her damaged, dyed hair and grins; she ticks a mark, voting for a female president. The young woman is unaware of the candidate's policies, her morals; she only knows the candidate is a woman, too powered by rage to even consider voting for a male. Unfortunately, this was not uncommon in our most recent election; many people voted for a president just based on something as trivial to the matter as their sex. Many people have been demanding change in our voting system due to the most recent election, but there are still many that do not know what the Electoral College, a key factor of the process, is or does.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    865 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Electoral College is a creation of the Founding Fathers that serves as a compromise between having the outcome of the presidential election decided by a popular vote of qualified citizens and a vote in Congress. The Electoral College process involves the selection of electors by the majority public voters, the former of which is given the task of casting their electoral vote so that it corresponds with their state’s popular vote. The minimum number of electors that a state could have (including the District of Columbia) is 3, and the final allotment for each state reflects the sum of the number of senators and representatives that the state has in the U.S. Congress. A candidate is elected President if they have 270 or more of the 538 total

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since the beginning, the Electoral College is a controversial method for electing the next President of the United States. To be the next President, one must accumulate a majority of two-hundred seventy electoral votes out of five-hundred thirty eight. The Electoral College also distributes the amount of electoral votes by the sum of the House of Representatives and Senators for each state. This allows a big difference in the amount of electoral votes one state has over the other. For example, Texas has a population over twenty million people and Wyoming is just shy of six-hundred thousand people. The population difference allows Texas to overcome Wyoming’s electoral votes by a difference of thirty five which can cause a major effect on an

    Read More

  • Winston Churchill's Quote on Democracy

    361 Words  | 1 Pages

    informed, or only care about their own interests. Building an effective democracy takes time, the

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    548 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Electoral College while very controversial, should be kept in place for several reasons that will be covered in this paper. Our countries founders put the Electoral College in place for a reason. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each state to select the president and represent the entire state. These ideas can be dated all the way back into Rome, where the same type of system was utilized. While the Electoral College has certainly developed over the years it’s the same basic idea. Each state is represented by its chosen leaders. The number of Electoral votes that a state receives depends on the number of US Representatives plus 2 senators. Politicians generally base their campaigns around so called “swing states” that could go either way. The controversy arises with the fact that it’s possible for a candidate to win the popular vote, however lose in the Electoral College, and therefor lose the election.

    Read More

  • Alienation False Consciousness

    1251 Words  | 3 Pages

    The reading (a) From the 1967 Preface by Georg Lukacs presented three different arguments. Some of these themes have been mentioned in previous readings. Alienation, false consciousness, and stand point contribute to a better understanding of how society is expected to function based on socially constructed ideas. Alienation is losing your persona and becoming immune to a particular activity. For example, you can become alienated with work, since it's a constant and daily routine that you lose connection with the real world. False consciousness is the misleading of facts into believing unrealistic ideas; therefore they are not seeing what is in front of them. Therefore, you only see what you want to see. It is known that the proletarians are

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Electoral College is not actually a place; it is how we elect our President per the Constitution. The Founders created this system as a compromise between choosing a President by popular vote or a vote by Congress (“U. S. Electoral College, Official - What Is the Electoral College?). Although this system has been in place since the beginning of our country, there are both good and bad things about it. To understand whether this system should be kept or abolished, it is important to see how it works.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Electoral College

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    The electoral college is an important part of the United States government. It was first created by the founding fathers when it was written in the Constitution in 1787. It is a group of electors who represent the views of the citizens of the United States in voting to elect the president. The electors that belong to this system are chosen in every state: they can be chosen by the state government or elected by a popular vote. These individuals represent their state’s population when they vote for president. The electors that belong to the college meet in their assigned states every four years to vote. The electoral college plays an irreplaceable role in electing the president of the United States.

    Read More

  • Karl Marx And Marxism

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...re in charge of making governmental decisions which affect everyone in the state. They believe the state plays a little to no role in directing society and its economic affairs, the state could have involved providing basic services such as defense, protecting property rights and enforcing them but this is not true. The representatives are actually not representatives of the people because they are the wealthiest, highly educated upper class people who bear no resemblance to the people (who really are the proletariat). We live in groups on a daily basis, so putting people in class is a part of human living. So having classes between a society is a natural part of life and the division of classes is needed for society to survive.

    Read More

  • Power in Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over all you can tell that a high social class is required to hold power. If the people you intend to rule don’t respect or follow you, they will not let you rule. It’d be kinda like if our president worked at a fast food restaurant before becoming president. Would you want to be governed by him? Of Course not; he has no leadership skills and no one would respect him. That is solid proof that you need to be popular and liked to hold power.

    Read More

More about The Pros And Cons Of Representative Democracy

Open Document