DailyPost 708
ARE LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES SETTLED?
Might be a decade back, there was a general feeling that liberal democracies are well settled. That it is there to stay seems well settled, but how robust is it is the issue? The simmerings have been felt for lomg but present US Presidency has brought it to the fore. Variant of Fascism is being talked about. Simon Sinek talks about a brand of nationalism that goes the fascist way. Russia hacks US Elections. Immigrants are a no no. Populism is on the rise. Democratic fault lines are right in the open, Trump seemingly facilitated it.
Universal Adult Franchise is a great democratic tool. One man one vote is best representative method we know of. In 2017, Annenberg Public Policy Center at Univ. of Pennsylvania surveyed 1,013 US adults & found that only a quarter of them could name all the three branches of a democratic set up. A third couldn’t name any. Educational attainment; on a maths test administered to 15 year olds, the United States comes out 30th out of 35 countries. Economic anxiety is on the rise and Moyo writes that 70% of the world’s putative democracies have become “indistinguishable from authoritarian regimes.”
Freedom House based on the US experience, declares democracy is facing “its most serious crisis in decades”, that even economists are leaping across academic boundaries opining on politics. Economist Dambisa Mayo’s latest book “Edge of Chaos” falls in this category. Economic fixes would come out of political fixes. “Political myopia is the central obstacle on the path of growth in advanced economies,” she writes. America’s rate of expansion has fallen from 4% in the late 1990s to little over 2% at present.
“Short-termism,”, gerrymandering & an avalanche of political money, both for electoral campaigns and lobbying, are other flaws. Moyo’s diagnosis has value. The electorate needs to know the functioning and the goals to pass judgement or handover responsibility for change. Economic initiatives once taken should go across governments. All of us have a stake for sure so voting needs to be mandatory. The low turnout also gives skewed results. The real representative nature is compromised. Proactive change is the answer.
ECONOMIC GROWTH & DEMOCRACY HAVE TO FIND A NATURAL SYNTHESIS.
Sanjay Sahay