Democracy and its crisis

However, not all citizens focus on political parties and their leaders when searching for the source and cause of these evils. The American philosopher Jason F. Brennan, who has extensive scientific and academic production on democracy and the exercise of the right to vote, has long declared that the culprits of the corruption of the democratic system are the voters, and framed the majority within the framework of the concept of hooligans. . This will be about those who go to vote blindly because of allegiance to certain colours, which also implies the hatred of the dissidents, as well as unconditional support for the leaders and representatives of their parties. According to the aforementioned professor, these “hooligans”, along with the so-called “ignorants”, undermine the fragile theories on which our model is based.

Perfect and idyllic, these theoretical foundations are based on the ideas expressed by Abraham Lincoln when he uttered the famous phrase “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” However, this “manual” democracy is faced with some practical realities that cloud the utopian vision of the election of its representatives by these peoples. Therefore, in order to move forward and thus face the challenge of improving the quality of our democracy, it is worth taking seriously, rethinking and reformulating the following issues:

1.- Free choice of elect: The citizen is theoretically free to decide his game, to choose the people who represent him and to choose the political option with which he identifies. But in reality, as the lists are closed and blocked, the space in which he develops that freedom becomes very small. So, when you choose a political formation, you should strictly limit yourself to the layout and components of a board imposed by the party apparatus. Your freedom is only so far. Those who in the end present themselves as representatives of the people are, in fact, an extension of the head of the list, and therefore owe loyalty to him and not to the citizen who put the ballot to the ballot box. And this loyalty would later turn into the famous “party discipline” that led to many embarrassing situations.

2.- Selection programs: In principle, they form the basis of the “contract” between the voting citizen and the appointed public office. A party and a list of candidates present a set of proposals to be developed in each legislature. These are texts filled with ambitious goals, commendable missions, and promises of change, for which, even in the hypothetical situation that hardly anyone reads, they do and serve to decide their votes, there is no mechanism to ensure their realization. In real life, a consumer who is the victim of misleading advertisements for a product or service has more defensive options than a voter deceived by an election program that only acts as a hook.

3.- Election debates: Designed as an ideal tool for comparing the capacity of each candidate and the validity of their aims, they serve to compare arguments and proposals, although as a general rule only one capacity emerges: the capacity to disqualify the opponent and blur the dialectic with everything else. kinds of reproaches, if not insults. While the main underlying problems – Education, Health, Justice, among others… – are not ignored, they are dropped to give way to a series of more or less related scandals with the aim of cornering the opponent.

4.- Election systems: formulas and rules that allow voters’ votes to be converted into seats. Regardless of the results achieved, it is regrettable that these systems tend to be disproportionate, over-amplifying or under-representing some political parties or others. There are well-known examples of parties getting more seats than other parties with far fewer votes and more popular support. The need to review and improve our electoral laws remains one of the taboo proofs that no one wants to deal with.

There are more reflections, but I’m staying here for now. Frankly, we are and should be a democracy. But how similar is what we have to what we want? How much has the distance between first and second increased lately? Let’s ask ourselves these questions now before democracy becomes a problem instead of a solution.