Do you really live in a democracy?

Democracy is like capitalism - it might not work very well, but it’s the best idea we have at the moment. 

At first glance, it would seem that democracy represents at the very least, an attempt at freedom and equality. It is a greater step towards equality than an inherited monarchy represented by the descendants of a rich warlord who lived hundreds of years ago. And if you live in the west, you probably accept that you live in a country with a government that may not function as well as you would like it to at times, but at the very least it is a democracy.

Or maybe not? Ever since I was resident in the UK during their last general election, I started to have serious doubts about their method of selecting their future government.  I was a student at the time and I was concerned about a potential rise in fees and a change in the immigration rules. I had just completed an essay on ‘New Labour’ after which I had come to the conclusion that Labour were basically a watered-down version of the Conservative Party. I was against the privatization of state services, spending cuts and ineffective tax rates for the wealthy. I told my husband I would vote for the Liberal Democrats because ‘they seemed good’ (I was not very politically aware at this point) plus there was no other viable party in the (almost) two-party system at the time. My husband gave me a prophetic warning ‘a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the Tories!’ Unfortunately he was right – Labour lost, the Conservatives couldn’t get a majority and in the end they became buddies with the Lib Dems, creating the current coalition government. Shortly afterwards, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg recanted his vow to prevent a fee hike and lo and behold, student fees rose to 10,000 a year and I had to admit to my husband that I was so very wrong!

Some time later the coalition held the ‘Alternative Vote’ referendum. This might have changed everything. With a change in the voting system, it might have been possible for other parties to get a chance. I could have my pick of the Greens, the Socialist Workers Party or maybe if hell froze over, the UK Independence Party?! But this democratic utopia was not to be – the Tories successfully scared the voter away from AV with horror stories of the BNP winning future elections. I was not scared of AV. Without a change in the voting system, all I could see was a continuous line of Labour/Tory governments taking turns every couple of years. And now that the Lib Dems are thoroughly disgraced, this would seem to be the future. So is this really a democracy? Two parties with minor points of disagreement taking turns to win or lose every election?  An episode of South Park summed this up perfectly – it’s like trying to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

Britain is not the only Western ‘Democracy’ to suffer from giant douche/turd sandwich disorder. When the creators of South Park wrote that episode they were of course referring to their own United States of America. I might even argue that the situation in the US is slightly worse. There has never been a viable alternative to the two leading parties, unlike the Lib Dem situation in the UK.  And to make matters worse, their Republican Party currently looks more outlandish than Britain’s Monster Raving Loony Party. Throughout the US election last year, I spend a lot of time playing the ‘if I was actually an American and I had a vote’ game which is quite frustrating when you are not an American and you don’t have a vote. This seems quite unfair when you consider that almost everything the American government says and does affects the whole world. When an American votes, they are basically deciding which of their future presidents should bomb my friends and their relatives in far off places they probably cannot locate on a map. If they had voted for Romney, he probably would have started another war with Iran and continued drone strikes. They voted for Obama and he is probably going to start another war with Iran and is continuing drone strikes. The problem with American style democracy lies within its structure and method of election, in the same way that British democracy has also restricted its voters to a two party system.

But there is a second problem with both these systems. Today I was just reading a list of the world’s richest leaders according to their net worth. There were some unsurprising ones at the top i.e. the King of Thailand, the Sultan of Brunei and the King of Saudi Arabia. But then I noticed that David Cameron was on the list worth $47.9 million and Barack Obama at $10.1 million. I’m not sure why I was so surprised at Cameron’s riches, I knew he came from a rich family and like most of the Tory MP’s, he attended the prestigious school of Eton in his youth. Attending Eton seems to guarantee its students a life of wealth and power. Yet, in order to attend Eton, your parents must be able to pay the £32,076 fee per year.  This has created a direct route from wealth to power, through the connections formed at such prestigious schools and colleges. In the US, it is undeniable that in order to stand for election, you must be able to command vast amount of money. This money often comes from big donors who are willing to part with their cash in order to hold sway over the next leader. These countries may no longer be under the control of a monarchy, yet wealth still equals power. And this wealth is quite often (as is the case with David Cameron and America’s almost-president Mitt Romney) hereditary.

When you consider all these problems, it doesn't seem so outlandish to ask yourself, am I really living in a democracy? And if it's not a democracy then what is it? Monarchies and dictatorships seem like remnants of the past confined to 'developing' countries still struggling to gain control of their own governments. Maybe we need a new word for this current malignancy afflicting some Western governments. Pseudo-democracy? Democracy-lite?