Understanding democracy

Recent events triggered an institutional crisis in these islands radiating beyond the judiciary and highlighting the threat of the hidden power of drug-related criminality.

This faceless power has the qualities of the octopus. Its tentacles stretch to the world of politics, to the soft underbelly of the bureaucracy and to the world of business. The institutions are vulnerable to this insidious power unless they are protected by strong and secure bulwarks. Democracy provides the bulwarks.

Democracy has been described as the most widely admired type of political system but also perhaps the most difficult to maintain.

Alone among all forms of government, democracy rests on a minimum of coercion and a maximum of consent. Democratic politics inevitably find itself loaded with 'built-in' paradoxes or apparent contradictions. These cause tension, not always easy to reconcile, and every country that travels along the democratic route must overcome different obstacles in the way.

The first paradox springs from the tension between consensus and conflict. In its very nature, democracy is a system of institutional competition for power. There is no democracy without competition and conflict. But any democratic society that sanctions political conflict runs the risk of it becoming too intense, jeopardising civil peace as well as political stability.

Cleavage must be tempered by a judicious degree of consensus at least where the national interest is concerned.

A second paradox 'contradiction' sets governability against representativeness. Democracy implies the dispersal of power rather than its concentration in the hands of the few. It therefore subjects leaders and policies to the mechanisms of popular representation and accountability. But, to be stable, any system of government must be able to act and, if necessary, to do so quickly and decisively. The government must not only respond to the clamour of the lobbies. It must be able to resist them. This calls for a party system that can gather competing groups under its umbrella without being paralysed or captured by them.

The third contradition is between consent and effectiveness. Literally, democracy means 'rule by the people' or with the consent of the governed. People across the globe want to exercise their right of turning their leaders out of office - to be governed only with their consent. Because it rests on the consent of the governed, democracy depends on popular legitimacy much more than any other form of government. This legitimacy requires moral commitment and allegiance which develop over time. At the same time, democracy will not be valued unless it deals effectively with social and economic problems and achieves a modicum of order and justice.

If democracy does not work, there is a danger that people may prefer not to be governed through their own consent. Hence the paradox: democracy requires consent. Consent requires legitimacy, legitimacy requires effective performance. But effectiveness may be sacrificed to consent. Elected leaders will very often be reluctant to pursue unpopular policies, no matter how wise or necessary they may be.

These paradoxes have important implications for the achievement of a viable democracy.

Democracies - especially new democracies - suffer from a common problem relating to government performance. Popular assessment of how the government performs generally takes the short term view. Democratic goverments everywhere are thus constantly tempted to trim their policies with an eye on the next election. In the short run, this may make good political sense. It does not necessarily make good economic policy. Over time, it is economic performance that counts.

Economies grow when they foster savings, investment and innovation and when they reward individual effort and initiative. Economies stagnate and regress when bloated, mercantilist, interventionist states build a structure of inflexible favouritisms for different groups, curtailing change, competition, innovation and social mobility.

Economies that invest in the human capital of the poor by meeting their basic human needs develop a continuing momentum of their own and achieve growth. But those that effectively prevent a vast sector of their working population from learning new skills and those that mop up such a vast sector to sustain their bureaucratic machine do not benefit from the fruit of development.

The state must get off the backs of producers and ensure that there is adequate investment in human and monetary capital and that development is responsible to environmental and other community interests.

Governability calls for sufficient concentration and autonomy of power to choose and implement policies. This conflicts with the need to hold power accountable to popular scrutiny, representation and control. In fact, vigorous public accountability may strengthen the capacity to govern and the effectiveness of government. This applies with special force when it comes to fighting against corruption.

Corruption is poisonous to democracy and government corruption is deadly. It impedes economic growth by misdirecting the flow of resources and by distorting competition. A narrow class of politicians and government officials and their business cronies may find it easy to enrich themselves at the expense of the bulk of the people - and of the legitimacy of the entire democratic system.

Moreover, where the prospect of ill-gotten gain is an important motive in the pursuit of office, the democratic process becomes a power struggle rather than a contest over policies. The premium on political power becomes so great that competing forces will do anything to win. This threatens the very essence of the democratic process - free, fair and orderly elections.

Any system of government that gives public officials numerous opportunities to garner pickings from the state's regulatory activities exacerbates corruption.

Once firmly in place and vigilante guarded, this bulwark will not be easy prey to drug-related criminality.

This does not mean that the danger of penetration by criminals is altogether ruled out. It merely means that any viable democracy, where the law prevails, enforcement is tightly exercised and accountability means what it is supposed to mean, would be adequately equipped to deal with drug-related criminality.

It is not enough to provide for safeguards. The point is that they must work.