Democracy in Decline

Rebuilding its Future

Philip Kotler

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473988286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Government & Business
• Index: Business

Democracy in Decline is an examination by the ?father of modern marketing? into how a long cherished product (democracy) is failing the needs of its consumers (citizens). Philip Kotler identifies 14 shortcomings of today's democracy and confronts this gloomy outlook with some potential solutions and a positive message; that a brighter future awaits if we can come together and save democracy from its decline.Encouraging readers to join the conversation, exercise their free speech and get on top of the issues that affect their lives regardless of nationality or political persuasion. Suitable for students across a broad range of courses including Political Science, Politics, Political Marketing and Critical Management/Sociology. An accompanying website invites those interested to help find and publish thoughtful articles that aid our understanding of what is happening and what can be done to improve democracies around the world.

Chapter 1 Why Democracy ISN’T Working Well in America or Elsewhere—Why Having Elections ISN’T Enough

‘People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.’

Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

We live in an age when the majority of people say they want to live in a democracy. But still, many of the world’s seven billion people are suffering from oppression, corruption, and dictatorship. They have a terribly low living standard and they don’t feel safe or free to talk. They yearn for democracy and prosperity. We saw them start a freedom movement in Egypt on January 25, 2011. Even earlier, on December 10, 2010, demonstrations started in Tunisia precipitated by the high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, poor living conditions, and a lack of political freedom. The Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions then led to demonstrations in other Arab countries, including Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, and Libya.

More recently the dictatorial regime and war in Syria has led more than four million refugees to leave Syria for Europe and other destinations where they could acquire a modicum of peace and opportunity. Their hearts beat for a place where their families can live normal lives and find work and freedom. Democracy is the system they yearn for and Europe and America come first in their minds.

America’s experience with democracy began in 1776 with the start of the American Revolution when the American colonies broke away from Britain. The Continental Congress worked to design a new political system, a democracy. Some elements were drawn from the ancient Greek idea of democracy as practiced in Athens, where eligible citizens listened to orators and directly voted on various proposals to improve their lives and living standards. More than 2,000 years later, in early New England towns, citizens would meet to vote on various proposals affecting their community.

On July 4, 1786, the U.S. founders drafted and passed the Declaration of Independence that stated that men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights to ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Almost a year later, on May 25, 1787, they met in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia to begin to draft a Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. They ended their work and adopted and signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787. The process of ratifying the Constitution began that day, and ended when the state of Rhode Island ratified it on May 29, 1790, three years later.

Then on December 15, 1791, the Congress added The Bill of Rights to the Constitution as the first ten amendments establishing freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to a fair and speedy trial. They were greatly influenced by the July 14, 1789 storming of the Bastille fortress and by the French Revolution dissolving the French Monarchy and replacing it with a system that would deliver to the people ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity.’ Many of us would prefer not to live than live without the values these words represent. The French Revolution was greatly influenced by our Declaration of Independence, and in turn influenced our passage of the Bill of Rights.

Two hundred years later, in May 1989, a million Chinese crowded into Tiananmen Square in central Beijing to call for greater democracy and to do away with the one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party. The protesters kept up daily vigils for three weeks and on June 4, 1989, Chinese troops and security police stormed the Square and fired indiscriminately into the crowds. Many young students fled; others stoned the attacking troops and set fire to military vehicles. At least 300 protestors were killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested.

On March 19, 2003, the U.S. Government invaded Iraq on the grounds that the Saddam Hussein Government possessed weapons of mass destruction and that this posed a terror threat to peace-loving countries. Although no such weapons were found, George W. Bush in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia on December 12, 2005, justified the invasion as our effort to help the Iraqis build democratic institutions such as a rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free economy, and freedom to worship. In retrospect, implanting democracy in a desert country appears a naïve aspiration and more a cover to disguise the real reason for the invasion, namely to protect our need for oil from the Middle East.

On August 8, 2013, public commemorations took place in Myanmar (Burma) to mark the 25th anniversary of uprisings that launched their pro-democracy movement. For over 20 years, Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest by the military to prevent her in leading a pro-democracy movement. After her release, she stirred up the pro-democracy movement. In November 2015, her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, won more than 80% of the contested parliamentary seats. Aung San is now the most important person in Myanmar and she is announcing new policies to build a better life for more people.

Why do I mention these episodes? They show the power and passion for the idea of democracy in different parts of the world. Is democracy the right system for every country in the world? No, not every country is ready for democracy. But when enough people believe in the idea of freedom and popular voting, such a country is ready for democracy.

What Qualifies a Country as being a Democracy?

There are probably more countries claiming to be a democracy than the actual number of democracies. In one study, the following 73 countries were listed as democracies:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jamaica, Kiribati, North Korea, South Korea, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Micronesia, Mongolia, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Palau, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Thailand, Taiwan, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay.¹

One needs to be suspicious of some of the countries included in this list. How did North Korea get on this list? Maybe these countries run elections, however honest or dishonest they are. But it should be noted that Russia is not on this list and yet it has elections.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) prepared a much better analysis of democracy. The EIU measures the extent of democracy in 167 countries based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture.² The EIU categorized these 167 countries into four regime types: Full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. Only 24 countries were identified as full democracies and they covered 12.5% of the world’s population. Flawed democracies numbered 52 countries which covered 35.5% of the world’s population. Full and flawed democracies operate in about 76 countries of the world.

Freedom House is another source of measures on how many democracies there are and it distinguishes between free and partly free democracies.³ Their discouraging finding is that the world is experiencing an eight-year decline in political rights and civil liberties. They saw an abridgement of freedom and democracy in such countries as Egypt, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Venezuela. Their governments have either been taken over by military coups or authoritarian leaders bent on destroying the opposition and perpetuating their power and oppression.

Unfortunately, many democracies around the world function poorly. Democracies in Latin America have to contend with a high level of poverty, high income inequality, and rampant corruption. In Brazil, the executive branch and legislative branch have difficulty getting broad agreement given that there are 13 political parties. President Rousseff has to build continuous coalitions to get anything done. She created at great cost a cabinet of 39 ministries to please the various parties. Raising political money has led to a major corruption scandal involving Petrobras, the large oil company. Much has to be done to clean up democracy in many of the world’s democracies.⁴

What is Democracy Anyway?

Democracy comes from the Greek words ‘demos’ (people) and ‘krates’ (rule), which literally means ‘people power.’ Democracy is essentially a political system where the ultimate power lies with the people. It lies in their power to vote for or against particular laws, rules, and regulations, and the freely rendered majority opinion determines the outcome. The seed idea of democracy is self-government and majority rule.

Intrinsic to democracy is the idea of one person, one vote! If one person can cast more votes than another person, the system of democracy is corrupted. Consider this. In a monarchy, only one person can vote, namely the King. Everyone else’s vote is irrelevant. In an aristocracy, the aristocrats have more voting power than the plebeians, even though there are far fewer aristocrats than ordinary citizens. In a plutocracy, the rich have much more voting power than the average citizens. This can happen if the rich use their money to influence the media to influence average citizens to favor certain candidates over others. The Koch brothers are plutocrats in that they have declared that they are ready to spend almost a billion dollars to get their favorite conservative candidates elected. They have a whole plan to infiltrate American state and city legislatures with legislators who will represent their ultra-conservative views. Sheldon Adelson, another plutocrat, is unrestrained in spending his money to get conservative politicians elected.

The source of this voting corruption of democracy lies in the lack of restrictions on campaign finance.⁵ The big setback was the decision of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case that recognized companies as ‘persons’ who could spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns and candidates: ‘Hostile forces in Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and state legislatures are rolling back decades’ worth of progress on campaign finance reform.’⁶

Clearly, democracy has some design flaws. But as Winston Churchill famously said, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ It is the only political system with moral legitimacy. Its major virtue is that it has the capacity to be ‘self-correcting.’ Inept leaders and policies can be replaced.

Most Democracies are Representative Democracies, not Direct Democracies

A direct democracy exists when citizens gather in (say) a small New England community to discuss and cast their votes on various local issues with the majority vote winning. The community would run meetings usually attended by all citizens. This was a frequent feature in the early Colonial and post-Colonial days of the U.S. Today it takes place notably in California where many referendums are proposed by citizens and citizens have a chance to vote on them.

But in larger, more populous areas where there are many issues, it is more expedient for the citizens to elect a set of representatives to vote on the issues for the citizens. This is variously called an indirect democracy, a representative democracy, or a republic. In fact, the U.S. is more a Republic than a Democracy in its original sense. The citizens may not have the time or aptitude to study and vote on the various issues. They elect candidates they trust to study the issues and vote for their interests. The framers of our Constitution shared a fear of direct elections. Elbridge Gerry of the Massachusetts delegation said: ‘The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.’ Fellow delegate Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph said: ‘The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.’

The framers knew that indirect elections—voters electing representatives who voted on issues—was the key to overcoming this problem. The citizens would vote to choose among the candidates who were running for office, rather than on the issues themselves. Still, citizens retain the ultimate control because they have the opportunity every two years to re-vote on the representatives they want. They will vote to replace disappointing representatives with new representatives who come closer to matching their issue preferences.

This system of representative democracy rai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Foreword
• Introduction—Challenges to Democracy in a Changing World
• Chapter 1 Why Democracy ISN’T Working Well in America or Elsewhere—Why Having Elections ISN’T Enough
• Chapter 2 Reforming Elections—Why are Citizens Not Voting?
• Chapter 3 Reforming Congress—Why Does Congress Perform Poorly?
• Chapter 4 Reforming the Executive Branch—Is the President Too Powerful?
• Chapter 5 Reforming the Federal Judiciary Process—Is the Judiciary Shaping Legislation?
• Chapter 6 Reforming the Federal–States Relationship—Are the States Too Independent?
• Chapter 7 Reforming Political Parties—Are the Parties Too Rigid?
• Chapter 8 Reforming Foreign Policy Making—Who Should Make Foreign Policy?
• Chapter 9 Reforming Government Service—Are Government Employees Efficient and Conscious that they are ‘Public Servants’?
• Chapter 10 Leading with Vision and Statesmanship—What Will it Take to Restore Democracy?
• Chapter 11 Dealing with the Major Unresolved Government Policy Issues
• Index