Wednesday, May 21, 2008

SS Assignment

Cheh Yizuo
Ervin Sethi
Kenji Lee
Quek Xiu Quan


Today, many nation-states institutionalize democracy as their political system. Democracy has its fair share of ups and downs.


“Democracy creates stability in a society.”

9 comments:

Kenji said...

Okay lets discuss this thing.
Democracy is now the most common system used across the globe in the current modern world.
Democracy is a system whereby used to uphold a a ideology which is liberalism which supports freedom.
However, in many places such as China,democracy is only procedural whereby the ideology is no longer there. Then, what is the point of such a democracy?

Cheh Yi Zuo said...

Everyone in the country is given the right to vote for the parties they favour. This provides a platform for the commoners to have their own freedom of voting. This freedom of political expression and freedom of speech are essential so that citizens are informed and able to vote in their personal interests. Without democracy, the majority will discriminate against the minorities. So another good thing about democracy is that it sort of bring peace and harmony into the country. Peace and harmony within a country established through democracy another problem.
In China, democracy is procedural, but it still is important. A procedural democracy still allows the people to be able to have their voting rights. Although it will always result in the same party winning, it still serves the purpose of convincing the people to believe in the country.

Ervin said...

Besides procedural democracy, i think that Direct Democracy should be something important for all of us.
direct democracies means people make their own personal decisions and don’t rely on representatives. Direct democracy is more than just voting, supporters of direct democracy feel that this should be for the benefit of everyone. An example would be Switzerland, where five million voters decide nationally whether a proposal brought up should be accepted and schemes to be implemented a few times a year. Towns also have their own meetings held annually to decide local problems and issues.

Quek Xiu Quan said...

Although direct democracy affirms power to the people to let them make decisions, it is practised in only a small number of countries and states while the majority of the world practices representative democracy.

Going back to whether democracy brings stability to the country, I believe the success of democracy in a country is majorly dependant on the overall social stability already present in the country. If there is already conflict between a majority group and a minority group within the country who have differing ideals, then democracy and its "majority over minority" ideology will not be suitable. An example is Sri Lanka, where the government is mostly Sinhalese and makes decisions favouring Sinhalese and discriminating against Tamils. The Tamils then rebel against the government, launching the country into a state of violent conflict and instability. In this way, democracy fails to bring stablity to the country.

Democracy is only a political structure which is driven by people, and the mindsets of the people are variable, making the success of democracy relative to the actions of the people in the government and the country.
Regarding China, there is only one party to be elected, and the party is only giving the people a false impression that they are given an element of choice by voting. However, they are in fact controlling a monopoly of leadership in the country, making the system a sort of communist system which is not truly democratic. The people are living in peace brought about by false democracy, thus I feel that democracy cannot be linked to the stability in the country today.

Kenji Lee said...

Like what Xiu Quan had said, Democracy indeed is only a political institution, otherwise known as a structure. A society consists of two very significant things. People and Structure. However, structure is used to push or support for a certain ideology. However in many nation's case, this ideology is not the actual liberalism. Democracy can even somehow goes to support the ideology Communism and Monarchy. This happens when the people of the nation do not believe in liberalism as they believe liberalism can bring about great chaos in the nation. This is true as Liberalism can indeed bring about several problems as it allows freedom to the people. In such situation, there can be no order thus chaos can be formed.Therefore a true Democracy supporting the ideology of Liberalism does have its downsides as well as it do not necessarily bring about stability to the nation but also the other way round.


Lets look at non-true Democracy. These democracy might have already lost its true ideology but they can actually bring about stability to a nation. As Democracy can be used to decide which ideology the citizens of the nation prefers as mentioned above, not everyone prefers liberalism. From this point of view, we can see that being given a choice, the citizens of the nation now do not have to be "forced" to support the idea of Liberalism. The majority of the people would win and thus the more preferred ideology would be chosen by the people. This however might create stability in a nation as the majority conform to the ideology of the nation. This is why i mentioned China's procedural democracy as it is something like what i mentioned above.

Cheh Yi Zuo said...

I think that democracy has its own bads and goods. The bads of democracy is mostly brought about by the difficulty to maintain democracy and how to make it successful. A successful democracy requires cooperation among the government representatives of the people to get things accomplished that are useful to the people rather than the representatives themselves. However, it is still hardly possible in the real world nowadays. Bribery, or perhaps in the case of China too, where "false" democracy is being performed, it is hard to ensure success in democracy. Actually, the government only plays half a part in maintaining a successful democracy. It is necessary to have a free media and a population literate and educated enough to read the media. In this way, when the government is immobile and selfish, a literate population can perhaps, put more pressure on the government to better serve the people. Free media refers to media that is uncensored and everything can be published, including exposing the bad things about the government with evidence. Hence, I think we can really say that it is not difficult to introduce democracy in a country, the only problem is that it is certainly hard to make it successful. Therefore, we cannot really say democracy brings about what and what in a country, because "different types" of democracy are being held in differnent countries.

Kenji said...

Yes its true that its not that hard to introduce democracy into the country but only hard to make it into a successful democracy. But however i do disagree with "Therefore, we cannot really say democracy brings about what and what in a country, because "different types" of democracy are being held in differnent countries."

Why can't we say what democracy brings about? We already mentioned that democracy is only a system put in place, a structure. While its the ideology behind that makes it whether its a true or false democracy. The structure can bring about stability or chaos in the country depending on how it is used.

Quek Xiu Quan said...

Democracy can be said to bring about stability or instability depending on how you look at it; if you look at democracy purely as a structure, then it is impossible to say how it will affect the country or state in which it is implemented. Democracy, being a structure, is merely a rigid system put in place which is dependant on many other factors such as human influence, international relations and social stability within the country. It is controlled by the people, thus solely people can decide its fate by how they use it, as stated above.

Ervin said...

However, if democracy is used by the people corrctly, it can do alot of benefit to the country, with a god government being voted in, ultimately the people will be the ones benefiting. Also, when used wrongly, this will only be the start of the downfall of the nation. Moreover, when a corrupt government is put into power, the people will suffer. one examle is where the government is biased towards rich people causing the rich to get rich and poor to get poorer, widening the gapbetween the upper class and lower class, with more and more people falling below the poverty line.