Both Plato and Winston Churchill were not great believers of democracy and they saw democracy as dangerous. The idea of democracy is to restore the power back to the majority, but as this research paper will suggest that
On the other hand, the anti-federalists stood for the status quo, but were at a disadvantage due to lack of information about the documents of the Constitution. They believed that the Constitution would result in an aristocratic tyranny and demanded for the inclusion of a Bill of
Due to the minimalistic role of the Seanad in the legislative process, its effectiveness is also lacking in strength. In 2013, there was a referendum held to abolish the Seanad. This proposal was rejected in the referendum. Reasons for the abolition were that it would save money and that the voting method was undemocratic. The fact that these reasons were so simple shows that the removal of the Seanad was not a serious or drastic event that could have taken place.
The small city-state does not subscribe to the extreme ends of the political ideology spectrum. It is not quite democratic nor is it strong authoritarian, hence its name ranges from benevolent dictatorship to soft authoritarian under Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership. The case of Singapore will not support Fukuyama’s argument that history has ended because pragmatism, which is what Singapore’s policies and politics are based on, posts a challenge to Fukuyama’s claim of a lack of viable alternative to the western liberalism.
At its mildest level it is epitomized by Confucian self-repression– which requires conforming to the group, while being different means isolation and exclusion. At its harshest level some form of punishment is involved, such as demotion or reduced rations, and at worst death. Kim Jong Il demonstrated an early willingness to use not only targeted purges but also arbitrary repression to assert his power; masses are thus watched and terrorized, even at the price of perennial economic failure and the decline of the citizens’ living standards (Lankov, 1). North Korea also lacks a comprehensive opposition within the country. The population does not have an alternative to the status quo, no dissident groups have emerged to pursue it, and even refugees do not report signs of collective action aimed at confronting the regime, due to continual purges and extensive repression.
As previously stated, in the past a system of direct democracy was considered the ideal, with every citizen directly choosing what would we done. Furthermore, as Jean-Jacques stated: “the moment a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free.” If we are to agree that this, a purely direct democracy, would create the best result, then one would conclude that any system with voting is a failure. However, this fully direct democracy would not seem to be feasible in the modern day. It would be difficult to organize all the citizens to take a full vote, especially when considering that this ‘ideal’ democracy did not include all citizens. It merely included landowning males, while excluding women and any
Since a democracy requires a sense of political determination and a national identity, democratization often causes a rise of nationalist sentiment and has even led to ethnic cleansing in order to eliminate the “enemy of the people”. Even if the Democratic Peace Theory was valid and could be built upon, it would still not legitimize promotion efforts in the Middle East. The theory talks only of wars of one state against another, while the conflicts relevant in the Middle East are state-internal; examples are the war in Algeria in 1991-2003, in Egypt 1992-1998 and in Syria 1979-1982. Nowadays, there are barely any wars in the region in which two states directly confront each other, as the conflicts are fought mainly between government and militant
When talking about empires, a negative connotation of being oppressed is usually present. Living in the modern age, we tend to consider democracy as the “rightest form of government”. However, democracy is not simply “freedom for all” or “the will of the people” for ancient empires. It was a complex, delicate system that sometime people overlook its inherent fragility. Many democratic states, such as ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, failed to keep the promise of freedom for all and ended up in failure.
Just like what Tort (2015) wrote in one his articles, the choice of running mate is an insignificant factor compared to the individual merit of a presidential candidate. He even cited examples of many elections in the country which resulted to a president and a vice president coming from different parties. In a country where the election system works differently, pairings of candidates is not something that one should really focused on when making decisions. Lastly, the consistent low rank of
As a result, our higher education system has succeeded in producing graduates and post graduates who neither meet the needs of the industry nor are they capable of functioning independently in any office. Moreover, their analytical and logical reasoning ability is not developed. The education system is “teacher centric” rather than “student centric”. The student is forced to study and memorise what the teacher/ system desires rather than what the student desires. Following are the major flaws in the present system:- (a) No inter disciplinary mobility is possible.