The Limitations of Our Democracy

Recently I've been putting a lot of thought into a question. Have we reached the peak of our development as a civilisation?

This question interests me because in almost every age people have asked the same question. From Plato and the Romans to enlightenment physicists lamenting the end of new scientific discoveries in their day (the late 1800s)! Why are civilised people always fearing the end of civilisation and the world? I personally think it is healthy to think like this to a degree. Simply because if one is worried about the state of civilisation like this it implies that one cares for and appreciates civilisation and life. It also fosters an attitude of pushing for excellence instead of falling into the trap of mediocrity. (A trap I often feel firmly wedged in)

As a biologist I tend to view civilisation like the evolution of any species: There are growth spurts, periods of intense selective pressures, dips in population and geographic spread, loss and gain of genetic diversity and of course occasional mass extinction events. Incidentally, I also view religions like this too. Each religion being a species that inhabits the ocean of minds that is humanity and spreads from person to person.

But for today I just want to consider the political diversity of the human species: democracies, tyrannies, military dictatorships, theocracies, empires, republics, autocracies and oligarchies... just to name a few common variations. Then within these they all have different ways of organising the different organs of state: parliaments, cabinets, judicaries, education systems, defence forces, public health, etc...

Curiously though, we seem to be heading towards a political monoculture where everyone adopts a very neat and polished version of western democracy: government divided into three parts (executive, legislative and judicary), an electoral system emphasising a two party system, a unified position of head of government and state who is directly elected and a 1 vs 1 contest and media dominated lobbying on political parties as a whole as opposed to individuals/independants.

I believe this is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity. It is the biggest source of my 'healthy' fear for the end of civilisation.

It is not simply because I believe this version of democracy is bad. Rather I do think we have generally an excellent system of government... but just because I can't imagine far into the future enough to plan for it doesn't mean I should stop trying to influence it. We live in an age where governments are increasing in numbers but decreasing in diversity at the same time. When one looks at the changes in governments over the last 1,000 years one is struck by the enormous amount of 'evolution' that has taken place. The differences is structure and philosophy of government are dramatic... yet, despite the occasional revolution, these changes all occurred gradually over time. Magna Carta for instance didn't automatically create parliamentary democracy, parliamentary democracy gradually grew out of Magna Carta over 700 years of small incremental changes. Also, the revolutions were generally a case of importing pre-existing ideas from somewhere else, not spontaneously developing nuclear fusion on the first attempt.

The recent wars in Iraq and Aghanistan have made me realise that we have an ideal for how democracy ought to be done. This is dangerous (yes, you can probably hear my 'dogma alert' alarms going off already). Political institutions like democracy are not either democratic or not, they exist on a 'democratic' spectrum. At the extreme end of the democratic spectrum we have autocracy followed by oligarchy a little further along. In the middle we might have the Roman Republic and some of the ancient Greek democracies. At the other end of this spectrum we have our modern day democracies which are far more sophisticated and inclusive than the Greek and Roman models. However, just because we're at the end of the spectrum that we can see doesn't mean there is still not more of the spectrum we haven't yet discovered. Think of the light spectrum: The visible light spectrum is history (what we can know) while the UV rays, X-Rays and Cosmic Rays are the future we haven't discovered yet.

The Bush administration worried me terribly for many reasons, but of these reasons in particular was because they appeared convinced that America had 'got democracy right' and that there was no need for further reform or development. All other countries will one day come to see the light and adopt the American model. This is political dogma and it is dangerous because it promotes an kind of political apathy that works like this: I don't need to worry about politics because we fixed the political system ages ago, it all works fine now and it only needs small and occasional fixes from time to time.

I feel that we need to get into the mindset of perpetually challenging and interogating our political institutions and never be complacent with them even if we do currently have the best polical systems in the world at the present. Just because you're winning it doesn't mean that you're right. Any cheater can win a race for example, and any dunst can too if the opposition don't bother to show up. Never assume that winning is always a good thing.

At the moment our democracy is centred around a two party system that only gives people one choice. Considering how diverse the electorate is, this kind of voting system is insulting and disappointing to almost everyone. No one likes any of our leaders anymore because we don't feel like our votes are actually going to the people we want to see elected.

Consider this day dream democracy of mine, does it have any qualities you would like to see implemented?

* Four party parliamentary system with each party obliged to have strict rules on who can join it. For example, in Australia both the liberal and labour parties have left and right wings internal to the party so the people don't have a clue if they're actually electing a conservative, moderate or progressive government because the party name is meaningless nowadays. By having stricter rules governing political parties the people would actually have a meaningful idea of what the different parties actually intend to do once in office. Modern 'all inclusive' political parties create a situation where we might as well live under a communist dictatorship for all the good voting for them does.

* Preferential voting. Only Australia has preverential voting. It is simply better than anything else other democracies have and it ought to be tried in more places. The fact that such a mindbloggingly good voting system isn't spreading simply because it is good, but rather contained simply because it either isn't what all the other big democracies do (the "don't think for yourself, just copy the winner" mentality) or because it is far easier to manipulate elections when one doesn't have the preferential system.

* Head of state separate from the legislative. That is, having both a president and prime minister so as to divide power.

* Fund the development of political wikis for each country where the citizens can record every piece of information they find out about their local members. That way when election times comes one can quickly read through all of the speeches and political statements a candidate has made and search records of how they voted for every piece of legislation. This is the information everyone actually needs to make an informed decision when voting. The election campaigne is all smoke and mirrors. People actually need to turn off their TVs at election time and get to know their local members. Using a polical wiki would be the best and most efficient way of achieving this.

* Compulsory voting

* Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press

* Constitutionally prohibitted cross-media ownership laws (No one should be able to own a news media company that can potentially create a monopoly across all mediums)

* Constitutionally guaranteed human rights.

These are just a few I'm personally interested in. Please share any more ideas you might have in the comments because just thinking up new ideas as an exercise is great for any democracy because we need to break through the mentality of 'we're in the west, we are the best' because this intellectual and cultural laziness will be our downfall if it becomes ingrained in our cultural psyches.