Democracy's failures. (Letters).

SIR: Ronald Conway's wide-ranging criticism (March 2002) of the shortcomings of democracy are not new and were described by de Tocqueville and many others. Few of the framers of the American Constitution were for a democratic government; rather the question was: How strong should the democratic element be in the political pyramid?

As history has shown, a popularly elected government can range from totalitarian democracy to constitutional democracy, but Conway's suggestion for the improvement of representative government is to search for the missing element in today's "increasingly contaminated political culture in the form of authority which derives from charisma, the symbolic and the transcendent" albeit only in periods of crisis. Charisma is a notably subjective judgment, and it is well known that authoritarians are notoriously reluctant to give up power when the crisis is over.

Conway deplores the loss of religion and suggests as one form of authority, the transcendent. He fails to point out that an appeal to a higher authority can be and is subject to tendentious interpretations by religious bodies who wield enormous power in world politics.

What is more questionable is Conway's view that the most effective statesman is one who "rejects all politics as an enduring solution to human affairs". He deplores the lack of interest in public affairs by a large body of the electorate but fails to suggest why this should be so.

Many of the problems of democracy arise from a misunderstanding of the nature and limitations of representative government and politics. Bernard Crick in his In Defence of Politics points out that political democracy in contrast to totalitarian democracy allows conflicting interests in the community to be heard and not suppressed. J.S. Mill once wrote, "representative government is no guarantee of liberty if all posts were filled by men of the same mind". The causes of the "same mind" are obvious in certain states--coercion, propaganda or religious zealotry.

Democracy is a necessary but not sufficient way of averting this situation. It needs a political robustness, it allows different views to be expressed which have to be conciliated with the understanding that there will be winners and losers. Crick sums this up by saying, "political democracy allows at least some tolerance of differing troths, some recognition that government is possible, indeed best conducted amid the open canvassing of rival interests. Politics are the public actions of free men."

There are many enemies of politics today. The self-righteous liberal who has never learned that politics is only the art of the possible takes a stand on issues as a matter of principle and won't compromise in recognising the divergent views of a community, the reconciliation of which sometimes demands sacrifice of principles because this is the basis of politics. Not wishing to soil their hands with politics, some liberals are paralysed into inactivity during security crises when the whole community must give up certain individual rights and liberties. A robust political democracy ensures that these rights are restored when the crisis has ...