does a democracy get the politicians it deserves?

brodski

Tea-Time toad
brodski
Joined
Mar 19, 2005
Messages
15,516
In the "beating of homeless tread" which had already become hopelessly derailed I asked if, in a democratic society, whether the political climate shaped society, or if society set its own political climate.


Can Thatcher be blamed for making the UK population selfish, Can Blair be blamed for making the British public talk smug, verb free, bollocks?
can Clinton be blamed for rampant sexual immorality in the US? and can Bush be blamed for, well, anything? :boxedin:

If society chooses to select a certain type of politician at a certain time, does that not show that the society is making an effort to set its own political climate?
Or are politicians free to set and act within a climate which they can dictate?

of course I think the answer is somewhere in the middle, but where?
 
That's a whole OP full of hard questions.

My own impression is with the OP in that the answer is in the middle, but since the feedback is constant and intense, especially in the days of instant polls, I think the situation may be getting a lot worse, both in terms of volatility and system instability (i.e. going to extremes as in "unstable system", not as in "system failure" although that's a possibility, too).

To some extent, different political ends will appeal to different people, that's the real success that binLaden and his band of murderers have had, by pushing us to a government that appeals to brute force and "crush it now" strategies.

I think that some education about how newer systems with faster feedback work is necessary for everyone, and some willingness to react, in non-life-threatening situations, with some deliberation, is going to become more of a necessity.

Oddly, I think there's a parallel in the stock market and stock exchanges, in that trends in either direction tend to be self-reinforcing, in a fashion that is very similar to nonlinear, underdamped stoichastic processes that have been modeled for other applications. Do I htink the model is predictive, no, I don't, because it is stoichastic, and the type of system is prone to sudden "breaks" in direction and attitude.

That's not an answer to the OP, I know, but it's some of the issues that will enter into the examination of the OP, I'm sure.
 
Some wag once observed that the democratic process was almost guaranteed to elect people who were exactly the opposite of what you'd want as a public servant.
 
Does a democracy get the politicians it deserves?

I think it does, and unfortunately the majority will from time to time elect someone who in hindsight wasn't a good choice.

However, I think there is a possibility that the (elected) leaders might use their powers in such a way that it becomes very difficult for the opposition to gain popularity (e.g. Singapore) - and maybe the population doesn't get the leadership they deserve after that.
 
It seems that some types of people will seek political power regardless of the political system where they live (conditions of eligibility for office having been met). I imagine that Pericles or Caesar would run for congress in the US today, or that Bush would have tried for a seat on the Athenian assembly. Human nature seems to operate that way.
That said, the existing social order has a strong inertial effect on the type of government that can be achieved, and even after having been overthrown (Caesar, Alexander, Washington), what results will bear a strong resemblence to what came before.
Society resists fundamental changes. You can argue that Thatcher took advantage of the more selfish and predatory components of the culture in the UK, but she couldn't have done that unless they were present already.
There's a strong argument that the US would never go for communism or socialism because of the entrenchment of business culture here. Fascism is more likely.
I think that what counts the most in political change is the stability of the institutions themselves rather than the transitory fashions of those who use them to gain power. The institutions shape those who govern and set limits to what is possible.
The dynamics of social revolution is another matter, but it's hard to see how the Bolsheviks or Nazis or Maoist could have taken control of their countries unless the political structure had already been corrupted. Certainly a long series of incompetent or corrupt rules will fatally undermine any government (it took Rome a long time to finally fall), but if the political system can be made self-correcting that day may be put off indefinitely.

I don't think that a democracy does get the leaders that it deserves, necessarily. The political system has to be designed to attract the leaders that will ensure its ability to continue to exist and discourage those who actions will undermine it.

That still doesn't explain how England has remained intact forever.
Maybe its necessary to be an island first. Probably the relative isolation of the US for so long has ensured its stablity as well.
 
Kullervo said:
Did Germany deserve Hitler?
Click to expand...

His rise to power wasn't exactly democratic.

I may be a little rusty on my Nazi history, so anyone is free to correct me if I get some details wrong:

The Nazi Party only received about 16% of the vote, which was a respectable percentage in a system that had a half-dozen or more political parties, but it was by no means a majority.

One of the crippling problems Germany had been facing as it tried to deal with an economy that was in ruins (the great Depression that was so terrible in the United States was even worse in Germany) was the lack of a stable government capable of lasting long enough to enact any policy at all.

The deal that was brokered that gave Hitler the Chancellorship wasn’t supposed to give him dictatorial powers, but was only supposed to be a compromise that would form a stable government. Hitler’s 16% was by no means a majority, but it was enough to guarantee that no government could be formed without the Nazi party, and the Chancellorship was the price demanded by Hitler. The idea was that if he could be appeased with the title, the government could be formed, and then saner men would prevent Hitler’s more outrageous policies from ever being enacted.

Hitler’s real rise to power came at the hands of the SA, a private volunteer band of thugs loyal to the Nazi party. After Hitler was named Chancellor in a democratic process, the SA rounded up the leaders of the Communist party, one of the strongest opposition parties at the time, and threw them into makeshift prison camps. The next morning, as the rest of the legislators were staring at the empty seats of their fellows, they voted on granting the office of Chancellor dictatorial powers “for the duration of the emergency”, but the vote was clearly under duress with the implied threat that whoever didn’t vote the right way would be next.

Funny thing, I’ve read on pro-Nazi sites descriptions of those events that claimed the Communists didn’t show up to the vote because they didn’t think it was important enough, in complete denial that they had been rounded up and imprisoned.
 
Mycroft said:
Funny thing, I’ve read on pro-Nazi sites descriptions of those events that claimed the Communists didn’t show up to the vote because they didn’t think it was important enough, in complete denial that they had been rounded up and imprisoned.
Click to expand...
Talk about your hyper-technicalities. :D
 
Does a democracy get the politicians it deserves? Yes. No question about it.
Click to expand...
He wasn't elected.
Click to expand...
Totally beside the point. Germany was a democracy, Hitler was a politician. He was democratically elected, taking absolute power afterward.
Germany got him. Did they deserve him?
 
Kullervo said:
Totally beside the point. Germany was a democracy, Hitler was a politician. He was democratically elected, taking absolute power afterward.
Germany got him. Did they deserve him?
Click to expand...
If you reduce the issue beyond the point where observations have any meaning, what's the point?
 
It's a counterexample to a universal claim, a white crow. Hitler may be extreme, but his case has to be taken into account.

Saying that a democracy always deserves the politician it produces seems to be rather empty. It cuts off discussion of the really interesting cases like Boston mayor James Michael Curley (jailed for mail fraud during his last term), US Grant, Warren Harding, Ted Kennedy and most of the recent congressmen from Ohio.
 
Mycroft said:
If you reduce the issue beyond the point where observations have any meaning, what's the point?
Click to expand...

true, althouh it does hit on a wider point, can dictators only remain in power if they are tollerated by the majority of the population?
Is there not an argument that on a very basic level, all soceity have some leval of democrasy- all be it through revolution rather than the ballot box?

I am awware of soem of the nasty places this thouht may lead, but I find it interesting neaver the less.

To partially address my own OP, I think that in a democrasy, the wider context of the shared valeus of the majority, will set teh pollitical context wihtin which pollitians can operate, although pollitians can influence thsoe shared values.
 
Kullervo said:
It's a counterexample to a universal claim, a white crow. Hitler may be extreme, but his case has to be taken into account.
Click to expand...

France was a democracy. It was invaded and occupied during WWII.

Did France deserve Hitler?

The statement presumes the leader is a product of the democratic process; a process that was hyjacked by the Nazi party.

If you just want to say that aphorism are stupid and not always true, one doesn't have to be dense in order to say that.
 
Mycroft said:
France was a democracy. It was invaded and occupied during WWII.

Did France deserve Hitler?
Click to expand...

There is certainly an argument that they "deserved" (or rather tolerated)the Vichy regime, a very harsh argument, but it does go to the question of whether people are responsible for the society in which they live.
 
These lines of reasoning seem parallel to me:

If the population of a country like North Korea or Cuba does not rebel, then it deserves to live under that political system.

If democratic society elects a government that turns into a dictatorship, it's gotten what it deserves.

Since the government may have been elected with less than a majority of the votes cast it seems unfair to hold those who voted otherwise responsible for the consequences. It's difficult for me to accept that think the country deserved Iran-Contra or Watergate despite the very broad margins that brought Reagan and Nixon into office. But who knows? Reagan would probably have been elected if he started channelling Satan during the campaign.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom