Rocking the vote: Are we getting the democracy we deserve or being taken for a ride?

In the US, an amoral, convicted felon of proven incompetence is taking power with a convincing mandate. The UK is still reeling from the effects of a vote to leave the EU, which, according to surveys taken shortly afterwards, few people really wanted. In New Zealand, policy flip-flops and hairpin turns are a distinguishing feature of each new administration. And minor parties, with single-figure percentages of the vote, have formed a tail that is wagging a dog that appears to have no sense of smell.

These anomalous results could be seen as a failure of democracy to achieve its aims, or as a sign that voters are dissatisfied with the process. Either way, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that democracy isn’t doing the business.

In many countries, including ours, “democracy” means representative democracy. Every three years, we hand over decisions about basic aspects of our lives – health, education, personal safety – to a few people who are then left to make the decisions. We have little meaningful input – in fact most of us aren’t aware of most of what goes on – and we repeat the cycle every three years.

The problems with organising things this way are many and obvious, although seldom discussed. In a 2017 speech to the Athens Democracy Forum, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan summed up the problems as he saw them then. First, growing inequality within countries. Second, governments looking increasingly powerless in the face of the imperatives of the global economy and the ever-growing web of regional and global deals they have entered into. Third, a crisis of effectiveness compared with authoritarian regimes, which seem to enjoy record rates of growth.

Three for the too-hard basket. Under our system, it is in politicians’ interest not to deal with long-term issues. As David ­Runciman, author of The History of Ideas and former professor of politics at Cambridge University, says: “Change lacks political grip on our imaginations because it is so incremental.” Also, the future doesn’t vote. Politicians depend on the goodwill of the current electorate for their jobs, so focus on short-term fixes to please them.

Philosopher AC Grayling was the first master of the New College of the Humanities in London (now Northeastern University London) and author of Democracy and Its Crisis. He describes our system as “elective dictatorship”. He singles out the process of whipping, by which MPs are required to vote in line with the decisions of their party executives, as a form of “harassment and coercion [that] would be illegal in other workplaces and subverts the democratic process”. Put simply – MPs are forced to represent their party, not their constituents.

Democracy is also enfeebled, writes Belgian cultural historian David Van ­Reybrouck in his book Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, by “our insane media”, which “true to market logic, have come to regard the exaggeration of futile conflicts as more important than any attempt to offer insight into real problems”. Politicians want to score points, and the increasingly commercialised media provides the opportunity via “incidentalism” – incidents are better at attracting media attention than good debates.

Helmut Modlik, chief executive of Ngāti Toa iwi authority Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, brings this criticism home. “Democracy creates a way to tap into the largest possible pool of ideas,” he told the Listener. “But if our pool of potential wisdom is poorly educated, is being propagandised and polarised, then we’ve shot in the foot our source of strength, and stretched our social fabric, arguably tearing it, which is what’s happening in democracies the world over.

“You can’t have a healthy democracy without a healthy economy and a healthy Fourth Estate … If the market can’t deliver that, then it becomes, by definition, a public good.”