governance II

The much debated and much maligned sequel to the block buster – governance :D
Like so many movies, the story takes an abrupt turn though!

Democracy as is practiced currently in almost all countries is indirect. The people vote to elect their representatives. These representatives represent their electorate in a quorum where their votes are considered to represent the vote of their entire electorate. This quorum again decides on all policies based on the votes of these chosen representatives.

This was perhaps the best way to go about creating a democracy because the logistics involved in allowing every person in a state to have a say in each and every decision made were too great to be managed.

However, if we see the two largest democracies in the world today, we see how this system can go hopelessly wrong.

There may be numerous political parties within a democracy. If the voter chooses to vote for a particular person, it is relatively easy. However, if a voter decides to choose for a particular candidate based on the candidate’s political affiliation to a particular party based on the principles of that party, things get murky.

If no party gets a majority, we have this concept of the single largest party getting an opportunity to form the government first … but things often break down, and weird coalitions come into existence after the election that have agendas very different from those that the voter voted for.

Sure, we can reduce the number of parties in the system to ensure that there aren’t too many different ideologies (though one could argue that this is undemocratic in itself). Now, if they don’t like what your government is doing, you can change it … but not for another five years at least … unless the chosen representatives take some drastic actions …

Dictionaries differentiate between democracy as described above and a “pure democracy” where policy decisions are always taken by a direct vote of each and every citizen of the nation.

Perhaps, it is time for us to move towards this concept of pure democracy.

If a country has a telecommunication network that covers it in its entirety, supplemented by an internet that reaches a fair percentage of the population, it can easily overcome the logistics issue that we have always had previously.

People have enough access to information thanks to the media and the internet to make informed decisions about most everyday issues.
Are there any short comings to this approach?

Well, if people are expected to vote on issues and the media is where they get their information, it gives a fearful power to the media – which can obviously be misused.

One may argue why everyone would even be interested in voting … the answer to which would be that they need not be - as long as there is a requirement that a minimum percentage of the population needs to vote in order for the results to be valid.

Issues involving sensitive intelligence data and so forth would be a little hard to deal with. We would need some mechanism to handle such issues.


I obviously cannot design the ideal mechanism for governance while sitting and writing out a blog. However, this is something that we all need to start thinking of.

The Greeks and Romans and other civilizations evolved a system of thought and governance that was way ahead of their times - so much so that they work pretty well even today.

But if you look at it the other way, what have we done? What have we created?
We are using a system of governance that was dreamt up ages ago without even bothering to tailor it to our current circumstances … forget about creating something that will work for future generations.

Now, just how shortsighted is that?