Is Democracy Failing? by Niheer Dasandi;Matthew Taylor;

Author:Niheer Dasandi;Matthew Taylor;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

AMore than $600 million was spent on the Trump campaign in the 2016 US elections, and close to $1.2 billion was spent on Clinton’s campaign. These huge sums of money negatively impact democracy. It means that high-level politics is dominated by elites, and government is less representative. It also gives big business and other donors excessive influence in politics.

A fundamental principle of democracy is that any citizen is free to run for political office. This helps ensure that government is not dominated by hereditary elites, as in an aristocracy. However, the costs of running an effective election campaign are often so high that powerful backing is essential to have any chance of winning high-level political office. In the 2016 US presidential elections, both main candidates – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – spent more than $250 million on their campaigns. The vast sums of money needed to run an effective campaign enable big businesses to influence democratic politics.

In many democratic countries, elected officials are far from representative of the general public, coming instead from highly privileged backgrounds. For example, more than half of the ministers in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Cabinet in 2014 attended elite fee-paying schools, and half attended Oxford or Cambridge University. Many questioned how these ministers could truly represent ordinary people in Britain, given that most had never experienced the problems that the majority of people face.

The lack of diversity in socioeconomic backgrounds is not the only flaw.

Women remain significantly under-represented in politics in the majority of democracies around the world. Bolivia and Rwanda are the only two countries where women have more seats than men in parliament. Globally, women hold less than a quarter of all seats in parliament, and those that are in political office often face sexism and misogyny. The situation is worse in high political office: the USA, for example, has never had a female president.

Hillary Clinton (b. 1947) is a US politician who was Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013, senator for New York between 2001 and 2009, and First Lady of the USA between 1993 and 2001. She was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the 2016 elections.

David Cameron (b. 1966) is a British politician who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, and leader of the Conservative Party between 2005 and 2016. He resigned as prime minister after Britain voted to leave the European Union in the referendum he called.

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