Is Democracy the best type of Government - Essay Example

In these societies, democracy only served to further the interests of a certain elite who had always been in power. The entry of new faces to the seats of governance was rare and often short-lived. For instance in Vietnam’s case, the country was run by a democratically elected government where the Prime Minister was a cousin of the emperor of Vietnam (Halberstam & Singal, 2008). The democratic policies initiated by this democratic government led to the alienation of large parts of the population, who eventually tilted over to the communist camp and began an insurgency.

The democracy under Nguyen Phuc Buu Loc was unable to shelter the interests of the many against the interests of the few. It has to be kept in mind that Vietnam is not the only nation to have suffered a democratic fate due to class divide and lack of equality. The quagmire in West Africa and the Horn of Africa is yet another example of democratic failure that has ruined millions of lives. The democratic system in these nations allowed the power hungry elite to broker power to themselves leaving millions in desperation.

The resulting governments led to the estrangement of the masses which in turn led to bloody civil wars and consequent anarchy (Bassey & Oshita, 2010). The outcomes of democracy in these nations signalled a major change in the very definition of democracy. What Abraham Lincoln declared to be “of the people, by the people, for the people” at Gettysburg (Wilson, 2006) has become “of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” in the twenty first century (Stiglitz, 2012). Attempts at promoting democracy across borders have often proved not only difficult but also unmanageable and dangerous.

People spearheading the cause of democracy for foreign nations fail to account for socio-economic and historic peculiarities that shape each nation. A society composed of tribal systems already has its own version of governance though there are no bravura democratic assemblies and parliaments to show the rest of the world. Imposing a foreign system that the local people are not aware of will never work in such a situation. The recent failed experiments at democratic implantation have failed miserably in both Iraq and Afghanistan (Shadid, 2005) (Hopkins, 2008).

A democratic system requires nourishment from the grass root level to flourish. If the roots of the system fail to support it, then the democratic system is open and vulnerable to exploitation. Typically democratic systems are exploited not from the bottom but from the very top. Democracies provide the power hungry elite with multiple avenues to manipulate people at all levels in society. Stieglitz (2012) has rightly declared democracies to be representative of the top 1% of all people in a society.

The people at the helm of affairs in a democracy possess the right tools and skills to manipulate the masses through propaganda. It is ironic and paradoxical to realise that the very people who forced Wall Street to crash were the very people who were bailed out by the democratic government (Byrne, 2012). Hordes of common people looking to occupy Wall Street to prevent further economic exploitation were rounded up by state machinery using the very resources that these ordinary people had paid for in terms of taxes.

It is regrettable that in the so claimed representative system of democratic governance, the very people w