Resul Kaan ONAÇ

20200782

Section 01

19.05.2003

RESEARCH ON DEMOCRACY

In his opening speech to the Constituent Assembly, Adolfo Suarez, and the prime minister of Spain during the transition to democracy, declared, “the future is not written, because only the people can write it.” (qtd.in Przeworski 10)  He mentioned the two important qualities of democracy while he is leading his country to the unknown. One of them is the results of democracy has produced are uncertain. Second one is public determine this results according to their self-interest. He is leading his country towards unknown, because it is risky to allow people to write their future.

In democracy majority’s willing come true, so if majority is in wrong way, it will be bad for this country. As it is indicated above results of democratic process are uncertain. Yet under democracy commitment to rules constitutes at most a “willingness to accept outcomes of an as yet undetermined content” (Lamonuier qtd.in Przeworski 14).

There are various criteria, which are important to compare countries in each other. One of these criteria is regime type. It is important that how people are managed. Since, there are many countries that apply the same method of management differently. From this standpoint method of management, in other words regime type becomes important among these criteria. I want to say that it is because leaders want to apply rules of regime type according to their wishes. Erdal Türkkan also verifies me, he says,  “The people who are in government, force all conditions and try to effect the time period of their government themselves. From this standpoint politicians are not coerced to have changes to take initiative according to their own desires” (359). In addition, democracy is one of method of management, which is used by not a few countries and still with applying their own rules. So it is interesting and useful to research democracy as a regime type.

Seeing regime type as an important criterion may not look like important to other people. However how people are managed is so important because of other things whatever you think about government and country are related with the method of management. For instance, government sets education system. The health system and industry are also set by the government. The relation between these arrangements and democracy is that governors are elected by their public or they become governors with any process without democracy or a person becomes a leader with again any process. Method of management effects these processes significantly.

           

There were many regime types in the world. These regime types varied according to eras as long as humans exist. The names of regime types became different during time periods but the origin didn’t changed exactly. Because there was how people are managed in the origin of these changes. In today’s world there are also many regime types such as communism, anarchism, theocracy, fascism and monarchy etc. Even all of them are not applied in countries today; people know that these are the possibilities in terms of regime types.

Anyway it seems that democracy is more common than all of these, because many countries use democracy but in different ways. They have to use democracy, because it is the most favorable one. But it doesn’t contain best conditions for people; there are still poor sides. According to me ideal democracy means social choice and individual values. But I want to give the definition of the ideal democracy according to Universal Declaration on Democracy in order to understand this. “In very simple terms, the Universal Declaration on Democracy identifies an ideal democracy that can and should always be improved upon and which involves building a society based on common values of freedom that promotes dignity of the individual and the common good” (Johnsson 4).

There are four types of democracy according to Aristotle. He mentions all details in his book -‘Politics’- about his own classification of these democracy forms however; the explanation about what these types look like exactly is not so important. Because the most important thing is that democracy differs from society to society and from time to time. In fact after societies had changed democracy, I don’t know is it possible to say the new regime type can be democracy or if it is possible, according to who? There wouldn’t be an exact answer to this question. Since every people has different criteria to evaluate it. Some of them don’t apply the rules of democracy exactly while their regime type is democracy. Some leaders changed the rules of democracy according to their own desires. However people see that democracy is applied in there, maybe it is written like that in their institution, since in fact the original regime is democracy in there.

As I mentioned before democracy is the most favorable method of management among all other types but it is not the best one. Since there are some big disadvantages of democratic elections. For instance, in a country there is parliament and there are 300 deputies in this parliament. There is one phase in the elections and vote limit is 10%, which means the parties that get less than 10% are not able to take place in the parliament. Let 3 possibilities happen after the elections. In first case, a party gets 30% vote, 2nd party gets 20% vote, other parties get less than 10% and they don’t take place in the parliament. Deputies can only belong to these two parties. As a result of their vote rate, there would be 180 deputies from 1st party and there are 120 deputies from 2nd party. In this parliament 1st party is able to do his wishes freely, since the government is consist of 1st parties’ deputies. In such case there would be confliction, because 70% of public don’t want to see 1st party but there is no solution. So, democracy doesn’t cover majority’s wishes. It is against democracy’s fundamental thoughts. As a result democracy is against itself.

In second case 1st party gets 70% vote, 2nd party gets 30% vote. As a consequence, there are 210 deputies from 1st party and 90 for 2nd one. In this case it seems majority’s wishes would become true. However how can the minority’s rights be expressed in the parliament? Since in government there wouldn’t be any deputies from 2nd party. This is also a contradiction; in the best regime type everybody’s rights must be expressed equally. Thirdly I want to mention about other problems in 2nd case. Yes, 1st party get 70% vote, on the other hand we can’t be sure that they are right and their wishes would be useful for country’s future. I will also mention it again later, but this also a missing part of a best regime type.

There are some possibilities about the future of the democratic process. If the outcomes of democratic process are uncertain and unknown, success of economic process in democratic countries may be unknown and even bad. Because the people who are chosen by the public, may not able to cope with economic problems and be successful in economic development of the country. Since if the public writes the future of country, this future will not be as good as they expect. All people in the society who there is no problem for them to attend elections have right to choose anybody among the applicants. So the choice of public is not the best every time. Since every voter has to choose and not all of them have knowledge about economic process, so they sometimes choose wrong people for government.

From the beginning of that time there would be problems and they can’t cope with these problems. Public can’t object to this situation, because their choice is this. Governors may have big knowledge about politics and diplomacy, but they should know the other parts of managing country. One of these economic issues is and other one is how economic relations are established between other countries in the world. There are also so many problems governors come across. This is not the wanted part of democracy, but this is the reality. Democracy is not the best way as a regime type for human being.

As I mentioned deeply, in each cases majority’s wishes may not be true, even wrong and Coleman also characterized this; “the minority does not consist of losers, and the majority winners. Instead minority members have false beliefs about the general will; members of the majority have true beliefs” (qtd.in Przeworski 15). This is the general rule of democracy, in such a way that the general beliefs of the majority must be obeyed. According to Coleman it is the true one, whereas it is true according to democracy theory. It is not always true in real life. It comes from the origin of the democracy to have to accept majority’s ideas. In the case of majority is false, disaster is inevitable.  That means because of a few disadvantages of democracy the election results may not be as good as

There was a perfect illustration during the last elections in Turkey. There is a party in Turkey called Youth Party and its chairman is Cem Uzan who owns many and big companies such as Telsim and Star TV. They are so rich and one of the 10 richest corporations in Turkey. Before the elections as every party Youth Party also did some activities in order to make people admitted themselves. During their activities they made some extras to affect people easily. The concerts were made, foods were given free to people, and some other interesting activities were done to affect public and change their mind before Cem Uzan’s speech.

Moreover these activities were made too many times in whole Turkey. He circulated every city in Turkey and made over 120 demonstrations during his travels. This was also a record that exceeding 120 demonstrations before elections length of a few months. He held thousands of people in his demonstrations. At first they went to demonstrations for free activities. Everything was free, concerts, foods, drinks, and etc. But after people thought that if he was using his sources for only demonstrations such a generous way like that, after the elections when he becomes president everything would be better and marvelous for Turkey and for them.

Firstly it is supposed that these are normal, but after the elections people realized the fact and they surprised. The Youth Party got 7.22% votes and they have almost been passing over the 10% limit. Cem Uzan also owns a TV station and the advertisements were done too much in his favor. Their ideas were fantastic and they seemed they couldn’t be realized. Although they had fantastic ideas, they got 7.22% vote. People trusted and believed him and his party, but they made a huge mistake. If Cem Uzan became president, bad future would wait for Turkey. He has made very good offers for people. He said that there would be no taxes after he became president. The books, which are required for primary school student, would be served out. Turkey would not depend on IMF anymore. He said that lots of alike things which are very tempting and can be easily accepted by the public. The results show that public believes and trust him, and so he was able to get 7.22% vote. However it is obvious that he would not do most of things he promises.

From now on it is time to mention about economy and its connection with democracy. As I said above reach able to success in economic relations is not easy. Any people who are selected by the people don’t sometimes have enough capability to cope with all problems that occurred in economics, diplomacy or any other area. In many times, during the beginning of history, world witnesses collapsing of democratic countries. There were also collapsed country, which were not managed by the democracy, but I defend that democracy is not perfect. It is the most favorable one among all other types today, and it is the most favorable along centuries. But it is not perfect and problems, which democratic countries came across until today, show us democracy is not a perfect regime type. Occurred problems were about every thing, but we are related to troubles that occur in economics.

There are many examples that countries have good, developed, and free of problems economic system, which some democratic or seemed democratic countries cannot access. For instance, the industrial strength of Hitlerian Germany, the energy of Japan prior to 1940s, of Franco’s Spain in the 1960s, or of Pinochet’s Chile in the last years of the dictatorship proved that there can be economic success without democracy.

In these examples leaders tried to cope with problem of unemployment and make their country more industrialized. Unemployment problem is really hard to cope with, but they were able to do this and won victories against unemployment problem, shortage of money and other similar problems. For instance, Hitlerian Germany participated in Second World War, and Hitlerian Germany got ahead of many countries although they didn’t participated in this huge war.

Let me conclude by stating that democracy is not a perfect regime type and there would be better possibilities to be successful in economics. In order to be successful in economics, it is required that exact people must take place in the government and the management of the country. Because all people take part in elections, it is difficult to choose the right people who have knowledge about managing a country. Sometimes communism, sometimes monarchy won important victories against democracy and these proved us democracy can be defeated and is not the perfect regime type.