The Disappointment of Democracy

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. (Winston S Churchill, Hansard, 11 November 1947).

Indeed, Churchill was wrong in saying no one pretends that democracy is perfect. His pronouncement full of English irony acknowledges that there are many failings of democracy. And its lesson must be that we should not be taken in by claims for its perfection. However, reservations about democracy do not sit well with the familiar triumphalism of the dominating view in Western democracies, where there is an ideological need to portray democracy as the ideal state of man in society. Such rhetorical claims for democracy have increasingly created an ideal, no less. This occurred in the course of its becoming an ideological weapon in the cold war with ‘communism’ (first Russia, and now China). So today we are left with the expectation that all good comes from democracy. However, nothing is perfection and yet we tend to yearn for it. Due to this, the reality of democracy can feel disappointing. Rhetoric and reality are not friends.

In this paper, it is claimed that amongst the discontents of civilisation, a disappointment arising from democracy itself is at times inevitable. An attempt will be made to pinpoint various disappointments with our current notion of democracy, and the implication that a vigilance for failures is a necessary antidote to idealisation. A selection of the disappointments will be discussed with the plea that modern democracy certainly needs systems of accountability much more than empty promises of freedom.

The rhetorical equation of idealises democracy with freedom leads to quite unreal expectations if not questioned. And unreal expectations can only fail, and deliver a disappoint