Organizational Hierarchy

One of the most difficult things to get a feel for in a democratic organization is that of Hierarchy. By definition, a Democracy is where all members are treated as equal. However, hardly any organization, including a democratic one, is sans Hierarchy. What does it mean to say that everyone is equal, but the leader is higher up than others? In my opinion, true Democracy will work if and only if the leader fully understands that he or she is in the role of serving the organization, instead of living under the illusion that the leader is "superior" to the rest of the organization.

Better Than Democracy

The democratic election tomorrow got me thinking about whether democracy is really the best form of Government. There is now an apparent consensus in the world that Democracy is indeed the "best" form of Government, because most countries have adopted a democratic government. There are undoubtedly problems with democracy - one oft-quoted flaw is the rule of the majority over the oppressed minority.

The philosopher Plato considered all the forms of Government - Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy - and rejected all of them as less than ideal. His disciple Aristotle actually believed that Aristocracy - Rule of the Best People - is the best form of Government.
There are other ways around these, such as Mixed Government, which consists of all the different forms of Government in different measures.

Inequality in a Democratic Organization

Page 231 talks about the problem of dealing with Inequality in Democratic Organizations, where members of the organizations are considered to be equal in the eyes of the organization. One way to prevent an entrenchment of power by one person is by offering the role of director or other high position to people on a rotational basis.

The problem of inequality in a democracy is not likely to disappear if there is a free market associated with the democracy, since capitalism always results in an unequal distribution of wealth among the citizens. Most of the nations of the world are turning towards capitalism for their economic structure (over 95% of the world's countries have a capitalist economy now, including Russia and China), and in every country with a capitalist economy, the gap between the rich and poor is steadily increasing, which does not brood well for equality between citizens.

Participation in a Democracy

Page 215 of the Textbook talks about how although the USA is technically a Democracy, voter turnout for presidential elections hovers around 50% in recent elections. This means that the president of the USA is sometimes elected by less than half the population - which is a poor measure of democracy, where the elected representatives are supposed to be "by the people" and not "by about half the people" :-) For instance, the 1996 election in which Bill Clinton was elected president saw a voter turnout of only 49%.

I believe that voter turnout in Australia is often higher than 90% because the country has a policy of compulsory voting - the voter who does not have a legitimate reason for not casting a ballot may be fined or imprisoned! That is a fine incentive to vote :-)