“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a
sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
― James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American
Liberty
Representative democracy is a system of government whereby
ordinary people elect officials of the government who are then mandated to take
decisions on behalf of the public and represent it’s views. While in theory this
form of government seems to offer empowerment and liberty, in reality the
workings of this system make this a difficult ideal to achieve, especially in
third world countries such as Pakistan.
Firstly, representative democracies are thought to reflect
the views of the entire population as everyone gets an equal chance to vote and
elect officials .However, this argument is rendered invalid when we consider
the premise of the irrationality of the average voter. Not only are most people
uninformed about political issues, they hold strong biases about the issues
that they have knowledge of. Moreover voting preferences are strongly characterized
by prejudice. For example many voters tend to be influenced by personalities and
short lived political campaigns rather than manifestos. Furthermore, in
countries such as Pakistan there are external pressures that influence voter decisions
such as family bias and economic pressures.
Moreover, the electoral system usually puts forth candidates
that are either middle class or elite. This means that power is no equally
distributed as most persons in power belong to the group of the hegemonic elitist
minority rather than the majority.
In conclusion, all these factors prevent democracies from truly
representing people or achieving the ideals of equality.
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