In Ancient Greece for example, the exclusion of women, slaves and foreigners from political participation displayed how democracy can be an unrepresentative form of government. In the modern world, however, "the people" generally constitute all adults (although the age of adulthood varies from country to country). Today's democracy is therefore, closer to the theory of democracy in general.
However, because of the popularity of this term, many states claim to be democratic without actually following the principles of democracy. Pakistan is a pertinent example. Although this country aims to achieve political equality, we are far from it. Military intervention becomes a necessity every decade which indicates the weakness of our "democratic" state. Furthermore, although the government is meant to be for the people, corruption runs rampant and quite often the voices of the minorities are left unheard. In cases such as these, democracy then simply becomes "the tyranny of the majority."
2 comments:
I do not agree that the situation of Pakistan can be termed as "the tyranny of the majority". The tyranny of majority implies that decisions on all issues are made by the majority population. Indeed, it is true that in such a case voices of the minorities are not heard and such is the case in Pakistan. However, in Pakistan, even the majority has little say in government affairs as the majority has negligible power.
In Pakistan, power resides with the ruling elite and all other members of society, be it the majority or religious minorities, are marginalized. Therefore, in practice, Pakistan is far from being a state with tyranny of the majority
^I disagree. For example punjabis being the majority will always talk in favor of decisions in their interest whether other minorities accept them or not hence if a particular decision interests PML-N, it will get it approved from the legislature as they have the majority of seat(voters) from their party.
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