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Representative democracy fosters political apathy?

  • 22-02-2014 10:27am
    #1
    KyussBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,797 ✭✭✭


    Very interesting (though warning: long) article by Yanis Varoufakis here, which gives a unique look at the history of democracy, and how he suspects that todays form of representative democracy, was - from its inception - formed in a way that breeds apathy among the wider population - with power over society transitioning away from the political sphere, and into the economic sphere (where the wider population have no real democratic representation).
    http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/02/21/can-the-internet-democratise-capitalism/

    There's too much in the article to provide any snippets that give a brief overview, but this gives some idea of what it's about:
    When designing policies (including e’democracy projects) to combat apathy, it may help to know what we are up against. For if democracy’s woes are repercussions of systemic features, the remedies will be effective only to the extent that they reach deeply into the roots of the systemic problem. So, what is the problem? It is, I wish to claim here, that our system of government is fundamentally oligarchic in nature, with add-on provisions for legitimising the oligarch’s authority through periodic endorsements by a passive electorate.

    I haven't studied the history of democracy or politics/political-theory, but there's a lot that makes sense with Yanis' view here, and it's obviously particularly relevant now more than ever, when it is not hard to find a multitude of problems with how democracies are being run worldwide - and solutions to those problems - yet general apathy among the public, leads to no reform; as well as how ever more power over society is being removed from democratic/public hands, and is being sold-off/privatized out of democratic reach.


    I don't know about his proposed solution though - his view is very insightful in nailing down the problems faced, but the idea of regaining more democratic economic control, through increasing worker-run business, has many problems and risks deflecting peoples efforts, away from needed political reform, and into a potentially ineffective area.


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