Democracy Creates Stability in a Society: English Blog Assignment Term 2

In my opinion, the ability of democracy creating stability in a society depends not on the ideal of democracy itself but more on the way the elected governments implement them and the response they get from the populace. This essay will thus attempt to prove this point.

Stability has three aspects, namely social, economic and political stability. I will thus be using these criteria to judge the stability in a nation.

First, democracy can create stability in a society. The ideal of democracy is that the people have a voice in deciding what they want and majority of such voices decide what ultimately gets done. It also gives opportunity to people to dispel their resentment as it acts as a channel to vent their dissatisfactions. Switzerland, which is one of the world's most stable countries, is a direct democracy where many things other than elections are also decided by public polls. It is the closest existing form to the ideal democracy. Switzerland is renowned for its economic stability in terms of prosperity, growth figures and GDP. There is social stability in the form of peace, and political stability in terms of absence of political struggles and conflicts. It is an ideal example to prove that democracy can bring about stability in a society. Liberal representative democracy is slightly different from direct democracy in that here the representatives elected by the populace will represent them as their voice. In the case of the United States, which uses this form of democracy, there is also economic stability in that it is a world super economy; politically stable because there are no multiparty conflicts since there are only two parties; and social stability because the people there lead a very comfortable life. Here too we see that democracy allows for the society to have stability.

On the contrary, democracy may not create stability in a society. Sri Lanka is a democracy that has been plagued by ethnic conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese. There is little social stability with so many daily skirmishes. There is little political stability because the LTTE and other Tamil activists are always scheming against the Sinhalese government. Because of all the problems, there is also no economic stability because the pandemonium literally makes investors run for their money. One of the causes of the conflict is the elected government itself. From the very beginning, the Sinhalese and Tamils voted for parties of their own ethnicity in the elections. Because the Sinhalese are the majority, the Sinhalese parties always win. This resulted in perennial resentment in the Tamil camp. From this, we see that there is also a loophole in the philosophy of democracy. While it tries to be Utilitarian in nature, just because more people are happy on one side not necessarily mean that the resentful minority can be disregarded. In a situation like this democracy only adds fuel to the fire of instability.

While the ideal of democracy may or may not create stability in a society, conditions may not be suitable to implement democracy at all in some countries. For example, it could not be implemented in China after the fall of the monarchy because of the state of despair at that time. Someone had to come down and make things work, because conflicting opinions could aggravate chaos. Socialism helped to consolidate and lift the society from the depths of the doldrums. India is the largest democracy in the world (population wise) and is one of the few Asian nations that practice it too.
India is a good example to argue on the pros and cons of the democratic system, as it offers sufficient ground to argue either way. While democracy and its companion capitalistic beliefs have jet propelled India into a super economy and given it economic stability, this increased capitalism has widened the income gap at the same time. Thus the socioeconomic status of the bottom half of the society degrades while the upper half blissfully blossoms. This is expected to impact the social cohesiveness and might lead to things getting out of control. Too much freedom/liberty also wreaks havoc in the political scene because there are so many different parties with different ideals, which paralyses the functioning of the government sometimes, and often results in hung decisions. There is thus little political stability.

While the ideal of democracy is same, it works very well in Switzerland and US, but fails miserably in countries like Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland and is in a limbo in countries like India. This only leads to my strong belief that practical implementation of democracy plays a key role on the success or failure of it regardless of where it is implemented. Needless to add, the mindset of the people in the country where it is implemented also plays a key role in it.

Therefore whether or not democracy creates stability in a society is a subjective development and can vary depending on various factors that surround each situation. While ideology sets the direction, the end result depends on how it is implemented and how well it is received and followed. Therefore democracy itself may not create stability in a society, but other factors have to work in its favour for it to succeed. Otherwise, it could lead to some unexpected results.