Proposition 2- Liberal Representative Democracy brings about stability

In my post, I would be explaining what liberal representative democracy is and how it can achieve stability in a country.

Representative democracy is a form of democracy where people vote for representatives who share similar ideals. The representatives form an independent ruling body charged with the responsibility of acting in the people's interest. Representative democracy is the more popular form of democracy. (I will explain why later) In many representative democracies, representatives are chosen in elections.

In addition to representative democracy, there is liberal democracy, where representatives are elected in free, secret-ballot, multi-party elections. Also, the power of representatives in a liberal democracy is curtailed by a constitution such as an independent judiciary.

I see that liberal representative democracy is able to achieve stability in a country if certain important assumptions are made. The underlying assumption is: All parties strive to bring stability to the country because…
1. The public is wise and able to identify the party who addresses their concerns best, of which, stability is of high priority.
2. There is suitable competition among parties. All parties try to outshine each other through addressing public’s concerns adequately. There is presence of choice for the public to choose the party whose ideals are most accurately represented. Parties are also of suitable influence and funding to ensure fair competition
3. There is a functional judiciary which administers justice and resolves disputes. The judiciary is able to keep the ruling party in check.

Of course these assumptions may seem difficult to meet in real life as they are theoretical. However, I see several countries which have fully functional representative democracy, most notably, the United States.

United States adopts a 2-party system, since the 1790s the country has been run by two major parties, the Republican and Democratic parties. The Republican Party is considered to be more liberal of the two parties and the Democratic Party, more conservative. The differences in ideologies of the parties offer voters a choice. This is unlike Singapore, where voters tend to vote for the PAP simply due to lack of capable opposition. Having one major ruling party hampers the reliability of the democracy. If the one party gets complacent and neglects work, there is no alternative for the people.

In the US, the Supreme Court of the United States acts as the judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President. The justices have indefinite tenure. In the Supreme Court of the United States, justices do not represent or receive official endorsements from political parties. Their infinite appointment and lack of political leaning ensure that their judgment is fair.

The United States show that the implementation of a fully functional liberal representative democracy is possible. Obviously, it is not perfect (complications may arise but I shall not elaborate here) but more than capable of ensuring stability in the country.

Liberal representative democracy can also resolve the problem of conflicting parties. One of the advantages of representative democracy is that the representatives are experts, who are supposedly, able to look beyond self-interests and look at decisions which can benefit the society as a whole and ensure that minority rights and public welfare is upheld. Ideally, a party’s sole aim would be to provide stability in the country and not to play ethnic politics or undermine other parties. If any party tries to undermine another party, the judiciary would have to stop it. Sri Lanka is an example of a country with a dysfunctional judiciary. Once again, this is fully theoretical.

In conclusion, I agree with Kah Khang’s earlier point that the success of democracy depends on its implementation, if the above-mentioned assumptions are all true, democracy is able to create stability. Thus, I also agree with Yiyan’s point that democracy has great potential to create stability; it simply depends on how well it is implemented.