The Political System Commonly Termed ‘Democracy’
The political system commonly termed ‘democracy’ is more accurately described as a representative oligarchy. In this system, the rule of the majority is executed by a minority — a few individuals, usually political party members, who are purported to represent the majority. These representatives are typically elected by party members, who then present candidates to the broader electorate for selection.
Political parties are institutions that organise around distinct generalised configurations of meaning — different focal points of attention, interpersonal values, and construals of experience. Within the system, elections involve the selection of candidates based on their alignment with the electorate’s values. Therefore, electioneering fundamentally involves political parties and their allies manipulating the value systems of the electorate. This manipulation often takes the form of inducing fear, promising material satisfaction, and tapping into value disequilibria. Such tactics are central to marketing strategies in consumer-capitalist societies.
The publication of pre-election polls serves as a form of monitoring — akin to how consciousness monitors the internal state of an individual. Just as consciousness can influence future behaviour, pre-election polls can alter the future behaviour of the electorate, shaping the trajectory of political campaigns and the electorate’s voting decisions.
Representative Oligarchy vs. Democracy
The undemocratic nature of representative oligarchies stems from their inherent oligarchic structure — a select few rule over the majority — and from the representative character of the system itself. In a genuine democracy, it is the community as a whole that rules. On the supervenience model, government is the emergent result of interactions within the community, rather than the actions of a select group of political representatives. The representative system fails to capture this broader, emergent dynamic.
The principal shortcoming of representative systems with respect to democracy is their inability to enable a single individual to accurately and fully represent another. No representative can encapsulate the diverse, multifaceted perspectives of an entire electorate, let alone the entirety of a nation’s population. Because government consists of the interactions between representatives, their actions are shaped by the context of other representatives’ actions, rather than by the direct will of the electorate. Thus, the decisions made by representatives are dynamically distinct from the intentions and desires of the community they purportedly represent.
Moreover, the international system of politics — where representatives of different nations interact — becomes even more distant from the lived experience and diversity of the people they are meant to represent.
Complex Systems Perspective on Representative Oligarchy
From the standpoint of complex systems theory, the political system of representative oligarchy constitutes a relationship between two distinct dynamic systems: the represented and the representing. The degree to which the political system can be considered democratic is determined by the openness between these two systems and the extent of control that the represented population exerts over the actions of the representatives.
Footnotes:
[1] If the majority of the electorate is uninformed and selfish, then the organising principle of the political system is ignorance and selfishness. This creates a dynamic where the ignorance and selfishness of the electorate become resources that politicians can strategically exploit.
[2] Moreover, directing the populace rather than reflecting their views is a violation of the principle of representation. Effective representation requires that the actions of representatives align with the collective will of the represented.