The political system commonly termed ‘democracy’ is more consistently described as ‘representative oligarchy’, since it involves the rule of the majority by a minority — a few who are purported to represent the majority. This minority typically consists of political party members that are elected by political party members and then proffered by the party to be elected by those in the general community who are both allowed and inclined to vote. Political parties are institutions formed around different generalised configurations of meaning: different foci of attention, different interpersonal values, different construals of experience.
Elections involve the selection of variant candidates on value. That is, candidates are selected according to the values of those who vote.[1] Accordingly, electioneering involves political parties and their allies opportunistically manipulating the value systems of the electorate. This can include inducing fear of the unfamiliar, promising to satisfy the desire for material resources, and so on. Inducing value disequilibria in the community is a basic principle of all marketing of goods and services in consumer-capitalist societies (see further, below).
The publishing of pre-election polls is the monitoring of the current state of the electorate, just as consciousness is the monitoring of the current state of the individual person. And in just the same way that consciousness can alter the probabilities of the future behaviour of an individual, publishing pre-election polls can alter the probabilities of the future behaviour of the electorate.
The undemocratic character of representative oligarchies derives partly from them being oligarchic, on the one hand, and from being representative, on the other. In a genuine democracy, it is the whole community that rules. On the supervenience model, this means that government supervenes as a level of organisation on the interactions of all the individuals in the community — not just the interactions of a select few inside and outside the governing political party.
The principal shortcoming of representation with respect to democracy is that it is not possible for one person to accurately and entirely represent one other person, let alone the rich diversity of all the people of even one electoral division.[2] Because government involves the interactions of representatives, the actions taken by individual representatives are actions selected in the context of the actions of other representatives, rather than actions selected by the constituency being represented, and so are dynamically distinct from the wishes of the community. With representatives of nations interacting with representatives of other nations, the system of international politics that supervenes is far removed from the diversity of people purported to be represented.
From a complex systems perspective, the political system of representative oligarchy is a relation between two distinct dynamic systems, the represented and the representing. The degree to which the political system is democratic depends on the degree of openness between the two systems, and the degree of control the represented have over the representing.
Footnotes:
[1] If the majority of the electorate is uninformed and selfish, then the organising principle of that political system is ignorance and selfishness. The ignorance and selfishness of the electorate is a resource for politicians to exploit.
[2] Note also that directing the people being represented, rather than reflecting their views, violates the principle of representation.