What are drawbacks of democracy?

Answer 1

I dont think there are any major drawbacks. What drawbacks exist are relatively minor.

Answer 2

One of the biggest problems with democracy in my own estimation is that the term is entirely too open to interpretation. It can mean something different to every man who thinks about it.

Apparently, it means the individuals right to self determination but that presupposes a consensus within a group about what is acceptable and what is not within a society. If there is no consensus then what you have is anarchy and anarchy hardly can be a guarantor of individual rights.

The Greeks tried to create a pure democracy and the results were disasterous. The Athenians basically undermined the government organized under Heracles and set the stage for their own defeat and conquest in so doing. I can see the same process taking shape here in America and quite frankly it frightens me.

I think the real problem is that many (or most) people think that America is a democracy when it isn't. America is a democraticaly elected republic based upon law and the constitution. That's a far cry from a democracy.

In any society there has to be some power structure. This is so even in the most basic of social elements, the family. It is the nature of the power structure to limit the right of the individual to express him or her self to those behaviors (and to some lesser extent those thoughts and attitudes) which the general consensus agrees are acceptable. Thus it must perforce limit freedom.

Thus, the idea of democracy immediately presents us with a paradox. How can you have freedom and be restricted at the same time?


-Seamus MacNemi

Answer 3

The drawbacks of democracy are the same as why the founding fathers of the US prevented a true democracy from taking place in the constitution. The democracy is a mob. When you have a democracy you end up with a press or rhetoric controlled society that responds to emotion based on a mob like mentality. The fall of Greece was often blamed not on lack of military or technology, but rather an inner struggle of authority because they were a absolute democracy.

Answer 4

The struggle to keep the masses educated on how their politicians actually will affect their daily life is a drawback. Propaganda is very powerful, average folks are busy with life, and the real issues that affect us average people get buried. In a Democracy, people can actually vote against their own real interests and not realize it.

"Information is the currency of Democracy." Thomas Jefferson

Answer 5

Pure democracy can be akin to mob rule. Our Constitution was written to give us a "representational democracy" in order that people who could devote time to studying and debating issues would rule. It also was aimed at protecting minorities from "the tyranny of the majority." Research the sad history of Athens when they lost their war with Sparta 2500 years ago, or of France when they chopped off the heads of Louis and Marie-Antoinette.

The Greek philosopher Plato (Socrates student and Aristotle's teacher), had contempt for democracy. In his classic "The Republic," he gave as reasons for this contempt: "that the many lack the intelligence and knowledge needed for governing; that they care only for money; that they are dominated by bodily appetites and by volatile and unpredictable emotions; and that they are easily manipulated by demagogues. All these characteristics of the masses make them unfit to govern; yet democracy gives them the right to govern. ... When you are in ill health, says Plato, you go to the most competent medical specialist you can find. You don't ask everyone you meet on the street for advice, you don't take a vote among as many people as possible to determine what your illness is or what to do about it. Why is it, then, that with regard to problems of the body politic affecting the health of the state, ... we consult the advice of the ignorant many?" [1]

"In a democracy the people choose their leaders, not because of their superior knowledge, but on all sorts of irrelevant grounds -- a humble background, a mellifluous voice, a leonine mane. This is the basic reason for Plato's castigation of democracy. The art of ruling, which ought to be the art of determining what is best, becomes in a democracy the art of flattery, the art of appealing to the passions of the mass." [2]

The views of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes expressed in his plays "Acharnians" and "Wasps" was that democracy suffered from inefficiency, indecision, and irresponsibility. [3]

But our representational democracy has other defects. It takes so much money to get people to vote for you that it lends itself to corruption. In politics the Golden Rule has become, "he who has the gold, rules."

In his idealized form of governance that Plato espoused in the "Republic," he tried to prevent corruption by requiring the ruling elite to give up all property and family ties and live an austere, monk-like, communal existence.

Answer 6

Slow for a democracy to respond to events

Voters rely on information sources that are not unbaised

Intelligently deciding on complex issues takes more effort that most people can afford to dedicate.

Answer 7

We are only as free as society allows the weakest of us to enjoy their freedoms. Or so said US Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the late 1890's. In the USA we do not have a "true" democracy. And the poor lack freedoms of their alleged constitutional rights.

Answer 8

Liberals with the freedom of speech
The only drawback I can see and I can live with it.

Answer 9

Plato, my favourite philosopher, had said 2,500 years ago, that in democracy the horse and the donkey are treated the same way.

Answer 10

Miscommunication and misinterpretation.
Batman and Robin of the west say it's " democracy."
The joker of the east say "Mind your own business"
The young ones say"Freedom"
The real thing that taste like coke is "Universal living" in planet of apes.
Do we understand how we keep on throwing pots and pans in bashing up one another like primitive living human kind still living in caves in planet of apes.