Is Democracy Overrated? (Essay Sample)

IS DEMOCRACY OVERRATED?
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Is democracy overrated?
Democracy refers to the type of government system where the supreme power is vested in the common population. The people or their elected leaders, through a transparent election directly exercise the power of the government (Sütçü, 2011). In many countries all over the world, democracy has continued to form prevalence over other types of government such as dictatorship, communism, and monarchy. However, various limitations that have affected the social and economic aspects of the people show that democracy is overrated.
Although democracy is associated with enhanced creativity emanating from the participation and intense engagement of many people in different projects, the system has a flaw of encouraging short-term goals among leaders. As much as democratization is considered a pathway to promote state-building, which greatly relies on long term goals, the process can result to trade-offs that might cause short-comings in the actualization of long-term goals. The complex political process associated with democracy plays a critical role in creating tensions in the implementation of long-term goals. Such situations cause the adoption of policies that promote short-term goals, which are easily achievable in the presence of policies tension (Singh, 2001). Democracy should be an element that promotes state building through reconciling state’s development policies and political process. This can remove political bureaucratic redundancy that is a major obstacle in the implementation of long-term goals in many countries.
Since time immemorial, democracy and escalating political corruption has shown a positive linear relationship, which in turn corrodes the democratic process, norms, and mechanisms. What defines an action or practice as corrupt is the corrosion of some features that allows democracy to thrive. Evidently, political corruption is “real” during elections, especially in Africa, a continent characterized by a big gap between the poor and the rich. Leaders tend to abuse their democratic rights by buying out voters. During election campaigns, potential leaders, who are mostly the rich people, stash out large amount of money to fuel bribery and coercion. Ultimately, voters abuse their democratic rights by accepting briberies and voting for leaders who offer money and promise favors after being elected to political offices. This result to incompetent and unfit leaders assuming the same offices (Schopf, 2011).The need to recover money used by these leaders will form the basis of corruption through illegal dealing such as drug trafficking and misuse of public funds.
Notably, democracy is associated with unlimited freedom to the people, where legalization of socially unacceptable behaviors such as homosexuality, marijuana, and concealed carry of guns is evident. This is because the belief that national laws are based on values upheld by citizens of a country has been eroded (Saunders, 2012). As a result, people are openly breaking the set rules and regulation, leading to increased crime. The carrying of guns, which is good illustration of unlimited freedom to exercise democratic r...