Analysis of the Quality of Democracy

This analysis is for a period starting the day after a Presidential election to the day of the next Presidential election for a made-up country.The two political parties in the country are the “Greens” and the “Yellows”.

Joseph Schumpeter wrote that “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide my means of a competitive struggle for the people´s vote” (Schumpeter 1976, page 269). He also wrote that democracy exists when there is “free competition [between candidates for political office] for a free vote” (Schumpeter 1976, page 271). He further wrote that there is an ideal competition when the competition has certain ideal characteristics (Schumpeter 1976, page 271). Inspired by Schumpeter, I believe that ideal competition is when the individuals who compete for political positions have received just as much help from bias in their surroundings. Then I mean that democracy is ideal.

This bias can come from the traditional media, social media, education and research, and from other types of organizations. It is how the bias impacts the political views and voting of the population that is of interest. I assume that how the political parties of the presidential candidates have benefited from bias and ideal impact (see below) throughout the term of office prior to election day affects how many votes the candidates get in the elections.

In table 1 it is presented how much the presidential candidates have benefited from the bias of their outside world. How I suppose that the candidates benefit from unfair financing is also reported.

The value in the purple field is a above 0 in the column for the greens. This means that the green presidential candidate benefited more from the problematic bias and problematic funding than the yellow candidate. The ideal is when the value in the purple field in whatever column is 0.

Improvements could mean that instead of showing a net benefit for green, some lines in the table show a net benefit for yellow. These are justified changes as long as the value in the purple field moves towards 0. Also, even if more individuals entitled to vote face a greater imbalance in bias that benefits the yellow candidate compared to bias that benefits the green one, this is justified if the value in the purple field moves towards 0. This is because in Schumpeter’s democracy model the priority is of the individuals competing for the presidency and not of the individuals who vote. Furthermore, if, for example, a newspaper benefit both candidates equally by its problematic bias or is in fact unbiased, it is desirable if the newspaper begins to benefit the yellow candidate more than the green candidate with problematic bias if it leads to the value in the purple field going towards 0.

Instead of analyzing problematic bias and unfair financing, the following is the analysis of the ideal impact on those entitled to vote for the same period of time.

The ideal influence is presented in table 2. It shows that ideal influence would have benefited the Yellow candidate instead of the Green one. That the ideal influence from organizations can benefit one candidate more than the other is since one candidate may have been more skilled at selling her- or himself and her or his ideas, has higher talent and ambition at acting as the President, has behaved better and has more rational ideas.

Conclusions

In the country, the Green candidate benefited by 120 units more from problematic bias and problematic party funding than the Yellow candidate. This is bad for democracy because in the ideal case the figure in the purple field should be 0. The value 120 means that democracy did not hold the highest quality.

If only the ideal impact was counted as made by all organizations in the country, the Yellow candidate would have benefited by 51 units according to the orange field in table 2. That the problematic benefit (120 units) is greater than the ideal benefit (51 units) and that the candidate from one party is benefited in the problematic case and the candidate from the other party is benefited in the ideal case would indicate that the problematic influence of organizations and problematic party financing has contributed to the formation of the wrong government. If one only looked at the ideal influence of the organizations and ideal party financing, a Yellow presidency tend to have been formed, but instead a Green government was tended to have been formed in its place.

The ratio between ideal to problematic favor is 51/120 = 0.43. Ideally, the ideal benefit should be much greater than the problematic one, perhaps above 4. For the country the ratio was low, even below 1.

If the quota had been very low for several consecutive terms in favor of the Green presidential candidates, it is justified to say that there are structural democratic quality problems - “democratic deficiency”, perhaps - in the country in favor of the Greens.

The quota also shows that there are major shortcomings in equality of opportunity if one compares the Yellow and Green presidential candidates’ relative ability to realize their political ideals. This is because not only the candidates' talent and ambition, etc., have played a role in who wins the presidency, but also the impact of problematic bias of organizations on the political views of those entitled to vote and problematic funding. Thus, one can say that the competition between the candidates is unfair. With the words of John Rawls, the democratic situation for the candidates has too little justice.

The fact that candidates, who are publicly examined and are voted on in general elections, according to these tables had relatively little power to decide which president it would be, suggests that the country would need a "power to the people" movement, which with peaceful methods would bring the value in the purple field in the table to 0.

How to move towards ideal democracy

Democracy is ideal when the value in the purple field is 0 because then none of the blocs have benefited more from problematic bias and problematic funding. When it comes to organizations, then only their ideal influence has influenced the election result. Bias that benefits Greens needs to decrease and bias that benefits Yellows needs to increase for this to happen. One way to go about this is by fewer greens and more yellows working in occupations where the population's political views are greatly influenced. This can be achieved by spreading this model of democracy so that greens in order to improve democracy seek out professions where minimal influence of opinions takes place and yellows in the same purpose seek out professions where the influence of opinions occurs to a large extent.

Development of the model

Lobbying is about how election results should be managed. An ideal election result can be distorted if lobbying means that the administration, the opposition and the government do not relate well to the latest election result. Therefore, problematic lobbying needs to benefit the Greens and Yellows equally.

In the analysis, in the ideal case, bias from only candidates to political posts has influenced the political views of the population. It is reasonable to extend this so that also elected politicians in government or in opposition can influence those entitled to vote with their bias. And an ideological debate and development can be facilitated if some of the organizations in addition to candidates and elected politicians can also influence those entitled to vote with their bias. The definition of these organizations should be limited so that the influence of candidates and elected politicians on those entitled to vote does not become insignificant. I call the individuals who are active in such selected organizations “ideologues”.

The analysis can also be divided into the time periods before and after an election. The analysis before an election should include the competitive situation for candidates for the presidency, for ideologues and for the funding of the candidates. The analysis after an election should focus on the competitive situation for the government and the opposition as well as for the situation of lobbying.

Sources

Schumpeter, Joseph, 1976: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Bungay, Suffolk: George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd (chapter 22).