Essay on Elite Democracy Definition

In 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed by six countries including Belgium, France, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and West Germany, leading to the creation of the European Economic Community and the establishment of a customs union. Those six countries were the founding members of the European Union. Afterward, more treaties and agreements were signed, and eventually, the number of member states rose to 28 till the time when this paper was written, the United Kingdom had not officially left the European Union yet. But Brexit is currently going on with a lot of negotiations and great uncertainties for the Brexit deal. Three Prime Ministers had been working on this troublesome issue without any outcomes. The disagreement among the Parliament and different parties has been so intense that people started to wonder whether Brexit could be a positive game changer for people’s benefits in Britain or if it would only bring damage to the state’s economy and national democracy. This paper will argue that the referendum was only a simulacrum of democracy and did nothing to solve problems if the United Kingdom stayed in the European Union, undemocratic supranational institutions, which further undermined the national sovereignty hazard.

The European Union is an undemocratic organization that forces diktats on European countries, which creates definite losses for countries with better economic conditions like the United Kingdom. Leading Leave campaigners, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Gisela Stuart described the EU as “a dysfunctional bureaucracy that has no proper democratic oversight”.

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Within the European Union, two institutions work together for the legislature: the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. The Council of European Union, also called a Council of Ministers, consists of 28 seats, one from each member state. According to Art 16(2) TEU: “The Council shall consist of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, who may commit the government of the Member State in question and cast its vote.” They have the legislative power and policy-making power across the Union. The European Parliament was directly elected every five years by European citizens since 1979. Each member state elects several MPs roughly proportional to the national population. The European Parliament shares law-making power with the Council of Ministers; it votes on the confidence of the European Commission and questions and investigates the Commission. The European Commission, sometimes called “the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels”, has a monopoly of the power of legislative initiative, which could be seen as the Executive of the EU.

The European Union does recognize the issue of “democratic deficit” in its glossary of EU terms. It defines it as follows:

A term used by people who argue that the EU institutions and their decision-making procedures suffer from a lack of democracy and seem inaccessible to the ordinary citizen due to their complexity. The real EU democratic deficit seems to be the absence of European politics. EU voters do not feel that they have an effective way to reject a “government”, they do not like, and to change, in some ways, the course of politics and policy (European Union,2017)

It is reasonable to say that it is hard to involve democracy in the decision process in an effective way. The low voter turnout for the European Parliament elections demonstrates the high dissatisfaction level in the European Union.

Under QMV, a law passes if it is backed by 16 out of 28 countries that make up at least 65% of the EU population. The UK has 13% of the EU population, so gets a 13% vote share.

Based on research by the London School of Economics, the United Kingdom was on the winning side 87% of the time between 2009-15. Thus, the British government does have to accept some EU decisions it didn’t vote for. One of the most high-profile losses in recent years, was when the chancellor, George Osborne, was outvoted on an EU law to restrict bankers’ bonuses. In this case, more than three-quarters of the British public, including 68% of Conservative voters, supported the EU proposal.

During the referendum, one of the greatest voices was that the integration of the EU led to parliamentary sovereignty. According to Lord Denning, a famous English Judge, our sovereignty has been taken away by the European Court of Justice... Our courts must no longer enforce our national laws. They must enforce Community law... No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses—to the dismay of all. Based on the Parliament’s website the United Kingdom, parliamentary sovereignty makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.

This may lead to the final Brexit going on. However, through Brexit, the so-called victory of democracy by many right-wing and EU-sceptic media platforms and politicians could not be reached and the democratic deficit could further exacerbate the current UK system.

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union by 51.9% to 48.1%. The results of both sides were quite close, with around one million vote difference. This may be considered the idea of the majority, but it could also be seen as the rejection of wills of almost half of the population with Wales and North Ireland choosing to remain in the EU. During another referendum in 1975, 67% voted to stay in European Communities. This time, the narrowness of the simple majority decided the outcome. Under the circumstance of a constitutional referendum, two-thirds of the vote would be needed. As Brexit is comparable to a constitutional amendment, a simple majority should not be effective.

The referendum did not help revive democracy among all people. The turnout was 72.2%, which did not express all population. The rate should be higher than 75% to make the referendum effective. If the turnout rate is low and Brexit wins a weak majority to support the outcome of the referendum, then this means that a small percentage of British voters can determine the fate of the entire country. For the usual prime minister elections, this is acceptable. If people are dissatisfied with the prime minister, they can be elected four years later, but Brexit is completely different from the prime minister. For a British citizen, participating in the referendum on Brexit might be the most important vote in his/her life. In this sense, stricter requirements would be needed for the referendum.

One of the main criticisms of referendums is that they can be the subject of widely distorting campaign expenditure, with voters subjected to heavily disproportionate advertising from one side of the campaign. Another issue is the provision of information. Here of course there are allegations of lies or at least exaggerations by the main campaigns.

From a bigger picture, the national democracy could not be reached simply by leaving the EU. Democracy means more than giving people the power to vote in elections and referendums. What matters more is to get them into the actual decision-making process and their opinions matter during political debates and negotiations. They can always count on their leaders rather than be used as tools for vote procedures. From a regional and national perspective, people’s voices should be heard and respected.

The UK democratic system claims to serve the people and should solve the problem for the people. However, due to the disputes between the party and the House caused by 'Brexit', the British government was unable to advance other domestic agendas, causing the economy to be on the verge of recession, business confidence to fall, and people to complain.

Representative democracy is essentially an elite democracy, but this kind of elite democracy is getting further away from the core of democracy, the people, and it is increasingly unable to solve the practical problems the society is facing right now, leading to bigger disappointment with elite politics. It represents the interests of the bourgeoisie. The political parties in the system represent different factions of the ruling class. They seek to control public opinion and provide the 'illusion' of democracy.

The reason why so many people asked for a second referendum soon after the outcome is because of the internal crux of modern democracy. Modern democracy originated in ancient Greek city-states by Athens from the 5th century BC to the 4th century BC; the city had about 40,000 citizens with voting rights at its peak. Democracy took root in ancient Greek city-states, mainly because there of a small number of people and the high similarity of the cultures in their communities.

According to Aristotle in Aristotle's Politics:

Since we see that every city-state is a sort of community and that every community is established for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what they believe to be good), it is clear that every community aims at some good, and the community which has the most authority of all and includes all the others aims highest, that is, at the good with the most authority. This is what is called the city-state or political community.

Compared with Athenian democracy, the carrying unit of representative democracy nowadays is not a community but a complex society. Their major difference is the participatory parties. Today, the large-scale practice of democracy at the level of sovereign states has completely separated from the original soil at the time of its birth.

In the contemporary world, except for a few examples of Singapore, “city-states” do not exist: “city-states” are replaced by “city” and “state.” Today, “country” and “city” are not homogenous communities that are connected by “internality”, but completely heterogeneous strangers. The classical 'city-state' can only be compared to small 'villages' or small 'streets/communities' today. In democracies nowadays, citizens are almost always composed of hundreds of millions of individuals who are completely unfamiliar with each other in an 'external' relationship.

This has led to one of the dilemmas in today’s world: structurally political indifference. Each individual’s vote is insignificant, which directly leads to diffuse political indifference in contemporary democracies. If a person was seriously responsible for the votes in his hands, this 'political right' would not be an easy task: to vote in the referendum, that person needs to read enough background information, and expert analysis, to understand the various, advantages and disadvantages of staying and leaving EU, make their judgments on whether or not to leave the European Union. But American political critic Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) observed nearly a century ago that voters would not have the time and energy to thoroughly examine problems from all angles. The reason is very simple, if you want to do this, you need to take extra time and attention to deal with the daily work and life affairs of contemporary people who are already full of power and high pressure. At the same time, when this 'sacred and responsible' vote is cast, its weight is slightly insignificant. Therefore, political indifference is not a diffuse phenomenon that is difficult to understand in modern Western democratic societies.

The further paradox of this dilemma is: 'In a democracy, a wide choice of non-selection is itself a dangerous choice.' Unselected, in the modern Western democracy, it is a 'choice' (i.e. Choose not to choose), and it is a very bad kind of 'choice' because it makes 'democratic autocracy' no longer a contradiction.

This dilemma has led to the core problem of modern democracy: when the host of democratic politics is no longer a classical city-state but a modern sovereign state, how to make it truly 'participatory democracy', how to Arouse the active participation of citizens? Ancient Rome during the Republican period was generally not considered a democracy because it decisively refused to give everyone the right to vote; however, it may be more 'democratic' than today's democratic society because all citizens must actively participate in public life and political affairs.