AWITI: Democracy has failed to deliver prosperity for the majority

Athenian Greeks originated the idea of the city-state as a community of citizens in which administration and the making of policy was the right and duty of the citizens.

Every citizen has an equal opportunity of having a share in government, through representation. The Athenian conception of the relationship between citizens and their representatives formed the basis for the secular state and the idea of society as a social contract.

Jeremy Bentham in England, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, and Thomas Jefferson in the United States of America were critical to laying the foundation for norms of social organisation based on rights of citizens and rule by the people, not authoritarians and monarchs.

Across Europe, citizens waged long and bloody struggles to secure their freedom from monarchs. Inspired by the Enlightenment and its ideals of individual liberty, reason and constitutional government, the English would forge the Bill of Rights and confer the power to govern on an elected parliament, not the crown.

The example of Europe overturning rule by monarchy inspired the decolonisation movements across Africa and Asia in the mid 20th Century.

In its ideal form democracy is designed to define and limit power and to promote legitimate government within a framework of freedom and justice.

At its core democracy promotes human wellbeing; making accessible the resources citizens need to advance ingenuity and enterprise. Among these are education, health, food, income, security and personal liberty.

There is growing and troubling evidence that democracy is failing. About 56 per cent of citizens in 17 advanced economies surveyed by Pew Research Centre in 2021 believe their political systems need major changes or a complete overhaul. A new NPR/Ipsos poll reveals that 64 per cent of Americans believe US democracy is in crisis and at risk of failing.

Brexit and the rise of Trump were perhaps the clearest signals that citizens, even in the countries that have long been considered the bastion of liberal democracy, value not its ideals but its fruits.

Dissatisfaction with how democracy functions is attributable to concerns about the economy, growing inequality and more recently about how governments have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To put in more colourful language; people don’t eat democracy. Democracy has not produced wealth and wellbeing for the citizens. A survey conducted by Aga Khan University in 2016 revealed the transactional relationship between Kenyan youth and the political process, where 40 per cent reported that they would only vote for the aspirant who bribed them.

Evidently, across the world citizens want something democracy, as they experience it, cannot deliver. They want prosperity; jobs, thriving businesses, healthcare, housing and financial security in old age. A pandemic-induced global recession has not helped.

In his New Year address to Kenyans President Uhuru Kenyatta observed that the zero-sum, winner-take-all political system introduced by the colonisers has privileged politics over leadership and entrenched poverty in Africa. In President Kenyatta’s view “we must rethink this model”.

President Kenyatta’s views are not outlandish. But what is the alternative to the current model of democracy?

The views expressed are the writer’s