Mandy @ POLI 333D

My best post: Has Democracy lost its Ground in the Euro Crisis?

Highlight:

“In face of the urgent debt crisis, should the Greek government officials be more resolute in deciding what steps to take, or should they listen to the public before taking any step, given that they are just representatives of the public in a democracy? According to this article, the Greek government should have no hesitation in choosing the latter option. This is because, “there are no wrong answers in a democracy,” meaning that as long as the choice is chosen by the public, it is a right choice.”

I seldom agree that the public is (overtly) unwise, but in the Greek case I may have to break my record. The fact that the public opposed to austerity measures, even if they would help the Greek economy, makes me puzzle over if the government should just ignore the public opposition and go for austerity. However, upon reading the macleans article, which suggests that even if the public is wrong, it is the duty of democracy to represent its view, I find myself wanting to criticize the Greek government and the Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who dismissed members of his government who vetoed the austerity package after the package was passed. I find the idea that “all choices chosen by the public are right” sad but unfortunately correct. After all, democracy has only promised to represent and act on the public views, rather than to provide the public the greatest common goods.

In sum, I really like this post because it reminds me (us?) of “what does it mean to be a democracy.”

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Jocelyn Mclean’s best post: Democracy In the News (9): Russia

Highlight:

“A recent poll shows that 8% of Russians see their country as democratic, with another 40% labeling Russia as “partly democratic”.

The article to which I am referring is written by Forbes, and seems to discuss these designations of citizen-identified democracy (or lack thereof) to what the author refers to as “Western style democracy”; that is, free press, freedom of speech, and religious freedoms. This was an interesting description to me as I suppose I assumed that a democracy is a democracy regardless of geographic location.”

This post gets me to think about whether a “democratic status” is conferred by the people or by certain measures (with certain democratic criteria). Somehow I feel that the former option is more valid, given the public is the ultimate beneficiaries (/subjects) of a democracy regime.  However, the Russian case, in which the public rated their government based on the “Western style democracy” (which I have always seen as a myth), reminds me that the public perception of the government is not limited to government-public interactions but also to interactions between the public and the foreign worlds (mainly through information exchange).

Finally, in response to Jocelyn’s comments that “I assumed that a democracy is a democracy regardless of geographic location,” I guess the author identifies a (fanciful) “Western style democracy” mainly because he wants to contrast Russian democracy with the North American ones, rather than to identify democracy based on a country’s geographic locations.

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