2 - The State and Dissent: The Limits of Democracy

Summary

Liberal democracy is in principle designed to prevent the growth of authoritarianism in the political sphere, with governments being subject to the continual scrutiny of opposition parties and regular elections offering voters the option of change if they become dissatisfied with the record of the office-holders. Various extra-governmental checks and balances have been built into the process, such as an independent judiciary and a free press with the licence to hold government to account through an ongoing critique of its policies; it is always a bad sign when a government starts to bully either of these institutions, an indication that it is not respecting the system as it should and may not be worthy of the electorate’s trust as guardian of the democratic order. One-party rule, as exists in various countries in the non-Western world, is the supposed antithesis to this model and it has a notoriously poor track record as regards respecting human rights; but a similar effect can be achieved even under a liberal democracy, enabling governments to entrench themselves for substantial periods and to operate in a largely unchecked manner during those. In the ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) method of electoral politics, it is possible to win a majority large enough to neuter any opposition in a parliament or national assembly – as the Conservative government in the UK currently demonstrates. Critics have called this kind of outcome ‘elective dictatorship’ to indicate the power it grants for the length of the electoral period, where governments effectively have free rein to curb dissenting voices by passing restrictive legislation (on the media, for example, which is always a convenient whipping boy for a government wanting to demonstrate its power). Such situations reveal the limits of democracy in the way that they reduce the effectiveness of dissent, and they have generated debate on the merits, or otherwise, of alternative systems such as proportional representation (as well as the various forms this can take).