Thursday, May 29, 2008

blog 2

Does democracy create stability in a society?

Every country in the world hopes to achieve stability in society, many tries to do so by adopting a democratic government system. In this essay, I would discuss if democracy really creates stability in a society.

Stability can be classified into mainly three areas, social, economic and political. Democracy is an internal factor determining stability in a society.

Socially, stability can be achieved through a democratic government as rights of minority are being protected in a democratic government; where social stability would be achieved when minority rights are being preserved. From the case of Singapore we can see that social stability is largely being present as democracy happens in Singapore, each ethnic group has its own representative in the parliament which would speak for their own ethnic group. Also, we can see from the present United States, social conflicts are infrequently spotted as US has a democratic government, the African American’s rights are also being protected, as can be seen from Obama’s case, a black also has the potential to become a president in a democratic society like US.

Economically, stability can be achieved through democracy as people have the rights to vote for the policies which would benefit them best economically. Economic stability can be achieved with democracy because there is freedom to change for the better, where people can choose for what benefit them best. For example, US has maintained economic stability by making US of less value recently for the oil crisis, this policy made has helped US maintained economic stability without being damaged hard by the crisis. This is possible because of the democratic society in US, where the parliament representing the people can vote for policies which would benefit them best.

Politically, stability can be achieved through democracy as people vote for their
political leaders, where the leaders would definitely be of high values and people would respect them. Since the leaders are being voted, there would be minimum cases of political instability as people respect their leaders. From the case of England we can see that political stability is being maintained ever since democracy was being introduced into England, there are no signs of political instability such as rioting or a weak party being the government.

There are also grounds to disagree with the statement. From the cases of many countries, we have seen the failure of democracy creating stability in societies.

An economic instability case has happened in the US before, which is the Great Depression. US was also under a democratic rule, but this great blow in economy still happened despite being a democratic country. This shows failure in democracy to prevent and resolve economic crisis.

Politically, Thailand suffered from political instability despite being a democratic government. The Armed government took over from Thaksin, which lead to a long period of political instability in Thailand. This was caused by a sudden change of stand from the Thai, where the people originally supported him were against him because of many factors.

Socially, in Sri Lanka, social instability was suffered for a very long period of time. The Sinhalese and the Tamils’ conflict was not resolved despite being a democratic government.

In conclusion, I agree with this statement. As can be seen from many countries, political, economic and social instabilities were maintained for a long period of time, such as US, Singapore, the European countries, were all able to maintain stability with the help of democracy. Where the instabilities happening in various countries are very short-termed and can be resolved shortly. Comparing democracy with other forms of government such as communist and socialist, democracy definitely gives more choice for people to vote for what they want. When the people are happy with their government, stability is naturally achieved in any country.

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