Is democracy in crisis?
The problem with the article Our democracies are facing a crisis (18 May) is that the writer, David Runciman, rightly bemoans the rise of populist demagogues including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump but fails to recognise democracy’s strength. Too much commentary treats democracy like a single entity, ignoring the fact that many so-called democracies, such as those in Russia and Turkey, are not worthy of the name.
Democracy as a political system is extraordinarily resilient, reviving after all sorts of authoritarian challenges for one simple reason: it works to the advantage of a majority of citizens. I am encouraged by the fact that the top 10 democracies in a qualitative index created by the Economist Intelligence Unit, including Norway, New Zealand, Ireland and Switzerland, are among the most economically and socially successful countries in the world.
Obviously voters can screw up and even shoot themselves in their collective foot – witness Brexit and Donald Trump – and social media, employed disruptively by demagogues, complicates matters. But free and fair votes are within the power of true democracies; and given the chance the electorate will “throw the bums out” and do what’s best for the majority.
Michael Craig
Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada
• A pivotal problem for democracies associated with the evolution of elections is the growing tendency in democratic politics to focus not on the responsibility of citizens, but on party leaders. This reduces elections to personality cults and democracy’s philosophy to a sham.
Citizens in Switzerland vote on a multitude of issues – nationally, regionally, and locally – year in and year out, as a matter of course. Their system of proportional representation makes it highly unlikely for one party to control their government.
Switzerland does not need a leader because its constitution empowers citizens to step in at any time to make a binding decision on any subject. If they don’t like it, they can only blame themselves.
André Carrel
Terrace, British Columbia, Canada
It’s not luck. It’s politics
I have always found Oliver Burkeman’s pieces interesting and sometimes provocative but You’re a success? Well lucky you (25 May) is outrageous. Perhaps all that psychology has gone to his head.
The idea of brute luck has been around for a very long time. At its extreme – and Burkeman seems to position himself there – it’s an apologia for institutionalised inequity, whether that be racism, sexism or what we misleadingly describe as inequality. To argue in the light of the overwhelming evidence of discrimination in all its forms that “your social situation is a matter of luck” is a travesty. Politics is about who gets what, where, when and how. The premature death and grinding poverty that remain endemic in our society is a political choice. Luck has nothing to do with it.
Neil Blackshaw
Barbizon, France
Briefly
• In The fool in the White House (1 June), Will Hutton writes: “For 70 years, it [the US] has sustained a world order that ... was at least an order with predictable patterns of international behaviour, along with a bias to openness, trade and peace.” One predictable pattern was that a small, helpless country would be attacked by the US: Korea, Vietnam, numerous Central and South American countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria.
Clearly the US may not have been a threat to world peace, but the US certainly caused a lot of violence. Trump uses words. Other US presidents just attacked.
Art Campbell
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• The Guardian Weekly has been tireless in its efforts to draw attention to the environmental crisis facing this planet. The issue of 27 April contained no fewer than four articles addressing aspects of the crisis, including Laura Barton’s stirring piece on Daniel Webb’s Everyday Plastic installation at Margate’s Dreamland. But so long as the Weekly itself continues to be delivered – as it is throughout Australasia – in a plastic wrapper, the paper’s parade of indignation is bound to appear hypocritical.
Michael Neill
Auckland, New Zealand
• Jack Latimore’s report on renaming European names with their authentic aboriginal titles is welcome news and a long overdue recognition of territorial ownership (25 May). Sadly, this well-intended gesture can only be seen as cosmetic until Australia has the courage and the will to follow New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and Canada’s Royal proclamation for Indigenous people in 1763. How long do we have to wait?
John Spencer
Sydney, NSW, Australia
• Linking the exploitation of women to capitalism as Rebecca Solnit does (18 May) is a distraction. The fact is that humans have always exploited other humans – think of the ancient Romans and their slaves – and always will. Marxist notions have nothing to do with it and get in the way of efforts to treat people more fairly, whether in work or in sexual relations.
Martin Platt
Berlin, Germany
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