notes

Democracy: rule by the people. We in western countries are proud of our democracies and dismissive of the alternatives, whether they are the authoritarian one-party systems of China and Russia, southern-hemisphere dictatorships or middle-eastern despots. From here in Britain it is difficult to argue that any of the alternatives are better than our democracy, though it is equally difficult to see things through the eyes of a member of China's new middle class whose parents scraped a living from the soil or a Russian reading about NATO military exercises in the Baltic or the Black Sea. So, democracy is the right way to go, but are we doing it right? There are no rules saying democracy has to be two or three political parties fighting it out to get the most votes in elections every four or five years. And rule by the people is no more than putting a cross in a box in the hope that things might improve, followed by disappointment when the other lot fail to deliver on their promises. I...