Jennyfer Pierre Gr:001

Democracy : a winning ticket or Pandora’s box?

Democracy is synonymous of the popular sovereignty; but this conception wasn’t invented overnight, it took us a lot of steps to get where we are today. We went by many uprisings, writings from philosopher like Hobbes, Voltaire, or Montsquieu, glorious epidodes of peace and truce, as some horrible slaughter also (WWII, Rwanda, Bosnian war). Nowadays, we tend to believe that we finally arrived to this ''winning ticket'' that garantees us a healthy democracy. However, when we look at the latest politic scandals in the twentieth century like the Watergate, one might wonder if democracy is the best politic regime. Wouldn’t it be better if we manage ourselves as a society in a independant way, without any political representation or party? In my own opinion, I do think that democracy is the best regime since it ensures the freedom of expression and representation of parties and it is the best compared to other systems. But people are not able of governing themselves.

Conventional wisdom says that democracy is not the best system because of its scandals like the prisoner torture allegations that troubled Canadian Government. It is true that it is tarnished by them certainly, but let’s reverse the question for a moment: What political regime is the best? If we compare it with the autocracy of Louis XVI in which state power rests in the hands of one person chosen by God for exemple, democraty wins since it tries to limit the gap between rich and poor with its social measures. We can also compare democracy with the national socialism (nazi) who led to the Holocaust, with the communism of Stalin oppressed by the ''Iron Curtain'' ; and once again democracy is better because it ensures freedom of expression and freedom of party representation.

Regarding the ability of people to self-rule,