David Mendoza
Opposition supporters turn up in tens of thousands.
With elections fever running wild in Singapore, it’s no doubt that we’ve reached a watershed in the political life of the nation. The racket has gotten so loud that even a misanthrope like myself has been drawn out of my hole of political indifference. Admittedly I don’t have much choice, finding myself in a hotly contested GRC with incessant media coverage, so I hope I can be forgiven if I decide to spout a little drivel….
Some generations ago, Ernest J King, a US Navy Admiral, produced a thesis entitled “The Influence of National Policy on Strategy”, as part of his studies at the Naval War College. In it, he made a rather poignant statement about democracy & the effectiveness of a state’s institutions under the pressures of democracy (in his case the institutions of national defence):
We might easily dismiss this as the typical reactionary response of a martinet to the populist isolationationism of the time, although the comment is rather surprising, coming as it does, from an officer serving a nation purporting to be the champion of democracy, not to mention the blatant elitism of the final sentence. Nonetheless, it’s worth mentioning that there is a lot of truth about he mentioned about the nature of democracy.
Theoretically, & in many instances in history, practically as well, a democracy secures a measure of accountability in the actions of the government. The other benefit being that a bread & butter issue of immediate relevance to the populace but unknown to the ruling executive might be aired in the respective legislative assemblies. All well & good.
The trouble starts with complex issues requiring specific skills & knowledge to devise a solution (or at least to alleviate the worst effects of the problem). The simple fact is that the issues facing a nation today are so complex than no individual citizen, can possibly possess the requisite skills to be in a position to understand all the problems that come the nation’s way, let alone solve them.
Yet the underlying assumption of a democracy is precisely that: that every single citizen, as King put, “knows it all” & will be able to excercise his/her option to choose the ideal solution to the problem. In many of the matured democracies which we see in the world today, politicians deliberately present issues in overly simplistic terms that in no way reflect the actual complexities of the problem.
To add another layer of complexity, there is some truth that a typical 1st world electorate is by & large concerned only with their own affairs, & would happily turn a blind eye to longer term problems for the sake of short-term gratification (myself being a case in point, sometimes anyway).
To be fair, there are the occasional simple issues that the executive government in power may be unwilling to change their stance on out of a mere attitude of familiarity with the status quo. Nonetheless, most problems, in addition to requiring specific skills, also require careful, diligent & logical analysis while never abandoning empathy with the population at large. IMHO, such management is more in line with a technocracy, you might say, a rule of experts.
At the same time, the flip side dangers are ever-present, there is always the danger that the technocracy might be too convinced of it’s abilities & lapse into complacency, not to mention the inevitable disconnect with the population at large by the sheer technocratic specialisation of the ruling executive. The extent of this danger is a function of the cultural background of the nation to a greater degree than people may care to admit.
The traditional solution to this is the similarly traditional concept of representative democracy, acting in the ways that I’ve already mentioned. Nonetheless, unregulated populism can hardly be considered the ideal solution to complacency, also for the reasons mentioned above. The answer does appear to be some sort of equilibrium between the 2 extremes, although to what extent, how this might be attained, & in fact if this is really the answer, I confess that I have no idea.
Ultimately, as the British historian John Brewer has implied, society will always be caught between its aspirations to function ever more effectively & efficiently & the danger that the same efficient system might execute the wrong action very efficiently. History has shown that balance is the key, though such balance comes at the cost of inherent tension, but I suppose that this is simply the reality of human society….non-ideality!
By the way if you’re interested, Ernest King unsurprisingly never ran for political office, he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations (the US Navy’s boss), managed a 2-ocean war from immediately after Pearl Harbour to the end of the WWII, by which time he was well-past retirement age.
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Photo courtesy of the Workers’ Party.
In Singapore’s case, there is no such thing as ‘unregulated populism’, as this writer mentioned. In Singapore, what we have here is ‘regulated (and regualar) autocracy’.