Democracy

Democracy is the government of people by the people and for the people. It can be said that democracy is a political system in which the supreme power lies in the body of citizens who can elect people to represent them. It is a controversial topic. Some people say that democracy is the best choice for any country to run their government while others are in the favor of dictatorship or monarchy. It is true that both democracy and dictatorship have some advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages of democracy are given as:

Democracy brings economic, political and social stability to the country. Due to the political stability, foreigners take interest in the country for investment. The countries like India, United States etc have more foreign investment due to political stability as compared to the countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.

Democracy encourages negotiation instead of military action against the citizens. This is the important advantage of democracy as various disputes can be solved through negotiation. For example there are different countries which contain rebel groups. These groups try to destabilize the country through terrorist activities. Such groups could be handled through effective negotiations which is only possible in democracy.

In democracy there is circulation of governments. Every government has to complete a particular period of time. Due to this characteristic of democracy, people can easily judge their leader i.e. whether he/she is working for them or not. If they are not satisfied with the present government, they can change it in the next election.

History tells us that democratic states do not easily come under the pressure of super powers. They follow the decisions which are in the interest of the country rather than the super powers. The main reason is that they have got the power of civilians behind them, which will support them in case of any mishap.

In democracy civilians elect the leaders. If the leaders do not work properly the civilians will not give them vote in future. Due to this fact leader try to provide benefits to the civilians in order to remain in the government.

There are also some disadvantages of democracy which are given as:

In democracy there is trend of short term plans. As the political leaders are elected for the short period of time so they focus on those plans, which benefit the civilians quickly. This policy is helpful for the politicians because in this way they will be re-elected in the next elections. They are reluctant to start any long-term project which may be in favor of country. 

There is lack of cooperation among the people. They do not use their votes to elect the proper person as their leader. The political leaders exploit this opportunity during the electing campaign. If all civilians use their votes, political leaders will be in trouble because of great competition.

In case of democracy ethnic and religious conflicts often occur. If there is government of one tribe, they will misuse their powers against their rivals. This creates serious conflicts and disputes in the state which hinder the economic stability of the country.

In democracy there are frequent changes in laws. If one government changes, the other government comes with some new laws, which are favorable for them and not for the country. Due to these changes the law enforcement agencies find the way to misuse their powers.

Corruption is also a big disadvantage of democracy. Since every political party spends lot of resources to win the election therefore when they win the election they start recovering their expenditures, which gives birth to the corruption. Secondly there are some temporary leaders, which feel that they will never be elected in the future so they try their level best to collect as much money as possible to live a prosperous life in the future.

Although it may seem that democracy is not a good choice for any country because of its various drawbacks. But the fact is that, it is not the proper implementation of democracy which creates such problems. The fruits of democracy would be visible only through the proper implementation of democracy. For example free and fair election, independent judiciary system, empowering law enforcement agencies etc. are some of the important factors for the effective implementation of democracy