Major challenges:
Foundational Challenge:
Non-democratic countries face the foundational challenge of making the transition to democracy and then instituting democratic government.
This involves bringing down the existing non democratic regime, keeping military away from controlling government and establishing a sovereign and functional state.
Challenge of Expansion:
Most of the established democracies face the challenge of expansion.
This involves applying the basic principle of democratic government across all the regions, different social groups and various institutions.
Ensuring greater power to local governments, extension of federal principle to all the units of the federation, inclusion of women and minority groups, etc. falls under this challenge.
This also means that less and less decisions should remain outside the area of democratic control.
Most countries including India and other democracies like the US face this challenge.
Deepening of Democracy:
The third challenge of deepening of democracy is faced by every democracy in one form or another.
This involves strengthening of the institutions and practices of democracy.
This should happen in such a way that people can realise their expectations of democracy.
But ordinary people have different expectations from democracy in different societies.
Therefore, this challenge takes different meanings and paths in different parts of the world.
In general terms, it usually means strengthening those institutions that help people’s participation and control.
This requires an attempt to bring down the control and influence of the rich and powerful people in making governmental decision
Thinking about political reforms:
No doubt, law has an important but limited role to play in political reform.
Carefully devised changes in law can help to discourage wrong political practices and encourage good ones.
But legal constitutional changes by themselves cannot overcome challenges to democracy.
Any legal change must carefully look at what results it will have on politics.
Sometimes the results may be counter-productive.
For example, many states have banned people who have more than two children from contesting panchayats elections.
This has resulted in denial to democratic opportunity to many poor and women, which was not intended.
Generally, laws that seek to ban something are not very successful in politics.
Laws that give political actors incentives to do good things have more chances of working.
The best laws are those which empower the people to carry out democratic reforms.
The right to information is a good example of a law that empowers the people to find out and act as watchdogs of democracy.
Such a law helps to control corruption and supplements the existing laws that banned corruption and imposed strict penalties.
Democratic reforms are to be brought about principally through political practice.
Therefore, the main focus of political reforms should be on ways to strengthen democratic practice.
The most important concern should be to increase and improve the quality of political participation by ordinary citizens.
Any proposal for political reforms should think not only about what is a good solution but also about who will implement it and how?
It is not very wise to think that the parliaments will pass legislations that go against the interest of all the political parties and MPs.
But measures that rely on democratic movements, citizen’s organisations and the media are likely to succeed.
Redefining democracy:
For the expansion, the definition slightly needs to add some qualifications:
The rulers elected by the people must take all the major decisions.
Elections must offer a choice and fair opportunity to the people to change the current rulers.
This choice and opportunity should be available to all the people on an equal basis.
The exercise of this choice must lead to a government limited by basic rule of the constitution and citizens rights.
You may have felt disappointed that the definition did not refer to any high deals that we associate with democracy.
Various aspects of democratic government and politics:
We discussed democratic rights at length and noted that these rights are not limited to the right to vote, stand in elections and form political organisations.
We have taken up power sharing as the spirit of democracy and discussed how power sharing between governments and social groups is necessary in a democracy.
We saw how democracy cannot be the brute rule of majority and how a respect for minority voice is necessary for democracy.
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