From the Readers

Chinese democracy VS Western democracy

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-06-13 15:40

Third, Western democracy never guarantees most people's attitudes are reflected by the elected representatives and government policies. Some electoral systems allow political parties of extreme views to gain influences or gain political power as part of a government to the detriment of the majority of the nation and great majority of the public.

Germany still has the same electoral system in operation today that allowed the Nazi Party to be the largest party in the German parliament after 1932 election and Hitler was invited to form a coalition government under the German constitution.

In Australia, the state of Tasmania which has about 300,000 eligible voters sent the same number of senators to the Australia federal parliament as New South Wales that have almost 20 times as many eligible voters. As a result, the Greens party now control the senate of Australia and hence the government policy formulation even though they are not actually the government for the next three years.

The types of electoral systems are very important. In some Western democracies, the electoral systems do not provide any comfort that no evil regimes will result.

Fourth, in China and in Western democracy, many special interests lobby the governments for their own causes. Some are more effective than others and governments then react accordingly. These lobbying efforts allow those that are not in direct political processes and in the operations of the government to have some access to the government. This is not a bad thing at all. After all not everyone wants to or can be in the political process every day.

Some individuals do contact government agencies and politicians by mail, email, letters to the media such as China Daily. They let their views be known and perhaps some are taken up by the politicians.

Democracy in any form is fine as long as people have regular participations and people are allowed to pass on their concerns to the government and the politicians in the form of lobbying and communications with the government and politicians in between formal participations.