Ambit 1 2 y 3.indb - CICR - Universitat Ramon Llull

DEMOCRACY OR HIERARCHY? 21
carried out for the sake of the presupposed general interest of all participants
–who, accordingly, are equal politically.
2) Thus, what grounds the new type of legitimate government –whatever
its form may be– is the delegation of power by the sovereign: the group of
members from the polis.
3) In the specific case of elected governments, their establishment is by the
periodical manifestation (regular or eventual) of a collective will that operates
through certain mechanisms (votes, candidates, political parties etc). One way
or the other, they represent the intention of or will for the autonomy of these
political units to manage their own problems and to build their own concrete
reality, even if controversially (and with lots of dissatisfaction), but by means
of collectively agreed-upon basic rules.
4) Therefore, the use of electoral procedures is to guarantee a collective
choice, which will then endow the government with legitimacy, giving it the
prerogative of making decisions and of executing policies that are beneficial
(and only if they truly are) to the whole population. A collective choice
achieved as the aggregate result of legitimate individual choices made by each
member of the defined electoral college.
5) Finally, the individual choice of each of these members will prevail
through autonomous and free initiative, with no external material coercion,
but based solely on their own conscience and on pieces of information available
serving as their subsidy.
In this fashion, the relatively simple modern electoral procedure, which is
equalitarian and individualized –“a man, a vote”–, actually corresponds to a
very specific set of normative pre-suppositions that, maybe not by mere chance,
ends up bringing up the contradictions involved in its historical previous
development. These contradictions seem to be always actually present in the
very complex context of demands that usually is demanded upon the voter,
at the exercise of his sovereign deliberation, and, off course will impose their
heavy weight on the quality of the information that he will have to resort to in
order to warrant his contribution to the “authentic democracy”. In fact, taking
not only the contemporary theoretical debate seriously, 9 but, above all, its
diffusion and its vulgarization promoted by common sense and by the media,
nowadays, one can really believe there will be no future for western democracy
unless the voter knows how to always choose the best candidate and/or
political party by means of: 1) a precise diagnosis of his or her immediate,
medium or far off personal interest (not only, but most importantly, in the
economic aspect); 2) a well grounded historical analysis of the ideological and
programmatic consistency of each political party, sided with a desirable and
thorough investigation on the personal coherence, sincerity and honesty of
the candidates; 3) if possible, there should also be a reasonable idea of the
implications of each electoral alternative for the ideal functioning of the system
adopted in his or her political unit, which naturally will have to cover some
topics such as the separation and the relations among the powers, federalism or
administrative concentration of responsibilities, etc.; 4) and we can not forget,
off course, the international agenda, the environment, the global evolution of
world capitalism, the fight against terror (or against imperialism), and so on.
What a wondrous amount of information!