The Overestimated Legitimacy of Elected Officers

The Overestimate Legitimacy of Elected Governors

The first chapter of the text draws a grand picture about what is democracy. It entitles the very basic structure supporting the modern representative democracy: popular sovereignty, political equality and political liberty. Then it unfolds the seven components of popular sovereignty , to which the competitive elections and political participation are both included. Being central idea of the representative democracy, a free and fair election could only be carried out once ordinary people participate in the election and the periodic election retains conducive to select the right person.

Throughout the well designed mechanism in which maintains the passage of people’s wish from the bottom to the top and supervises for every period of the term, the standing officers gain their legitimacy on behalf of the people. But, is the legitimacy of officers really corresponding responsibility on them endowed by the people? Or in other words, are they really legitimized through the process of the election? This skeptic is arose for the election as the source of the legitimacy:

Is the number of voters enough to represent the majority of people in the country?
Are the voters really rational and competent decide the direction of the country?
Is the election process picking out the person with competency?

The first two questions are mentioned in the text which are constant concern with the election. People should involve in the process and vote for their favored candidate at first place so that the elected officers could be seen legitimate. The data from Pew Research Center revealed that 86.8% of registered voters cast the ballot during the 2016 election which is high. But the total amount of registered voters only occupied the 55.7% of the voting-age population. The latter data was dropped behind most of the developed countries. More specifically, such huge gap between the voting-age population and registered voters is ranked second largest among all the documented country. (see the data at: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/15/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/ ) This low-level of turnout in the election leaves a quetions. Although result of election definitely represents the majority of vote, it’s still hard to see it could represent the majority of the whole people in the country since only half of them cast their ballots. This issue is accompanied by another potential problem. Among all the people who voted, is there certain reciprocal interest groups which would strongly insist to vote for one direction in favor of their economic benefits or political resource. Thus the ordinary people are having less voice in the election and blocking out with an “ invisible curtain” from the political mechanism. The low participation could somehow damage the legitimacy of elected officers.

Another aspect involved in this topic is related to the wisdom and competency of the ordinary people. With no doubt, to have a clear political position and an insistent appeal for what they want about country’s general direction is quite a complex topic for most of the people in any country. What is more often to see is that the large amount of people who are less educated and economically independent, in a sense, are easily to be influenced by mass public opinions and to be redirect by certain political leverage. Thus, back to the main story, it cannot be ignored that to some extent the public opinion could be direct by the political interest group.

The third concern on this issue is about the competency of candidates themselves. How successful these officers have done their work as corresponding to the support of people ? The approval rating from Gallup shows that almost every president, head of government, has been through a decrease until the end of terms. (see the data at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx ) Bedisde variable external factors happend during their stay in White House ( which are reseaonable to decrease the approval rating), one very crucial element is that it was hard to see their real competency whitle they were running for election. Before becoming the president, George W. Bush had been the campaign advisor for his father and the Governor of Texas (1995-2000), and Barack Obama had been the State Senator in Illinois ( 1996-2004) and the Federal Senator (2004-207). In general, both of them had only less than 10 years experience working as a junior officers. Compared with their counterpart in China, Xi Jinping , the current Chinese leader, had been government officer over 40 years. Within the Chinese bureaucratic system, ten well-designed levels cover all the officers from the national leader to the village officers. The annual investigation by the Organization Department from upper level about their work performance is the only access to promotion. But only 4.4% of officers could be promoted from the bottom level to the second, and it gets harder and harder. Although there is no open election, every nation-lave governor would have at least 35 years of career experience. They know well about what ordinary people want and want general policies the country needs. From the freedom house dataset, in the survey about the attitude toward country’s general direction, 85% of Chinese people are satisfied and 26% of American are satisfied. For the question that “ the next generation will have a better life”, 82% of Chinese agree and 33% of American agree. If the strong competency of governing tested by a long time career and the high level of satisfaction from ordinary people are not the strong source of the legitimacy of government officers. Then what else could be?

To sum up, the complex mechanism of election in the U.S. definitely is the best way to form a government in the representative democracy. But drawback and doubt indeed exist. The overestimate legitimacy of elected officers requires more participation and rational consideration of the people.

5 Responses to "The Overestimated Legitimacy of Elected Officers"

Kevin Todd says:

September 8, 2017 at 2:05 pm

I agree with the legitimacy of the candidates should change. I feel that if someone with more experience in government should be considered more qualified because of the experience they’ve had. I do not think the amount of people who vote represent this nation wholly, and I think more people should participate in voting. However, citizens have the ability to pick and choose what they want to do whether that be a certain candidate or not voice their opinion at all. I think it is important, especially to those who complain about this nation’s economic well being, to voice their opinion by voting. Most people do not vote because they simply say or think “My vote doesn’t matter” and in a way I can understand where they are coming from if you compare it to millions of other people. A big problem with this country is that the people who are qualified to vote lack very little knowledge and education about government. When they go to vote, for some of them, it’s simply filling in a bubble with no thought or opinion backed behind it. I’m sure a lot of people who voted for Trump just voted for him because they think he’s “better” than Hillary yet they have no idea if he is or not. I think that needs to change. It is a problem for everyone living in this country because you have people making poor, uneducated decisions about what will be essentially be affecting this country’s citizens lives.
Camryn Travis says:

September 10, 2017 at 2:23 pm

Something I think is very interesting within the American presidential election process is the electoral college. With the system of the electoral college, individual voting in the United States is narrowed down even further to 538 people. Even if every person of voting-age registered to vote, and every registered voter cast a ballot on election day, the votes are condensed into the vote of 538 people. Typically this does not serve as a problematic situation, however, with the election of Donald Trump and the previous election of former Presidents John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harris, and George W. Bush, the candidate with the higher electoral vote won the Presidency over the candidate with the popular vote amongst United States citizens. This most recent election had the most explicit difference between the electoral vote and the popular vote with Hillary Clinton having 77 fewer electoral votes but nearly 2.9 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. (Gore, 1). http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/presidents-winning-without-popular-vote/ This separation between popular vote and electoral college begs the question of whether the United States truly has a democratic government that is run by the majority.
Jackson Puckey says:

September 10, 2017 at 2:51 pm

One of the most important issues with American democracy is the massive issue of voter turnout and lack of civic participation. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections), less than 60% of the voting-age population has turned out for every election since 1968. By comparison, the United Kingdom has seen voter turnout over 60% for almost every election since World War II (http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm). Despite this difference, both countries have seen lower voter turnout in the past few decades than in the past. There are a wide variety of causes which attribute to this abysmally small number, and the debate over which is the most important is highly politically charged. One of the most divisive of these is voter suppresion, as we have discussed in class, which specifcally targets poorer Americans and African-Americans in many states through a wide variety of means (including Voter ID laws, restrictive times for the distribution of State IDs, and poor infrastructure for voting in poor urban precincts). However, many citizens also feel that their vote does not matter as it cannot effect the general election result. While this is certainly true of one individual, when millions of people use this to justify their own voter apathy, their combined refusal to vote acts to delegitimize democracy as a whole in the minds of many. The electoral college system can also dissuade people from voting. An example of this may be a Democrat in Utah or a Republican in Hawaii, who know that the opposing party will certainly win the state in a landslide. There are no clear solutions to this problem as a whole, but rather a wide variety of reforms from both sides of the aisle must be implemented to strengthen the nature of our democracy.
It also seems that the general sentiment of the futility of voting has led to a voting populace who are significantly less educated about the form and function of government than they have been in the past. While this is certainly not the only cause, it is certainly contributing to the lack of voter education. Another cause may be the massive politicization of media, which has resulted in psuedo-propaganda from all ends of the political perspective spinning issues and exaggerating the powers of the presidency and congress. Lastly, and most importantly, civics and government education in secondary schools has been severely lacking in recent years, resulting in a young voting populace who knows less about how the system functions than ever.
Lastly, candidate competence in American government has come to an all-time low. No matter which party you support, the past 10 years has shown a great deal of criticism on the qualifications of candidates. Both Barack Obama (who only spent a short time in the Senate) and Donald Trump (who had never held elected office) recieved massive criticism for their lack of government experience. While there is an argument to be made that career bureaucrats and politicians are, by virtue of their experience, most qualified to run a country, many Americans (especially supporters of Donalf Trump) believe that time spent in government results in a gradual distancing of the politician from the daily lives of the average person. The debate between these two camps generally results in some happy medium of a politician who has spent time in both the public and private sectors, however recent events have shown a deviation from the normal pattern.
Austin Liptrot says:

September 11, 2017 at 1:42 pm

Your comparison between the Chinese system of election is very interesting especially your point that the Chinese leader has over 40 years of political experience while Obama and Bush had combined less experience before reaching the presidency. However, I do not think that that so easily translates to a particular difference in political legitimacy. I find it very important that the American system allows for people from separate industries have the ability to rapidly gain political power. Trump especially comes from relatively very little political experience. Some of Trump’s connection with the people, and his “drain the swamp” campaigning came from his distance from political life. Other presidents such as Eisenhower and Ulysses S. Grant as well had only held military power before office. Despite the fact that these three were never politicians I believe that it doesn’t detract from their legitimacy. If legitimacy is derived from the consent of the people and the support of the government then they can very much be as legitimate as their Chinese counterparts with lengthy experience.
Katherine Fell says:

September 15, 2017 at 1:21 pm

I think that all of the comments make interesting points, but I think that that the root of the problem in today’s current electoral climate is the election itself. Voter turnout in the United States is incredibly low, with millions of people not casting their ballots because they do not believe that their votes will make a difference, or they refuse to vote in the election because they are uninspired by the candidates (this was especially true in the 2016 Presidential Election). People who fail to connect with a candidate and therefore abstain from voting are the reason that a candidate like Donald Trump was elected President. The Democratic and Republican parties both failed to put forth strong candidates who truly encompassed the ideals of their respective parties and the American people. In 2016, we were left with Hillary Clinton, who had lots of government experience, but many voters disliked her because they found her untrustworthy and too connected to the establishment, and Donald Trump, who had never held an elected office before and was caught bragging about sexually harassing women on an Access Hollywood tape.
It’s obvious that these two candidates were not the best that their parties had to offer. However, they were the best out of the decreasing number of people who are willing to put themselves through the hellfire that is an American presidential election. Each election year, potential candidates shy away from tossing their hat into the ring because of the vicious nature of the media and American people during an election. These people avoid constantly being in the public eye and having their families and private lives under constant investigation and scrutiny. In 2016, Ted Cruz’s father was accused of being involved in the Kennedy assassination, and his wife was called ugly and fat by Donald Trump. This situation has become so bad that the country is pushing away potential leaders with the intellect and sociability to fix a multitude of our country’s problems. Instead, the major political parties are not putting their best candidate forward, leaving voters uninspired and unwilling to participate in the electoral process. The horrible nature of an election is what is leaving America in a situation where candidates are not truly winning over the majority and are therefore not representing the interests of the majority.

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