Representative Democracy - Criticisms

Criticisms

In his book Political Parties, written in 1911, Robert Michels demonstrates that most representative systems deteriorate towards an oligarchy. This is known as the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and also as the First Law of Politicology. In line with this law, all representative democracies are known to become after time a particracy. Representative democracies which are stable have been analysed by Adolf Gasser and compared to the unstable representative democracies. in his book "Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas" which was published in 1943 (first edition in German) and a second edition in 1947 (in German). Adolf Gasser noted the following requirements for a representative democracy in order to remain stable, unaffected by the "Iron Law of Oligarchy":

• Society has to be built up from bottom to top. As a consequence, society is built up by people, which are free and have the power to defend themselves with weapons.
• These free people join or form local communities. These local communities are independent, which includes financial independence, and they are free to determine their own rules.
• Local communities join together into a higher unit e.g. a canton.

There is no hierarchical bureaucracy.

• There is competition between these local communities e.g. on services delivered or on taxes.

The system of stochocracy has been proposed as an improved system compared to the system of representative democracy, where representatives are elected. Stochocracy aims to be at least reduce this degradation by having all representatives appointed by lottery instead of by voting. Therefore this system is also called lottocracy. The system was proposed by the writer Roger de Sizif in 1998 in his book La Stochocratie.