Go Scotland!

I’m a great fan of democracy because democracy delivers. That no famine has ever occurred in a democracy is testament to the fact that the removal of a government by the people, come their next election, is a very great incentive for governmental action on behalf of the people. There isn’t quite the same incentive for totalitarian governments as there are generally no consequences of their actions or indeed inactions. They are not held to account by their people.

However, in certain circumstances – and it pains me to say this – democracy isn’t either appropriate or even desirable for some countries. These are the countries that have separate ethnic, religious or other historically aggregated groupings, where the people feel that a vote would be better used given to the representatives of their own group, come what may. This would be particularly so if there were a history of conflict between the groups. Importantly, this could also be the case in some nominally democratic countries, where the largest grouping could retain a stranglehold on power through elections. If the people always vote the same way on non-political grounds and if a government can’t be removed, is that country really a democracy?

In such divided countries, the simplistic solution would be for the groups to each seek independence, if there was no possibility of integration and providing the groups were confined to different geographical areas. However, if it were that easy it probably would have happened, and there are a number of reasons why this may not be possible. For example, it would be most unlikely that mineral resources within a country would be distributed evenly amongst the groups. Frequently it’s one of the smaller groups that has the largest resources, making any sort of separation difficult for the largest group, possibly having disproportionately enjoyed the wealth from these resources.

Iraq is an example of the difficulty in introducing the democratic process to a country with distinct groups, two religious and one ethnic. The Shias, Sunnis and Kurds would likely vote for their own group parties. However, by creating a number of fairly autonomous provinces (18, much larger than the number of main groups) it looks and functions more like a federation of states. Within the provinces there is at least the choice of voting for different candidates even if they’re from the same group. And further, there’s the possibility that the state – or province – model could ensure that the majority group doesn’t indefinitely retain power over the whole country and over all issues. However, with the Sunni IS militarily very active in Iraq, the prospects for democracy are bleak indeed.

South Africa, in contrast, is an established putative democracy, where one party, the ANC (not forgetting the other two members of the left-wing alliance), form by far the greatest grouping. They have retained power ever since free elections began. The inability of its citizens, voting on broadly ethnic and tribal lines, to remove the government, negates all the benefits of democracy. In a country blessed in so many ways, the delivery of real social progress by the government hasn’t been anything like the rate expected of a democracy. Perhaps the ANC will have to further fragment into smaller parties before the complacency, and worse, of perpetual one-party government is removed.

A perhaps surprising recent addition to citizens of a democracy voting on tribal lines is Scotland. Having declined to vote for independence in the recent referendum, the opportunity to disproportionately increase their influence could have been achieved if, as originally thought, the SNP had held the balance of power in a hung UK Parliament. Of the 59 Scottish seats, the SNP won 56. Had Scotland voted for independence it seems very unlikely that in the following Scottish election, the SNP would have won such a resounding victory. Similar to the last Scottish election, the voters would have likely voted along traditional democratic lines rather than condemning Scotland to a one-party state, where the party in control was without a raison d’etre, having fulfilled its ambition. The SNP would then have been left fighting for virtually the same ground as the Scottish Labour Party, from where many of the SNP hierarchy and members came.

If voting to send an SMP to Parliament in Edinburgh was a decision made in the best democratic traditions, and a different, more tactical, mind-set was at work in sending an MP to London, could it be argued that the latter wasn’t in the best democratic traditions? To act in such a tribal way suggests that Scotland’s heart really isn’t in Britain. Perhaps Alex Salmond was right to raise the spectre of another referendum on Scottish devolution. It would probably be in the best interests of the remaining UK, Scotland and democracy, if Scotland attains its independence, and perhaps sooner rather than later.

So the burning question of the day is; should Scotland have another referendum as soon as possible?