A direct approach to democracy

It doesn't have to be just one vote every five years

- BRIAN BEEDHAM

THE basic assumption of democracy is that all adult men and women should have an equal share in deciding how their country is governed.

Some of them are wealthier than others, some have sharper minds, some prefer Mozart to Bono, or vice versa.

No matter. Provided they are reasonably sane, they are all equally part of the democracy.

That concept sits oddly alongside the fact that, in most of the 'democratic' world, all but a few hundred men and women have no democratic function.

Except, that is, to cast a vote every now and again for one or another of a variety of parties that offer them a complicated list of proposals.

Some proposals they like, but others they do not like; and between those occasional votes, the few hundred exceptions, plus the civil servants under their command, make all the actual law-making decisions.

This is not really representation. It is, in the long periods between elections, just a transfer of power to the few. An 'elective dictatorship' as Lord Hailsham famously called it.

In direct democracy, the voters do not merely vote every few years to elect a parliament and a president, and then leave it to these people to represent them until the next election comes along.