the comparision of monarchy and democracy |
Can we keep the balance between monarchy and democracy? According to the Wikipedia, democracy is a form of government where the population of a society controls the government. That is to say, the right of decision making belongs to all people rather than single one person. Some adherants want legislative, judicial and executive powers to be handled by the people. But Taiwan only allows legislative decision just the same as other democratic countries. Also states by Wikipedia, monarchy is a form of government that has a monarch as head of state. A distinguishing characteristic is a monarch always reigns for life. In republic, the head of state is normally elected for a certain amount of time. Or, the head of state wouldn’t stay on the position for life. There are 29 monarchies in the world now. Most of the monarches serve as a symbal of continuity and statehood. They have little real political power. That is to say, the state policies were made by another machinism. In some cases, the symbolism of monarchy alongside the symbolism of democracy can lead to divisions over seemingly contradictory principles of sovereignty. Although there are many kinds of democracy and monarchy separately, in case of learning the different between both systems. Here we assume that all governments in the world could be divided into two forms: monarchy and democracy. The former is far fewer than the later in the extant system now. Also we could say, the number of monarchy is declining gradually. Because of the trend of being democracy has been boomed for several decades---some said it’s the 20th century waves of democracy. Taiwan had been part of China, which has been existed for more than five thousand years since its establishment. The form of government of China has been experienced from monarchy to democracy. It was not a typical monarchy in its origin and the form had been developing to democracy in Taiwan today. So, Taiwan has gone through various kinds of monarchy and democracy as well. Since Taiwan is located southern coast of China, it is easy for the people to perceive the form of governing. Because the monarch conscious was exaggerated enforced here by the local officials in monarchy ages. Monarchy stories can be picked up here and there. For instance, in monarchy ages, most people had no choice to say there were born for poor. So they were content with things they were and wouldn’t think they could do anything for their future and descendents as well. Such kind of fatalism had been held in most minds for a long time. Along the developing of political trend, Taiwan was turning its way to democracy gradually. Now, people in Taiwan already perceive that they are the real host of this island. They recognize that they are the one who has absolute right to arrange their things include the country’s public affairs. By the history of Taiwan, we can tell this land has been experienced from monarchy to democracy, which makes it in a good position to tell how it keeps the balance between both different forms of government system. People are attracted to the economic development of democracy, which promise them to have better life. On the contrary, the national wealth and power always held by the monarch or a few of his relatives in monarchy age. The people couldn’t access to decision making as well as policy making. So, they couldn’t benefit from it. Also their farewell was not surly concerned by monarch. This results in lacking freedom and influencing national economic situation and people’s individual economic situation too. That is why monarchy will fade out of political stage so soon. Democracy will include different kinds. Although nearly all of the world’s governments claim to be democratic, and some of it were achieved its goal of being democracy, still they belong to different level of democratic political practices. Such as, direct democracy, representative democracy, liberal democracy and illiberal democracy. Is democracy absolutely good to people? Is monarchy absolutely not good to people? From the history of Taiwan, we can tell that it shows no answer to our question. A monarch possesses all the power. He or she could integrate all resources concentrating on the priority of the nation. In this case the monarch could do a lot of beneficial affairs to the people. But a tyrant would do nothing for his or her people unless torturing them. In a democratic country, all public policies come from a huge think tank, because every person could participate in discussing the things relating to them. In this case, their opinions and ideas could be considered sincerely and people would benefit from such kind of policies. But in representative democracy, once the representatives misuse their power, all public policies might only serve to the minority. That is why political scandals everywhere in some democratic countries. Can we create a form of government, which combines both privilege of democracy and monarchy? That is to say, in one hand we could integrate all resources on priority order to benefit people. In another hand, people could be able to participate in their country’s policy making. In this case, we could prevent political scandals happening and avoid being tyrannized by a tyrant. Anyhow, there is no perfect form of government in the world. But still we can establish a better one. How to highlight the merit of democracy and monarchy and prevent the shortcomings of it? It’s worth us to take a guarded thinking to find a way of keeping the balance between these two extreme sides of political form. |