Question

1. Briefly describe a scenario (real world or hypothetical) where Democratic leadership style would (or has) not be (been) effective (would be considered a con).

Answer 1

For this let us take a hypothetical scenario, as it would relate our understanding of the working of democracy better. We can take the example of a hypothetical country, which is considered as the largest democracy. We call it largest democracy because the population of voter are huge and the voters turn out remains at an average of 60%.

By democratic leader, we mean that the leader is elected democratically by either an election of popular support. However, the process of support and mobilization of voters and getting popular support becomes very tricky. Society is composed of a variety of groups as in class, ethnic groups, race, caste, etc. A supposed leader can misuse the differences to create antagonism between the existing groups who have a larger number of population. For example, in a country where there is two major religion like the Hindus and Muslims, a leader who claims to represent a democratic ideal can use communalism to win the support of the larger religious community. He/ she can incite hatred between the two religious community and fool the people of the majority to represent himself as their leaders. Therefore, democracy can utterly fail when such individuals who misused the differences existing in a country and simply use the differences to gain him votes.