A nation is known by the tenets on which it rests and is governed. Of all the forms of government, democracy is by far the best, though Winston Churchill famously once said, ‘democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other systems that have been tried’ In the labyrinths of democracy, one can find it populist or representative, liberal or illiberal, direct or delegated, party based or responsive, responsible or crisis riddled, effective or deficient as one may want to look at. One can even have a hybrid democracy with curtailed civil liberties and rights like they have in Pakistan. Still, democracy probably is fairer because it lets the people decide who is going to rule them. Other systems, such as absolute monarchs, military dictatorships, theocracies, etc. rely on a small clique or cabal of people, or an individual. Voting in a democracy allows legitimacy and smooth transition to the leader and a sense of belonging to its people unlike a monarchy. Corruption is better controlled because of the watch that opponents keep and can be a safety valve to the discontented. Democracies are less likely to go to war since the people may not rally behind. Not everything is good However,.
Democracies tend to have a short-term vision since coming back to power will always weigh on a political party. The majority could also be a constant threat to minority groups, as a leader or government may only serve the interests of the larger social groups and ignore, or even repress the rights of others. Sometimes, it can result in unwieldy coalitions, or endless squabbling and political deadlock. Further democracies can be manipulated and distorted by wealthy individuals, motivated media, special interest groups and everything digital.
Can then be there, good democracy and bad democracy? Are we still evolving as a democracy? Is there a minimum threshold of performance that defines a democracy? The quality and success is evaluated by the rule of law, accountability, responsiveness, freedom and equality, though the quality of democracy is indirectly derived from the satisfaction expressed by the customers. When will the threshold of good democracy be reached or breached? Can the electorate be educated before voting, not just depend on misinformation or fake or motivated information? Can we then have an assessment and accreditation process to evaluate governments and the democracies they practice as a consequence? Can we have accreditation stars awarded to democratic systems and governments similar to Quacquarelli Symonds Stars awarded to educational institutions? The major parameters could be adult suffrage, fair elections, all people participation, dissemination of information, transparency quotient, meeting expectations and funding. Of course, democracy thrives on the existence of a local, centralized civil bureaucracy that competently, efficiently and universally applies the laws and assumes responsibility in the event of an error and the existence of an efficient police force that respects the individual rights and freedoms guaranteed by law. Hence their assessment must also happen. The scores obtained can help the governments and democracies to do a gap analysis and course correction. The threshold of a good government and a good democracy will evolve against accepted best practices.
Drilling down to more parameters, to evaluate the next level, missing names in voter lists, EVM tampering, booth capture, unfair use of national resources, politics on national safe keeping, job creation or the farmer distress can be evaluated. All these skews the democracy threshold bringing it down. Scores can then be made public to people for them to vote with exactitude.
Intelligent metrics can be defined to evaluate political parties and their performance even when they are not in power. Can funding be done to parties based on a certain minimum cumulative vote they garner whether win or lose? They, at least then, will be in a position to develop their constituencies and the people not falling to the vagaries of leaders challenging them to vote for them lest they be deprived of benefits and face oblivion.
Are we seeing cyber subversion that can hijack democracies in future? One cannot prevent easily the spread of fake news and theft of information. Social media has rendered democracy vulnerable. Policies and processes on cybersecurity remain immature in a rapidly evolving domain such as cyber-subversion. Like hacking that evolved in the last decade, cyber subversion will evolve in the next decade putting democracies in peril undermining them from within.
The stakes are very high during election times. There will be advocates and adversaries. Advocates may try to support their cause by active manipulation of social media. Adversaries may do the reverse. Number of hits can be manipulated to affect a viewer’s conclusion about a candidate’s popularity. We can see the count of tweets or likes of certain leaders surging dramatically, but in effect is due to a simple backend app.
The cyber subversion is technology intensive. One can model propaganda efforts in graph-theory form. Parapsychology creates a “trust network” in every individual where each of us keep a mental trust network that helps us decide what and what not to believe. The nodes in this weighted network, like the people, institutions, and ideas are entities that we are familiar with. A nonlinear relationship has weights on the nodes as values of trust and distrust that we implicitly assign to every entity we know. A team of IT experts and social media researchers working for a candidate or a party, will sift through voluminous data, look for patterns and make us alter connections and values in our trust network influencing our perception about the candidates and thus “help us” decide on candidates of their choice.
Most of the Institutions critical to the functioning of our democracy, from media to telecommunications, are targets of cyber-attacks. The fact that someone can penetrate the election systems and influence the outcomes is not a partisan issue. It is a threat to the national security that demands counter measures. Artificial intelligence that models para psychology and counters every bot with a counter bot that at least confuses the viewer with a counter view must be used. A reader, thoroughly confused, will either disbelieve all that floats on the social media or will go off it altogether. A regressive method sometimes is as effective as a progressive one. The government must also share cyber threat intelligence with the private sector and proactively create a restorative panacea.