Beat The GMAT

wilderness · Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:26 am

Hi,

Looking forward to your comments and ratings.
Topic "Democracy is far more cumbersome form of government than dictatorship"
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Since the end of cold war, many countries across the globe have chosen democracy as the form of government. Today, most of the world's powerful countries, international organizations and political science experts see democracy as a natual choice in comparison to dictatorship. Yet democracy remains a far more complicated form of government as compared to dictatorship.

Some decisions that for the common good of the entire community might require some group of people to make some sacrifice e.g. farmers might have to leave their family land and go to some other place in order to make space available for some new industry. While this new industry can bring prosperity to the whole area and can offer better jobs and standard of living to the farmer's own children, many farmers would be reluctant to leave the land that has been ploughed by their forefathers, espacially if the land is fertile. Convincing them to accept monetary compensation or another piece of land can be a very difficult task in a democracy as compared to a dictatorship. Displacing millions of people for building a dam, as the the case when constructing the Three Gorges Dam in China, might have been much more cumbersome in a democracy.

Democratic system of governments generally have an extensive system of election of government. Dictatorships do not need to spend effort in developing and mainitaining such proceses and are hence free from this hassle. A comparison of recent elections in Zimbabwe with the current ongoing US presential campaign clearly shows the former to be much simpler than the latter.

Democratic systems by nature prefer to have a system of check and balance so that all power is not rested in one indivdual. This can sometimes lead to situations where doing any legislation becomes very complex or nearlly impossible. In a parilamentary form of government a hung parlaiment or in a presidential form of government a President and Parliament from different political parties are examples of such complicated scenarios. A dictator can however carry out this action throught a decree. The problem faced by Indian governemt in convincing its coalition partners to accept the nuclear deal with US is an example of such complication.

Democracy can bring even more complications to the developing nations, where resources are scarce and political infrastruture might not be developed enough to help people make the right democratic choice. In order to increase their chances of victory politicians sometimes play up the racial sentiments of a community. Such actions can produce big problems in the long term and can lead to cracks in the social fabrics that can be very complicated to hear for the government.

Many democracies agree to this arguemnt of complexiteis in a democracy. Hence many democracies provide options whereby head of state or parliament can suspend goverments and granting powers to one person or group of people under special situations. During the second world war, Norwegian pariliament disoveld itself and handed over all the powers to the cabinet.

While democracy today apperas to be the most popular choice when it comes to choosing a form of government, it brings with it many complications that would be absent in a dictatorship. Making bold decisions for long term proposerity, executing controversial decisions and making bitter choices for the common good can be very complicated processes in a democratic form of government.

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parore26 · Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:42 am

5.0 - 6.0 I'd say. Excellent. Some of the sentences are a bit lengthy:

"Some decisions that for the common good of the entire community might require some group of people to make some sacrifice e.g. farmers might have to leave their family land and go to some other place in order to make space available for some new industry. While this new industry can bring prosperity to the whole area and can offer better jobs and standard of living to the farmer's own children, many farmers would be reluctant to leave the land that has been ploughed by their forefathers, espacially if the land is fertile"

You might want to cut down a bit here. A long sentence is more likely to have more grammatical errors Smile