US is a very flawed democracy, it’s a bad example. Unlike most European countries you can’t just vote both out so if both parties agree on something the public opinion doesn’t matter.
There are oligarchic elements in all democracies but the purpose of a rep democracy is that you can elect the most qualified person to do the job of sorting all the governing out full time.
To further illustrate the point, most votes for the presidency of the US just flat out don’t matter. You can’t even vote for your preferred candidate since there’s no runoff/ranked choice election in either primaries or presidential election and each state is a winner takes all so republicans in New York don’t get a say nor do Dems in Alabama.
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
All representative democracies are flawed by nature since they all allow for an elite class to exist and likewise allow for corruption to exist. I just use the US as an example since I am the most familiar with US politics, but the US spread its ideas about representative democracy to the entire western world.
The most “qualified” person is not always the right person for the job. Some people take qualified to mean experienced, for instance, which is what many neoliberals in the US touted in their campaigns, but they were experienced in maintaining a corrupt system and serving their donors. The Republicans are experienced in also serving their donors while pushing the needle further right.
Say there was ranked choice or some other system that allowed for more than two parties. As we see in EU countries for example, the elite are still allowed to rule there, and corruption still exists. Denmark isn’t pushing for Chat Control for fun.