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Lobbycracy or Democracy?
United States of America is widely regarded by the world as the champion of democracy. So what does the term democracy mean in USA and rest of the world. The word democracy is formed by the combination of the ancient Greek terms demos (people) and kratos (power). Putting these two terms together, the meaning of democary is derived as power to the people or people power.
As part of democracy, we the people of the land elect representatives of the people to form the government of the nation. Here, the elected representatives and the constituted governing bodies they form derives from the power of people to enact laws of the land to eventually benefit the constituents, who are none other than the people who elected them in the first place. This leads us to the famous phrase from the Gettysburg address by Abraham Lincoln - “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, which symbolizes the ultimate meaning of democracy.
However, in many democratic countries including USA and around the world, lobbying has become entrenched in the democratic systems and aims to influence decisions by the elected government representatives to favour the lobbying interest. This process of buying the vote and conscience of the elected representives distorts the outcome of the elected representatives to favor the lobby interest, and not the people who elected the representative in the first place.
Lobbying is effectively political advertising, and a thorn on side of what clean and pure democracy is all about. Lobbyists represent the money interests of high net worth individuals and large corporations to eventually influence governmental decisions to facilitate business and ultimately increased profits. This might not be in the best interest of the people as a whole.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary website also lists Lobbycracy as a new slang word in their open dictionary section as below:
Lobbycracy (noun) : A mutant form of a democratic government in which certain group of persons or organizations try their best to militate the thinking of legislators or other elected public officials for or against a specific cause. In a lobbycracy, democracy is just reduced to counting number of votes and voters are not considered as a political power.
Word Usage: The ten thousands lobbies in the DC have transformed Democracy into Lobbycracy.
Finally, we come to the big question of the century - Do we have to rename the term democracy as lobbycracy to aptly reference the form of governance system prevalent in the times we live in this century?
