As a result, the US politics is deeply undemocratic and seems to be moving ever more towards a "Plutocracy," in which a few wealthy people have power disproportionate to their numbers. The real decider is the money behind elections. Today, voters can no longer decide the makeup of the US Congress. It is fair to say that the American political system is undergoing a decline from democracy to to "plutocracy." Business interests have a great deal of influence over US government policy, while ordinary citizens have little influence. China, on the other hand, is a different story, writes Danny Quah, a professor at the National University of Singapore: "The 40 years of social and economic development that the Chinese people have experienced are the best 40 years in China's 4,000-year history." If you look at it in terms of wealth, the top 1 percent control 40 percent of the wealth. Nobel laureates and renowned American scholars Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich developed the theory "Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%." Stiglitz notes that the top 1 percent of Americans earn almost a quarter of the country's annual income. In June 2019, Edward Luce wrote an article in the Financial Times that exposes the inequities in American society. But is there really a level playing field for the rich and the poor? The answer is no. Americans believe that their social system creates a level playing field for the disadvantaged. Second, the US social environment is extremely inequitable. The cultural change, self-awareness and spiritual outlook of the Chinese people are progressing rapidly." This is in stark contrast to the United States, which is in a state of stagnation.
In the Social Progress Index released in September 2020, we were surprised to see that, out of 163 countries around the world, the US was one of only three that experienced social decline.Īs for the state of Chinese society, Jean Fan of Stanford University observed during a visit to China in 2019, "China is undergoing profound changes that are hard to understand if you don't come and see for yourself. The bottom half of Americans are at risk of losing their personal freedom and ending up in prison, especially the bottom 10 percent of the black population. Frankly, the US can no longer lead in the way it used to.įirst, the development of American society is abnormal. So it is hard to see how the US, once a model of democracy for many countries, could play such a leading role in holding such a conference today. The US, which will host the so-called Democracy Summit on December 9 and 10, is in the midst of a recession and deep internal conflicts: a failed response to COVID-19, a stagnant economy, excessive police brutality and visible discrimination against Asians. Abstract published by arrangement with Sage Journals.The US-styled democracy fraught with deep-seated problems Graphics: Deng Zijun/GT It is suggested they may play out in ways that frustrate their architects' hopes, due to the continuing baleful consequences of neoliberalism. These claims are critically analyzed in principle, but how they work out in practice is hard to prophesy. The Coalition purports to be democratizing police accountability through elected Police and Crime Commissioners. The current British Coalition government's tendentious 'austerity' measures make these perennial problems especially acute. Accountability has become accountancy, under the auspices of New Public Management. The complex role of the police has been distilled down to criminal catching. The article focuses on how this has developed in England and Wales, although there are parallels with other jurisdictions. Both issues have been radically altered through the profound transformation of policing produced by the last three decades of neo-liberal hegemony. This article critically analyses two key debates about police and policing: the problematic definition of their role, and how they can be rendered democratically accountable.
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