Faction: Democracy’s Fatal Virus?
When I hear people say we need to reach across the
aisle and work with the Democrats, you know what I say? The only reason I’ll be
reaching across the aisle is to grab one of them by the throat.
(elected State official in the US)
Politics in the US has become a “vetocracy”, where it
is far easier to prevent things getting done than to build something new….Part
of it comes from the spread of partisanship at all levels..
(David Runciman, London Review of Books, 29th
June 2017)
Perhaps there comes a state
of chronic dysfunction for democratic systems of government, no matter how well
designed or embedded.
It happens when faction is in ascendant and becomes, for the foreseeable future, ineradicable.
