Political Decay in Liberal Democracy: Five Core Principles to Battle Systemic Corruption and Promote More Democracy

Democracy today is seen by the western world as the only legitimate form of government. Never before have we seen as many democratic states as in the last decade. Yet democracy seems to be in a recession, exemplified by Brexit and Trumpism in the west. Citizens of countries across the world are showing a mistrust in their government, because they do not feel represented. As a result, the political party today is the least trusted institution in the western world. What I will argue in this paper is that the people distrust the political apparatus because governmental officials, political parties, and institutions fail to represent the people and as such are not democratic. There is something in the very fabric of the current electoral representative system that allows for the oligarchization of power. Further, to battle the unequal access to political power, I will propose five core institutional principles that promote more democracy and as such spread political power more evenly among the members of an association.