Short answer is yes, a resounding yes. The ultimate test of the system is whether it works, in the longer term, for the collective good of the people and society.
Do you believe the American has the right to determine who governs them and how their govern? Hillary or Trump or a few others who are now running? Are they all the choices I can cast my vote on? Can you determine how they govern or how Obama governs once they're elected? If you're thinking through, you will start to realize how delusional that you think they can determine how the leaders are selected or how they govern. Sure in theory they may have the right (actually not even in theory, just think about all the voting schemes out there), in reality, people often find them powerless in an electoral vote system. In the vast majority of the developing countries, it could even get worse.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not picking on the US or even assailing its system. It's incredibly difficult to govern a country of continent size with hundreds of million people. America has been among the more successful representative democracies in the world despite its various weakness. I'm just using it as an example.
This is an old subject, and it would be off topic if we dwell on it too much. All I want you is to think more broadly and from different perspectives, and don't automatically assume you're on a moral high round and have won all the arguments just because you utter the word "vote" or "freedom/democracy."
I recommend you, or whoever interested in the subject, read the political scientist Francis Fukuyama's latest books:
,
. Francis Fukuyama is a well-known American political scientist, once studied under the late Samuel Huntington of "Clash of Civilizations" fame. Fukuyama's thinking on different political systems has certainly evolved from "
" that he published and became famed for immediately after the end of Cold War. He expounds on the strengths and weaknesses of both American and Chinese political systems, and their origins. The Chinese system has a lot of resilience and continues to evolve, and in some ways it continues its long tradition of central governance with obviously many modern adaptations. I'll leave it at that.
By the way, My Fukuyama was invited to China for a discussion with Wang Qishan last April on the very subject. Xi Jinping also invited him for a private conversation (probably based on the recommendation from Mr. Wang) last November when he was in Beijing again.
