Doing the right thing spells electoral defeat.

In a link sent to me by Scandinavian blogger, Fjordman, Luxemburg´s prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker said:

"We all know what we need to do, but we don´t know how to win elections after we have done it."

Juncker has candidly pointed out one weakness of democracy. This is what I am trying to get at in my blog. In my earlier article, Democracy needs a Reformation, I pointed out that it is difficult to inflict short term pain to achieve long term gain.

Politicians do not have the luxury of planning more than four or five years ahead. Under pressure of winning the next elections, the policies achieve the opposite - short term gain in exchange for long term pain. But of course, they won't be in office then.

A study on how beneficial economic reforms affected the electoral prospects of the incumbent votrepreneurs (politicians)concluded that the incumbent ruling parties lost an average of 23% of the votes.

If as Juncker said, votrepreneurs cannot do what they know is right to win elections, then you will do what is wrong. That is why most democracies are ineffective.