the minority; it often affects majority adversely as well. There is a second, deeper reason why power sharing is good for democracies. Power sharing is the very spirit of democracy. A democratic rule involves sharing power with those affected by its exercise, and who have to live with its effects.
People have a right to be consulted on how they are to be governed. A legitimate government is one where citizens, through participation, acquire a stake in the system. Let us call the first set of reasons prudential and the second moral. While prudential reasons stress that power sharing will bring out better outcomes, moral reasons emphasise the very act of power sharing as valuable.
Prudential: Based on prudence, or on careful calculation of gains and losses. Prudential decisions are usually contrasted with decisions based purely on moral considerations. The cartoon at the left refers to the problems of running the Germany’s grand coalition government that includes the two major parties of the country, namely the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party. The two parties are historically rivals to each other.
They had to form a coalition government because neither of them got clear majority of seats on their own in the elections. They take divergent positions on several policy matters, but still jointly run the government. For details about the German Parliament, visit © Tab - The Calgary Sun , Cagle Cartoons Inc. As usual, Vikram was driving the motorbike under a vow of silence and Vetal was the pillion rider.
As usual, Vetal started telling Vikram a story to keep him awake while driving. This time the story went as follows: “In the city of Beirut, there lived a man called Khalil. His parents came from different communities. His father was an Orthodox Christian and mother a Sunni Muslim.
This was not so uncommon in this modern, cosmopolitan city. People from various communities that lived in Lebanon came to live in its capital, Beirut. They lived together, intermingled, yet fought a bitter civil war among themselves. One of Khalil’s uncles was killed in