Voting science

THE great weakness of western democracies is that political parties can only be held accountable at infrequent elections.

If certain economic, health, wealth, educational and human rights data were plotted on Bell Curves, an overall democracy index could possibly be measured and plotted against time. The Left and Right tails of the curve might indicate shifts to the Left, towards communism and to the Right, towards fascism.

This use of economic data might change Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s opinion, that economists know the cost of everything but the price of nothing. He is, however, emphatic about one thing, that economics is not a science. But perhaps democracy could and should be, too?

Dr Anthony J Campbell

Murray Park
St Andrews, Fife