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The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy

Klaas Mensaert (Goodreads Author)

4.33 · Rating details · 9 ratings · 8 reviews

Democracy is under pressure. Western democratic societies face problems such as today’s increased polarization, climate change, and migration crises. But democracies have been facing challenges from their very existence. Democracy should enable us to peacefully resolve social problems by political means. Unfortunately, it has failed to do so—before the American Civil War, ...more

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Paperback, Version 1.0, 127 pages

Published March 24th 2020 by Klaas Mensaert

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Apr 26, 2020 Denise rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2020, own

There's no such thing as the perfect political system - on that, I think, we can all agree. Out of the ones being practiced in the world, I strongly agree with the author that representative democracy is the best one available. I also strongly agree that it, too, comes with a number of significant flaws. Mensaert lays them out one by one, giving detailed explanations of how and why various aspects of the system as currently practiced in different countries pose difficulties and offering suggesti ...more

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Jul 21, 2020 Peter Monien rated it it was amazing

Shelves: democracy

As someone who has read a lot about the topic of democracy and also wrote a book about upgrading democracy, I gotta say, that I am impressed.

The bottom-up approach of Klaas Mensaert's ‘inclusive party’ completely dissolves the current party oligopoly, greatly reduces the current polarization, and allows for better cooperation.

Klaas argues well why the current approach of ‘exclusive parties’ leads to polarization, a large accumulation of power, little innovation, and instability of the entire pol ...more

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Mar 21, 2020 Zjef Van Acker rated it it was amazing

** Spoiler Alert **

“The flaws that kill our democracy” really impressed me.

Klaas distilled 4 years of passionate research and thorough thinking into 109 pages of only the most important technical and historical information. You will need all of your focus and attention to completely comprehend what he’s saying - but it’s all worth it because this book has the potential to become a milestone in history by fundamentally improving politics and democracy.

For this review - I will discuss four things ...more

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Apr 24, 2020 Angelino Desmet rated it really liked it

In the quest for efficiency, scientists and engineers are often inspired by, and get praised for using mechanisms from the natural world. That politics should be no different is my main takeaway from this book (e.g. bottom-up approach, piecemeal changes, trial-by-combat, etc.), achievable ideas I can fully get behind. Except for that last one, that was a joke.

The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy is insightfully written with academic integrity, but the author occasionally forgets that his readers wo ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Rita Bogorad added it

First things first, I do not come from a political background. I am a scientist and my usual reads are scientific publications with focus on biology.
The book was a great weekend read! It was something insightfull and rather easy to follow thanks to the relatable examples and the book structure.
As an author, Klaas gives a very a very interesting view on the flaws of democracy. What's even more interesting is that he goes on to suggest scientific solutions to what is commonly percieved as strictly ...more

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Apr 29, 2020 Nathan Albright rated it liked it

Shelves: challenge-2020

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by BookSirens in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

In many ways, this book resembles a shorter cousin to John C. Calhoun's disquisition on American politics in a way that demonstrates a desire to create a more consensus-based government that serves as a case of reasoning from flawed premises. Given that the Belgians have adopted a concurrent majority model not too dissimilar from Calhoun's model, that is not too sur [Note: This book was provided free of charge by BookSirens in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

In many ways, this book resembles a shorter cousin to John C. Calhoun's disquisition on American politics in a way that demonstrates a desire to create a more consensus-based government that serves as a case of reasoning from flawed premises. Given that the Belgians have adopted a concurrent majority model not too dissimilar from Calhoun's model, that is not too surprising. On the positive side, the author has clearly read a great many good books and has sought to gain insight from them. On the other hand, the author shows a great deal of contradictions that show the internally inconsistent nature of late-stage socialism as it relates to the reform and structure of political systems. The author tries to argue for bottom-up reforms of the political system while simultaneously arguing for the creation of more layers of bureaucracy in an already overly bureaucratic European democratic model, and claims to be a moderate while simultaneously endorsing Pirate socialism. The book certainly has interesting insights and the author has done a good job at thinking about issues, but he is still creating an idealistic and utopian view of politics that seeks to promote the soft tyranny of bureaucratic solutions to deal with the threat of division between genuinely opposed political parties. Whether or not that soft tyranny is to be preferred to the options that result from populist demagoguery or whether it is to be viewed as legitimate are up to the reader to decide.

This book is a relatively short one at between 100 and 150 pages and it begins with a preface and acknowledgement that introduce the author and his background and perspective. After that the author looks at the issue of decentralization and tries to discuss his own personal political awakening as well as a look at fragility and the nature of political parties and their flaws. The author looks at exclusive parties (to which he contrasts his own goal for inclusive parties) and the issues of oligarchies and specialization that results from having people committed to political parties, somewhat disregarding the reasons why times of crisis tend to have sharply divided and exclusive parties more than normal periods. The author also deals with questions of representation, including complete choice voting and accounting for popularity in different ways as well as providing negative comments about lobbyists and the way that the political process can frequently be manipulated by the press or marketing efforts. After that the book ends with an appendix that includes an faq as well as notes and additional ideas.

I expect this book to have multiple versions. This is only the first, and it seems likely that the author will address concerns and critiques of his philosophy as well as changes to the political behavior of the Western democracies by making further versions that are likely more complicated and more nuanced. The author notes the status quo bias of many voters while also presenting a solution that is clearly not a status quo one by adding layers of elected officials and seeking to counteract the presence of lobbyists. If the author recognizes the problem of biased media and biased political elites within parties, it is difficult for republics to understand what the people want--and people, especially the low-information masses of our contemporary world, may not be well-equipped to understand and articulate what they want no matter what model of government we provide them. Ultimately, the author seeks to fix fragility within the governments of the West that may or may not exist through the use of very technical solutions that appear to support an agenda of managing democracy by unelected technocratic and bureaucratic elites. And if the author finds that compelling, there will be many people who disagree. Nonetheless, I do not expect this to be the last word that the author has on the subject. ...more

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Sep 01, 2020 Janalyn Prude added it

In this book The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy Claus Mensurt , Tries and in my humble opinion succeeds and explaining the week parts of our democracy. Not only does he break each aspect of democracy down he also In very simple terms explains it from all sides. For example chapter 1.5 is titled, What are Political parties,1.6 is critique of political parties, 1.7 changing political parties in 1.8 The flaws of political parties A&M each one like most of the topics he tells you the good the bad and ...more

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Jun 11, 2020 The Inquisitive Biologist rated it it was amazing

The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy is a neat little book that proposes changes to the system of representative democracy so as to fix it shortcomings. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020... ...more

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May 16, 2020 Klaas Mensaert rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

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Reviving Africa t...: If Africa's democracies wants to thrive, it should be done by an inclusive party system.	1	2	May 16, 2020 12:02AM

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About Klaas Mensaert

Klaas Mensaert

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As a bioinformatician, Mensaert has been inspired by decentralized, bottom-up processes that can be observed both in nature and in the best of human endeavors—ideas such as the free market and the scientific process. As a former member of the Belgian Pirate Party, he has observed both the capabilities and weaknesses of political parties.