Fix the holes in the House

The Anna Hazare movement’s singular achievement is to reveal the crisis of parliamentary democracy. Defenders of parliamentary democracy have to acknowledge several gaps in the fabric of our democracy — the gap between representative and responsive government, between democracy and legitimacy. Practices of popular authorisation through elections are deeply entrenched. But elections produce policies that are not often legitimate in a wider sense — policies that we would accept as free and equal citizens. These gaps exist in all democracies. The challenge is to try and close these gaps.

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