On an average, politicians/Government reflects mentality of Citizens. Agree or Disagree?

Do you agree?

If it's an established, transparent democracy.... yes. People deserve the officials they have because they elected them into office.

Agree. They reflect the mentality of majority of the citizens.

Although, i have observed that people can be influenced using a variety of factors that they identify very closely with (religion etc).

I disagree. Politicians usually have to undergo a lot of compromises either due to other parties in parliament, unions or international institutions pushing an agenda (like the European Union, NATO etc.). Ideologies, which most opinions are guided by, and I suspect a lot of people base their political views upon, are becoming less important and rightfully so.

Direct democracies would do best at reflecting what citizens want.

it depends. the question you have in the poll refers to hitler and germany in the 40s, and in that instance, i'd argue that the mentality of the citizens was sculpted and influenced by hitler's propaganda.

Yes, people deserve their rulers. They do not descend from the space or somewhere else, the government forms from average citizen

lenear1030 wrote:it depends. the question you have in the poll refers to hitler and germany in the 40s, and in that instance, i'd argue that the mentality of the citizens was sculpted and influenced by hitler's propaganda.

Nope, the Treaty of Versailles & Great Depression sculpted and influenced it. As for the Anti-semitism, that was prevalent all over Europe.

I disagree, you have the illusion of choice. Candidate A and Candidate B are completely the same except for a few disagreements, it's all corrupt

I'm with Potential, on this one.
I don't think it's necessarily "all" corrupt, but the choices you can make in a democracy are already hugely limited, and for a large part, that's even a good thing.

Tocqueville was the first to talk about majority rule and the need of protecting minorities, and he's right.

If you made a poll about it, in say 1930, I put it to you that each and every European country would've kicked out their Jewish population, if they had just had a poll on it. Sure, it took a corrupt regime and an insane dictator to commit genocide, but extraditing them all would have been fair game to the average European at the time.

I also don't think that people deserve their ruler, as Grande_Milano said. That might be true for developed Western states, but it is just plain cynical for poor countries who often get overtaken by the guy who gets the most foreign money (and weapons) - take Egypt for example, Mubarak stayed in power for as long as he did largely because his military junta minority was treating themselves well, and he could depend on the West for money and weapons in return for not invading Israel, and torturing innocent Afghans for the Americans.

It's like that in many parts of the world.
Or look at Zimbabwe. You can certainly revolt against Mugabe. If you want to have your hands macheted off. You could have run against the Nazis in the general election in 1933, if you liked being beaten by brownshirts and strangled in a dark Berlin alley at night.

There is also two dimensions to the relationship between the leadership and its people, there's the bottom-up effect of leaders representing the, or pandering to, the will of the people, whatever that may be, but there's also the top-down effect of governments, politicians, and power players shaping the public opinion. It's all interconnected.

Disagree...politicians reflect the mentality of the extremists on both sides, because those are the ones who always vote

They definitely don't reflect the mentality of the center...at least over here