ABSTRACT
As the issues of centralized vs. decentralized monetary systems are intimately related with the way in which citizens exercise control over state governance in democracies, in this concluding chapter, we conduct a comparative assessment of democracy by representation vs. self-governance. Initially, we identify the core deficiencies of representative democracy and highlight the fundamental processes from which they spring. More specifically, by looking into the literature in the respective fields, we find that these deficiencies include the self-interest of politicians, bureaucracy, rent-seeking and corruption, uncoordinated polycentrism and regulatory and state capture, all of which have deleterious social and economic effects that cannot be prevented because they arise from drawbacks that are inherent to the process of representation. Then we establish that self-governance in the detailed Athenian institutional setup is free of such deficiencies. Due to direct participation, there is no voter alienation; informational asymmetries are counterbalanced by accountability and personal responsibility of all officials; the interests of those who govern coincide with the interests of those who are governed, etc. Finally, drawing on this account, we call for structural reforms toward “strong or participatory democracy” in the short to medium run, which will prepare the ground for establishing systems of Direct Digital Democracy (DDD) that the ongoing advances in the areas of digital networks and cryptography have rendered feasible.
