Universal suffrage—the ”implement-as-soon-as-possible” goal?
For the last few centuries, different countries performed dethronement of its arbitrary kings and turned to constitutional one(Parkman, 1878, p.1). Nowadays, universal resident suffrage, which according to Chan(2006), defined as ‘one person, one vote’ ”(p.257), seems to be the most extensively advocated and practiced electoral system. Positive outcomes resulted now and then politicwise and socialwise, but some, like the case of Ghana in Africa(Nelson, 2010, P.41-50), are not. For instance, residents in places like Hong Kong, Poland, etc. have been striking for universal suffrage recently as many of them believe that this electoral system should be the ultimate democratic goal(Chan, 2006, p.257-258). However, groups of scholars, such as Parkman and Ellickson, agreed that adverse effects led by democracy may outweigh the positive one(Michelman, 1982, p.1582; Parkman, 1878, p.1-2) thus electoral rules are needed. This essay holds the view that despite universal suffrage prevalence, it is not always success guaranteed thus countries should carefully consider its political, social and economic states, indeed its traditions and education level, etc. before implementing universal suffrage in order not to impede its development due to an over-aggressiveness to become democratic.
Firstly, some researchers have claimed that universal suffrage is best for one society to establish democracy as this should be the optimal equality-showing electoral method. According to Michelman(1982, p. 1581), universal suffrage is the best solution to a democratic system as no parties should be exclude-permitted from municipal electorates. However, these views are arguable as they fail to consider economic effects of implementing universal suffrage. As Ellickson(1982, p.1582-1584) points out that one society’s political state and economic stability are a tie-in, if a hard-to-control and unpredictable electoral...