Good Studies Article Review Example

Citizen-Centered Government

In my opinion, the citizen-centered way of governance is far from ideal. The citizen plays an important but not ubiquitous role in policy-making process. The theory of political studies states that a democracy comes from the people but I am not sure that placing interests of an individual in the center of the system is exactly what was meant by this definition.
Nowadays citizens are almost in the center of every western democracy. The first argument against this citizen-centered approach is that it does not give an explanation of what it exactly means for the policy. The second one is that it disaggregates society and promotes the individual welfare over collective one. This approach is top-down one meaning that if the government meets the expectations of individuals, it will solve the problems of the whole society at the same time. Thus the attention of policy-makers is concentrated on the needs of individual citizens and this narrows the scope of hard choices making.
Moreover, such an approach enables political play on the individuals' feelings and the possibility to re-assure each individual that their viewpoint matters. That is why these western democracies face so low turn-up during elections and referendums, and absence of citizens' interest in politics. In realityб those governments which proclaimed to be citizen-centred ones often supersede the rights of individuals by the collective rights of citizens that may be classified as violation of above-mentioned approach for the benefit of society-centered one.
The cititzen-centered rhetoric simply works to mask the reality. When the focus is on the individual welfare, it is more difficult to find the consensus because the individuals work as collaborators each pursuing their own interests. That is why society-centered approach provides a possibility of making decisions basing on the national interest over private expectations. Governance based on collective interests may enable prompt and decisive actions in response to problems and allow to make hard choices.