"Necessity" of Musical Chair In Democracy

First of all, all democracies develop into two-party systems, other parties become non-existent (usa) or too small to matter. This is achieved by alliances, unions, take overs and yes buying.

In Pakistan we have not yet reached that point, we have two big parties but there still is significant power in smaller parties. Its because we didn't have a continuous democracy, due to frequent military take overs.

So, once the two-party system is reached, a musical chair develops. One party get in power, spend atmost 10 years, then let the other party take over for atmost 10 years. Rinse and Repeat. Why?

Its because if only one party remain in power, then it cannot blame its faults to anybody else, it has to take some responsibility of its actions. The musical chair scheme works great for both parties, because they can keep on blaming each other.

If you want to play a long game, then you have to be careful about what you are playing with, that thing should not deplete. People's trust is the thing most democracies play with.

Note that musical chair is not effective to achieve its target if first two-party system is not developed. Its because in presence of significant others, when the first party let the seat go, its not necessary that the second party catch it, some third entity can take hold.

Two-party system in democracy is like duopoly in economics. Lesser the competition, lesser the efficiency. As retail is the most perfect real world market, due to presence of numerous suppliers (no monopoly), democracy is as efficient as number of parties are. This however do not work, because after a threshold, the multi-party country sieze to exist, because it breaks down in smaller units. Democracy divides. Its in this division the short-term efficiency is.

Let me explain. The efficiency democracy brings is by reducing political corruption. This actually is a very small portion of economy. Its because very small portion of economy, usually less than a quarter goes in taxes, and a fraction of taxes goes in corruption. There is an upper limit on corruption-to-taxes ratio, which is amount needed to run the country, the unavoidables, things like salaries of govt employees, maintenance of infra structure, maintenance of military weapons etc.

Greater efficiency can be achieved by making empires. By combining districts into provinces into countries into regions into empires. Greater the size (population, land) of a country, the more efficient it is. This efficiency comes by using same currency, free internal traveling and trade, specializations of areas etc. This efficiency comes in the whole economy.

So, assuming that taxes are one quarter of economy, and corruption is half of taxes, only 12.5% of economic output goes in corruption. The most that we can theoretically do with efficiency is to make it 100%, so assuming a perfect democratic system, having hundreds of almost equal political parties, we may reach 99% of efficiency. So there is a saving of almost 12.5% of economy. Now lets see at what cost it will come.

The least that we do with real world division is to limit it to 2, that is divide in half. Ofcourse having hundreds of political parties means that you have to divide by some greater number, say 10 or may be even 100, but lets be very optimistic. At a division of 2, efficiency decreases somewhat. My point here is, that at whatever length that decrease in efficiency is, it would still be larger than the 12.5% number we have got to above.

So, its must to have a very corrupt govt, for most of human history where there is a large empire. This corruption can come in many forms. It might be the mughal kings giving outrageous amounts of money in gifts to their families, or warlords of medieval europe basically doing almost whatever they want in their little strongholds inspite of law of land and desire of kings.

Empires are expensive. No doubt about it. One expense is excessive corruption. To keep united a large region, with may be hundreds of languages and cultures, there have to be a lot of earmarks, grants, buyings on the soft hand and rebellions, civil wars, crushings etc on the hard hard. We know from the roman experience that all democracies, even the two-party systems, become empires in the long run. Empire means having a king, that is monopoly, no competition at political level. By definition this arrangement is inefficient. Yet this efficiency is many times less than the efficiency gain in economy.