Politics and Economy

A society that has been undergoing transition for an extended period, a society with an artificial and rather rusty political system, a society where the gap between the people and the politicians is deepening by the day may take advantage of electoral years to fine-tune or even reform its political system. Nevertheless, such undertaking would require that the society in question should have a truly autonomous economy that would be untouchable by political interference. Any analysis of politics - regardless of whether politics is seen is the source of decisions and the means by which decisions are implemented, or as a struggle for positions of importance - requires a paramount outlook over what is referred to as "power." When regarded as a relationship between individuals or groups of individuals, power means that one of the individuals or groups accepts - through persuasion or threat with the use of violence - the influence and decision of the other individual(s) or group(s). Since the relationship between politics and economy is inherently based on power, obviously the holder of the power can be either the economy or politics, depending on circumstances. However, the more powerful is the control that politics exerts over the economy, the more democracy is limited.

Being the political expression of the appearance of millions of small enterprises, democracy ensures the optimal environment for a market economy. Since the economy and politics are interdependent, disputes over the role they play start from the supposition of an asymmetrical relationship: either the economy influences politics (politics being in this case a consequence of economic factors) or politics dominates the economy and turns it into an annex. Politics and the economy have distinct objectives. While the economy concerns relations linked to the manner in which goods and services are marketed, politics is the arena of competition for decision-making positions. The permanent exchanges between the two can by synthesized in the bilateral, univocal relation money - power. Politics' dependence on financial resources that it can only secure from the economy has become a characteristic of the last few decades. The more ground political marketing - inspired by economic marketing - has gained in election campaigns, the most expensive the cost of political marketing has become. The perverse effect of this situation is the loss of confidence in and credibility of the traditional political players: the political parties. More strategy implies less democracy in this case.

The idea that democracy is a luxury that only the rich country can afford used to dominate conservatism and can be traced even in today's Romania. However, if thoroughly dissected, this theory is as false as it is popular. Far from being a mere consequence of a rich economy, democracy itself is a production force. Starting from an underdeveloped basis comparable to the contemporary third world, the English economy's substantial development in the past centuries was closely linked to democratization and it advanced in sync with the advancement of democracy. As increasingly numerous enterprises were able to take part in both political and economic activities, England grew increasingly prosper. On the other hand, a recent example comes from South East Asia. The economic development those countries achieved in the "80s - "90s was not accompanied by real democratization. A make-believe democracy cannot be the foundation of a prosperous economy. Neither privatization nor restructuring will be enough as long as such measures are not implemented in a democratic society. Far from being a goal in itself, privatization, as well as restructuring, are tools that help fine-tune the real economy, just as Euro-Atlantic integration cannot be a political goal in itself, but means to achieve a higher purpose. The more the decision-ma-king process - regardless of whether it is about political or economic decisions - concentrates in fewer hands, the more harmful the situation will be to both politics and the economy. Conflicts between those able to make decisions, or those able to influence decision-makers on the one hand and those who cannot have their say on the other hand are the ingredients of public disputes. And without such disputes, neither politics nor the economy are able to function.