No. of Recommendations: 4
You agree Spankee is the same as Arafat (which is you being quoted, above).
Nope.
One of the things about an elected democratic system of government is that it conveys legitimacy to the elected officials to make decisions on behalf of the electorate, even if those decisions are not themselves especially popular and would not be supported by a majority vote. By having the election and agreeing to the (typically) constitutional framework that set up the government, they are providing consent to be bound by the decisions of the elected official - even if they disagree with them. That's the difference between representative democracy and direct democracy. We all agree that we will have an election, the person who wins the election will have certain powers, and they can make decisions consonant with those powers and they will be legal and enforceable.
That's incredibly important. People sometimes think of democratic institutions as a way that a People can reach consensus on decisions - but oft-times it's more a mechanism by which the People can reach a decision when there isn't a consensus. You have a vote, you put someone in charge, and they get to make the decisions their offices entitle them to.
When you don't have that kind of a system, though, the un-elected "leader" doesn't have that type of institutional legitimacy to make binding decisions on behalf of the People. The People haven't formally agreed to put that person in charge, or to what powers they have. Their "authority" comes only through suasion, informal power, influence, and (for the most part) their credibility in assessing what the People they represent actually want. There isn't a way for them to legitimately bind the People to decisions that the People would overwhelmingly disagree with, the way they would be able to in a more formal structured government.
