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Lee Kuan Yew ... words said in the heat of an argument, perhaps at the time warranted. Photo: Reuters

Lee Kuan Yew's life always posed difficult questions for democrats. So too now does his death.

As the president of Singapore for over three decades, Lee Kuan Yew oversaw a country that developed with superhuman speed, while rejecting important pillars of liberal democracy institutions like a free press, unmolested opposition parties, and an open civil society. His government was sceptical about individual liberties, famously banning chewing gum, public spitting and, for a few decades following the rise of hippiedom, long hair on men.

As his memoir (From Third World to First) claimed, this strict approach to government did work in important ways. The country's economy expanded and expanded, transforming a small island nation into a commercial powerhouse. For Lee Kuan Yew, this economic success was only possible because of his politics Singapore needed "discipline more than democracy".

This fear that democracies are undisciplined or unfocused is a constant source of worry, wherever the system exists. The Singapore story functions as a kind of adult fairy tale, told to democrats before bed to scare them into asking tough questions.

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Are democracies obsessed with trivialities, like a Prime Minister's love of raw onions? Do they pander to our weaker, selfish selves, never placing obligation before freedom? And are they ultimately incapable of long-term planning, always preferring short-term gratification?

These are very old debates. Plato thought that democracy was the most alluring form of regime, a "coat of many colours". The problem with democracy, though, was that it shamelessly appealed to people's desires it told people what they wanted to believe, rather than what they needed to hear.

Where a liberal democracy exists, these concerns inevitably linger. In contemporary Australia, with a budget loitering in the Senate, growth sluggish and unemployment rising, fears about democracy are again being voiced. People seem to be losing their nerves.

In a recent article in The Weekend Australian, economics writer Adam Creighton argued that Australia's budget deficit could be traced back to compulsory voting. Because mandatory voting pushes certain people to vote that otherwise wouldn't (a group that Creighton described as the 'median voter') he claimed that politicians must pander to people that receive benefits, but don't contribute much in tax.

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Democracy's critics miss the point