We are living through what has been described as a “crisis” of democracy. In Australia, poll after poll reveals deep dissatisfaction with the way democratic politics operate.

Cynicism about politics has always been with us. Cynicism is healthy. But in a democracy, everything rests on the perceived legitimacy of the system. That perceived legitimacy is ebbing away.

Why? Because we have undermined the basic democratic ethos: the principle that we are all, ultimately, equal.

Now, everybody would claim to agree with that ethos. I am not convinced they do. We live in a fundamentally undemocratic age. Scores of statutes and institutions assume that individual citizens either do not have the capacity or the right to make decisions about their own lives for themselves – that someone, superior to them in the political hierarchy ought to make those decisions on their behalf.

Today we are being constantly told that people are too irrational and irresponsible to choose what they eat, or drink, or how they arrange their own lives. No wonder we have started to doubt the intellectual capacity of our fellow citizens in the ballot box too. Hence the democratic crisis.

“Government by expert” is now the political ideal. When Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others, he was not talking about fascism or communism, he was talking about rule by experts.

Nowhere is this more obvious in our modern fetishisation of “independence” from parliament.

In Australia there have been calls to move the setting of fiscal policy from the hands of parliament to an independent, expert authority. Just as central banks make decisions about monetary affairs, fiscal authorities would make decisions about tax and spending. It does not seem accidental that these calls have come from political leaders – John Hewson and Mark Latham - who lost elections badly.

To defend democracy we must recognise its limits. Its most fundamental limit is that we cannot make our representatives act how we would like them to, nor do we have much incentive to do so. While our current democratic institutions are not perfect models for liberty or even democratic equality, nor is rule by experts.

Democracy is more than just parliaments and campaigns and voting. It is an assertion that we all have the right to an equal stake in our political order. It is a shame few politicians and bureaucrats agree.

Chris Berg is a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and author of Liberty, Equality & Democracy (Connor Court Publishing, 2015). Register for his events in Wellington (June 29), or Auckland (June 30).