German foundation says democracy is declining worldwide
laprensasa.com
laprensasa.com
http://www.bti-project.org/en/index/methodology/
Various non-democratic elements that they include in the methodology are "No interference of religious dogmas", "market based competition", "anti-monopoly policy", "anti-inflation policy", "social safety nets", "equal opportunity" (under welfare regime), "GNI cc PPP rescaled", "education index", and all sorts of other things.
I'm all in favor of market based competition and anti-inflation, but you can totally have a democracy that lacks these things - Greece, for example. Voters might be influenced by religious dogmas and vote against market competition and equal opportunity; this is a feature of democracy.
Because the common religions tend not to be democratic(#), the influence of religious dogmas could make a nation less democratic.
EDIT: (#) but patriarchal / hierarchical / dogmatic / scripture-based / ...
Similarly, if you want to measure incidence of lung cancer, you measure "# of people with lung cancer" not "A x # of smokers + B x # of people with lung cancer".
What? Greece is part of the Euro area and therefore under the ECB anti-inflation umbrella. This resulted in moderate inflation until the crisis at which point it's experienced deflation.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/inflation-cpi
Greece also has market based competition under EU law; it's enshrined in the aquis communitaire.
(Also, think carefully about what a zero inflation target means in an economy coupled to the German economy: it would mean Greek wage and price levels below German price levels forever. In order for Europe to converge, local price levels have to change.)
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/07/why_is_greece_s....
Examining the ranks of economic freedom, we find Greece at 138. Italy, the next of the PIGS, is at 86. Only a couple of Euro nations (Bosnia and Croatia) are below Italy (102 and 108).
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
You are right about inflation - I spoke badly. What I should have said is that the elected officials of Greece are not anti-inflation.
"Democracy" is being eroded and undermined by the naive well intentioned types that wear their bleeding heart on their sleeves; the threat is really not even the "far right" or the "fascists". The real risk is the unseen, unrealized one that stares back at us when we look into the mirror. It is never the obvious risk that gets you. What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan.
Well put.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r... und so wieder...
Please entertain me with tales of how democracy in EU is alive and well... Not even going to touch democracy in the US, current presidential campaign speaks for itself...
http://www.bfna.org/media_advisory/global-index-sees-tough-t...
"Democracy and models of social market economy are being challenged worldwide. At the same time, the influence of religion on political institutions and legal systems is on the rise."
It's local. It's not worldwide.
(I wish I could get the original study, but it's not free.)
Only a pedant insists that every else restrict themselves to the strictest of definitions.
Definition change over 200 years. Madison in Federalist #10, made a distinction between "pure democracy" - "by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person" - and a "republic" - "by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place".
You'll notice that only says a republic isn't a "pure democracy". It doesn't say that a republic isn't a form of democracy.
I do not know enough to give a meaningful view on nuances of different forms of democratic governance. I will point out that much of the affairs of our daily lives take place in command hierarchical, aka, the workplace. The pressure (from corporate media and rich people) is often to run government more like a business. It should be to run a business like a democracy.
I agree absolutely with you on the workplace, more people should start realizing that.
"Weak" is also a broad term. Even if you come in with the terms first, you shouldn't use definitions that can easily be transformed to mean the opposite.
Many people do not think that a direct democracy can scale beyond a few thousand people. They may therefore say that direct democracy is "weak", because of that failing, and that it's "meaningless" for a large country like the US.
What's interesting is that Lincoln and the Republican Party in the 19th century fought to democratize industry, they condemned wage labour as wage slavery.
Partially, yes. But even if they are in the mood, an antagonistic first comment can change the mood. Calling a preferred form of government "weak" can easily be seen as antagonistic, and it sets up the initial discussion to be about the correct term, rather than what you want it to be.
Most of us are happy to say "direct democracy" or "Athenian democracy" if that's what we mean.
On the other hand, a popularly-elected dictatorship would be justified in calling itself a republic. It's useful to have a term which includes direct and representative democracies, while excluding dictatorships, and "democracy" is the commonly accepted term.
1) "Several variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both of which concern how the whole body of all eligible citizens executes its will. One form of democracy is direct democracy, in which all eligible citizens have active participation in the political decision making, for example voting on policy initiatives directly. In most modern democracies, the whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called a representative democracy." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Types_of_democracies
2) "The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[16] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with strong instruments of direct democracy). The nature of direct democracy in Switzerland is fundamentally complemented by its profound federal governmental structures (in German also called the Subsidiaritätsprinzip).
Most western countries have representative systems. Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland
You may of course regard this as not sufficiently significant. Personally, I include some of the things of Norse/Germanic law as examples of direct democracy. Eg, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_of_all_Swedes :
> All free men living in the realm and who were able to wield a weapon had the right to participate, and the assembly was led by the lawspeaker.
3) Voting eligibility then was not based only on citizenship. "Participation was not open to all residents: to vote one had to be an adult, male citizen who owned land and wasn't a slave, and the number of these "varied between 30,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of around 250,000 to 300,000." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy .
Thus, the women citizens couldn't vote, so it wasn't "citizen majority" in our post-Suffragette understanding. Of course, the concept of "citizen" is tricky. If you define 'citizen' as 'the people with the right to vote' then the women of Athens were clearly not citizens. Then again, under that definition, felons in the US who have their right to vote taken away would not be citizens either. You might look to the government at the time to use their definition, but letting the lawmakers decide what 'citizen' means is suspect. An absolute monarchy, dictatorship, or other autocracy could count as a democracy if the ruler declares "I am the only Citizen". Or, quoting Terry Pratchett:
> Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.