30 years after communism, eastern Europe divided on democracy's impact | Hacker News Reader

30 years after communism, eastern Europe divided on democracy's impact

theguardian.com

29 pointspehtis6 comments

What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that it comes in 2 levels: the hardware and the software.

The hardware are the objective written institutions: the laws, separation of powers, freedom of assembly, movement and opinion, open elections, etc.

The software is what is within the mind of every each citizen, how he respects and relates to the ones that are different from him, including different social classes, religions and ethnicity, how he feels about corruption, nepotism and abuse by authorities, how tribal or civilized are the disagreements, etc.

Most people think that to implement democracy you just need to make the hardware. But the hardware doesn't work without the software. Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Egypt and other countries (Eastern Germany and AfD?) tried democracy but felt back into tyranny, plutocracy and theocracy precisely because there wasn't a software, a democratic heart.

What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that the nation most responsible for spreading it isn't one - it has a representative republic. There's a reason that the US government was not set up as a democracy - it is rule by mob. But I completely agree that in addition to having just rules and a fair legal system, people must believe in the same for it to work.

Direct democracy and representative democracy are both forms of democracy.

Why did Poland make your list? Democracy here is better than ever. And we've been democracy since at least 15th century, with exception of times when Poland was ruled by foreign powers.

As a Bulgarian I very much agree with the observations of the article: a lot of us aren't really sure things are that much better than before.

[Mostly] free market and freedom of expression are highly appreciated. Everything else is all over the place though. True democracy just isn't in the hearts of the politicians around here. It always gets twisted into oligarchy and oligopoly. No idea how to fix it but it's observable that every nation has their own slightly (or very) skewed idea of what democracy is.

Mostly important IMHO is the spirit of contract. It takes time to build up in a society.

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