How old are democracies across the world?
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
Am I missing something? By which measure was the US (and possibly another among the first eight in this list) not an electoral democracy for as long as Australia and Switzerland? All three had significant restrictions on suffrage, with Switzerland particularly regressive in this regard in the late 20th century.
EDIT: I was thinking of Iceland as well, which has a very reasonable claim to be the oldest (continuous and current) democracy along with the US and possibly the Isle of Man, depending on how democracy is defined.
Sliding back the US and Canada flipped from electoral autocracy to electoral democracy in 1921.
> In electoral autocracies, on the other hand, the chief executive is dependent on a legislature that is itself elected in de-jure multiparty elections (in parliamentary systems), directly elected alongside a separately elected legislature (in presidential systems), or a combination of both (in semi-presidential systems)
I'm not sure what happened in 1921 to flip the U.S.. I think 1920 was the first election that allowed women to vote? But as you say, why that isn't counted against Switzerland I'm not sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
And in the USA, it was first deemed that only landowning white men could vote. Then in 1865, Black people were permitted to potentially vote, but in effect they simply couldnt.
Then women were allowed to vote in the 1920's. In a rights-review, black men were seen as higher standing than women.
And Jim Crow laws were in full effect until 1965. It took 100 years to go from 'kind-of-mostly-not-really ending slavery' (unless you get 12 angry white guys saying guilty, then you qualify as a slave. still do, btw) to the federal govt moving military in to enforce desegregation. Now it's just hidden.
And fast forward, in 1974, women finally apply and get credit (including credit cards, loans, etc). My SO was born in that year. And, not too long afterward in 1985, the Credit Check was created.
But if you're a white guy working in tech, its all cool.
Did you actually mean to respond to my comment? I acknowledge this and mention Switzerland, where I lived for years, due in part to its refusal of women's suffrage through much of the 20th century (1990 or so in one canton). That seems to make this definition of democracy, if used to preclude the US, rather questionable if not inaccurate.
> A country is classified as an autocracy if it does not meet the above criteria of meaningful, free and fair, multi-party elections
https://ourworldindata.org/regimes-of-the-world-data
My guess is it may be to do with the difficulties that African Americans faced when voting.
Switzerland only required all cantons to allow women to vote in 1991. Australia only allowed all ethnicities to vote since 1967.
I agree the original article has a concept of democracy that is hard to understand when it says Australia and Switzerland were the only ones in the 19th century.
In New Zealand women could vote, but not run. Only in 1919 were women eligible to be elected to the House of Representatives. And only in 1941 were women eligible to be appointed to the Upper House.
Curiously a US woman was a representative before women had gained the vote. So kind of topsy-turvy there.
Before women had gained a nationally guaranteed equal right to vote; women had the vote in many states (sometimes on an unequal basis) prior to that point.
In the same way Denmark was a democracy since 1849 but because they had some people bossing them around that nobody wanted for 5 years all the traditions and understanding of how democracy works went out the window? I might actually think that appreciation of democracy might increase if you've had it, lost it, and then recover it.
Paris was occupied by Nazi germany. Yes. But the southern half of the country was not.
A military guy from ww1 took over and setup a government composed of French folks.
That the problematic part in my book.
The official postwar French position was that Vichy was a German puppet state. Some historians have since the 1970s rejected that position by arguing, "Vichy had a political agenda of its own, which it pursued without the slightest pressure from Germany".[6] Germany kept two million French prisoners-of-war and imposed forced labour (service du travail obligatoire) on young French men. French soldiers were kept hostage to ensure that Vichy would reduce its military forces and pay a heavy tribute in gold, food and supplies to Germany.
>they're mapping the amount of time since the latest emergence of democracy.
again emergence of democracy because you have a revolution and overthrow the dictatorial elements of your own society, and re-establishment of democracy by kicking out some invaders seem like two very different things.
To be clear: Vichy was a client state of Nazi Germany, but from 1940 to 1942 its southern portion was not occupied. It was collaborationist, but Vichy was not simply ruled from Berlin.
It would not be accurate to imagine Vichy as an entirely foreign invention. Like in much of Europe at that time, there were many domestic supporters of reactionary conservatism and authoritarianism. As for the strength of democratic sentiment in France, remember that a President of France (and republican) once gave it only the faint praise: "republicanism is the form of government that divides France least."
The domestic political situation was in no way unique to France. There existed significant authoritarian movements and tendencies in every European country at this time. You are probably aware that both Portugal and Spain had adopted authoritarianism, and not simply by foreign imposition. My point is: the Nazis found an existing domestic reservoir of authoritarian French willing to collaborate.
Just to provide a few more facts about Vichy:
Vichy was the French government formed after invasion and occupation of northern France by Nazi Germany. Its head of government was general Philippe Petain, and Pierre Laval was its prime minister. Both had been significant domestic political figures in France. Vichy France was formed after the National Assembly voted to give full powers to Petain.
Vichy had its own paramilitary militia (the Milice) consisting of about 30,000 Frenchman. This was similar to the SS and Gestapo, but considered more dangerous by resistance French.
Of course, unoccupied Vichy adopted anti-Semitic policies and deported Jews to be murdered by the Nazis. Maurice Papon (later the prefect of police in Paris 1958-1967) participated. You can look up yourself his subsequent misdeeds during the Algerian War. Unfortunately, even after the fall of the Nazis, there continued (and continue) to be significant reactionary and authoritarian political elements in France.
If you wish to learn more about this period, you can start here:
In the comment to which I replied to there was a reference to Nazi occupation, and there was a reference to Vichy France.
I made a short paragraph commenting about Nazi occupation but not mentioning Vichy France. Why would you think that meant I did not know what Vichy France was? Normally I would think this person wants to focus on the Nazi occupation part here for some reason?
Then I segued into another paragraph where I mentioned Denmark and said I did not think the Nazi occupation meant that democracy was destroyed. At this point I might even think, that guy wants to talk about Denmark, or maybe just various Nazi occupations in general and thus his reasons for ignoring Vichy France!
But at any rate my point is that if Denmark had engaged in Vichy like collaboration with the Germans, if there had been established an independent Danish government forced into a quasi-fascistic mode then I suppose the return to democracy would have been more difficult and noteworthy, but as there was not such a system (there was an attempted National Socialist Danish party but it got very few votes) I don't think occupation was a destroyer of the democratic norms, especially as the Danish government was officially disbanded at one point in protest of the death penalty for sabotage being set by the occupying Germans.
Why did I say so much about Denmark in this post, and so much in the previous, and not really seem to care about Vichy France? I don't know, my name is just Bryan Rasmussen and I suppose the reasons for my interests in Denmark in this discussion must remain shrouded in impregnable mystery.
Whether you are Rasmussen or Ruggeri or live in Denmark, Italy, or the United States, when you respond to a thread about France it is not mysterious that others will interpret your reply with the context of that country, rather than substitute, post hoc, the context of Denmark.
Pétain was a very French dictator, who got his absolute powers directly from the French parliament. Even if you say that the French government in exile in London was the legitimate one, it was not elected either.
I am not saying that the concept of ‘longest continuous democracy’ is very useful (I don’t think it is), but France did stop being a democracy for a few years.
Although there is an argument that the 3rd Republic did not end in 1940 (its constitution was not suspended or replaced until after the war), therefore the Vichy regime was illegitimate and thus should not count.
I would guess San Marino being on that list also, having been a republic (with elections, similar to the Roman republic) since the fourth century...
Before that the states were independent nations with their own militaries, collected their own taxes, had border controls between them etc.
So how are they tracing it back? The states still have their own democracies to this day but I don't think you can call that Australia's democracy.
Yes, and important point. India had a pet parliament, but the prime majority of Indians had no option to vote. In fact, it was mostly Britishers themselves who sat there until mid-192X
https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/administrative-la...
I think people outside the UK don't really understand the value of the Lords or the way it works, which is remarkably restrained and serious even given various governments' attempts to stack it, and your comment is giving a crucial wrong impression.
With a handful of exceptions, I'll take the UK House of Lords over a dysfunctional elected senate. There's very little bad-faith use of powers there and far less obstructionism, compared to, just say for example, the US Senate, which is almost totally dysfunctional.
What precisely do you find dysfunctional about the Senate compared to the House of Representatives or UK Parliament?
As I understand it in the USA system, you can get legislation starting in both houses that often get merged.
Whereas in the UK (apart from the one single form of the veto) the Lords can only delay or offer amendments to legislation, and the Commons can reject them.
It puts the Lords much more in the service of the Commons than the comment I was replying to suggests. People outside the UK might see an unelected chamber making law, but it doesn't and can't. It can only offer reflection and advice.
The US system, I'm sorry, but your Senate is wilfully obstructionist in its roles in federal appointments and judges, the majority abuses procedure to suit it, and it is abusing both the two thirds majority rule -- by simply refusing to even sit when things won't on the face of it won't get past strict party loyalty -- and the filibuster.
Look at how unseriously it treated its role in the impeachment or Obama's supreme court picks; the whole world sees an unserious, childish organisation.
There is party representation in the Lords but it does not work the way it does in the Senate, because nobody is running for election (there are also many "crossbench" peers who have no affiliation).
Second, the way your system elects senators is by no means impervious to the MTG types. John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, Kyrsten Sinema -- these are not serious people; they either act in bad faith, play up to their base or don't turn up. Hawley is actively bad, John Kennedy is a fake and a disgrace, and Sinema is wasting her seat. (Let's agree not to talk about Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.)
Because of how the Lords works, almost nobody is in that sort of position, and the Lords functions in a genuinely more collegiate way. I mean someone offered to resign -- in good faith and all seriousness -- from a ministerial position in the Lords for being late.
> As I understand it in the USA system, you can get legislation starting in both houses that often get merged.
> Whereas in the UK (apart from the one single form of the veto) the Lords can only delay or offer amendments to legislation, and the Commons can reject them.
Correct. I think this point actually makes it a more effective chamber of deliberation because the Senate is empowered to bring forth an alternative, initiate legislation that the House is unwilling to, or stop legislation in its tracks.
> It puts the Lords much more in the service of the Commons than the comment I was replying to suggests. People outside the UK might see an unelected chamber making law, but it doesn't and can't. It can only offer reflection and advice.
I don’t see this as a feature. A Senate in service to the House would be subordinate and less effective. If it works for the UK, great, but your Parliament has passed much legislation in the past 20 years that has made it a less appealing alternative to my own country over time, to me at least. Still a wonderful country to visit, just respectfully not a place I would choose to emigrate to. :)
> The US system, I'm sorry, but your Senate is wilfully obstructionist in its roles in federal appointments and judges, the majority abuses procedure to suit it, and it is abusing both the two thirds majority rule -- by simply refusing to even si when things won't on the face of it won't get past strict party loyalty -- and the fillibuster.
If you can stomach a single podcast episode on the American system of government, Constitutionally Speaking’s latest episode, Episode 77, has a good primer on the Filibuster in an American historical context and why we have it. The long and the short of it is, it benefits both parties, at least in the present, but likely only has a few years of life left in it because of our contemporary political situation. It’s 3/5 to bring cloture so the Senate can proceed to the next item on the agenda, and the Senate has both the power to revise its standing rules and does so regularly. If you can stomach two episodes, the preceding episode covers how the US House functions.
> Second, the way your system elects senators is by no means impervious to the MTG types. John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, Kyrsten Sinema -- these are not serious people; they either act in bad faith, play up to their base or don't turn up.
Resistant would be a more honest way of putting it rather than impervious, and I didn’t mean to suggest it was impervious, merely resistant.
That said, I agree with your assessment of the individual Senators save for the fact that I wouldn’t put any of them in the same league as the two House members I listed nor many more that I could list. One of the nice things about deliberative bodies of all stripes though is that they tend not to speak with one voice.
> Because of how the Lords works, almost nobody is in that sort of position, and the Lords functions in a genuinely more collegiate way. I mean someone offered to resign -- in good faith and all seriousness -- from a ministerial position in the Lords for being late.
It’s possible that this statement is true about the Lords being more collegiate, but my understanding of the Senate from listening to both Senators in interviews and from people who have worked on Senatorial staffs or spent a great deal of time in the chambers is that the Senate is quite a fair bit more collegiate than the podium and television camera politics let on. They all have a base that needs pandering to to one degree or another in order to get re-elected, they’ll do their pandering for the cameras, but I do wish we could throw out the audiovisual recording devices from both the House and Senate floors.
Christ. I was born here and I wouldn't emigrate here.
The US counterpart isn't so much the Senate as the Supreme Court: permanently appointed partisan lawmakers. The US Supreme Court is limited in that it can only make law on the cases brought before it, but it's been a critical flashpoint for so much social change in the US. To a certain extent the US "gets" to have a dysfunctional senate because critical civil rights issues are fought in the courts instead.
(The people complaining about "judicial activism" have a very real point that a lot of critical US law comes from the Supreme Court, it's just that that includes basic things like "allowing people of different races to marry despite what Virginia wants")
It is also a problem that everyone runs to the US for comparison and not, say, the UK's elected devolved assemblies. Which seem to be reasonably functional with their proportional systems. (Stormont is dysfunctional because of the civil war, not structural issues in the assembly itself)
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/23/canada-trude...
What it did do is allow higher level police to override local police that were refusing to do their jobs. It also allowed the government to temporarily use heavy tow trucks because the contracted companies were also refusing to honour their contract. The blockades were already illegal under normal laws. Protesting was always allowed and still is. Breaking other laws while protesting is not allowed.
More, our government has multiple checks and balances for using the emergency act, and they were all in play. Opposition parties had to agree to keep it in play, which they did. It was under continual review. At no point was it "not a democracy."
Ancient Athens, 400s BC, 10%
Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500s, 10%
Britain mid 1700s: 8%
Britain after reforms of 1832: 15%
USA before 19th Amendment: 20% peak actually voted.
USA after 19th Amendment: 35%
And so on. The percentage is more revealing than the label.
Athens puts all modern democracies to shame in who actually held office, and ensuring that those that did had real skin in the game.
I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.
But would be wonderful. You will see an increase in responsability.
Well, unless you were a woman, a slave, or under 30, in which case oh well. Let's not exaggerate the glory of Athens.
The key difference, in Athens, is most political appointments were by random lot. It was literally a government by the people. No matter who you were, if you were eligible to vote, you could end up with political office. This is just not true with our modern democracies. Most people eligible to vote have no realistic path to political office.
Point is, this was rather small portion of population. And who you were, who parents were, mattered a lot in whether you was eligible to vote.
> This is just not true with our modern democracies. Most people eligible to vote have no realistic path to political office.
There is too many of us eligible.
Sure, but what does voting matter if the options basically are the same?
> There is too many of us eligible.
Right, but I'll repeat the criticism you levied above. In modern democracy, who you are, and who your parents are, matters a lot in whether you are de facto eligible to hold office.
The same as in Athens. Sure, you could throw your lot in, but... did you have the means to run for the office? Did you have supporters that "discouraged" other candidates from running?
The Athenians in office I can currently recall all came from rich or influential families. (I may well be wrong - my recall is certainly extremely spotty. I'd love pointers if anybody knows of an analysis on Athenian officials & their backgrounds)
Exact same in Athens.
Turns out, even in Athens, for the really big jobs they were kind of picky - dokimasia is an excellent filter to remove those you don't want. (Part of the process was questioning your "moral character", which is a pretty good proxy for "has an in with the powers that be").
And if we exclude high-visibility offices, there's a lot of people who can and do run in the US, for their local offices. School boards, city council members, commissioners, etc.
If we want to debate shortcomings of modern democracy, we might want to focus on the devaluation of local offices to the point of only focusing on national office.
It's not that illogical to exclude slaves because a slave in office gives their masters influence over an official, exclude people without land because they were susceptible to bribery, and exclude women who could get pregnant.
> exclude people without land because they were susceptible to bribery
This however means, Athens dont put other democracies in shame at all.
Imagine Google hires new developers with one condition: if they fuck up they'll never get another job in America for ten years.
It will virtually guarantee that the only applicants are those with a delusion of grandeur or those who can't get a job elsewhere.
This sort of creates an incentive to moderate the use of ostracism to the times someone really fucked up bad.
To illustrate the point lets create 2 fictional countries each with 100M population. In their most recent elections they both had 30M vote. By your measure they have equivalent levels of democracy at 30%.
However if we say that in country 1 half of the country is under the age of 18 and is ineligible to vote and only calculate using eligible voters this becomes 60%.
If in country 2 1/10 of the population is under age 18 and ineligible to vote their number becomes 33%. So country 1 has nearly twice the democracy of country 2.
"We claim that Dahl’s theory of polyarchy (1971, 1998) provides the most comprehensive and most widely accepted theory of what distinguishes a democracy based on six (1998,p. 85—originally p. 8 in his 1971 book) institutional guarantees (elected officials, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, associational autonomy, and inclusive citizenship). This conception requires not only free and fair elections but also the freedoms that make them meaningful, and thus avoids the electoral fallacy (Diamond, 2002; Karl, 1986). "
> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
> 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
Whatever caveats need to be added or however much it would differ from our ideal, I've never seen anyone call the form of government of Athens in the period between the Persian War and the Peloponnesian War anything other than "democracy." The Roman Republic, for whatever it's short comings, was a republic. America in 1790 or 1850 was at least as democratic as either of them (by the six measures you list, or by any other useful measure).
Even moderate political scientists rank the US below the democracy line. And calling Australia a liberal democracy is also a stretch.
Independence of the 3 government powers plus press and education would be needed for a modern democracy.
Looks like a CIA puff piece.
Sounds outrageous to me that the US Give them equal rights or leave you can't own a nation... Or at least not while calling youself a democracy. Seriously, if I'm reading this wrong I would really appreciate an explanation.
[1] One can make arguments for why non-proportionate elections might be better than proportionate ones, but those arguments do not include 'non-proportionate elections are more fair'.
And unlike US states, it can be granted independence by a simple vote of congress. It gives them the option to gain independence.
It's important to note they are full citizens in every respect. If you move from Puerto Rico to Florida, you instantaneously can vote, without having to anything other than register the same way Floridians do. And a Floridian who moves to Puerto Rico loses their ability to vote for President and doesn't have real representation in Congress either.
Though some territories, like American Samoa, don't even get citizenship. They are full-on colonies.
We also don't have to pay _federal_ taxes so we aren't being taxed without representation.
It is a bit rich to celebrate UK's democracy as 102 years old when they were practicing colonization and slavery less than a human lifetime ago (75 years), isn't it?
So a country where the people can't change their own government are what you call liberalism and democracy. Got it.
> (limits on government power) and (the ability for the people to kick out the current government)
not
> > limits on (government power) and (the ability for the people to kick out the current government)
You need checks in place against the government for that, regardless of the majority.
A constitution is a contract between the government and its people how they agree to be governed.
You weren't specific in your criticism so I'm not sure what you take issue with.
Why do you need to take issue with something?
Constitutional limits don't conflict with democracy, they preserve it.
If you were talking about some other sort of limitation an example would be nice.
The most important rights are the negative liberties of the rich. Which of course are universal on paper.
The democracy part is a concession to popular pressure and also to serve as a unifying slogan, since democracy is valued even higher than liberalism in polite discourse.
But it’s really just a thin veneer. All it takes is one vote for the “wrong candidate” or for someone to read the first three paragraphs on The Republic on Wikipedia for that high-minded ideal to go out the window. Then the specter of populism looms.
I think generally speaking political discussions are discouraged on HN for this precise reason.
Did you arrive at that conclusion driven by observation and evidence? If so, then that means you notice this behaviour only on the politics threads. Now, ask yourself: are people here really not behaving analytically and logically only when it comes to politics, but you only happen to notice that when it comes to politics? Or maybe you only think that this happens in politics because you have an unreasonably emotional reaction to truly analytical points of view that contradict your political view points?
This wouldn't rule out the above, both reasons can coexist even, but it'd add to the understanding significantly.
You second sentence does not follow from first one. It is quite possible for HN to have that behavior in more then one topic while OP making the first observation in politics.
That’s why people who might otherwise have a logical and analytical approach to technical matters forget how to apply that when it comes to these topics.
That is also the reason why politics and religion are not generally “allowed topics” on this forum except when directly related to tech or a major world event.
Personally, I find the HN crowd to be very logical and intelligent on most issues, though there are some pockets of ignorance and SJWs. However, much of that ignorance is fueled by external motivations and misguided desires.
Frequently autocracies invade democracies because autocracies are inherently unstable and need frequent propping up of internal support by fake "injections of popularity", such as war.
Look at Eastern Europe bloom in 1990 - 1992. For all intents and purposes these countries were under foreign occupation and regimes imposed from abroad.
Simply not true. Ask north korea, cuba, etc. No democracy could withstand an enemy 1000X its size attacking it. Can you imagine the US withstanding an enemy 1000X stronger than us? Not a chance.
> need frequent propping up of internal support by fake "injections of popularity", such as war.
Historically, it's usually the other way around. Democracies have invaded "autocracies". In the past 100 years, most of the invasions have been by democracies ( predominantly the US and our allies ) against other nations.
Actually, "protecting democracy" was propaganda we used to get involved in ww1 against the wish of the american people. And it hasn't stopped since. In the name of "democracy" we've invaded dozens of countries and set ourselves a nice little empire.
That democracy is a good is modern propaganda. Go read up on what the founders wrote about democracy. Go read about what Socrates did. Most intelligent people throughout history have not been fans of democracy. For a good reason, the greatest genocides in history have been committed by democracies. Just think about it.
List the countries currently occupied by "autocracies". Now list the countries we occupy.
List the nations genocided by democracies. It's rather shocking. So on and so forth.
Not saying autocracies are good. Just that the idea that democracies are necessarily good is simply not true. Democracies have committed the worst crimes against humanity. It wasn't an autocracy that did hiroshima or nagasaki. But we each have our own history books I guess.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a limp argument. Emperor Hirohito controlled Japan when they committed an absolutely disgusting amount of war crimes. It had to end.
> Frequently autocracies invade democracies
These are not claims? Evidence was provided for one side of this argument already, and it's not yours.
> I think murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children in seconds qualifies as evil. Don't you?
I do, but do you know why they did it? Honest question, why did the UK nuke Japan?
Agreed. But your replies to me seem to indicate absolutes.
> Democracies are generally more peaceful and produce lower casualties than autocracies.
Not sure what you mean by "generally" or "peace". Internally or externally? Because I'm betting autocratic countries are much more peaceful internally. If you mean externally, I've already shown you that democracies have shown themselves to be more violent/invasive. Just take a look at the US. In our short time, we've "grown" from 13 states to 50 states + many territories. And in the last 100 years, we've invaded more countries than any autocracy. We currently occupy more countries than any autocracy. Two democracies ( US and Russia ) have invaded Ukraine in the last 10 years.
> There's a reason people like them more when they can vote with their feet.
Is that why everyone is fleeing to india, the largest democracy in the world? Nobody comes to the US, Canada, Australia, etc for democracy. People come here for money/wealth. The countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in the world is saudi arabia, UAE, qatar, etc. None of them are "liberal democracies".
> I do, but do you know why they did it? Honest question, why did the UK nuke Japan?
Of course you do. And I do. But instead of stating the truth, you'll say because japan refused to surrender/etc. But that makes it even a more heinous war crime in my mind. The US was a racist nation in the 1940s. We did hiroshima/nagasaki for the same reason we sent jewish refugees back to europe in the 1940s, racial hatred.
Your assertions are what we were all raised with. Most just blindly believe it. But if you were correct, then everyone would be immigrating to india for democracy and not saudi arabia, qatar, etc. North korea would be the most violent nation invading everyone. Instead it's the US, britain, france, etc.
1. The US didn't invade Ukraine, or did I miss something?
2. Russia is not a democracy, did you even look at the article this whole discussion is based on? :-)))
> Of course you do. And I do. But instead of stating the truth, you'll say because japan refused to surrender/etc.
Well, not just refusing to surrender.
Numbers. US planners estimated that the Japanese would defend their homeland and that the number of casualties would be over 1 million people.
I thought we did. Remember there being a coup a while back. But I may be mistaken.
> 2. Russia is not a democracy, did you even look at the article this whole discussion is based on? :-)))
Just like Venezuela isn't a democracy. Just like Iran wasn't a democracy. Chile wasn't a democracy. Democracies that don't vote the "right" way are not democracies.
> Numbers. US planners estimated that the Japanese would defend their homeland and that the number of casualties would be over 1 million people.
I know. That and the billion purple hearts argument.
All your assertions are standard propaganda we all grew up on. I used to believe it too. Now I know better as the evidence to the contrary is rather convincing. I gave you enough information for you to get started and explore incovenient truths. Good luck.
The moment you declare Putin's Russia a democracy, any argument you make about this topic is invalid.
There are inconvenient truths and there is realizing when something is just... wrong.
The parent makes a reasonable point. Cuba, an autocracy, has invaded no one in its history. North Korea is a bit of a special case as it's maintained a de jure state of war, but it has not invaded anyone new since the war that created it. Vietnam, an autocracy, has invaded no one since the war that created it and is doing quite well.
There are numerous old (multiple generations) autocracies in the world that are indeed stable. There are plenty of old democracies that have invaded no one and are stable, and plenty of democracies that have performed plenty of invasions.
It seems to me that there are enough counter-examples on both sides that claiming "democracy is stable and invades no one, and autocracy is unstable and must invade" doesn't fit with much of anything.
Comparatively democracies are more peaceful than autocracies.
And autocracies for sure have committed far worse atrocities in total numbers.
Let's not cherry pick Cuba when the Soviet Union was around, or Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan, or Communist China, etc, etc.
> autocracies are inherently unstable
Making that claim, and holding up democracies in contrast to that, implies that democracies are inherently stable in a way that autocracies are not. I don't think that's a reasonable claim to make.
> Comparatively democracies are more peaceful than autocracies.
> And autocracies for sure have committed far worse atrocities in total numbers.
Completely agree here. I would certainly agree that autocracies tend to commit worse atrocities, but that isn't necessarily directly connected with the stability of the regime.
There's just too many pedantic definitions, technicalities and arbitrary choices which make any sort of analysis like this arguable in soooo many ways.
Just one glaring example: The US has "technically" been a Democratic Republic since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. But Boston, where I grew up, was founded in 1630, 159 years earlier. Massachusetts and other states implemented various democratic systems that continued through the founding of the Federal government. Putting the line at 1789 doesn't tell the full story because the states of the United States are all pseudo-nation states and existed decades before the Union, and I will bet many exist nearly unchanged after the Union is dissolved some day as well.
One could also argue that after the English Civil War, the king was mostly a figurehead and that the Parliament was actually a form of representative government that was copied by the Americans, and that we were basically throwing a hissy fit for having to pay our fair share of taxes and not really rebelling against tyranny. In fact England had been electing representatives to Parliament since the 1500s. And that's totally a valid way of looking at it. The point stands.
Anyways, I feel that the American pride in the fact that we're the first "real" democracy (for whatever definition of real you want) is well founded *without any caveats*. Our ancestors could have done better, and so can we!
By what metric?
Most of the population of liberal democracies (or at least in the US) have very little influence on politics. To the point where they are not being propagandized against as much as they are kept distracted with less “serious” things than opinion pieces about killing babies in incubators.
I mean if the rich guys own everything anyway.
Do they ramp up authoritarian reasonings to justify policies?
Do they just stop trying to justify?
Some emails were posted here just a few days ago. Fed and facebook discussing propaganda strategy.
Obviously not all of the problems in the world are due to these people. Therefore autocracies are heavily invested in obfuscating the truth, gaslighting populations with propaganda, takeovers of national media, and jailing or execution of dissidents. After all, you can’t have people going around saying the autocrat is not the solution to everything and “those” people aren’t the one and only problem. People might start to get ideas.
Thus the downward spiral begins. This is why autocracies are unstable. They require an ever shifting narrative about why things are so bad. The real reason things go to shit under autocracies is because no one in charge is invested in solving real problems. The problems that autocracies aim to solve are made up to incite people and to appease egos. They aren’t evidence based because following the evidence would reveal shockingly that the autocrat doesn’t have all the solutions.
My best counter argument is: "Are there more democracies among developed or underdeveloped countries? Are there more dictatorships among poor or rich countries? We can see that dictatorships are more related to empoverishment and democracies are more related to development."
I think something similar happens in Chile.
I will highlight one aspect of the questionable results from the analysis about India. There's a "Clean elections index" in the V-Dem project which is about absence of registration fraud, irregularities, election violence etc. Interestingly India's clean elections index score keeps sliding downward after 1998. Note that India was under officially declared emergency from 1975-77 and an election was held in 1977. The V-Dem clean election index doesn't reflect this phenomenon.
India adopted the electronic voting machines (EVM) sometime between 1998-2001. Before using EVM, paper ballots would be used for elections. It is well documented [2] that EVMs have helped ensuring freer and fairer elections. Anecdotally I would remember so many incidents of booth-capturing (described in [2]) and re-elections due to irregularities, prior to the EVM era.
[1] - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/an-analysis-of-the-v-dem-data-...
[2] - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/04/05/indias-el...
A right-wing website that's extremely sympathetic to the current right-wing government in India is how you rebut V-Dem's classification of India as an electoral autocracy.
We can argue endlessly about what a mess the process was, and if the results did reflect the electors wishes. But the people did elect delegates, that met and decided on a president. Formally, that is a perfectly valid election (that started by 82, and only really ended in 87 - that's an entire mandate duration with the delegates not really deciding on it).
"in the US land votes"
Perhaps one day NYC will secede and tell Wyoming to go fuck themselves.
Edit: Actually Switzerland seems to be older in their data
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-wor...
"The identification of electoral democracies is based on the Regimes of the World classification by Lührmann et al. (2018).
In electoral democracies, citizens have the right to participate in meaningful, free and fair, and multi-party elections."
you might want to revise this claim
Indeed, one of the major points of discontent was lack of parliamentary representation for the Americans despite nominally being equals -- kind of like the situation of Puerto Rico today.
Indeed—one of the key factors for the US war for independence was that rich Americans wanted to expand the franchise to all rich men, not just rich men who happened to be born to the correct parents. They wanted to do this only in the colonies, but that likely would have emboldened reformers in Britain proper, too ("why should those colonists get more of a say in government than we do?"). This would have threatened the power of the British nobility, so of course war and (ultimately) losing the 13 colonies was chosen instead.
As a species we're quite accustomed to a having an alpha male\female\etc make the calls. I think all of us are just a few steps in the wrong direction from a dictatorship.
You make a silly analogy and seem to actually believe it's representative of what we're discussing, showing a lack of understanding beyond that which would allow a proper discussion to continue. That doesn't show your intelligence and ability to debate, quite the opposite.
The US should absolutely leave and defund NATO of which we pay the vast majority for.
Why should my tax money be used to pay for European defense when they won't pay for it themselves?
Europe has been largely demilitarized with the US providing protection. It would be a strategic blunder for the US to abandon its position in Europe to Russia.
No one wants a third trip over there and to rebuild Europe/UK again.
There's an agreement of % of GDP that members should pay.
They should pay it or defend themselves. I don't see why that's a debate.
Or store ICBM where you could not.
It’s convenient.
RE: going back to Europe, for what exactly. If the German act out again? Russia maybe? We’ll see what actually happen with that one but we can only notice the US is way less trigger happy than it was in says : Iran invasion.
Overall, we figured it out amongst ourself for a while. It will be fine.
NATO allow the US army to have a considerably larger reach. I do agree with recent comment that it’s “brain dead” ( see : Turkey bullying Greece.)
I’m with you, it should be disbanded and Europe should pay for its own army.
But I don’t think the US would actually want that. That would be a blow to it’s reach.
Edit : mandatory comment about USSR bearing most of WW2 war effort. Not the US :)
The ICBM argument has long been irrelevant since you can loiter nuclear subs around a country, especially Russia which has large ocean borders.
That does not change my view : US should not be surprised to bear the brunt of the cost. Since it’s their toy. And my personal wish would be for that alliance to be replaced by something controlled by EU.
Then if the US want to keep their base, they can ask.
We should reduce our presence in Germany speaking of Ramstein, Merkel didn't like that idea though when President Trump pitched it.
Nowadays it'd be more useful to have them in Poland.
>That would be a bonus in my eyes. We shouldn't be there fighting endless wars, funneling taxpayer money into defense contractor's and politician's pockets.
Sure. But that doesn't change that currently the US very much profits from having NATO bases in Europe for its own, non-NATO purposes.
>We should reduce our presence in Germany speaking of Ramstein, Merkel didn't like that idea though when President Trump pitched it.
How did Merkel come into play here as a gotcha? You're the one arguing that the base should be removed. Further, President Trump pitched ~10000 ideas a day, from drinking bleach against COVID to raking forests, to having to flush toilets 10s of times, to applauding Frederick Douglass for becoming more successful, I don't blame any sane person not keeping up with that crap.
>Nowadays it'd be more useful to have them in Poland.
Huh? Where did that 180 come from? So you want bases in Europe after all?
Rude. If you need clarification to my statements, just ask. No need for snark.
> Sure. But that doesn't change that currently the US very much profits from having NATO bases in Europe for its own, non-NATO purposes.
These are my opinions. I'm saying NATO countries should pay what they agreed to or leave the agreement. I'm saying we shouldn't be in the Middle East.
> How did Merkel come into play here as a gotcha?
It's not a gotcha, it's current events. The Ramstein base was brought up recently. Trump wanted to reduce troops, Merkel didn't like the idea. That's all.
Just because Trump was mentioned you don't have to bring up the propaganda like the bleach lie (he was talking about UV disinfectants). He talked about forest management to prevent wildfires (he's correct), which you simplify to raking forests. Please keep on track and don't diverge into petty stuff like that.
> Huh? Where did that 180 come from? So you want bases in Europe after all?
I'm saying if we do have to have strategic bases in Europe, it would make more sense to have them in Poland to defend against the most likely adversaries, Russia and China.
Fair enough, I apologize.
>These are my opinions. I'm saying NATO countries should pay what they agreed to or leave the agreement. I'm saying we shouldn't be in the Middle East.
Yes, but we're discussing what the US is gaining from the European NATO partners, and not what your personal opinion on wars in the Middle East is.
>It's not a gotcha, it's current events. The Ramstein base was brought up recently. Trump wanted to reduce troops, Merkel didn't like the idea. That's all.
Uh. Ok. Sure. Don't forget the 1000 servings of Spatzle for Afghanistan refugees. That's another fact unrelated to the discussion.
>Just because Trump was mentioned you don't have to bring up the propaganda like the bleach lie (he was talking about UV disinfectants). He talked about forest management to prevent wildfires (he's correct), which you simplify to raking forests. Please keep on track and don't diverge into petty stuff like that.
Check your facts, I saw the clips, that's exactly what he said. [0]
But sure, I'll refer to him as "twice-impeached serial sexual predator, adulterer, who would like to date his own daughter and who can reliably recognize the picture elephant on a test" instead.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/19/make-america...
When we agreed to it maybe that plus the agreed upon GDP 2%? percentage payment was the motivating factor. The point is those countries aren't paying the agreed upon amount. Maybe it's still worth it for that simple fact alone and that's why every politician other than Trump was okay with the status quo, because they support the endless wars.
> Check your facts, I saw the clips, that's exactly what he said. [0]
"Raking of forests" is a real practice and in general he was talking about clearing brush to prevent fires.
This is what the machines that "rake" forests look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_EZeAiy3ew
> But sure, I'll refer to him as "twice-impeached serial sexual predator, adulterer, who would like to date his own daughter and who can reliably recognize the picture elephant on a test" instead.
Acquitted both times because the impeachments were ridiculous. The other stuff you listed is ridiculous as well.
Oh, I didn't see him end wars.
>"Raking of forests" is a real practice
Ah, now it's raking of forests again, after you cried out that he never talked about raking but about 'forest management', a phrase I am sure never crossed his lips. But maybe, if you continue your research, you can come up with differences between Finland and California.
> Acquitted both times because the impeachments were ridiculous.
Impeached, period. But yes, now Putin's little puppet is praising the master again.
> The other stuff you listed is ridiculous as well.
Indeed. All on tape and video, for the whole world to hear and see. Never before was the head of a country made fun of by the whole planet. Never in the history of the UN was there another clown like this laughed at on stage, to his face. What an utter embarrassment and failure is that guy, that the whole world turns away from this cringe.
HTTPS://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44717074
And the US far, far dominates actual national defense spending, which is what matters for collective defense. It's the $700B the US spends on defense that backs the NATO defense commitment, not the couple billion spent on training missions.
Someone who is born with abundance doesn't appreciate his blessings, but one who is born with very little and acquires abundance appreciates it every day.
You can have a Socialist Democracy or a Socialist Dictatorship, just like you can have a Capitalist Democracy or a Capitalist Dictatorship.
Contrary to what some people argue, "democracy versus no democracy" and "capitalism versus socialism versus communism" are separate axes. For example, there exist capitalist countries with very little democracy. And there exist socialist countries with relatively robust democratic institutions. And the opposite combinations exist.
(There have not, as far as I know, been very many self-proclaimed communist countries with robust democratic institutions.)
The questions that I care about are, "Can the people of the country make a comfortable living?", "Can they successfully petition the government for a redress of their greivances?", and "Does the country protect minorities of various sorts from the tyranny of the majority?" Achieving all three of these can be a challenge, and different countries may vote for more or less safety net.
It's just plain wrong to call us Nordics socialist. We have free market economies just like all Western countries.
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-ministe...
It's fair enough that they're not fully socialist by any means, but for a lot of socialists the Nordic model is far closer to what they want than e.g. China.
If the largest democracy in history isn't a "notable example" what is?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-second_Amendment_of_th...
Even the link you provided notes the same thing: "Ambedkar's (the original author of the constitution)...objection [to putting "socialist" in the original preamble] was [it was] "purely superfluous" and "unnecessary", as "socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution" through Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy."
Yes, if a socialist government is democratically elected it's overthrown shortly afterwards by the CIA.
(sarcasm, but this is basically what happened to South America, and there's longstanding questions about some of Italy's postwar politics)
Specially if you watch the news.
On the flip side we also use it to make jokes.
Do you see that justification used much in Spain?
We had an illegal lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic. Number of people punished 0.
During most of the pandemic it's been back and forth on do this, do that. Things done that flies against all science like masking outside (just lifted) and other silly things like keeping small children masked in school knowing now that there rate of infection has been the same with or without masks.
Other than that we seem to have avoided the authoritarian tendencies of the us, canada, australia, new zeland, germany, austria, france etc.
Compared to those countries we have not had it to bad when it comes to violating our rights.
Now it's time to vote all of them out of office. I don't want a single politician in power who got used to wielding power during a pandemic.
What law was broken?
We were all locked in our houses for 6 weeks. So yeah I want people to go to jail.
(And he owns much of the pandemic related testing facilities, and related infrastructure, which is nice. He is richer now)
Because elites live under state sponsored anarcho-capitalism. It's only illegal if you're found out and then only if you find someone to prosecute you(cash only verdicts don't count for obvious reasons).