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Comment by vinay427 | Hacker News Reader

> Only a few countries have been electoral democracies for a long time. Eight countries — Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States — have been electoral democracies for a century or more. And according to this data, just two countries have been electoral democracies even longer: Australia and Switzerland have been democracies since the mid-19th century.

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.

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I think, for the sake of precision, we should just go with the percentage of the population that could vote. For dead democracies, we can reference their peak, so:

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.

I think suffrage is a bit of a one-dimensional way of measuring a democracy.

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.

> I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.

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.

The elegant balance of the system is that everyone eligible to vote in Athens were eligible to be selected for office (through random lot). Officials weren't some distant elite separate from the voters, it could be your neighbor, it could be you next.

This sort of creates an incentive to moderate the use of ostracism to the times someone really fucked up bad.

I don't imagine exile would be as bad today as it would back then. Our national level politicians are fairly wealthy too. Getting exiled as a local level politician would be tough though.

You got to keep in mind most Athenian officials were selected via sortition (i.e. random lot), not elected. If you were eligible to vote, you were eligible for a term in office. Only a small fraction of the officials were elected, including for example generals.

IIRC, you could basically put your name in the lot, or put the name of whoever you thought would make a fit candidate.

Assuming that would be exile relative to the jurisdiction of service - you might have to move to the next town :-)

"Athens puts all modern democracies to shame in who actually held office, and ensuring that those that did had real skin in the game"

Well, unless you were a woman, a slave, or under 30, in which case oh well. Let's not exaggerate the glory of Athens.

Right, but who gets to vote is just one aspect of it. Regardless of the fact more people get to vote in our democracy, our officials almost without exception are from a fairly small socioeconomic elite. This has changed remarkably little since universal suffrage some hundred odd years ago. Despite how a lot of people get to vote, not a lot of people get to rule.

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.

I think you are confusing "eligible" and "get elected to the biggest, most visible positions".

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.

> No matter who you were, if you were eligible to vote, you could end up with 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.

> 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.

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.

"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)

> In modern democracy, who you are, and who your parents are, matters a lot in whether you are de facto eligible to hold office.

Exact same in Athens.

They also had non small population of men who were not slaves and not citizens. Had to be born to right parents too. And have wealth I think too.

You needed to be a male citizen landowner. But part in this is because eligibility to vote was eligibility to be assigned political office. Voting wasn't just a right, it potentially came with duties as well.

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.

Aristocracy with no election at all is not _that_ illogical either. But, it takes some seriously twists to call it democracy.

> exclude people without land because they were susceptible to bribery

This however means, Athens dont put other democracies in shame at all.

Why is universal suffrage necessary for democracy?

Because otherwise you decide that segments of the population shouldn't be heard. Democracy is literally "government by the people" - anything but universal suffrage means you consider some part of the population not people.

> 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.

Or every 4 years, we just exile the old president. lol

Is this percentage of possible eligible voters? If this is counting children for example then it's pretty useless.

No, you have to count children because the definition of "children" changes over time. In 1788 most USA states had adulthood start at age 25. Now it is age 18. How would you track that change over time, except by counting the whole population? I think so long as you are aware of what the numbers mean, then this is the most accurate way to do it.

It's still useless. How is it relevant that Norways %voters is higher than the US' if the US has 5x the number of people who can't vote because of age? (Numbers are made up) This says nothing about the health of a democracy and is completely to do with demographics.

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.

It looks like they consider the US to have become a democracy in 1921, which would point to the 19th amendment as the thing that made the US "become a democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...). The term "electoral autocracy" hardly seems to fit, whatever failings the US might have had prior to that time. Nor does the term "closed autocracy" really seem to make sense referring to the administration of George Washington. While Washington was unanimously elected to be President (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...), the President had relatively little power at the time, and the other government officials were not unanimously elected.

They've used a constructive approach to this, and I think what flips from "Electoral Autocracy" to "Electoral Democracy" relies on a threshold calculation of "polyarchy":

   "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). "

I don't know how they made and weighted that calculation, but you can see how any country near the threshold would have lots to argue about. US I imagine scored low (or high, not sure which way is +ve) on inclusive citizenship in earlier years, less clear on the others.

I mean, they can make up new definitions for the words "autocracy" and "democracy," I suppose, but that's not what they mean. It calls to mind Alice's discussion with Humpty Dumpty:

> '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).

In my book the US stopped being a democracy in the 1930ies. It's a "fascist" system in constant war since then. The modern term would be cooperatist.

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.

By that measure Switzerland wasn't a democracy until 1971 or 1991.

Why is that issue?

I'm currently reading through the source here for the same answer: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e09f/417c2d78b48fb100bea6dd...

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.

That could be related to the direct election of senators rather than their appointment by states. The change happened around that time. Of course, Canada still has an appointed senate, so I'm not sure what the distinction is.

The 17th amendment (Senators elected by the people) was ratified in 1913 and the last senators to be elected by the people took place in 1918.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

Guessing the US crossed a threshold with with women’s right to vote.

Arguably the United Kingdom was not a true electoral democracy until the 50s and until decolonisation. In the early 20th century the United Kingdom governed much of the world and non of those people had much say in the government that governed them.

The British Empire and the United Kingdom are not the same entity. The UK was a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy that ruled a non-democratic empire.

I've always found that to be quite the hair to split. Quasi-democracy in the narrowly defined homeland and crushing authoritarianism for all other subjects. Separating the UK and the British Empire that way feels like a bit of a fig leaf, a polite fiction.

It's basically the same situation as the USA has w.r.t. the world until maybe very recently, they basically inherited the UK organizational structure.

This sounds like it fails to recognize much of colonial governments, which were typically in the case of the British a very far cry from simply installing an unelected leader or otherwise manipulating leadership through extortion and other means, as the US (among others) is now known to do. There’s an entire wing of cultural, linguistic, and legal imposition that doesn’t seem to exist in what might more accurately be called imperialism by the US, and these changes still have ramifications in how people in the ex-colonies see themselves, their society, and their relationships to the world.

They're quite different things in practice. The US has never had an arrangement like the British Raj in India.

The UK _still_ has an unelected upper house with theoretical veto power. One of its members is ... Evgeny Lebedev, son of former KGB man and oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

The veto power of the Lords is almost entirely non-existent. Essentially its only power of veto is over laws that the Commons might try to pass to extend the lifetime of a parliament. Literally it can stop the Commons unilaterally extending its power to govern; that's it. Otherwise it can only hold up legislation so as to make it endure more scrutiny, and then only for a year.

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.

In practice, the HoL isn't that bad, but it remains explicitly anti-democratic and it's a corruption magnet, since the Tories have started selling seats in exchange for donations. The value of the Lords is millions of pounds in Party donations per year.

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)

I happen to quite like our Senate. It’s a chamber for deliberation, not rubber stamping what the House throws their way, and since it is formulated differently it’s resistant to tyrannical majorities and you don’t typically find either a Marjorie Taylor Greene nor a Maxine Waters among their ranks.

What precisely do you find dysfunctional about the Senate compared to the House of Representatives or UK Parliament?

It's not a chamber for deliberation in the way the UK House of Lords is, because it has a role in creating legislation rather than just amending it/discussing it.

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.

> It's not a chamber for deliberation in the way the UK House of Lords is, because it has a role in creating legislation rather than just amending it/discussing it.

> 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.

> Still a wonderful country to visit, just respectfully not a place I would choose to emigrate to. :)

Christ. I was born here and I wouldn't emigrate here.

Arguably, a country without a fair, equal and representative electoral system is not a true democracy. This excludes the us and most Commonwealth countries, except new Zealand (since their electoral reform a decade or so ago).

You pretty quickly hit a ‘no true Scotsman’ situation pretty quickly though. If only one country (or a single digit percent) that calls itself a democracy qualifies under the criteria, what use is the criteria?

Maybe it's not useful? Or not as presented here? I mean, Malaysia and Japan have both been ruled by basically the same party for all but maybe a few years since the end of foreign occupation. One is ruled a democracy here, thee other isn't. I don't see a good reason why, other than Japan is friendlier with Western values than Malaysia. It's also useless when you look more than about 50 years in the past. In 1835 you were really democratic if every white man could vote, now even somewhere like Iran has suffrage for women and minorities.

Not really. There are many countries with fair, equal, representative elections. With its 200 year old system, the us is really behind the pack.

> United Kingdom governed much of the world and non of those people had much say in the government that governed them.

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

It's particularly weird since Australia was founded in 1901.

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.

This reminds me of Shashi Tharoor's [0] speech at Oxford Union.

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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4

Just because you do not have universal suffrage does not make you an electoral democracy.

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...

Can someone please explain Puerto Rico? I just read the Wikipedia page and I'm a little shocked to learn that their people do not have voting rights in the US.

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.

Puerto Rico is not part of our union. And until recently, Puerto Rico generally wanted to be the gray area it is in within the USA. It's not sovereign, but it is exempted from laws that apply to all other states and incorporated territories. It can have a lower tax rate, doesn't have to follow the same regulations. It's like being part of the EU without having to follow all the rules.

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 don't have _federal_ voting rights in the US. We have the ability to vote for our city/state(oh-boy) policy and politicians. We also have a commissioner that 'represents' puerto rico in the house* of reps.

We also don't have to pay _federal_ taxes so we aren't being taxed without representation.

States have sovereignty separate from the federal government. Tribal nations have limited sovereignty from federal government. Territories do not have any sovereignty from the federal government - they basically are the same entity. Since the federal government was created by and is formed by sovereign states, no, territorial landholdings of that federal government don’t have a role. Think about them like a city relative to a state. Or perhaps like the frontier - they are lands held by the country, underdeveloped, and depending on sophistication of population, may or may not have organized local governments - and in those cases, yes, people vote for their own local government. When you think of the “wild west” those were territories that eventually achieved statehood. Or Alaska. People born in those territories (US Nationals) can move to US states to live and work, or continue to live in the “frontier”. And trust me, there are aspects of living in the frontier that make it “freer” than living in a state - basically that people give less of a shit what goes on out there if they even know where “there” is. Some territories (like Marshall Islands) elect not to become states but to become sort of quasi protectorates for lack of a better term - having their own internationally recognized sovereignty as independent nations but in tight alliance with and under the defensive umbrella of the US. At risk of pushing too many analogies, saying the US is less democratic because territories don’t have the same rights as states would be like saying your country is less democratic for not letting adolescents vote in elections. Well, maybe that’s true in strictest sense of the term, but then “full democracy” by that definition is not really anyone’s ideal. Perfectly pure systems for their own sake are usually not a desirable end outside of thought experiments.

The US is a democracy, but it's not a fair democracy. All non-proportionate[1] democracies are unfair in one respect or another. On a macroscopic set of trends, it's been getting more fair over the centuries.

[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'.

non-proportional elections are not what makes US democracy unfair. The real problem is that US has bunch of laws which seem specifically designed to deter poor black people from voting: the lack of government issued ID (which in my country you can get for free), not enough polling stations, forcing people wanting to vote to stand in line for HOURS, gerrymandering, or even the fact that US elections are held on work days instead of holidays (making it harder for people who work two jobs to find a time to vote).

There are multiple axes by which a democracy can be unfair. It's possible to have a fully enfranchised population, but let a constituency of five people determine one delegate, while a constituency of five million people determines another.

Only recognized states are given federal voting rights by the constitution. Puerto Rico is designated as a territory. That’s the logic at least.

I don't know how they define democracy. Why France isn't in that list?

They were governed by an autocracy during WWII. This is measuring the age of current democracies.

Nazi occupation in half of it, puppet regime in the other half ( Vichy regime )

I don't think external occupation really works, yes there are a few people alive that have a memory of being oppressed by the invaders but that 5 years or so of Nazi rule does not wipe out the memory of democracy before it.

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.

If you look at the graphs for both Denmark and Norway it's clear that the nazi occupations "reset" the count for the sake of those maps - they're mapping the amount of time since the latest emergence of democracy. It'd be interesting to do a map with short-lived occupations excluded too, but it'd be a different thing.

Yes, I understand the concept. I'm saying I think the concept is bull for the reason I mentioned.

>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.

All that may be true, but this research is about how old existing democracies are, not about which countries have a tradition of democracy that precedes the existence of the current democratic state.

With due respect, your comment would benefit from a better understanding of French 20th century history. Vichy France was not Nazi rule, and it was not oppression by invaders. It was oppression of the French and by (some of) the French, albeit with significant coercion from the Nazis.

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France

>With due respect, your comment would benefit from a better understanding of French 20th century history

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.

Others can judge whether I misread your comment.

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.

> I don't think external occupation really works, yes there are a few people alive that have a memory of being oppressed by the invaders but that 5 years or so of Nazi rule does not wipe out the memory of democracy before it.

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.

Oh. No. The French let it happen and democracy was no more.

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.

It’s hard to Monday QB the rump part of a destroyed nation (quote from 0). I’m willing to give France a pass on democracy being interrupted during WWII. On the other hand, WWII marked the end of France’s “Third Republic” and the current constitution was established in 1958 (1). I don’t think it is fair to consider the current democracy the same as the one before WWII.

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.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France

its revisionist bs. The US was a democracy for much longer than their BS metrics

Arguably, Canada is not a democracy at the moment due to the minority government's invocation of its emergency powers act.

Aren't you like two days late on this AM radio talking point? [1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/23/canada-trude...

That's unnecessarily bitter, but I wasn't aware that he capitulated. Thanks for the update.

"Capitulated" seems a strong term - the emergency was dealt with and the convoys were dispersed so the act was revoked.

This a grave emergency and requires suspension of your Charter rights for… a few days

Even before it was dropped it still did not remotely affect our democratic status. There is a great deal of misinformation about this in the US media. It did not invoke a state of martial law. It did not invoke the military.

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."

Clicking through to the source of the metric they used:

> 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.

The list of universal suffrage (all men, all women, all ethnicities) is different from the article too though. Only New Zealand in the 19th century. Followed closely by Finland, Norway, Denmark, etc.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage

> Only New Zealand 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.

Heck it took until the 1990's for women to be US Senators (but for an exception or two).

Curiously a US woman was a representative before women had gained the vote. So kind of topsy-turvy there.

> Curiously a US woman was a representative before women had gained the vote.

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.

Suffrage and ability to run are different I think but yeah point taken.

Suffrage is one thing. I agree it's a shortcoming of the metric. Making the vote free and fair amongst those who can vote, is a separate matter.

To be honest, the USA is a kleptocratic oligarcic republic with the facade of "democracy". Even the founders held democracy in a great ill repute.

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.

> Then women were allowed to vote in the 1920's. In a rights-review, black men were seen as higher standing than women.

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.

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