Mad rulers are also quite normal for much of human history, the theory was that Democracy would relieve us of that particular problem.
Mad rulers are also quite normal for much of human history, the theory was that Democracy would relieve us of that particular problem.
This is one of the most insightful videos I've ever seen on society and governments. It describes Anacyclosis, where political systems evolve in a recurring sequence driven by corruption and decay.
Democracy will eventually decay. It's not permanent. You can see it now live where democracies elect more and more radical leaders.
Even this "decay" isn't inherently "bad" (assuming you are pro-democracy). There are numerous other decision mechanisms, and many of them are inclusive and transparent. Some of them might work for various levels of civil organisation, should The People want to give them a try. If a country replaced its democratic voting system with one of these others, you could still call that a "decay of democracy", but it might actually be good for the country.
(For the record, I don't think authoritarianism and its associated decision systems are good for large, general purpose bodies like countries.)
Can a (more or less) two party system where the population hovers around 50/50 support for each side truly be called a democracy?
Unless democracy has never existed, and thus has evidence for being unable to exist, sort of like communism, yes. It’s flawed. But it’s more than in line with historic systems. (Not all of which failed due to populism.)
I don't think that was the theory. I think the theory was something in the middle of the wisdom of the crowds and the fact that non-violent hand overs of power are less bad than violent ones.
The main flaw is that democracy can be undone by democracy whereas autocracy in principle can be made to last forever. Of course autocrats eventually kill the host organism so there too there is a built in fuse but it can take a long time (centuries?) to burn.
I think Athenian democracy was explicitly built by Solon to relieve gridlock among entrenched, corrupted families.
For instance the Romans are thought of as a great, cultured civilisation because their histories won out, but the Gauls and Carthaginians would’ve disagreed.
Like Lord Palmerston said, countries don’t have friends v or enemies, only interests. Russia and China get along well now, definitely didn’t 50 and 150 years ago, but did in intervening periods. Yet they would both consider themselves as in the right regardless.
Country? Probably not. Society? Yes. America’s treatment of Europe post-WWII, and even Japan and Germany, together with its restraint when it was the global nuclear hegemon, was benevolent.
From that society? The people who were in power when we were the global nuclear hegemon?
My point is societies corrupt, and great societies emerge from the corrupted. America before and after was not benevolent. The Americans at the helm during and at the end of WW2 were, as an aggregate, as expressed through our republic, benevolent. (Benevolence doesn’t require faultlessness.)
The Empire bit the dust, Europe ruined - and the US and CSSR divided the world upon themselves.
It is not narrative for us to hear, as there have been many sacrifice that came to liberation of Europe. It is much easier to see them trough less less of the good guys, the liberators. But there are many sides to history: it also was a change of guard in the strategic geopolitical sense… and even after WW2, the US did a lot to accelerate the Empire’s demise …
I think a lot of it has to do with inertia; people have made such a great job in the past in the wester world, with infrastructure, education, law, medicine, and so on, that even when real proper idiots take power, most things just continue being good enough. It takes a lot of time for idiots and autocrats to make their impact, which when (hopefully) voters will switch and get good people back in power.