Yves here. While this post contains useful historical detail on the evolution of democratic systems in many countries, its optimistic framing at the end, that the word is in a phase “democratic backsliding” but democracy experiments continue, is what Matt Stoller sometimes calls “adorable,” as in naive to the point of being treacly.
We are well on the way to a polycrisis. At the same time, the reach of surveillance tools is increasing as elites are increasingly worried about their legitimacy and ability to hold on to power. We are seeing increases in authoritarianism across Western nations, staring with suppression of speech, persecution/prosecution of peaceful opposition forces, increasing election interference (see Romania and Moldova), and in the US, Trump’s announcement of the intent to use the military against internal enemies. It may turn out that the ability to contain opposition forces is vastly lower than the ability (in theory) to identify them, but individuals and organizations are already being turned into examples as part of the containment effort.
So yours truly is not bullish about democracy.
By John P. Ruehl, an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
Sri Lanka’s 2024 elections have fast-tracked reforms that began after the country’s 2022 economic crisis, when mass protests forced limits on presidential powers. In 2025, the new government has been pushing further toward a parliamentary system, which was in place during its independence before it converted to a presidential system in 1978. Sri Lanka’s potential swing back fits South Asia’s traditional experimentation with different democratic models. Pakistan also began as a parliamentary democracy during independence, but has since then alternated between parliamentary and presidential systems. Bangladesh, meanwhile, transitioned to a presidential system before reverting to parliamentarism in 1991.
The ongoing debate in South Asia is part of a larger conversation about what type of democratic governance is best. With the notable exception of China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and a handful of other authoritarian states, most of the world’s countries now hold regular elections with at least a formal commitment to democracy. Roughly “36 percent of democracies are parliamentary, 25 percent are presidential, and 39 percent are semi-presidential,” according to the nonprofit educational technology platform OpenStax.
Democracy has become the global default system of government in recent decades, but its appeal and credibility have waned. Many regimes that call themselves democratic conduct rigged elections or have stage-managed political processes, while in long-established democracies, trust is eroding in institutions. With ideological competition increasingly taking place within democracies rather than against other political ideologies, understanding the development, forms, and appeal of different models is increasingly essential to safeguard the process.
The origins of today’s democratic models took shape in distinct ways, centuries after the ancient Greeks in Athens introduced self-rule, allowing a limited segment of society to govern through direct or representative voting. The U.S. established the first presidential republic in 1789, with a president directly elected as head of state and government. Independent from the legislature, the president appointed an administration largely of their choosing (subject to legislative approval). While the office echoed monarchical power, it was constrained by checks from other branches and later by term limits.
The model proved popular across the Americas during the 1800s, as newly independent countries adopted the presidential template to assert sovereignty and strengthen executive authority in the face of instability and foreign pressure.
Parliamentary government, by contrast, places executive authority with the legislature instead of a single office. The prime minister can be removed through a vote of no confidence, and cabinets often depend on changing coalitions to retain power.
This system traces back to medieval Europe, where monarchs occasionally consulted assemblies but typically limited their powers. After England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, the monarch was required to govern with parliament’s consent, and over the next centuries, parliamentary systems spread across Europe and former British colonies like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
After both World Wars, new democracies in Europe and Asia often adopted parliamentary institutions, with the U.S. encouraging them to avoid concentration of executive power in one figure and guarding against the return of strongman rule. “The post-Second World War occupations of Germany and Japan were America’s first experiences with the use of military force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin rapid and fundamental societal, political, and economic transformation. … Their success demonstrated that democracy was transferable; that societies could, under certain circumstances, be encouraged to transform themselves,” stated E-International Relations.
The rollback of European colonial empires produced a wave of democracies, with other British colonies also adopting parliamentary systems, building on institutions established under colonial rule.
India’s democratic system, for example, was shaped by the Indian Civil Service and British administrative frameworks and became the largest parliamentary democracy in the world after independence in 1947.
Elsewhere, however, democratization was far more rushed. Many anti-colonial movements rejected British and other European parliamentary traditions in favor of presidential systems, which promised unity and decisive leadership while giving ambitious leaders a clearer path to consolidate power. Former British African colonies like Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda had parliamentary systems when established, but switched to presidential rule after independence. Outside Africa, countries such as Guyana and Sri Lanka also opted to change to centralized presidential systems.
While many governments often sought to avoid pure presidentialism, frustration over frequent government collapses, weak coalitions, and legislative paralysis within parliamentary systems by the mid-20th century led to experimentation. In 1958, after 24 governments in 12 years, Charles De Gaulle restructured French democracy, creating the Fifth Republic with a directly elected president alongside a prime minister accountable to parliament. This semi-presidential model was built on earlier examples in Weimar Germany and Finland and was not formally identified until the 1970s.
The president, directly elected by the people, became responsible for foreign policy, defense, and diplomatic representation. The prime minister, typically appointed by the president, became in charge of domestic policy and ran the cabinet while remaining accountable to the legislature. This arrangement also allowed for “cohabitation,” when the president and prime minister come from different parties, and has been adopted by other countries seeking strong, directly elected leadership with parliamentary oversight. Semi-presidential systems nonetheless vary widely in the balance of power between the two offices.
Democracy in the Modern Era
The fall of communism provided a path for further democratic expansion. Some followed the broader European pattern of adopting parliamentary systems, including Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Georgia and Armenia also reformed into parliamentary democracies in the 2010s, while Moldova has gradually reduced its presidential powers, moving toward a parliamentary system. Other countries, like Romania and Poland, became semi-presidential systems.
Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Central Asian states, however, adopted presidential politics and have seen them evolve into super-presidential systems characterized by strongman rule. Kyrgyzstan began experimenting with parliamentarism following two revolutions. The “Tulip Revolution” in 2005toppled President Askar Akayev but left presidential dominance mostly intact. A second uprising in 2010 led to constitutional changes that redistributed power between the president, prime minister, and parliament, laying the foundation for a parliamentary system. The country, however, reverted to a strong presidential model after constitutional changes in 2021. Ukraine, meanwhile, attempted reformthroughout the 2000s and 2010s to reduce presidential power, but the 2022 Russian invasion has pushed it back toward a centralized presidential model to maintain wartime unity.
As in the Cold War, Washington has continued to support various democratic forms. It backed color revolutions in post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav countries to encourage parliamentary rule, while tolerating presidential strongmen in Africa for the sake of stability.
Nation-building during the war on terror further reflected the same pragmatism: Iraq was established as a parliamentary republic to create political consensus and appease the sectarian society, while Afghanistan was given a strong presidential system to unify the country. Afghanistan’s political system collapsed after the complete withdrawal of the U.S. army from the country in 2021, while Iraq’s system, despite constant crises, has so far endured.
The results appear to vindicate what Juan J. Linz argued in his article, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” published in 1990 during a wider debate over democratic systems, that new democracies should favor parliamentary systems if they want to survive. Presidentialism’s “winner-take-all” makes democracy a zero-sum game. “Linz argued that such a system discouraged compromise and coalition building while exacerbating competition and polarization,” stated the blog by Justice Everywhere. Yet these dynamics are not exclusive to presidential systems, with parliamentary democracies like India and the UK also capable of eroding democratic norms through majoritarian rule.
Meanwhile, the reemergence of the strongman archetype has similarly appeared in parliamentary systems, often aided by the lack of term limits. Israel briefly experimented with directly electing its prime minister in the 1990s before reverting to the traditional vote by parliament in 2001. But under Benjamin Netanyahu, constitutional changes and political practice have increasingly concentrated power in the prime minister’s office.
In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has in turn reshaped parliamentary institutions to entrench his party’s rule. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has centralized authority, evolving from earlier efforts under Indira Gandhi and some of her supporters during the Emergency (1975-1977) to move to a more presidential system.
Fears of power consolidation remain greater, however, in presidential systems. Despite the heightened threat of coups and military control to remove an unpopular president, some argue that its advantages offset the risks, especially when legislative powers are limited. Strong presidents can ensure consistent leadership during a crisis, but strict term rules make removing a president difficult. Prime ministers, in contrast, can be removed relatively easily.
Parliamentary democracy has its own strengths and vulnerabilities. Belgium—a longstanding parliamentary democracy and the heart of the EU—went without a federal government for 652 daysbetween 2018 and 2020. Yet the system endured until consensus was reached, without one person needing to dominate the government.
Semi-presidentialism is often seen as a good middle ground, but it carries risks of its own. France’s experience since switching to this model has shown how cohabitation can create gridlock. Its current revolving door of prime ministers highlights the fragility that can emerge even without formal cohabitation. Newer semi-presidential democracies, such as Tunisia, have shown how unclear boundaries between the president and parliament can create instability that threatens the political system.
Sri Lanka’s ongoing political evolution shows the appeal of parliamentary systems, though strong presidentialism also retains allure. In 2017, Turkey formally abandoned nearly a century of parliamentary democracy for a presidential system. Tunisia’s 2021 coup came just a decade after the Tunisian revolution, birthplace of the Arab Spring, and until then, its only “success story.” Since then, President Kais Saied has turned Tunisia from a semi-presidential system into a strong presidential republic, sidelining parliament and the prime minister’s office. Egypt has followed a similar path, strengthening presidential power and reversing earlier reforms.
Despite his criticism of presidential systems, Juan Linz made an exception for the U.S., tying its stability to a broad moderate consensus and a lack of deep polarization. With those conditions now under strain, arguments are being made for the U.S. to adopt a parliamentary system. Similar debates surround Sri Lanka’s future, alongside Syria and Ukraine, once their conflicts end.
Amid the current wave of democratic backsliding and dissatisfaction, the wider ideology continues to evolve. Unlike past eras, marked by often violent divisions between fascism, communism, and monarchy, democracies today cooperate extensively across ideological and institutional lines. Sharper divides and rivalries between different democratic models risk orienting their future evolution toward greater antagonism.
Although experimentation carries risks of instability, the coming decades could produce innovations that redefine what a successful democracy looks like. Change also occurs on smaller scales: with council-manager governments operating at the municipal level in the U.S. in ways that resemble parliamentary systems. Local adaptations and more common transitions between parliamentary, presidential, and hybrid systems may become an increasingly normalized strategy for democracies to survive and manage relations.
I think the debate is somewhat misplaced, since the matter obviously is *who* has/have the power, and in which way wants to legitimize it. I was not commented the experience of the brief Portuguese republic (1910-1926), which was the first truly republic in Europe coming from a monarchy after the French Revolution (and well before the October Revolution), a bourgeoise one besides. It collapsed because, in my opinion, the emergent power of bourgeoise was strong enough to expel monarchism, but not to consolidate it before the large owners, the military, the church, and other reactionary forces. In fact those forces enacted a deceptive presidential system, with Salazar holding all the power, or best, like Franco after him, in a more coarse and bloody way, being the Supreme Arbitrator, which makes the system with strong similarities to the American system (apart from not being democratic at all, even despising the concept itself).
Anither point is the Marquis of Condorcet problem, I mean, the electoral system. This is as important, if not far more, than the system itself, and it is calibrated by the same elites who actually holds the power. One very acute problem of Spain always was their electoral systems. The Second Republic System had a strange system (made trying to flee from precedent systems of electoral fraud) of making artificial majorities, the winner took 2/3 and the loser 1/3 of the constituency. It brutally radicalized politics, since small fringe parties turned hughly valorated when the difference between win and lose fell on small margins. In a truly proportional system, centered-parties would have won most of the seats and radical positions would have been penalized, the contrary was what happened. This, in a society with a high degree of polarization became fatal.
Britain, for instance, has a total disfunctional system, IMHO, because most of the English (not British) voters prefer an artificial majority than parties negociating among them out of any control from voters. It is cultural.
So, at the end, the system will depend in who is the main actors, and the electoral system is what truly models the entire issue.
Dear Yours Truly who, “is not bullish on democracy,” you may have a kindred spirit in Mary Harrington, as she testifies to a similar sentiment in her July “First Things” piece, “The King and the Swarm“.
I think Yves opening comment captures this piece quite well: it is “what Matt Stoller sometimes calls “adorable,” as in naive to the point of being treacly.”
As I read this I was reminded of the “Civics” class we were all required to take back in junior high (that’s middle-school these days for you youngsters). It was a basic course on government, mainly focusing on US government but also including brief lessons on comparative systems (‘monarchy,’ the dreaded ‘communism,’ etc.). It taught us how our “democratic Republic” was *supposed* to work in theory: three branches, “checks and balances,” etc. But while educating us on the formal elements of our “democracy,” it of course actually served as an ideological smoke screen obscuring how *real* political power was distributed and exercised in the US and how formal “democracy” operates to reproduce particular social hierarchies and economic systems. Reading this took me back to those days. And discussing forms of “democracy” in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Russia – or Israel – in the abstract without placing them in historical or geopolitical context is pretty laughable today.
I think this discussion might be useful, especially for those in the US who typically lack any historical or comparative understanding of other political systems. But it has been a long time since I was in eighth grade.
Regan took Civics out of the curriculum in the 1980’s. So anyone under the age of 55 in the US never got to take that course. The closest I got to that was “World Studies”in 8th grade in 1986.
Most people don’t understand that politics is not civics.
I cannot recommend highly enough as some background for this sort of analysis Carroll Quigley’s posthumous “Weapons Systems and Political Stability.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/991684.Weapons_Systems_and_Political_Stability
The essence of it (in my reading) is that available technologies (both communications and military) are highly influential where prevailing political systems are concerned, since they either promote or constrain the concentration/diffusion of power. Among other things, inevitable changes in technology always made the “end of history” premise and its proponents sort of ridiculous.
LOL! There is probably something to Quigley’s argument in that book. But in relation to my comment directly above about our simplistic understanding of “democracy,” I think Quigley’s ‘Tragedy and Hope’ is a much more useful antidote. His history of elite networks of financial interests pulling the strings behind the veneer of Anglo-American “democracy” never made it into my eighth grade Civics class for some reason. Apparently Bill Clinton learned its lessons well, though, as one of Quigley’s prize students at Georgetown. The Clintonian style of global “democracy promotion” would be well understood by his mentor.
I have a copy of Tragedy and Hope but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet — thanks for the reminder!
My experience working for elected representatives in the US govt. has left me no longer a believer in the concept of representative democracy. Some form of more direct and accountable representation is necessary because as is “public servants”in the US work for their financial donors only.
What I’m reading from this is that democracy has a chance only in a society that a) has income and wealth equality (so nobody really has enough extra to “sponsor” policies) and b) any type of political donation is forbidden and when caught every party is presumed guilty until otherwise proven and punishment is 10 year ban from any public office and private business operation.
Yes. There must be some way to remove or abate the political power of wealth for any possibility of democracy (of any type) to represent anyone but the über-wealthy. We are where we are because this hasn’t happened despite several attempts in the US to do so (e.g. 1890 pops, FDR).
For Canadian federal election campaigns financial contributions and spending are tightly regulated. Third party spending is also tightly controlled. Importantly the limits do allow for the election of many non-corrupt politicians. However the restrictions only apply to the election campaign itself so spending can occur before the campaign.
In addition, the media, mostly controlled by business interests, can say what it likes. And of course loyal elected servants of corporate interests can always count on plum jobs after they leave office.
The province of Quebec has much tighter controls. Only individual contributions to political parties are allowed, and for both provincial and municipal parties they are limited to $100 yearly or $200 in an election year. The province also kicks in money towards expenses.
I’m involved in a municipal election campaign at the moment in the city of Gatineau (270k inhabitants). The party I work with has hundreds of volunteers on the ground going door to door. The small amount of money available is spent on campaign signs and various incidental expenses. The other party is very close to developers and would spend millions to try to buy the election if it could. But it can’t. To my knowledge it has almost no-one on the ground except the candidates themselves. A recent poll showed my mayoralty candidate at 58% of the votes. She is exceptional – 36 years old, honest, super competent, has a a social conscience and is definitely not in the pocket of the developers. The developers’ “lower our taxes” candidate is at 36%.
See https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/party-financing
See also https://www.electionsquebec.qc.ca/en/our-institution/research-projects-studies-and-surveys/for-a-new-vision-of-the-election-act/theme-3-political-financing-and-election-expenses/
Nat, from your observations in such offices of ‘public servants’, would you venture a guess…on the ‘hours logged’ by staff and ‘servant’ …focused on donor funding, for a subsequent re-election campaign? In general terms is fine. One of the variants here likely L-T servants vs the ‘newly elected’. Perhaps a link if this query has been broached before. thx
As long as “democracy” is mostly seen as a dominance hierarchy – so a permanent struggle for supremacy and power between factions within the political elite, (though ostensibly a representative system), then all those parliaments and governments are corrupted and the entire system mere tokenism.
A useful article. Perhaps the US would be better off under a parliamentary system but of course a true democracy was what the Founders didn’t want for fear that “levelers” would then threaten their own privileged positions. It seems those with the time and leisure to think about such things need minions, slaves even, to do all the grunt work.
That said, I believe in an affluent country, like the US is now, we all are to blame for our govenment since so many have enough time and leisure to pay attention to the problem if only they would do so. The decline in attitudes of citizenship brings forth current monsters.
In the days of ancient Greece, every could participate in the running of the government as it was a selection from a small population that could all meet together. But populations have exploded which led to representative democracies. Thing was, just who were those representatives actually representing. As an example, a study done over a decade ago at Princeton which found that the US was effectively an oligarchy as the wants and needs of the people were only taken into account when they coincided with those of the elites-
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
And you have the same pattern in many countries such as the UK and many of the EU countries. In modern democracies, only the elites are actually represented and everybody else is just along for the ride. Would internet voting help? We all know the answer to that one. I think that to survive, that democracies will have to ‘devolve’ with power being pushed to the lower level rather than having it all centralized at the top. I can see no other viable solution.
” a selection from a small population” by lottery, there was no elections, except for military generals (stratēgoi), who had to leave the city once a military campaign is over. The randomly chosen did not represent the rest, jut carried out the decisions of the people, who voted for decisions directly (plebiscite).
Sophistry was born in this kind of system where the wealthy paid sophists how to argue in public and sway the multitude to their liking…
This was also a slave-owning society where the citizens could own enough slaves to never work, while serving as a voter was a kind of welfare that provided an income.
There is no perfect system…
The Scandi systems have the highest degree of devolution, so more direct democracy, and broadly the greatest satisfaction with their political structures.
Finland and Scotland both have about 5.5m people. Finland has over 300 municipalities compared with 32 local authorities in Scotland.
Finnish government devolves 50-60% of government spending; Scotland’s local authorities have their local tax raising powers circumscribed and the majority of grant aid ring fenced by Holyrood, and local spending responsibility is less than half the % of Finnish municipal budgets.
Finland’s national government also has a much higher ratio of politicians than the UK, with 3.6 politicians per 100,000 people compared to the UK’s 1.11 per 100,000 people.
The Scandi countries and Switzerland all score very highly in all those ‘happiness and contentment’ indices, and top global rankings. Whether this is down to the higher level of engagement in the decisions that affect folks’ daily lives is open to interpretation.
This author is lost. We have to come up with a catchy name for Putin Derangement Syndrome. There is so much “Russia Bad” in this author’s tool box. One of the links says “Ukraine’s pursuit of a democratic path, which gained momentum during the 2004 Orange Revolution and was reinforced by the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, posed a significant ideological challenge to Russia.” and continues with “The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which began in 2014, can indeed be viewed as an external suppression orchestrated by the Russian Federation.” (link)
I love the “Revolution of Dignity” term.
When an author is this fundamentally lost, I just can’t spend the time reading their argument or trying to understand their position.
I react to broad-ranging articles like this the same way you do ADU. If they fail in areas where I know something then I don’t read them. The problem is that I could be propagandised into believing nonsense due to my lack of knowledge in other areas.
This author links to nonsense about Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe and one of the worst in the world. What does democracy even mean when every politician and high level government official is on the take? The link to an article discussing “The Revolution of Dignity”, a coup orchestrated by the US in conjunction with far right Ukrainian elements (sporting swastikas, SS symbols, hatred of Jews – later toned down for PR purposes, and Russians) is offensive. The comment on Afghanistan is similarly shallow and silly.
The article was a no go for me.
That said I’m fine with NC linking to articles like this one. It gives us a sense of what’s out there.
As is well known, the ‘far right Ukrainian elements’ you speak of consisted of a few dozen beer-swilling teenage skinheads in leather jackets supported and encouraged by the FSB for the benefit of RT cameras and gullible (again) westerners. The genuinely malignant far right rules from the kremlin.
When I think back on the political analysis of yesteryear, the farm vote, solid south, city bosses, when New York had the greatest number of electoral votes and there were only 48 states and “as Maine goes so goes the nation” … Maine voted in September. There were no mail-in votes. There was no early voting. An absentee ballot required a reason beyond self-indulgence. When I think of all that with all its warts, with however much chicanery there was, however many elections were stolen or bought, the Congress paid attention to the people who elected them. So did the Presidents. It was far from perfect but it did not resemble the late roman republic. There was a degree of civility. It was not as if the political parties were an off label version of the Montagues and Capulets or the Castellammarese War. We have a simulcrum of democracy. Perhaps it can be revived. I am not optimistic in the short or even the medium term. We have our aspiring dictator blundering right along. We have a Congress of toadies and hand wringers. We have money in all its manifestations lording it over the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber or is it the Deep State. All that has to be dismantled or fractured or discarded, and how that happens or when, is unclear, a great unknown. I wish I was going to be around to see how it works itself out.
Polycrises, new to us of a certain age who were familiar with polynomials and Polly want a cracker.
Here is one feature, or bug, of the current political landscape, destined to occupy its own category.
Read about the voting machine book in the link and think about countries impacted by apparent or seemingly anomalous election results. There is probably much more to be disclosed to the demos.
Among other assumptions of the author, this is problematic for me: the fall of “communism” provided a path for further “democratic” expansion: Did the author mean NATO expansion?
Not to be pedantic, but what is “communism” exactly? What is “democracy” exactly? Everyone thinks they know but few have a working definition. The author provides no meaningful definitions, but reflects western bias and faulty assumptions. These terms have become loaded and biased. The old “autocratic east” and “democratic west” framework is mostly just PR fluff and Orientalist assumptions.
“…Nation-building during the war on terror further reflected the same pragmatism…” Say what? What is this corporate media speak? Destroying entire nations and relegating them to failed state status should be treated as an historical crime committed by “democracies”.
To what degree are the US and vassal states “democratic”? Just because there are parliamentary frameworks and elections does not mean that the “will of the people” is reflected in public policy. We see so-called democratic governments openly defy the majority of the public, and and engage in (often illegal) brutal violence to smash dissent.
(And Israel is a democracy? Was that supposed to be dark humor?)
We could go on about this forever, but when we have seen massive institutional corruption in many western “democracies”, flagrantly illegal actions (openly supporting genocide, attacking other countries etc.) openly defying public opinion, authoritarian abuse of power, both formalized and illegal political bribery.
As others have noted above, if is not possible to have a so-called democracy when an entrenched oligarchy is busy hoovering up what is left of public (and private) assets and resources. (kleptocracy) resulting in perverse concentrations of wealth and power.
At its core, what we call democracy is actually a pseudo-democracy. True democracy is not a system in which people elect leaders. Rather, it is a system in which people can swiftly remove leaders who act against their will.
Whatever it was that existed in the U.S. that was called democracy is over. And it ain’t comin’ back, Virtually all power is now in the hands of a tiny oligarchy. Policy is essentially not made by elected officials but, instead, by this capitalist cabal of the super rich and powerful.
All avenues for real change have been blocked, while U.S.. elites, Democratic and Republican, are incapable of addressing any of the deep, wide, systemic problems threatening the system. In fact, the system itself is incapable of producing such leadership. There will be no Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt to save the day this time.
There is now no way forward. Instead, the U.S. will continue to unravel, its elites becoming ever more desperate to halt this slide toward collective ruin. They surely will fail..
True, as far as it goes…. But what is ignored in this article is (ahem), the rest of the
world. Remember them? Of course not. I remember reading that the #1 cause of
death in people over 80 is too much TV watching, death by vegetation. True enough
in its way, although the official cause is heart attack etc. Famously, The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg, details the loss of the ‘Third Place’, bars, bowling alleys,
poker night, etc. This has been one of the primary causes of the ‘death of Democracy’. What we have instead is ‘cocooning’, the wide spread phenomenon
of people staying home and being deluged in what amounts to official propaganda.
News? I think I timed the nightly news at 13 1/2 minutes out of a whole program,
the rest being commercials and other announcements. The online movies such
as Hallmark ™ have recently had to simplify plots due to ‘multiple screens’
in the room. And we PAY for this! Real money to become brainwashed with no
offscreen social contacts to mitigate the blurb. That’s why I say the rest of the
world, with different languages and cultures has not been sucked into our quicksand.
They have their own consensus. Our American attitude is who cares? Ours is
the only culture that matters. Spoken like the true Provincials we are!
Government functions as the nervous system of the state, while money and banking are the equivalent of blood and the circulation system. Public government and private banking do not work.
As should be all too evident. Russia and China have effectively gone back to private government, with Putin and Xi as respective CEO’s. Basically to keep their oligarchs in check and ours at bay. Which is why our puppet masters and their swarms of flying monkeys hate them so much.
Well put….. In total agreement with that – from across the pond.
Our worry here has to be failing to sidestep that pattern…
This essay might have been more persuasive if the author had first decided to dive into an analysis of the nature and causes of polarization rather than the nature and types of historical representation.
From my perspective, when political polarization (of the type now existing in the U.S.) starts to overwhelm representation issues we are in a profound psychic as well as political/economic crisis.
Political polarization in the U.S, has now reached the point were political opponents are viewed primarily as “the others,” who represent an existential danger (they threaten one’s own being) which, in turn, requires them to be excluded from the public sphere, potentially stripped of their democratic rights and labeled as permanent political pariahs.
In such a context the interior domestic enemy begins to appear (which is happening right now) Then comes complete exclusion and attempted elimination.
Is there a way back?
The author portrays western democracy as the holy grail. Western democracy has failed because people do not have power and cannot get involved in decision-making. The author also disqualifies systems that have been successful but are not to his liking, for example, the Chinese style of democracy. To my understanding, villages in China have power in decision-making, and readers can find studies and discussions about it on the internet. Perhaps people in the West have been brainwashed enough to be blind to alternative models besides those exposed by the author.
I wonder if the author went on the quest for the holy grail of western democracy with Indiana Jones, or Monty Python.
Robert Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, is a good place to start when discussing the problem of democracy. Dahl’s answer is that the US is not democratic at all. Democracy means one person, one equal vote, which is violated by gerrymandering in the House and entirely ignored in the composition of the Senate, Supreme Court, and Electoral College. The Nordics’ proportional representation in a single legislature works best. The US and Britain’s first-past-the-post system performs worst. The problem isn’t that democracy is on the decline in the US: the problem is we have never had a democracy in the first place.
Good points. I have several books by Dahl on my shelf as well. For the US, the now-classic Democracy Inc. (Sheldon Wolin 2010) is another I recommend. His concept of “inverted totalitarianism” is noteworthy.
Managed public relations democracy is the best we could have expected, but conditions have significantly worsened since 2015
Agreed. Most of the founding FATHERS had a horror of democracy, the true form of which can only exist in fairly small population entities.
The Founders disliked having the broad based democracy that we have today, true. And they also wanted the franchise based on property ownership. However, dictatorship and the corrupt, incompetent, increasingly incompetent oligarchy that we currently have was also a big fear of theirs.
What they were trying to have is moderately sized, property based electorate and an economy based on small farmers with at least enough manufacturing that the country wasn’t dependent on anyone else. Actually, there was a lot of arguing about exactly what kind of economy the country should have, but the previous description is close enough with Alexander Hamilton’s idea of an industrial nation having won.
They also expected that the well armed citizens would have “discussions” with the ruling elites occasionally because whatever system was created would inevitably have corrupt and/or power mad leaders eventually. Leaders who would not listen to the people. This current system of a corrupt, well armed, extremely powerful government and empire as well as the general acquiescence to the government’s oppression would horrify them.
So we would be considered a failure by them both because of the broad franchise and the lack of opposition to the corrupt mess of the oligarchy. This includes a lack of violent opposition. They also would loathe the current oligarchy for being self centered, greedy, fools.
Yep. “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Dahl had a notion of “democracy” that was both naive and dangerous, imho. Like many other theorists, he piled on requisites that could not be fulfilled by any functional political system. It would not be surprising if every political system that can be realitically put to work would fsil his (or other theorists’) demands.
I tend to think one should define democracy by mechanical, mathematical, and functional parameters: what are the requirements for voting? what are the formulas for translating votes to winners? What are the strategies that can be adopted by political actors to gain advantage under these requirements and potentially abuse them–and what can be done to curtail the worst abuses. And, above all, keep expectations low: “democracy” is just another set of mechanisms whereby a society can be managed, no more no less.
Now I do happen to believe that a well run “democracy” acts as a safety valve, something that can keep the “government” informed about what’s pissing the masses off. Ironically, the governments who bluntly their elections in these terms are those who would be called electoral authoritarians–I heard this description from Singaporean government officials: not exactly the most “democratic” people. Yet, I could only approve their attitude–that the gov’t’s job was to take care of these problems, at least enough that they wouldn’t be too angry. Contrast that to the leaders of self claimed “democracies”: they know what people should want, the “right” answers. The only problem is to engineer the electoral process so that they are in charge. From the “Singaporean” perspective, this is a total subversion of “democracy”: if you shut people up, how do you know what angers them? This, in turn, brings up the next paradox: as a quasi dictatorship that both responds to popular demands fairly efficiently while successfully “managing” the opposition, the Singaporean government does not worry too much about losing power. The governing parties in the West aren’t that good at either–and, to be fair, managing opposition and keeping the level of social discontent low go hand in hand–fewer angry people –> fewer people whom opposition recruit and organize–and would prefer to mess with the process than tackle the basic problem while blabbing about “high ideals.”
So what exactly does this say about their democracy?
The author seems to focus entirely on possession of the trappings and stage sets of (from his view solely “representative”) democracy while emptying the concept of any substantive content.
During the bulk of the Brazilian dictatorship elections were held, legislative bodies met, and so on. But the results did not matter.
And I don’t believe Augustus and successors found it necessary to formally strip the Senate of its former powers. They just needed to learn the game of finding out what the emperor wanted to be asked to do before asking him to do it. And to say “mother may I” before passing any laws.
A formalist concept of democracy is pretty useless.
>>>And I don’t believe Augustus and successors found it necessary to formally strip the Senate of its former powers
For a few centuries, the fiction that the Senate was in power (and it did have some power) was maintained, but the emperors, starting with Augustus, held all the major offices and their authority. It is as if an American president held all the Cabinet positions as well as the leadership of Congress and the Supreme Court. Yes, the day to day functions and authority of all the parts of the government would still exist and function, but ultimate authority would be with one man.
This is how Emperor Augustus could and did say that he had restored the Roman Republic as on paper he had. He just didn’t mention that all the most powerful offices with their power were filled by him.
Bourgeois democracy? No.
Soviet democracy? Of course!
As long as people can manipulate a system of government to their advantage, usually at the expense of others, then there can be no genuine democracy – where the system embodies full transparency and accountability, amongst the other characteristics that ensure integrity of function. This assumes that democracy is defined as a fair system of government, for the people, by the people, rather than a system that doesn’t explicitly state it.
Any healthy system of government, regardless of label, must be built on core fundamentals that allow it to function well, without degrading over time, as we see today with every country that purports to be a ‘democracy’.
Unfortunately, we have to recognise the nature of individuals [not all, but many] who are drawn to power, and implement mechanisms to prevent them abusing their positions.
We have never had a healthy functioning democracy, and I doubt we ever will until we mature enough as a species to address the problems we cause for ourselves.
Some may find this interview looking at how the US got to this point worth listening to: Blowing the Lid Off the Deep State with Aaron Good | DEEP FOCUS with John Kiriakou
Frankly there are no multiple versions of democracy.
There is one version and everybody knows what it means and how it´s supposed to work.
And its concept is not difficult to understand. Which is why it works so well to defraud people by abusing the idea.
To apply the various warnings and relativizations of „democracy“ mainly by elder deceased statesmen is no proof to the opposite.
Wherever democracy is genuine it poses a danger to elite rule to some extent.
Whether you use it in Italian cooperatives, or in the local councils within Venezuelan Bolivarianism, or – I assume – local councils in China or even in the superficial broad strokes of Swiss referenda.
Besides the text offers no understanding into objectives of the systems of governance. If I seek democracy in opposition to other forms why so?
This reminds me of a very good brief comment by Jacques Baud in the same convesation which I recommended earlier in links https://rumble.com/v700k2w-col.-jacques-baud-eu-panics-claiming-putins-masterplan-to-destroy-europes-u.html?e9s=src_v1_upp_v
1:18:00 min.
„European elites believe governing means just being the boss and giving orders (…) they have no objective and they have no strategy.“
If on applies this to democracy we have the same issue: If the demos exerts its authority to strike decisions together by discussion and majority vote that in itself is completely meaningless if it does not reflect goals and a strategy that arise from the fact that the people decide.
Discussions like the one conducted by Ruehl encapsulate the very problem and crisis of policy-making and Western societies at large. They offer no answers to this. Because if he did he would upset his entire worldview. So his mundane talk serves rather to obsucre than illuminate the problems.
I think this mixes up “governing” and “democracy.”
Governing does mean someone giving orders.
Good governing means having objectives and strategies that are realistic and achievable.
Democratic governing means having mechanisms where popular discontent is effectively channeled into policymaking–like elections that “work”–to act as a self correction mechanism.
Democratic and good governing aren’t the same–although a functional democracy (as in providing for a good and clear channel of communication) can provide for better governance. (But all the moralizing nonsense about “democracy,” imho, actually muddies up the communication and breeds worse government.)
BTW, I hope Terry Flynn is doing alright, as he hasn’t been seen lately and I think he was having some health issues of late….
I am trying to be an optimist guessing that Terry Flynn despite age and difficult health sometimes simply may be too busy with other things, like political organising in whatever smaller form, as he described it earlier this year I think. Fwiw: in Germany the bulk of organizing the peace movement is accomplished by the 70+ gen.
“Liberal democracy” is an entity in its own right, a peculiar form that empowers the bourgeoisie and deprecates the working class. However, it should not be confused with ‘democracy’ itself, no matter how hard the West tries to claim it is not only the best, but the only form of democracy. China’s “bottom-up democracy” can be considered to be a more legitimate realization of the democratic ideal.
Plato’s thoughts define Western reality more than adequately. Democracy unleashes the worst aspects of human nature, greed, seizing any chance to grab your neighbours property, intolerance of those who disagree with you and a general state of all against all and the Hobbesian notion that human life is lived in “…continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. This then settles into the rule of those who have succeeded in creating gangs or corporations, and accumulate wealth and create a social order to their taste in which life may be nasty, brutish and short for the poor, but not for the wealthy.
The oligarchs overreach, and the poor eventually gain a leadership of sorts, begin to fight back, then, if they are lucky, have a few good years before collapsing into tyranny because they will overreach and order must return under a strong leader. Not exacly as Plato told it, but this makes sense of the pathway the Collective West has taken – towards tyranny, mass deprivation of rights and liberties, and the likes of Donald Trump and other cartoon leaders like Macrobe, Merz, fonda Lyin’, and the dreary savagery of the Ziofascist Starmer who is rapidly stripping the UK of its her historic liberties, incuding the right of the most basic liberty of all, free speech.
In my old age a significant part of me has become even more supportive of majority rule.
I used to feel I had all the answers but now in the absence of my own certainty on so many issues, majority rule seems the most cogent and pragmatically defensible decision-making principle. If qualitative factors can’t be objectively assessed we must let quantitative factors (counting votes) decide.
For me, majority rule has become just as rational as reason.
You can say that again.
Well gee, it goes without saying that whatever you call this, that is to say, the system of governance in the U.S.A., it is, above all else, deadly. It is hyper-violent and ultra-predatory and is arguably the gravest threat the human race has ever faced. If China’s rare earth export controls don’t disarm it to a significant degree, it will almost surely destroy us all.