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I think the argument is that democracies tend to be more stable. Weimar was an attempt to patch together a democratic successor to a fairly authoritarian state,
by golwengaud 17y ago
I think the argument is that democracies tend to be more stable. Weimar was an attempt to patch together a democratic successor to a fairly authoritarian state, and Louis XIV's rule was at best metastable. Near the end of his reign, the War of the Spanish Succession (among other things) was causing France to begin to run into the financial difficulties that would cause Louis XVI trouble.
More generally, if Amartya Sen is right (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen#Research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen#Research), democracies are rather less likely to do things that would lead to popular unrest.
- mhartl 17y agoI agree that people argue that democracies are more stable (though usually they just assume it), but the lists of unstable democracies and stable autocracies are both incredibly long. At the very best, there may be a rough correlation between stability and democracy; I rather suspect an anti-correlation, but in any case I don't see anything that would justify the blithe yet pervasive confidence of democratic stability exemplified by the assertion quoted in my original comment.