7 ms·

Something I've wondered recently: in the past 10-15 years, how many functioning democracies have fallen apart vs been created? I'm fairly ignorant about this,

by m741 10y ago

Something I've wondered recently: in the past 10-15 years, how many functioning democracies have fallen apart vs been created? I'm fairly ignorant about this, so please correct me if my perceptions ar wrong, but Turkey seems to have devolved to autocracy after being democratic for a while. I've heard scary things about Poland. Venezuela, as mentioned in the article, fell apart. Obviously there's Putin's Russia, though I'm not sure Russia was ever really democratic. I can't think offhand of any new, functioning, democracies.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> I've heard scary things about Poland. Poland is fine, don't listen to the bullshit in mass media. That was just some noise of little importance to anything whatsoever, perpetuated because the party that lost last elections wasn't too happy about that fact.
- trendia 10y ago
  > That was just some noise of literally zero importance to aything whatsoever, perpetuated because the party that lost last elections wasn't too happy about that fact. That seems eerily similar to what happened in the US.
- mtgx 10y ago
  So the proposal to ban abortions was just a lie? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-government-performs-u-turn-on-total-abortion-ban https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-governm... What about the story that Poland is one of the few European countries that want access to encrypted communications? https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/five-member-states-want-eu-wide-laws-on-encryption/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/fiv...
  - true_religion 10y ago
    They proposed a ban and backed down on public pressure. That does not seeem anti democracy.
  - nolok 10y ago
    How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should happen. "Democracy" doesn't mean "they do what you agree with" nor even "they do what's best for their citizen", it means the citizens elects the one they want, even if it's the guy whose policies are so bad he's going to send them backward 20 years.
    - scotty79 10y ago
      If people elect candidates who are pro-totalitarian surveillance state and limitation of individual freedoms, then being democratic means those laws should happen as well? Basically if people elect candidates that want to kill democracy then the democratic thing would be to let it die?
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      > How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should happen. See, this is why the US is supposed to be ruled by a constitution, rather than just be a democracy. The constitution says that there are things you can't do, even if you have a majority (unless you have enough of a majority to amend the constitution). Now, granted, that's been eroded under the last few presidents, with (probably) worse to come under Trump. But this is why it matters that we have a constitution that limits what a president can do.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      When people in the West talk about "democracy", what they usually really mean is "liberal democracy".
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > So the proposal to ban abortions was just a lie? Yes. I.e. not the proposal itself, but the stories about it being likely to be implemented - yes. The "Black Protest" thing was a media-inspired panic. > What about the story that Poland is one of the few European countries that want access to encrypted communications? That is indeed worrying, but I don't see anything different here than happens in many other western countries.
- isido 10y ago
  In Poland, the ruling party (Party of Law and Justice) is a right-wing, populist party, which has tried to nominate/replace judges and to some extent, control the media. EU is has voiced concerns, but Poland's democratic processes still work, as evidenced in the recent recall of controversial abortion bill. A Similar, but perhaps further evolved situation is in Hungary, where right-wing populists have held the power for quite a long. But even in Hungrary the rulings party's power is not absolute, at the moment, and you don't get thrown into jail for having wrong opinions.
- saboot 10y ago
  Try RTFA: The government’s attempts to undermine the country’s constitutional tribunal, for instance, set off an investigation by the European Union. The resulting report warned that the government’s actions “endanger not only the rule of law, but also the functioning of the democratic system.”
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I live in Poland, I know this stuff first-hand.
ianai 10y ago
I don't know, but I'm definitely interested. I know nationalism is on a world wide tear.
nolok 10y ago
Poland is still as functioning a democracy as it was 15 years ago. They elected a party that's a bit on the extreme, so what, isn't that how it's supposed to work ? Does Trump's election means american democracy has "fallen appart" ? Turkey is still democratic. Yes, the rule of law is taking massive hits, and yes, Erdogan really wants to be sultan and makes his way there, but so far he has always won in the election in the same way and rules people won with 15 years ago there. He didn't have a 50+% majority of votes to be PM but neither did the torries in the UK. It might go wrong if there are more actions against legislative political opponent. Venezuela went from a pretend democracy where everyone massively voted for the popular charismatic dictator to a pretend democracy where everyone massively dislike the unpopular dictator, nothing fell apart because there was nothing to break there. Russia is a valid case.
- howlin 10y ago
  Trump's election may very well cause US democracy to "fall apart". He's already signaled that he wants to stifle a free press, and he's made a lot of campaign promises that go against the rule of law. Congress doesn't seem willing to stand up to him, and there are a lot of vacancies in the judiciary that Trump can fill with people more likely to give him a free pass. Trump's greatest enemy in accomplishing his undemocratic agenda is his own incompetence and unfamiliarity with Washington DC politics. He'd be the next Erdogan or Putin if he could be.
  - woofyman 10y ago
    For example, American flag burning has twice been ruled a first amendment right by the Supreme Court. This morning Tump tweeted: >Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!
    - MollyR 10y ago
      Hillary co-sponsored an actual bill called the "the flag protection act". The fact that the democrats and republicans produced such like minded candidates is the more worrying aspect.
glup 10y ago
'Functioning democracies' are probably better thought of as being a gradient rather than a binary property. There are a number of indices of varying regional and temporal scope, e.g. you could look at the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index for 2006 onward [1]. There's a lot of latent causes that move these indices (e.g., the collapse of the Soviet Union) so theoretical frameworks are useful for understanding the raw data, e.g. Samuel Huntington's 'waves' characterization of democracy [2]. Not saying that this is right, but sometimes it helps to think about the underlying currents. Finally, democracy and liberal institutions are not concomitant... in fact it's sort of a bug in democracy that you can totally democratically dismantle institutions like court systems, press freedoms, and even voting [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Democracy [3] http://media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_SEaytac/Week3.pdf http://media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_...
- js8 10y ago
  > Finally, democracy and liberal institutions are not concomitant... in fact it's sort of a bug in democracy that you can totally democratically dismantle institutions like court systems, press freedoms, and even voting [3]. Actually, I believe that to avoid those Russell-style paradoxes, it should be a rule that the vote must be potentially reversible in the future with the same process. So the decisions like - strip democratic rights to a minority - kill a specific person cannot be democratic. On the other hand, creating a democracy then cannot be democratic decision either. Dismantling press freedoms and courts would still be democratic (in fact, many democratic countries do not have full freedom of speech), as long as people could vote again on the issue (I don't see why they would vote to dismantle it, so it's not a big deal).
woofyman 10y ago
Hungary is becoming authoritarian. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/22/world/europe/europe-right-wing-austria-hungary.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/22/world/europe/e... >Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, running on a joint list with the K.D.N.P., a Christian Democratic party, have won the last two parliamentary elections in Hungary, worrying many Western leaders about his increasingly authoritarian rule. The party also decisively won in voting for the European Parliament in May 2014. Jobbik, a far-right, anti-immigration, populist and economic protectionist party, won 20 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2014, making it Hungary’s third-largest party. Its policy platform includes holding a referendum on membership in the European Union and a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “the Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” Jobbik wants to increase government spending on ethnic Hungarians living abroad and to form a new ministry dedicated to supporting them. In a 2012 bill targeting homosexuals, the party proposed criminalizing the promotion of “sexual deviancy” with prison terms of up to eight years.
vkou 10y ago
Russia was a democracy that, in less then a decade completely fell apart economically. Putin, and the rising price of oil can be credited for stabilizing the country, and largely pulling it out of a dystopian horror show. Freedom and democracy is nice, but having the means to buy bread, and not being robbed and killed by desperate people is even nicer. Edit: I presume the downvotes aren't coming from people who lived in Russia through the 90s.
scotty79 10y ago
In Poland it's just poor people electing populist leaders and well off people taking their nice and modern country for granted and not bothering to show up at the election or spreading their votes on anti-system small parties because it's rad.
Chathamization 10y ago
Some countries that became more democratic over the past 10-15 years would probably include places like Tunisia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Georgia (to name a few). It's a complex issue, and like others have pointed out, being democratic isn't a binary switch. Take Turkey, for example - in a country prone to military coups, the most recent military coup failed. Erdogan has autocratic tendencies, but people really do support him and he seems to be in power because of mostly democratic elections.

by m741 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> I've heard scary things about Poland. Poland is fine, don't listen to the bullshit in mass media. That was just some noise of little importance to anything whatsoever, perpetuated because the party that lost last elections wasn't too happy about that fact.

trendia 10y ago
> That was just some noise of literally zero importance to aything whatsoever, perpetuated because the party that lost last elections wasn't too happy about that fact. That seems eerily similar to what happened in the US.
mtgx 10y ago
So the proposal to ban abortions was just a lie? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-government-performs-u-turn-on-total-abortion-ban https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-governm... What about the story that Poland is one of the few European countries that want access to encrypted communications? https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/five-member-states-want-eu-wide-laws-on-encryption/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/fiv...
- true_religion 10y ago
  They proposed a ban and backed down on public pressure. That does not seeem anti democracy.
- nolok 10y ago
  How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should happen. "Democracy" doesn't mean "they do what you agree with" nor even "they do what's best for their citizen", it means the citizens elects the one they want, even if it's the guy whose policies are so bad he's going to send them backward 20 years.
  - scotty79 10y ago
    If people elect candidates who are pro-totalitarian surveillance state and limitation of individual freedoms, then being democratic means those laws should happen as well? Basically if people elect candidates that want to kill democracy then the democratic thing would be to let it die?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should happen. See, this is why the US is supposed to be ruled by a constitution, rather than just be a democracy. The constitution says that there are things you can't do, even if you have a majority (unless you have enough of a majority to amend the constitution). Now, granted, that's been eroded under the last few presidents, with (probably) worse to come under Trump. But this is why it matters that we have a constitution that limits what a president can do.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    When people in the West talk about "democracy", what they usually really mean is "liberal democracy".
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > So the proposal to ban abortions was just a lie? Yes. I.e. not the proposal itself, but the stories about it being likely to be implemented - yes. The "Black Protest" thing was a media-inspired panic. > What about the story that Poland is one of the few European countries that want access to encrypted communications? That is indeed worrying, but I don't see anything different here than happens in many other western countries.
isido 10y ago
In Poland, the ruling party (Party of Law and Justice) is a right-wing, populist party, which has tried to nominate/replace judges and to some extent, control the media. EU is has voiced concerns, but Poland's democratic processes still work, as evidenced in the recent recall of controversial abortion bill. A Similar, but perhaps further evolved situation is in Hungary, where right-wing populists have held the power for quite a long. But even in Hungrary the rulings party's power is not absolute, at the moment, and you don't get thrown into jail for having wrong opinions.
saboot 10y ago
Try RTFA: The government’s attempts to undermine the country’s constitutional tribunal, for instance, set off an investigation by the European Union. The resulting report warned that the government’s actions “endanger not only the rule of law, but also the functioning of the democratic system.”
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I live in Poland, I know this stuff first-hand.

ianai 10y ago

I don't know, but I'm definitely interested. I know nationalism is on a world wide tear.

nolok 10y ago

Poland is still as functioning a democracy as it was 15 years ago. They elected a party that's a bit on the extreme, so what, isn't that how it's supposed to work ? Does Trump's election means american democracy has "fallen appart" ? Turkey is still democratic. Yes, the rule of law is taking massive hits, and yes, Erdogan really wants to be sultan and makes his way there, but so far he has always won in the election in the same way and rules people won with 15 years ago there. He didn't have a 50+% majority of votes to be PM but neither did the torries in the UK. It might go wrong if there are more actions against legislative political opponent. Venezuela went from a pretend democracy where everyone massively voted for the popular charismatic dictator to a pretend democracy where everyone massively dislike the unpopular dictator, nothing fell apart because there was nothing to break there. Russia is a valid case.

howlin 10y ago
Trump's election may very well cause US democracy to "fall apart". He's already signaled that he wants to stifle a free press, and he's made a lot of campaign promises that go against the rule of law. Congress doesn't seem willing to stand up to him, and there are a lot of vacancies in the judiciary that Trump can fill with people more likely to give him a free pass. Trump's greatest enemy in accomplishing his undemocratic agenda is his own incompetence and unfamiliarity with Washington DC politics. He'd be the next Erdogan or Putin if he could be.
- woofyman 10y ago
  For example, American flag burning has twice been ruled a first amendment right by the Supreme Court. This morning Tump tweeted: >Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!
  - MollyR 10y ago
    Hillary co-sponsored an actual bill called the "the flag protection act". The fact that the democrats and republicans produced such like minded candidates is the more worrying aspect.

glup 10y ago

'Functioning democracies' are probably better thought of as being a gradient rather than a binary property. There are a number of indices of varying regional and temporal scope, e.g. you could look at the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index for 2006 onward [1]. There's a lot of latent causes that move these indices (e.g., the collapse of the Soviet Union) so theoretical frameworks are useful for understanding the raw data, e.g. Samuel Huntington's 'waves' characterization of democracy [2]. Not saying that this is right, but sometimes it helps to think about the underlying currents. Finally, democracy and liberal institutions are not concomitant... in fact it's sort of a bug in democracy that you can totally democratically dismantle institutions like court systems, press freedoms, and even voting [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Democracy [3] http://media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_SEaytac/Week3.pdf http://media.library.ku.edu.tr/reserve/resfall15_16/Sosc116_...

js8 10y ago
> Finally, democracy and liberal institutions are not concomitant... in fact it's sort of a bug in democracy that you can totally democratically dismantle institutions like court systems, press freedoms, and even voting [3]. Actually, I believe that to avoid those Russell-style paradoxes, it should be a rule that the vote must be potentially reversible in the future with the same process. So the decisions like - strip democratic rights to a minority - kill a specific person cannot be democratic. On the other hand, creating a democracy then cannot be democratic decision either. Dismantling press freedoms and courts would still be democratic (in fact, many democratic countries do not have full freedom of speech), as long as people could vote again on the issue (I don't see why they would vote to dismantle it, so it's not a big deal).

woofyman 10y ago

Hungary is becoming authoritarian. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/22/world/europe/europe-right-wing-austria-hungary.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/22/world/europe/e... >Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, running on a joint list with the K.D.N.P., a Christian Democratic party, have won the last two parliamentary elections in Hungary, worrying many Western leaders about his increasingly authoritarian rule. The party also decisively won in voting for the European Parliament in May 2014. Jobbik, a far-right, anti-immigration, populist and economic protectionist party, won 20 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2014, making it Hungary’s third-largest party. Its policy platform includes holding a referendum on membership in the European Union and a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “the Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” Jobbik wants to increase government spending on ethnic Hungarians living abroad and to form a new ministry dedicated to supporting them. In a 2012 bill targeting homosexuals, the party proposed criminalizing the promotion of “sexual deviancy” with prison terms of up to eight years.

vkou 10y ago

Russia was a democracy that, in less then a decade completely fell apart economically. Putin, and the rising price of oil can be credited for stabilizing the country, and largely pulling it out of a dystopian horror show. Freedom and democracy is nice, but having the means to buy bread, and not being robbed and killed by desperate people is even nicer. Edit: I presume the downvotes aren't coming from people who lived in Russia through the 90s.

scotty79 10y ago

In Poland it's just poor people electing populist leaders and well off people taking their nice and modern country for granted and not bothering to show up at the election or spreading their votes on anti-system small parties because it's rad.

Chathamization 10y ago

Some countries that became more democratic over the past 10-15 years would probably include places like Tunisia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Georgia (to name a few). It's a complex issue, and like others have pointed out, being democratic isn't a binary switch. Take Turkey, for example - in a country prone to military coups, the most recent military coup failed. Erdogan has autocratic tendencies, but people really do support him and he seems to be in power because of mostly democratic elections.