> As an example of undermining and disregarding rule of law, in the US no party has respected surveillance laws as far as 2001 and likely further back. As an ex

> As an example of undermining and disregarding rule of law, in the US no party has respected surveillance laws as far as 2001 and likely further back. As an example from here in Sweden, government officials regularly undermine and disregard the law in regard to how open contracts between government and companies. As a global example, we saw on Wikileaks how almost all countries classified information in order to hide political embarrassing facts from going public. All this is authoritarian behavior with varied degree of harm, and the laws they undermine or breaks are laws that got written in order to restrict authoritarian rule. This so succinctly sums up my frustrations with what I view as the erosion of democracy as we know it the world over. The controls established to limit the awesome power of the state are being subordinated by the state itself, and in secret. The asymmetry makes it hard for the citizenry to do anything about it, even when it happens in the open. Thinking more about it, the power of the people is only able to be exercised collectively, that is we require coordination in order to effect change. On the other hand, actors in government have figured out how to wield their powers unilaterally (in the US at least). This makes it much harder for the collective to effect change that restricts the actions of the individual actors, as the change is hard to make (collective action is hard) and easily undone later on.