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> Only a few countries have been electoral democracies for a long time. Eight countries — Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kin
by vinay427 5y ago
> Only a few countries have been electoral democracies for a long time. Eight countries — Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States — have been electoral democracies for a century or more. And according to this data, just two countries have been electoral democracies even longer: Australia and Switzerland have been democracies since the mid-19th century.
Am I missing something? By which measure was the US (and possibly another among the first eight in this list) not an electoral democracy for as long as Australia and Switzerland? All three had significant restrictions on suffrage, with Switzerland particularly regressive in this regard in the late 20th century.
EDIT: I was thinking of Iceland as well, which has a very reasonable claim to be the oldest (continuous and current) democracy along with the US and possibly the Isle of Man, depending on how democracy is defined.
- peeters 5y agoI'm currently reading through the source here for the same answer: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e09f/417c2d78b48fb100bea6dd728d95cb481c01.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e09f/417c2d78b48fb100bea6dd... Sliding back the US and Canada flipped from electoral autocracy to electoral democracy in 1921. > In electoral autocracies, on the other hand, the chief executive is dependent on a legislature that is itself elected in de-jure multiparty elections (in parliamentary systems), directly elected alongside a separately elected legislature (in presidential systems), or a combination of both (in semi-presidential systems) I'm not sure what happened in 1921 to flip the U.S.. I think 1920 was the first election that allowed women to vote? But as you say, why that isn't counted against Switzerland I'm not sure.
- pclmulqdq 5y agoThat could be related to the direct election of senators rather than their appointment by states. The change happened around that time. Of course, Canada still has an appointed senate, so I'm not sure what the distinction is.
- lapetitejort 5y agoThe 17th amendment (Senators elected by the people) was ratified in 1913 and the last senators to be elected by the people took place in 1918. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
- TravelPiglet 5y agoGuessing the US crossed a threshold with with women’s right to vote.
- noasaservice 5y agoTo be honest, the USA is a kleptocratic oligarcic republic with the facade of "democracy". Even the founders held democracy in a great ill repute. And in the USA, it was first deemed that only landowning white men could vote. Then in 1865, Black people were permitted to potentially vote, but in effect they simply couldnt. Then women were allowed to vote in the 1920's. In a rights-review, black men were seen as higher standing than women. And Jim Crow laws were in full effect until 1965. It took 100 years to go from 'kind-of-mostly-not-really ending slavery' (unless you get 12 angry white guys saying guilty, then you qualify as a slave. still do, btw) to the federal govt moving military in to enforce desegregation. Now it's just hidden. And fast forward, in 1974, women finally apply and get credit (including credit cards, loans, etc). My SO was born in that year. And, not too long afterward in 1985, the Credit Check was created. But if you're a white guy working in tech, its all cool.
- vinay427 5y ago> Then women were allowed to vote in the 1920's. In a rights-review, black men were seen as higher standing than women. Did you actually mean to respond to my comment? I acknowledge this and mention Switzerland, where I lived for years, due in part to its refusal of women's suffrage through much of the 20th century (1990 or so in one canton). That seems to make this definition of democracy, if used to preclude the US, rather questionable if not inaccurate.
- n4r9 5y agoClicking through to the source of the metric they used: > A country is classified as an autocracy if it does not meet the above criteria of meaningful, free and fair, multi-party elections https://ourworldindata.org/regimes-of-the-world-data https://ourworldindata.org/regimes-of-the-world-data My guess is it may be to do with the difficulties that African Americans faced when voting.
- eatonphil 5y agoThe list of universal suffrage (all men, all women, all ethnicities) is different from the article too though. Only New Zealand in the 19th century. Followed closely by Finland, Norway, Denmark, etc. Switzerland only required all cantons to allow women to vote in 1991. Australia only allowed all ethnicities to vote since 1967. I agree the original article has a concept of democracy that is hard to understand when it says Australia and Switzerland were the only ones in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage
- n4r9 5y agoSuffrage is one thing. I agree it's a shortcoming of the metric. Making the vote free and fair amongst those who can vote, is a separate matter.
- sampo 5y ago> Only New Zealand in the 19th century. In New Zealand women could vote, but not run. Only in 1919 were women eligible to be elected to the House of Representatives. And only in 1941 were women eligible to be appointed to the Upper House.
- eatonphil 5y agoSuffrage and ability to run are different I think but yeah point taken.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoHeck it took until the 1990's for women to be US Senators (but for an exception or two). Curiously a US woman was a representative before women had gained the vote. So kind of topsy-turvy there.
- yodsanklai 5y agoI don't know how they define democracy. Why France isn't in that list?
- peeters 5y agoThey were governed by an autocracy during WWII. This is measuring the age of current democracies.
- dopidopHN 5y agoNazi occupation in half of it, puppet regime in the other half ( Vichy regime )
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI don't think external occupation really works, yes there are a few people alive that have a memory of being oppressed by the invaders but that 5 years or so of Nazi rule does not wipe out the memory of democracy before it. In the same way Denmark was a democracy since 1849 but because they had some people bossing them around that nobody wanted for 5 years all the traditions and understanding of how democracy works went out the window? I might actually think that appreciation of democracy might increase if you've had it, lost it, and then recover it.
- Veen 5y agoAll that may be true, but this research is about how old existing democracies are, not about which countries have a tradition of democracy that precedes the existence of the current democratic state.
- dopidopHN 5y agoOh. No. The French let it happen and democracy was no more. Paris was occupied by Nazi germany. Yes. But the southern half of the country was not. A military guy from ww1 took over and setup a government composed of French folks. That the problematic part in my book.
- DocTomoe 5y agoJust because you do not have universal suffrage does not make you an electoral democracy. I would guess San Marino being on that list also, having been a republic (with elections, similar to the Roman republic) since the fourth century...
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoIt's particularly weird since Australia was founded in 1901. Before that the states were independent nations with their own militaries, collected their own taxes, had border controls between them etc. So how are they tracing it back? The states still have their own democracies to this day but I don't think you can call that Australia's democracy.
- lagolinguini 5y agoArguably the United Kingdom was not a true electoral democracy until the 50s and until decolonisation. In the early 20th century the United Kingdom governed much of the world and non of those people had much say in the government that governed them.
- Veen 5y agoThe British Empire and the United Kingdom are not the same entity. The UK was a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy that ruled a non-democratic empire.
- ch4s3 5y agoI've always found that to be quite the hair to split. Quasi-democracy in the narrowly defined homeland and crushing authoritarianism for all other subjects. Separating the UK and the British Empire that way feels like a bit of a fig leaf, a polite fiction.
- openfuture 5y agoIt's basically the same situation as the USA has w.r.t. the world until maybe very recently, they basically inherited the UK organizational structure.
- vinay427 5y agoThis sounds like it fails to recognize much of colonial governments, which were typically in the case of the British a very far cry from simply installing an unelected leader or otherwise manipulating leadership through extortion and other means, as the US (among others) is now known to do. There’s an entire wing of cultural, linguistic, and legal imposition that doesn’t seem to exist in what might more accurately be called imperialism by the US, and these changes still have ramifications in how people in the ex-colonies see themselves, their society, and their relationships to the world.
- ch4s3 5y ago
- politician 5y agoArguably, Canada is not a democracy at the moment due to the minority government's invocation of its emergency powers act.
- quasse 5y agoAren't you like two days late on this AM radio talking point? [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/23/canada-trudeau-revokes-emergencies-act/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/23/canada-trude...
- politician 5y agoThat's unnecessarily bitter, but I wasn't aware that he capitulated. Thanks for the update.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago"Capitulated" seems a strong term - the emergency was dealt with and the convoys were dispersed so the act was revoked.
- refurb 5y agoThis a grave emergency and requires suspension of your Charter rights for… a few days
- tensor 5y agoEven before it was dropped it still did not remotely affect our democratic status. There is a great deal of misinformation about this in the US media. It did not invoke a state of martial law. It did not invoke the military. What it did do is allow higher level police to override local police that were refusing to do their jobs. It also allowed the government to temporarily use heavy tow trucks because the contracted companies were also refusing to honour their contract. The blockades were already illegal under normal laws. Protesting was always allowed and still is. Breaking other laws while protesting is not allowed. More, our government has multiple checks and balances for using the emergency act, and they were all in play. Opposition parties had to agree to keep it in play, which they did. It was under continual review. At no point was it "not a democracy."
- lkrubner 5y agoI think, for the sake of precision, we should just go with the percentage of the population that could vote. For dead democracies, we can reference their peak, so: Ancient Athens, 400s BC, 10% Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500s, 10% Britain mid 1700s: 8% Britain after reforms of 1832: 15% USA before 19th Amendment: 20% peak actually voted. USA after 19th Amendment: 35% And so on. The percentage is more revealing than the label.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoI think suffrage is a bit of a one-dimensional way of measuring a democracy. Athens puts all modern democracies to shame in who actually held office, and ensuring that those that did had real skin in the game. I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote.
- hulitu 5y ago> I imagine contemporary politics would look very differently if officials that fucked up risked ten years of exile by public vote. But would be wonderful. You will see an increase in responsability.
- xeromal 5y agoOr every 4 years, we just exile the old president. lol
- toqy 5y agoI don't imagine exile would be as bad today as it would back then. Our national level politicians are fairly wealthy too. Getting exiled as a local level politician would be tough though.
- earleybird 5y agoAssuming that would be exile relative to the jurisdiction of service - you might have to move to the next town :-)
- jkingsbery 5y agoIt looks like they consider the US to have become a democracy in 1921, which would point to the 19th amendment as the thing that made the US "become a democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...). The term "electoral autocracy" hardly seems to fit, whatever failings the US might have had prior to that time. Nor does the term "closed autocracy" really seem to make sense referring to the administration of George Washington. While Washington was unanimously elected to be President (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...), the President had relatively little power at the time, and the other government officials were not unanimously elected.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoBy that measure Switzerland wasn't a democracy until 1971 or 1991.
- watwut 5y agoWhy is that issue?
- ska 5y agoThey've used a constructive approach to this, and I think what flips from "Electoral Autocracy" to "Electoral Democracy" relies on a threshold calculation of "polyarchy": "We claim that Dahl’s theory of polyarchy (1971, 1998) provides the most comprehensive and most widely accepted theory of what distinguishes a democracy based on six (1998,p. 85—originally p. 8 in his 1971 book) institutional guarantees (elected officials, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, associational autonomy, and inclusive citizenship). This conception requires not only free and fair elections but also the freedoms that make them meaningful, and thus avoids the electoral fallacy (Diamond, 2002; Karl, 1986). " I don't know how they made and weighted that calculation, but you can see how any country near the threshold would have lots to argue about. US I imagine scored low (or high, not sure which way is +ve) on inclusive citizenship in earlier years, less clear on the others.
- squidsurfer 5y ago
- amitport 5y agoCan someone please explain Puerto Rico? I just read the Wikipedia page and I'm a little shocked to learn that their people do not have voting rights in the US. Sounds outrageous to me that the US Give them equal rights or leave you can't own a nation... Or at least not while calling youself a democracy. Seriously, if I'm reading this wrong I would really appreciate an explanation.
- Fezzik 5y agoOnly recognized states are given federal voting rights by the constitution. Puerto Rico is designated as a territory. That’s the logic at least.
- vkou 5y agoThe US is a democracy, but it's not a fair democracy. All non-proportionate[1] democracies are unfair in one respect or another. On a macroscopic set of trends, it's been getting more fair over the centuries. [1] One can make arguments for why non-proportionate elections might be better than proportionate ones, but those arguments do not include 'non-proportionate elections are more fair'.
- 988747 5y agonon-proportional elections are not what makes US democracy unfair. The real problem is that US has bunch of laws which seem specifically designed to deter poor black people from voting: the lack of government issued ID (which in my country you can get for free), not enough polling stations, forcing people wanting to vote to stand in line for HOURS, gerrymandering, or even the fact that US elections are held on work days instead of holidays (making it harder for people who work two jobs to find a time to vote).
- vkou 5y agoThere are multiple axes by which a democracy can be unfair. It's possible to have a fully enfranchised population, but let a constituency of five people determine one delegate, while a constituency of five million people determines another.
- autokad 5y agoits revisionist bs. The US was a democracy for much longer than their BS metrics
- teatree 5y agoThis reminds me of Shashi Tharoor's [0] speech at Oxford Union. It is a bit rich to celebrate UK's democracy as 102 years old when they were practicing colonization and slavery less than a human lifetime ago (75 years), isn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4