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I always find it interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government. I guess I’m unsurprised

I always find it interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government. I guess I’m unsurprised that some democracies would be open and vibrant societies and others would have much more restrictive views of civil liberties and privacy. (Not saying that’s a good thing, mind you.)

pfortuny 4y ago
People conflate democracy with the rule of law. That is strange, but it is so. In all these examples, what is lacking is the rule of law, as in the FISA courts: they can do something secretly and without accountability. There have been monarchies and dictatorships in which the rule of law was more widespread than in the present US and possibly more countries which describe themselves as “democracies”.
- lbeltrame 4y ago
  To be fairly honest, the rule of law in most European countries has been greatly eroded over the past two years. Mostly with support from the people themselves, I might add.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    > To be fairly honest, the rule of law in most European countries has been greatly eroded over the past two years. Mostly with support from the people themselves, I might add. Do you have any examples of how the "rule of law" has been eroded in Europe with a positive public reaction? I can't think of any times where the people have cheered that the law was being wilfully broken. It was the final straw for kicking the last UK PM out. I might agree that governments care less about their public appearance due to many factors, but it doesn't seem to ever come with public goodwill.
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      Rule of law and breaking the law are two very different things. As for examples, look at the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. That alone should tell you enough about why GP claims the rule of law not only being eroded, but also why the majority is doing this to itself. It was a massive scandal with huge consequences for many victims. Yet, many individuals still haven't been fully compensated, the news has largely stopped reporting it, the majority has stopped caring, and the authorities in question have barely changed their modus operandi.
      - synu 4y ago
        The people even immediately re-voted right back in the same government after it was forced to resign.
    - lbeltrame 4y ago
      Freedom of assembly and movement, for one. My country had seventy days of armed soldiers out to enforce a lockdown. That was done by completely violating the constitution and the rule of law. It was done with an administrative act, bypassing all checks and balances. Afterwards, a year later unvaccinated people were denied access to public transport and even work (note that a mandate would've been lawful instead, just not the vaccine pass scheme implemented). All of this with an overwhelmingly high support for these measures. It was a de facto tiranny of the majority.
      - lbeltrame 4y ago
        Oh and even afterwards protests were forbidden for a while to "avoid hurting the economic recovery". Again, most were favorable.
      - happymellon 4y ago
        > It was a de facto tiranny of the majority. Isnt that democracy anyway?
        FpUser 4y ago
        So is lynching. Democracy means zilch when people do not have inalienable rights not to be fucked with and those rights are enforced.
        shlurpy 4y ago
        Such rights mean nothing when people lose their respect for them. Democracies work when a sufficiently vast majority of those within them belive that the systems are fundamentally good. Lynching represent a public belief that whatever systems are in place are insufficient to bring justice. They happen regardless of what rights are declared in some legal text or whatever. The solution to building a better democracy always returns to building better, more trusted institutions, and building thr peoples trust that they are fair, and inalienable rights are just another such institution.
        4y ago
    - jmopp 4y ago
      Specific to the Netherlands, there was a scandal where the government was discriminating against minorities with regards to child benefits - unlawfully demanding the return of benefits and putting thousands in debt as a result. The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        >The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before. Sorry, but if the majority of people decided to democratically elect the same people in charge, who's at fault here? If political misbehavior is not punished though votes, then what's left? Maybe the people should learn to vote better.
        nl 4y ago
        They were using that as an example of somewhere where there has been a positive public reaction to breaking the law.
        yakak 4y ago
        Seems like a trick question to me, the founders of the republic and everyone who didn't push for legal consequences (such as permanent ineligibility for civil service) for major civil infractions is at fault. A pure democracy is garbage because it never protects a minority from the greed of the majority. No amount of education can stop populists if the education is covering the fact that your framework technically legalizes unethical behavior. The majority of citizens in any system are going to have frustrations from some of the many trade offs made to keep a system and would rather not have the total of that frustration hit a topic where they are in the minority. This is why a well educated wealthy person and a racist populist are often the same person, if you come from wealth then better a race argument than a class argument causing a violation of civil rights whenever the republic wrongly gives ground to the democracy.
    - greatgib 4y ago
      For that, you can look at France for example: Some times ago, there use to be constant demonstrations against the government in Paris. The police governor of the region requested police to do a lot of harmful and possibly unlawful actions and tactics. Resulting in a lot of casualties (broken eyes, concussions, ...) And more trouble as the strategies were forcing people in more aggressive and violent positions that they would have been. All of these methods were previously forbidden especially because it was known to be harmful and against civil rights. Still they continued without conséquence as they said that "they are the police, they can decide what is the understanding of the law". Same things for the police using "drones" to monitor civilian without authorization. But still, no consequence...
      - trinsic2 4y ago
        It's my understanding that what's happening in society is a reflection of what's happening in A majority of individuals. As individuals that have not worked out their karma form into groups, those group dynamics create the very conditions we find ourselves in. So until there's a significant change in The majority of individuals there won't be a significant change in society.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - trinsic2 4y ago
      I'm wondering if you recognize the distinction between public support and public reaction? In my view those are two very different things. People support tyranny by supporting policies that feed on the perception of public fears. Reactions are just reactions and my judgment don't really hold as much value as making personal changes and being an example to the world.
      - lbeltrame 4y ago
        It was public support. Polls, as unreliable as they were, showed that the vast majority of the people asked were in favor. Aside that we had people calling the police on "offenders", DDR style, and at the very least showering them with insults.
- tempodox 4y ago
  Doing stuff in secret removes it from democratic control and democratic decision processes. So it has something to do with democracy, not just the rule of law.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    The opposite is also true, in a sense. The secret court was created by an elected government, technically held accountable by people that can loudly say, “that is not okay and is why we are electing someone else.” In practice it really doesn’t work that way, though.
    - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
      The democratic process, when used for political decision making, creates the appearance of legitimacy, and invokes the natural human herd mentality to stifle dissent. The main difference between regular democratic decisions, and political ones; is that the former are voluntary, and applicable to all participants; whereas the latter are unilaterally applied to all, regardless of real consent. Try applying this to regular situations, such as shopping, or love making, to see why this is bad.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      you dont vote for every decision that an elected government takes. so in fact no democracy is a true democracy, merely the fake appearance of giving some power to people where they actually have none.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      It depends on if you think that a society that runs a successful plebiscite where its population votes to never have another vote remains a democracy. Voting for the central processes of government to be hidden from you, and for informed participation in them by the population to be made impossible, is a constitutional failure. It also creates powerful hidden parts of the government that can exert control over the public parts of government.
  - pfortuny 4y ago
- koonsolo 4y ago
  Doesn't this all come down to the separation of powers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
  - lambertsimnel 4y ago
    But the Netherlands has a parliamentary government, so it has fusion of powers. Are presidential governments more resistant to this kind of executive overreach?
- bostik 4y ago
  Let's keep in mind that "democracy", as it was originally constructed, was effectively somewhere between oligarchy and plutocracy. Approximately 3% of the population had the vote. I've been saying for 20 years that we are not far off from the origins. > countries which describe themselves as “democracies” I thought it was common knowledge that any country that has the word "democratic" in its official name is anything but. Same for "republic". And for the true bottom of the barrel, "people's". It may be high time to add "united" to that list.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    >Let's keep in mind that "democracy", as it was originally constructed, was effectively somewhere between oligarchy and plutocracy. Approximately 3% of the population had the vote. I'd prefer that system much more TBH, if nothing else it would reduce the noise.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      There are many places you can move to.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        Not really, because they think that they're going to be in the 3%. Invitation only.
        moonchrome 4y ago
        Actually I don't, I don't vote at all since my vote contribution rounds down to zero - not worth the time investment to inform yourself and do it. As long as it's a constitutional rule of law respecting individual human rights I really couldn't care less about how decisions are made.
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        But why would I ? I really don't care about politics and removing general population democracy would just cut the noise for me. But I have more going on in my life than wanting to avoid populist political topics.
seydor 4y ago
Democracy is formally not about the elctoral system, but about power being bestowed to the citizens themselves (hoi polloi): self governance. In ancient democracies that was achieved by lottery instead of election. Fukuyama sets 3 conditions for a liberal democracy : strong state, rule of law and accountability
- trinsic2 4y ago
  That's not my understanding of democracy regardless of this interpretation. Democracy is about bestowing power to a majority. There is a big difference between the terms "people" and a "majority of people" because the majority can, and does, end up being wrong about a great many things. So if we bestow power to a majority we end up with less power as a people.
  - lambertsimnel 4y ago
    I think there's a spectrum of democracy from minimal (with peaceful transitions of power, but with other trappings of democracy largely ineffective or absent) to full (exemplifying Ernest Naville's words: "in a democratic government, the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to all"). I think full democracy requires minority rights and the rule of law, but maybe that's implied by the Naville quote. Notably, majority rule isn't sufficient for full democracy, and isn't necessary or sufficient for minimal democracy.
  - seydor 4y ago
    Most definitions of democracy do not mention majority. It is one way to pursue wide representation, though The autocracy of the majority is mob rule, not democracy
mola 4y ago
You should consider modern democracy as a response to the horrors of the 20th century fascistic and autocratic governments. Especially the case of Nazism in Germany that rose inside of democracy. In the aftermath of WW2 the concept of human rights rose, and the idea the democracy is not a majority rule, and that every democracy should offer basic human rights and protections for minority classes, be it political racial ethnic or religious minorities. This is the prevelant ideal of the modern liberal democracy as is viewed in most of "the west". This is what's being eroded.
denton-scratch 4y ago
"Democracy" isn't some kind of electoral system. There are working democracies that eschew elections.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government It’s always meant that [1]. Elections are essential. But since antiquity it’s been recognised, first through custom then by law, that they had to be balanced against e.g. minority rights and tribal partisanship. Reducing democracy to elections is a modern American/British phenomenon. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
- trinsic2 4y ago
  Thank you for clarifying this. So many forget that custom (In my view this is the sense of right and wrong) precedes law, and that is why public policies, codes, legal decisions are not law, but have the force of law (which stems from custom). Law stems from the customary belief in innate right and wrong that we all share between individuals. - P.S. Sorry if my belief took your statement out of context.

pfortuny 4y ago

People conflate democracy with the rule of law. That is strange, but it is so. In all these examples, what is lacking is the rule of law, as in the FISA courts: they can do something secretly and without accountability. There have been monarchies and dictatorships in which the rule of law was more widespread than in the present US and possibly more countries which describe themselves as “democracies”.

lbeltrame 4y ago
To be fairly honest, the rule of law in most European countries has been greatly eroded over the past two years. Mostly with support from the people themselves, I might add.
- happymellon 4y ago
  > To be fairly honest, the rule of law in most European countries has been greatly eroded over the past two years. Mostly with support from the people themselves, I might add. Do you have any examples of how the "rule of law" has been eroded in Europe with a positive public reaction? I can't think of any times where the people have cheered that the law was being wilfully broken. It was the final straw for kicking the last UK PM out. I might agree that governments care less about their public appearance due to many factors, but it doesn't seem to ever come with public goodwill.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Rule of law and breaking the law are two very different things. As for examples, look at the Dutch childcare benefits scandal. That alone should tell you enough about why GP claims the rule of law not only being eroded, but also why the majority is doing this to itself. It was a massive scandal with huge consequences for many victims. Yet, many individuals still haven't been fully compensated, the news has largely stopped reporting it, the majority has stopped caring, and the authorities in question have barely changed their modus operandi.
    - synu 4y ago
      The people even immediately re-voted right back in the same government after it was forced to resign.
  - lbeltrame 4y ago
    Freedom of assembly and movement, for one. My country had seventy days of armed soldiers out to enforce a lockdown. That was done by completely violating the constitution and the rule of law. It was done with an administrative act, bypassing all checks and balances. Afterwards, a year later unvaccinated people were denied access to public transport and even work (note that a mandate would've been lawful instead, just not the vaccine pass scheme implemented). All of this with an overwhelmingly high support for these measures. It was a de facto tiranny of the majority.
    - lbeltrame 4y ago
      Oh and even afterwards protests were forbidden for a while to "avoid hurting the economic recovery". Again, most were favorable.
    - happymellon 4y ago
      > It was a de facto tiranny of the majority. Isnt that democracy anyway?
      - FpUser 4y ago
        So is lynching. Democracy means zilch when people do not have inalienable rights not to be fucked with and those rights are enforced.
        shlurpy 4y ago
        Such rights mean nothing when people lose their respect for them. Democracies work when a sufficiently vast majority of those within them belive that the systems are fundamentally good. Lynching represent a public belief that whatever systems are in place are insufficient to bring justice. They happen regardless of what rights are declared in some legal text or whatever. The solution to building a better democracy always returns to building better, more trusted institutions, and building thr peoples trust that they are fair, and inalienable rights are just another such institution.
        4y ago
  - jmopp 4y ago
    Specific to the Netherlands, there was a scandal where the government was discriminating against minorities with regards to child benefits - unlawfully demanding the return of benefits and putting thousands in debt as a result. The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >The government resigned - only to be re-voted in with the coalition being comprised of the exact same parties as before. Sorry, but if the majority of people decided to democratically elect the same people in charge, who's at fault here? If political misbehavior is not punished though votes, then what's left? Maybe the people should learn to vote better.
      - nl 4y ago
        They were using that as an example of somewhere where there has been a positive public reaction to breaking the law.
      - yakak 4y ago
        Seems like a trick question to me, the founders of the republic and everyone who didn't push for legal consequences (such as permanent ineligibility for civil service) for major civil infractions is at fault. A pure democracy is garbage because it never protects a minority from the greed of the majority. No amount of education can stop populists if the education is covering the fact that your framework technically legalizes unethical behavior. The majority of citizens in any system are going to have frustrations from some of the many trade offs made to keep a system and would rather not have the total of that frustration hit a topic where they are in the minority. This is why a well educated wealthy person and a racist populist are often the same person, if you come from wealth then better a race argument than a class argument causing a violation of civil rights whenever the republic wrongly gives ground to the democracy.
  - greatgib 4y ago
    For that, you can look at France for example: Some times ago, there use to be constant demonstrations against the government in Paris. The police governor of the region requested police to do a lot of harmful and possibly unlawful actions and tactics. Resulting in a lot of casualties (broken eyes, concussions, ...) And more trouble as the strategies were forcing people in more aggressive and violent positions that they would have been. All of these methods were previously forbidden especially because it was known to be harmful and against civil rights. Still they continued without conséquence as they said that "they are the police, they can decide what is the understanding of the law". Same things for the police using "drones" to monitor civilian without authorization. But still, no consequence...
    - trinsic2 4y ago
      It's my understanding that what's happening in society is a reflection of what's happening in A majority of individuals. As individuals that have not worked out their karma form into groups, those group dynamics create the very conditions we find ourselves in. So until there's a significant change in The majority of individuals there won't be a significant change in society.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - trinsic2 4y ago
    I'm wondering if you recognize the distinction between public support and public reaction? In my view those are two very different things. People support tyranny by supporting policies that feed on the perception of public fears. Reactions are just reactions and my judgment don't really hold as much value as making personal changes and being an example to the world.
    - lbeltrame 4y ago
      It was public support. Polls, as unreliable as they were, showed that the vast majority of the people asked were in favor. Aside that we had people calling the police on "offenders", DDR style, and at the very least showering them with insults.
tempodox 4y ago
Doing stuff in secret removes it from democratic control and democratic decision processes. So it has something to do with democracy, not just the rule of law.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  The opposite is also true, in a sense. The secret court was created by an elected government, technically held accountable by people that can loudly say, “that is not okay and is why we are electing someone else.” In practice it really doesn’t work that way, though.
  - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
    The democratic process, when used for political decision making, creates the appearance of legitimacy, and invokes the natural human herd mentality to stifle dissent. The main difference between regular democratic decisions, and political ones; is that the former are voluntary, and applicable to all participants; whereas the latter are unilaterally applied to all, regardless of real consent. Try applying this to regular situations, such as shopping, or love making, to see why this is bad.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    you dont vote for every decision that an elected government takes. so in fact no democracy is a true democracy, merely the fake appearance of giving some power to people where they actually have none.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It depends on if you think that a society that runs a successful plebiscite where its population votes to never have another vote remains a democracy. Voting for the central processes of government to be hidden from you, and for informed participation in them by the population to be made impossible, is a constitutional failure. It also creates powerful hidden parts of the government that can exert control over the public parts of government.
- pfortuny 4y ago
koonsolo 4y ago
Doesn't this all come down to the separation of powers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
- lambertsimnel 4y ago
  But the Netherlands has a parliamentary government, so it has fusion of powers. Are presidential governments more resistant to this kind of executive overreach?
bostik 4y ago
Let's keep in mind that "democracy", as it was originally constructed, was effectively somewhere between oligarchy and plutocracy. Approximately 3% of the population had the vote. I've been saying for 20 years that we are not far off from the origins. > countries which describe themselves as “democracies” I thought it was common knowledge that any country that has the word "democratic" in its official name is anything but. Same for "republic". And for the true bottom of the barrel, "people's". It may be high time to add "united" to that list.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  >Let's keep in mind that "democracy", as it was originally constructed, was effectively somewhere between oligarchy and plutocracy. Approximately 3% of the population had the vote. I'd prefer that system much more TBH, if nothing else it would reduce the noise.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    There are many places you can move to.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Not really, because they think that they're going to be in the 3%. Invitation only.
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        Actually I don't, I don't vote at all since my vote contribution rounds down to zero - not worth the time investment to inform yourself and do it. As long as it's a constitutional rule of law respecting individual human rights I really couldn't care less about how decisions are made.
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      But why would I ? I really don't care about politics and removing general population democracy would just cut the noise for me. But I have more going on in my life than wanting to avoid populist political topics.

seydor 4y ago

Democracy is formally not about the elctoral system, but about power being bestowed to the citizens themselves (hoi polloi): self governance. In ancient democracies that was achieved by lottery instead of election. Fukuyama sets 3 conditions for a liberal democracy : strong state, rule of law and accountability

trinsic2 4y ago
That's not my understanding of democracy regardless of this interpretation. Democracy is about bestowing power to a majority. There is a big difference between the terms "people" and a "majority of people" because the majority can, and does, end up being wrong about a great many things. So if we bestow power to a majority we end up with less power as a people.
- lambertsimnel 4y ago
  I think there's a spectrum of democracy from minimal (with peaceful transitions of power, but with other trappings of democracy largely ineffective or absent) to full (exemplifying Ernest Naville's words: "in a democratic government, the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to all"). I think full democracy requires minority rights and the rule of law, but maybe that's implied by the Naville quote. Notably, majority rule isn't sufficient for full democracy, and isn't necessary or sufficient for minimal democracy.
- seydor 4y ago
  Most definitions of democracy do not mention majority. It is one way to pursue wide representation, though The autocracy of the majority is mob rule, not democracy

mola 4y ago

You should consider modern democracy as a response to the horrors of the 20th century fascistic and autocratic governments. Especially the case of Nazism in Germany that rose inside of democracy. In the aftermath of WW2 the concept of human rights rose, and the idea the democracy is not a majority rule, and that every democracy should offer basic human rights and protections for minority classes, be it political racial ethnic or religious minorities. This is the prevelant ideal of the modern liberal democracy as is viewed in most of "the west". This is what's being eroded.

denton-scratch 4y ago

"Democracy" isn't some kind of electoral system. There are working democracies that eschew elections.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government It’s always meant that [1]. Elections are essential. But since antiquity it’s been recognised, first through custom then by law, that they had to be balanced against e.g. minority rights and tribal partisanship. Reducing democracy to elections is a modern American/British phenomenon. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

trinsic2 4y ago
Thank you for clarifying this. So many forget that custom (In my view this is the sense of right and wrong) precedes law, and that is why public policies, codes, legal decisions are not law, but have the force of law (which stems from custom). Law stems from the customary belief in innate right and wrong that we all share between individuals. - P.S. Sorry if my belief took your statement out of context.