6 ms·

Japan joining growing global trend of declining democracy

59 points by wahnfrieden 10mo ago

AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
> After an apparent victory over communism with the end of the Cold War, democracy now faces a major challenge. The benefits of globalization did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. Sounds like they nailed the problem. Too bad there’s no push to solve this as a global community. That’s really the only way out, globalization isn’t going away, externalities and climate change are on a one way path. So assuming you can go back to a time before globalization is fantasy. Instead, people are retreating to their tribes and the only option now is prepping for tribe-tribe battle. It’s a shame that it’s been the failure of multiple generations to provide, not only the leadership, but the citizens who could accept and promote the right people into the leadership, for the good of all people Alas, humanity does not have the capacity to do that. Bummer man
- mkleczek 10mo ago
  This. It looks like it goes in cycles: after major catastrophic event subsequent generations that don't remember the catastrophe are willing to engage in another one (I think of WWI and WWII as one event). If the memory was stronger there would be more pressure to find other means of resolving issues. Eg. as a "half boomer" European I remember well why EU was created. It looks like the reasons have been largely forgotten now.
  - hexbin010 10mo ago
    The EU? Or a prior institution with different goals and aims?
    - mkleczek 10mo ago
      Indeed. The organization changed in the passing years. My worry is that there is more will to just dissolve it instead of working on improving it.
  - lmz 10mo ago
    Didn't WW2 largely lead to a "cleaning up" of minorities across state lines in Europe? Maybe it's the population importers who forgot the reasons for post war prosperity. https://www.dday.center/the-impact-of-wwii-on-european-borders-and-population-transfers/ https://www.dday.center/the-impact-of-wwii-on-european-borde...
- fbias 10mo ago
  [dead]
- OgsyedIE 10mo ago
  The macroeconomic problem is that export-led growth is zero sum. Other kinds of growth aren't, but for most countries export-led growth is the most accessible kind of growth. Then, if other countries are rationally defecting, trying to reach out to them gets viewed as treason.
  - jjk166 10mo ago
    But export led growth isn't zero sum. Sure someone needs to import your products, but they are importing them because it is in their own best interest to do so. You grow by having access to a market for your goods and services, they grow by having better access to a resource than they did before. Of course these strategies can be poorly executed and may wind up leaving one party worse off, but win win situations are most certainly possible.
    - OgsyedIE 10mo ago
      I was unclear. There is a finite pool of customers to be fought over.
      - jjk166 10mo ago
        They don't need to be fought over, customers can purchase from multiple sellers. Increasing prosperity increases demand for goods and services.
- rich_sasha 10mo ago
  I think more broadly, we're (re?)discovering various weak spots in democratic governments, and all at once globally. Ones that strike me include: - Most crucially, democracy relies on an educated electorate, but access to really excellent education is minimal globally. This exposes democracies to disinformation and populism - Democracies are not great at long-term investment and planning, due to the rapid election cycle and politicians needing to manage polls in ~real time - We long relied on media as gatekeepers and curators of sound political analysis and facts, but a revenue race to the bottom means media now chase ragebait and owner politics instead - The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of successes of Western Democracies happened when they weren't all that democratic. Anything prior to 20th century was really plutocratic at best, then there was a slow expansion of the vote, but even then, there simply weren't that many terrible options to vote for. Even an uneducated electorate can make a good choice when all you can do is choose between two decent options - Not entirely related, but I think shift from values-based societies to consumption/hedonistic societies broke the unwritten contract of democratic systems, where you vote not for your immediate benefit, but for some kind of societal one. As Churchill supposedly quipped, democracy still seems like the least bad option, but that shouldn't mean we don't discuss improvements. I don't really know where we go from here - pumping lots of money into education would possibly do it eventually - but awareness is a good first step to fixing.
  - linguae 10mo ago
    Good points, though I have some other thoughts (note that this is coming from an American; I don’t know the situation in other democratic countries): 1. More people have access to a university education today than in previous generations. Granted, not everybody goes to college, and I’m concerned about the relatively low standards of today’s high schools outside of highly-ranked ones that serve as feeders to elite universities. 2. I wholeheartedly agree. Moreover, I feel modern American culture as a whole, and not just politics, is very short-term driven compared to previous generations, though this is a perception and I have no data to back this up. I feel so many businesses, for example, are hyper-focused on achieving the next quarter’s targets. To put it in computer science terms, sometimes a greedy approach isn’t optimal. 3. I sympathize, but this is not the first time America has dealt with a reckless media landscape. I remember reading in high school about “yellow journalism” and its role in instigating the Spanish-American War. 4. I wonder if modern presidential primary elections helped contribute to polarization as opposed to the old, pre-George McGovern methods of choosing presidential nominees? The Democratic and Republican parties used to be less uniform ideologically, and party bosses often picked compromise candidates to try to appeal to different factions of each party. The pre-Civil Rights Democratic Party was an alliance of Northern pro-union, moderate-to-liberal politicians and Southern conservatives. The Republican Party had Northeastern moderates (like Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.) and conservatives from other parts of the country (like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater). On one hand primaries are arguably more democratic, but on the other hand they’ve fueled polarization. 5. I’ll have to think about this some more.
- thomassmith65 10mo ago
  The benefits of globalization did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. Those are merely received ideas, not necessarily the root cause of a decline in democracy. Acid House music arose around the end of the Cold War. If, for some reason, a handful of influential figures had blamed Acid House for all society's problems instead of globalization, then presumably the author would have written: The benefits of Acid House did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. This century, we have landed on a whole framework for explaining what we don't like about the world - involving 'elites', globalism, immigrants, etc etc - and it is a pretty useless as a framework.
- servo_sausage 10mo ago
  Democracy requires that people view themselves as part of a singular group; we might all have different interests and priorities, so each citizen might want different policy, but the compromise to the majority should be something that's positive overall. We are not so far into the multicultural experiment (in the literal sense where distinct self contained cultural groups can exist in one nation), and it's becoming clear that it doesn't really work. You get endless cases of representatives chosen based on cultural groups, policies where one group wins at the cost of the whole, and lower trust in the system generally. This is complicated by the messaging that multiculturalism is the same as anti-racism. This has been such a successful campaign that nationalism even being an acceptable idea is one of the major dividing points between parties. I don't really believe that it's resolvable without some kind of major external factor.
  - donkeybeer 10mo ago
    What has nationalism and religion ever given us other than bloodshed? Nationalism is the problem. If nationalism didn't exist people won't have an inclination to fight over racial lines. Destroying nationalism will solve half the worlds conflicts. Destroying religion should deal with the remaining 90%.
    - Ekaros 10mo ago
      So if not for nationalism. Why not roll over and let the other country take over you and then join their democracy? A single world government ruling over all the land?
      - donkeybeer 10mo ago
        They have a right to self defense like anyone else, illegal aggressors should be killed. Nationalism as in racialism. I have no problem with defining a country on principles you have agree to follow, in fact its one of the best forms of countries. I am ambivalent to apathetic to "Iran" remaining "Iranian race" or "France" remaining "French race".
- jmward01 10mo ago
  I actually think globalism has nothing to do with the decline. Or maybe the gains it brought us has indirectly contributed. In general US quality of life has risen. Japanese quality of life isn't bad either. I think the keys are just simple apathy, ignorance and fear of loosing what you have when you have it easy. It is like the silly anti-vax stuff now. People don't see the huge infant mortality rate that used to be there so their value signal for vaccines is completely un-tuned. They didn't have to go through the hardship so they don't know the value. Similarly, by most measures, life is actually pretty good compared to the time we are trying to make great again, but because people now weren't alive then and didn't see the impacts of unregulated stocks, weak health institutions, etc etc, they don't understand the value of the institutions and can't adequately judge the importance of people that are trying to keep those institutions strong. Instead they see a report that has dramatic music and footage from a different time/country with no context and a headline saying 'inconsequential thing X will destroy you and take your home and I will protect you' so they vote out of fear and ignorance or don't vote at all because they can't be bothered to learn as a way to inform instead of experience. Until it happens to them it isn't real. I think fear, ignorance and apathy are the real keys here.
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rzerowan 10mo ago
I always find any discussions which do not adequately desrcibe the terms cuious. Thers a reason why academic articles usually stress on the 'term of art' to make exact what is being addressed and the scope. Going forward as far as 'Democracy' i personally think not many countries can claim to have been/are one. If we are definig it as a system where the majority make decisions while minority rights are protected. For one the US has only ever been aspirational to those ideals since its founding and objectively with Citizens united eventhat pretence has dissolved [1] and moving to out and out a collection of oligarchs that pay lip service to any democratic institutions/norms. To bring it back to the article after WW2 , Japan has been basically run by one party backed by the US , which still holds veto over key military/financial decisions. Certainly if it was a democracy this situation could be changed by the vote (eg bases on okinawa) , that it persists shows the hollow nature of the derciptor. What articles like this show is the kabuki theatre is incresingly being rejected by the deimos worldwide who are seeing through the tricks in realtime - hence the plethora of cencorship laws going live obstenively to tackle lewd images/terror etc. [1]https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-d...
- culi 10mo ago
  Not even in its founding. Federalist #10 spells out exactly the fears that Madison had about democracy. You give people full political power and they'll use it to redistribute wealth/land. So you need to give people somewhere to funnel their energies without rocking the boat too hard. Originally we weren't supposed to vote for Senators and the presidency was mostly conceived as a ceremonial role and the Electoral College was there just in case the establishment was ever too threatened by "democracy"
- martin-t 10mo ago
  A true democracy would be people voting on laws directly and having the _option_ to appoint an assistant to vote for them. That's right - politicians would not be "leaders" but assistants who could be removed or replaced at any time. --- A political party and a person's political opinion are both points in a high-dimensional vector space. The greatest issue with representative democracy is that voting is the act of describing one point (your political opinion) by picking another point from a small predefined set (political parties) which is acceptably close to yours. That's nuts and it should be obviously nuts to anyone who understands a tiny bit of vector math. Thank god they don't teach it until university or we'd have riots every day until it was fixed.
monero-xmr 10mo ago
The prime minister said she wants lower immigration in order to preserve Japanese culture: https://x.com/ianmiles/status/1980957928791437360?s=46 https://x.com/ianmiles/status/1980957928791437360?s=46 The result will be lower GDP. But the culture will remain strictly Japanese
- bilbo0s 10mo ago
  My jarring awakening to the importance of genetic and cultural Japanese-ness in Japan was when that girl won the Miss Japan pageant. She was seen as not-Japanese as she was white. Which I hadn't thought would be a problem. (Maybe it was foolish of me, but to be fair they had actually already had a black Miss Japan. So why wouldn't they accept a white one?) Anyway, it culminated in that girl giving up the crown but it taught me an important lesson after several conversations with friends. Japanese-ness is not some backward notion from a time that the world has advanced beyond. They take Japanese-ness extremely seriously. One ignores it to their own detriment. As that particular Miss Japan contestant found out. And as, I suspect, many foreign residents of Japan will find out in the coming years. It's unfortunate. But culture above everything I guess?
  - monero-xmr 10mo ago
    If a democracy votes to not allow foreigners in, and to lower their standard of living year after year, and die out as the birth rate declines - I think it is the will of the citizens
    - bilbo0s 10mo ago
      Well, true. Sigh.
    - logicchains 10mo ago
      >and to lower their standard of living year after year, and die out as the birth rate declines Eventually the population will get low enough that standards of living start improving because there's so much land and resources per person, and the Japanese birth rate will start rising again. Which won't happen if they keep importing foreigners to compete with Japanese youth for resources.
tjpnz 10mo ago
Got my (Japanese) wife to vote for CDP at the last election after years of complaining about the LDP as a non-voter. She managed to get a few of her friends out too by merely expressing her intention to vote - nice work. There was no change in government but the LDP were given a bloody nose. Whether that resulted in anything good remains to be seen (as a foreign resident I'm keeping a keen eye on it).
- donkeybeer 10mo ago
  I hope you will obey the government and hand in your papers if it votes to deport you.
  - raincole 10mo ago
    CDP is the more pro-immigration (by Japan's standard) party. But nice knee-jerking comment.
tuowei433234 10mo ago
Perhaps the problem lies in the Anglo-American "Democracy" as a system of rule itself ? I mean for the most part, democracy is a joke today. Most people have no say in how they get "governed" by increasingly haughty and disconnected elites. It's all but a farce today - worse, there's no central King whose greed for wealth can be satisfied once. Voting is just a means for legal legitimacy - nothing more. Until the systems become radically decentralized (ergo, ruling out every political theory in existence), this "liberal" trick of atomizing the public, while the elites centralize globally, will continue. There's a endless musical chair of parasites who come in to get their fill, and then leave - so 'people' don't even have one guy they can kill off to start anew.
- aaa_aaa 10mo ago
  You summarized the "democracy the god that failed" book.
- anon291 10mo ago
  The issue is we look upon the government for solutions. In reality, the answer always lies in us. What people don't get about 'Anglo-American' democracy is that the various political governmental bodies ARE NOT the governing mechanism of society If you're not president of some local board or organization, then YOU are the problem. America is a nation of presidents. Until we each do that, the country will always be missing something. Outside observers clearly noted this early on in this country's history. People completely misplace their trust today depending on the government. This is why transplanting American legal systems to foreign cultures doesn't work. The work to be done is not governmental but rather interior to each individual in society
- bvrmn 10mo ago
  > there's no central King whose greed for wealth can be satisfied once. King and court and lords are the same amount of greedy bastards. The issue with kings is on another plain, what to do with power transfer to a new king. Democracy try to solve exactly this problem. What to do with individuals bending laws to be new kings is another issue to solve.
- aisisiiaai 10mo ago
morninglight 10mo ago
As Japan's economy weakened, Abe and now Takaichi have promoted remilitarization. The big money in military hardware can sway any election. The US is a obvious example. The best "democracy" that money can buy.
- tjpnz 10mo ago
  With all the saber rattling from China what else were they supposed to be doing?
- yongjik 10mo ago
  I doubt that. Takaichi has (IMHO needlessly) angered China and China is lashing out - because China is much bigger, the economic pain will be much greater for Japan. It's theoretically possible that Takaichi had a plan and decided the economic pain was worth it, but generally you don't win elections by hurting economy.
panny 10mo ago
I'm in Japan now. Whatever Japan is doing, they should continue doing it. Life is much better here than in the US. By a country mile. I could elaborate for hours on this small statement. Everything in the US is worse than in Japan, except perhaps the cheese selection at the grocery store. The US does a great job on cheese, I can give our team that one. Everything else, Japan wins. It's not even a contest. Crime rate: Japan is better. Divorce rate: Japan is better. Suicide rate: Japan is better. GINI score: Japan is better. Life expectancy: Japan is better. Obesity rate: Japan is best in the world. I could go on and on and on. If democracy isn't working out in Japan, that tells me democracy sucks, not Japan.
- tjpnz 10mo ago
  As a foreign resident I'm pretty happy. People like to make dollar comparisons (especially to US salaries) but it's a crude oversimplification.
  - panny 10mo ago
    I understand it, the "disagree votes" and whatnot. At the end of the day, I fully expect to be a -4 wrongthinker for posting this. People get defensive when you start talking about their country, but they've never set foot here. It is mind blowing. You cannot buy a 30 year old vacation home ANYWHERE in the US for $650. Like, you get the land, the house, everything. You couldn't even RENT one for a month in the US at that price. https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/6979902125/ https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/6979902125/ Life is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better in Japan than the US. It isn't even close.
- fruitworks 10mo ago
  Yet japan's parmesan score is rather uninspiring
- blargey 10mo ago
  They're talking about how recent trends are a departure from the existing trends that got Japan to where it is now (where you seem to like it).
roenxi 10mo ago
V-Dem seem to be redefining the word democracy somewhere here to mean something other than the demos being in charge of things. I agree that all this stuff is bad news but they're using the wrong word. The term is "illiberal" and the problem is a lack of personal freedom. Democracy is a technical concept about how decisions get made and is capable of doing some really evil and illiberal stuff in a perfectly democratic fashion. > A government panel has also started work on restricting entry into Japan by foreigners, a policy that could further spread xenophobia around Japan. This was the part that really set me off. I mean, democracy is fundamentally a little xenophobic. Democracies tend to be militarily aggressive and the people on the receiving end don't get a vote. One of the best arguments for being a capitalist democracy, in my opinion, is that the only way to hold off a foreign capitalist democratic military is to deploy one yourself. Otherwise it is hot knife through butter time. They are unkind to foreigners. > Populism that gains support through xenophobia and chest-pumping arguments is also spreading into Japan. This reflects the distortions in politics and society that fuel dissatisfaction among the public with their daily lives. And I get that this is not a good thing, but how are they to argue that it makes a country less democratic? There seems to be some bizarre academic re-appropriation of words here where it only counts as democratic if the majority can't act, can't be persuaded of new ideas that haven't been approved by Sweden and some blessed minority is secured. All that probably would be nice, but words mean something! It is hard to get much more democratic than populism. Mobs are very democratic organisations too, that is one of the arguments against going overboard with democracy. Too much of the stuff. It is good to have a few slow multi-year rituals to give people time to think over whether they want to do something really stupid.
- like_any_other 10mo ago
  > but how are they to argue that it makes a country less democratic? [..] words mean something! You misunderstand the purpose of editorials such as these. It is not to communicate, but to push an agenda [1], here by putting PR pressure on the Japanese government. Words are just a tool in pursuit of that goal. So 'democracy' is used because of its positive affect in the minds of the public, and because it can be successfully misused without most people noticing - the line between "a set of policies I like" (how they are using the word) and "rule of the people" (what the word actually means) has been blurred through years of media effort for this very reason. [1] I use the term neutrally, as in agendas can be either good or bad. E.g. fighting for the right for repair, and tobacco companies deceiving the public about the harm of their product, are both agendas.
Ekaros 10mo ago
Perhaps it is just population feeling that previously elected democratic leadership did not do their jobs very well. And I would tend to agree. When they then decide to instead vote for someone who promises to do better it is "populism". I think lot stems from the reality that many don't see the "plenty" themselves that is spend in many cases spend on others. Or notice that somehow "plenty" comes from ever increasing debt...
raincole 10mo ago
It's funny. LDP had been the ruling party for more than 50 years. By the standard of the west, Japan's democracy never work at all (Can you imagine the US or the UK being ruled by the same party for 50 years? Would people still call it them democracies?) But only when LDP is falling and becoming a minority government and so-called alt-right is rising, it's "joining the trend of declining democracy."
- anthonj 10mo ago
  Japan was already classified as "flawed democracy" for that reason and others. The likely reason for going even lower in that scale is the foundation of new parties that in some case goes as far ad calling for the restoration of the political power of the imperial family. Not really funny IMHO.
- pseudohadamard 10mo ago
  A single ruling party doesn't necessarily make you non-democratic. Bavaria has been run by a single party (the Christian Social Union) almost uninterrupted since 1945 without becoming an autocracy despite the party being rather on the conservative side by European standards (by US standards they're rabid socialists so it depends on your perspective).
SanjayMehta 10mo ago
What is V-Dem and what are their credentials?
tim333 10mo ago
The article cites as an anti democratic trend: >A government panel has also started work on restricting entry into Japan by foreigners but if the people want that and vote for that maybe that's democracy in action?
- wahnfrieden 10mo ago
  Hitler was voted in. Democracy can be ended through its own mechanisms.
  - simonsarris 10mo ago
    There is nothing anti-democratic per se about restricting immigration, and in fact many countries create policy that is significantly to the left of their populaces surveyed desires with respect to immigration, who almost always wish for lower numbers. This has been true for decades, and fleshed out in the 90's in Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States by Freeman. Basically alleging that elected officials prefer client politics (what employers and small ethnic groups, etc want) over democratic politics (what people want). It gets remarked on all the time today by newer sources too.
    - wahnfrieden 10mo ago
      The article doesn’t say anti-immigration policy is antidemocratic (and my post is only to address the question of whether ending democracy through democratic means is antidemocratic). This thread you continue about the article claiming anti-immigration is antidemocratic is a non-sequitur, evidence of reading comprehension challenges
pjjpo 10mo ago
As it's flagged hoping the damage is done but in case anyone finds this - The original article starts with all-caps EDITORIAL:. It's rare to see such strong labeling but personally I couldn't find any facts in the piece and suspect it's to make that clear - The article is from Asahi, which along with Mainichi are the anti-government newspapers in Japan. Not an issue for normal news but this is an EDITORIAL (emphasis from the original article, not mine) Quietly take away from the article what you want but please don't make any claims based on this.

59 points by wahnfrieden 10mo ago

> After an apparent victory over communism with the end of the Cold War, democracy now faces a major challenge. The benefits of globalization did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. Sounds like they nailed the problem. Too bad there’s no push to solve this as a global community. That’s really the only way out, globalization isn’t going away, externalities and climate change are on a one way path. So assuming you can go back to a time before globalization is fantasy. Instead, people are retreating to their tribes and the only option now is prepping for tribe-tribe battle. It’s a shame that it’s been the failure of multiple generations to provide, not only the leadership, but the citizens who could accept and promote the right people into the leadership, for the good of all people Alas, humanity does not have the capacity to do that. Bummer man

mkleczek 10mo ago
This. It looks like it goes in cycles: after major catastrophic event subsequent generations that don't remember the catastrophe are willing to engage in another one (I think of WWI and WWII as one event). If the memory was stronger there would be more pressure to find other means of resolving issues. Eg. as a "half boomer" European I remember well why EU was created. It looks like the reasons have been largely forgotten now.
- hexbin010 10mo ago
  The EU? Or a prior institution with different goals and aims?
  - mkleczek 10mo ago
    Indeed. The organization changed in the passing years. My worry is that there is more will to just dissolve it instead of working on improving it.
- lmz 10mo ago
  Didn't WW2 largely lead to a "cleaning up" of minorities across state lines in Europe? Maybe it's the population importers who forgot the reasons for post war prosperity. https://www.dday.center/the-impact-of-wwii-on-european-borders-and-population-transfers/ https://www.dday.center/the-impact-of-wwii-on-european-borde...
fbias 10mo ago
[dead]
OgsyedIE 10mo ago
The macroeconomic problem is that export-led growth is zero sum. Other kinds of growth aren't, but for most countries export-led growth is the most accessible kind of growth. Then, if other countries are rationally defecting, trying to reach out to them gets viewed as treason.
- jjk166 10mo ago
  But export led growth isn't zero sum. Sure someone needs to import your products, but they are importing them because it is in their own best interest to do so. You grow by having access to a market for your goods and services, they grow by having better access to a resource than they did before. Of course these strategies can be poorly executed and may wind up leaving one party worse off, but win win situations are most certainly possible.
  - OgsyedIE 10mo ago
    I was unclear. There is a finite pool of customers to be fought over.
    - jjk166 10mo ago
      They don't need to be fought over, customers can purchase from multiple sellers. Increasing prosperity increases demand for goods and services.
rich_sasha 10mo ago
I think more broadly, we're (re?)discovering various weak spots in democratic governments, and all at once globally. Ones that strike me include: - Most crucially, democracy relies on an educated electorate, but access to really excellent education is minimal globally. This exposes democracies to disinformation and populism - Democracies are not great at long-term investment and planning, due to the rapid election cycle and politicians needing to manage polls in ~real time - We long relied on media as gatekeepers and curators of sound political analysis and facts, but a revenue race to the bottom means media now chase ragebait and owner politics instead - The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of successes of Western Democracies happened when they weren't all that democratic. Anything prior to 20th century was really plutocratic at best, then there was a slow expansion of the vote, but even then, there simply weren't that many terrible options to vote for. Even an uneducated electorate can make a good choice when all you can do is choose between two decent options - Not entirely related, but I think shift from values-based societies to consumption/hedonistic societies broke the unwritten contract of democratic systems, where you vote not for your immediate benefit, but for some kind of societal one. As Churchill supposedly quipped, democracy still seems like the least bad option, but that shouldn't mean we don't discuss improvements. I don't really know where we go from here - pumping lots of money into education would possibly do it eventually - but awareness is a good first step to fixing.
- linguae 10mo ago
  Good points, though I have some other thoughts (note that this is coming from an American; I don’t know the situation in other democratic countries): 1. More people have access to a university education today than in previous generations. Granted, not everybody goes to college, and I’m concerned about the relatively low standards of today’s high schools outside of highly-ranked ones that serve as feeders to elite universities. 2. I wholeheartedly agree. Moreover, I feel modern American culture as a whole, and not just politics, is very short-term driven compared to previous generations, though this is a perception and I have no data to back this up. I feel so many businesses, for example, are hyper-focused on achieving the next quarter’s targets. To put it in computer science terms, sometimes a greedy approach isn’t optimal. 3. I sympathize, but this is not the first time America has dealt with a reckless media landscape. I remember reading in high school about “yellow journalism” and its role in instigating the Spanish-American War. 4. I wonder if modern presidential primary elections helped contribute to polarization as opposed to the old, pre-George McGovern methods of choosing presidential nominees? The Democratic and Republican parties used to be less uniform ideologically, and party bosses often picked compromise candidates to try to appeal to different factions of each party. The pre-Civil Rights Democratic Party was an alliance of Northern pro-union, moderate-to-liberal politicians and Southern conservatives. The Republican Party had Northeastern moderates (like Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.) and conservatives from other parts of the country (like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater). On one hand primaries are arguably more democratic, but on the other hand they’ve fueled polarization. 5. I’ll have to think about this some more.
thomassmith65 10mo ago
The benefits of globalization did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. Those are merely received ideas, not necessarily the root cause of a decline in democracy. Acid House music arose around the end of the Cold War. If, for some reason, a handful of influential figures had blamed Acid House for all society's problems instead of globalization, then presumably the author would have written: The benefits of Acid House did not reach all citizens, leading to a maldistribution of wealth. This century, we have landed on a whole framework for explaining what we don't like about the world - involving 'elites', globalism, immigrants, etc etc - and it is a pretty useless as a framework.
servo_sausage 10mo ago
Democracy requires that people view themselves as part of a singular group; we might all have different interests and priorities, so each citizen might want different policy, but the compromise to the majority should be something that's positive overall. We are not so far into the multicultural experiment (in the literal sense where distinct self contained cultural groups can exist in one nation), and it's becoming clear that it doesn't really work. You get endless cases of representatives chosen based on cultural groups, policies where one group wins at the cost of the whole, and lower trust in the system generally. This is complicated by the messaging that multiculturalism is the same as anti-racism. This has been such a successful campaign that nationalism even being an acceptable idea is one of the major dividing points between parties. I don't really believe that it's resolvable without some kind of major external factor.
- donkeybeer 10mo ago
  What has nationalism and religion ever given us other than bloodshed? Nationalism is the problem. If nationalism didn't exist people won't have an inclination to fight over racial lines. Destroying nationalism will solve half the worlds conflicts. Destroying religion should deal with the remaining 90%.
  - Ekaros 10mo ago
    So if not for nationalism. Why not roll over and let the other country take over you and then join their democracy? A single world government ruling over all the land?
    - donkeybeer 10mo ago
      They have a right to self defense like anyone else, illegal aggressors should be killed. Nationalism as in racialism. I have no problem with defining a country on principles you have agree to follow, in fact its one of the best forms of countries. I am ambivalent to apathetic to "Iran" remaining "Iranian race" or "France" remaining "French race".
jmward01 10mo ago
I actually think globalism has nothing to do with the decline. Or maybe the gains it brought us has indirectly contributed. In general US quality of life has risen. Japanese quality of life isn't bad either. I think the keys are just simple apathy, ignorance and fear of loosing what you have when you have it easy. It is like the silly anti-vax stuff now. People don't see the huge infant mortality rate that used to be there so their value signal for vaccines is completely un-tuned. They didn't have to go through the hardship so they don't know the value. Similarly, by most measures, life is actually pretty good compared to the time we are trying to make great again, but because people now weren't alive then and didn't see the impacts of unregulated stocks, weak health institutions, etc etc, they don't understand the value of the institutions and can't adequately judge the importance of people that are trying to keep those institutions strong. Instead they see a report that has dramatic music and footage from a different time/country with no context and a headline saying 'inconsequential thing X will destroy you and take your home and I will protect you' so they vote out of fear and ignorance or don't vote at all because they can't be bothered to learn as a way to inform instead of experience. Until it happens to them it isn't real. I think fear, ignorance and apathy are the real keys here.

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rzerowan 10mo ago

I always find any discussions which do not adequately desrcibe the terms cuious. Thers a reason why academic articles usually stress on the 'term of art' to make exact what is being addressed and the scope. Going forward as far as 'Democracy' i personally think not many countries can claim to have been/are one. If we are definig it as a system where the majority make decisions while minority rights are protected. For one the US has only ever been aspirational to those ideals since its founding and objectively with Citizens united eventhat pretence has dissolved [1] and moving to out and out a collection of oligarchs that pay lip service to any democratic institutions/norms. To bring it back to the article after WW2 , Japan has been basically run by one party backed by the US , which still holds veto over key military/financial decisions. Certainly if it was a democracy this situation could be changed by the vote (eg bases on okinawa) , that it persists shows the hollow nature of the derciptor. What articles like this show is the kabuki theatre is incresingly being rejected by the deimos worldwide who are seeing through the tricks in realtime - hence the plethora of cencorship laws going live obstenively to tackle lewd images/terror etc. [1]https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-d...

culi 10mo ago
Not even in its founding. Federalist #10 spells out exactly the fears that Madison had about democracy. You give people full political power and they'll use it to redistribute wealth/land. So you need to give people somewhere to funnel their energies without rocking the boat too hard. Originally we weren't supposed to vote for Senators and the presidency was mostly conceived as a ceremonial role and the Electoral College was there just in case the establishment was ever too threatened by "democracy"
martin-t 10mo ago
A true democracy would be people voting on laws directly and having the _option_ to appoint an assistant to vote for them. That's right - politicians would not be "leaders" but assistants who could be removed or replaced at any time. --- A political party and a person's political opinion are both points in a high-dimensional vector space. The greatest issue with representative democracy is that voting is the act of describing one point (your political opinion) by picking another point from a small predefined set (political parties) which is acceptably close to yours. That's nuts and it should be obviously nuts to anyone who understands a tiny bit of vector math. Thank god they don't teach it until university or we'd have riots every day until it was fixed.

monero-xmr 10mo ago

The prime minister said she wants lower immigration in order to preserve Japanese culture: https://x.com/ianmiles/status/1980957928791437360?s=46 https://x.com/ianmiles/status/1980957928791437360?s=46 The result will be lower GDP. But the culture will remain strictly Japanese

bilbo0s 10mo ago
My jarring awakening to the importance of genetic and cultural Japanese-ness in Japan was when that girl won the Miss Japan pageant. She was seen as not-Japanese as she was white. Which I hadn't thought would be a problem. (Maybe it was foolish of me, but to be fair they had actually already had a black Miss Japan. So why wouldn't they accept a white one?) Anyway, it culminated in that girl giving up the crown but it taught me an important lesson after several conversations with friends. Japanese-ness is not some backward notion from a time that the world has advanced beyond. They take Japanese-ness extremely seriously. One ignores it to their own detriment. As that particular Miss Japan contestant found out. And as, I suspect, many foreign residents of Japan will find out in the coming years. It's unfortunate. But culture above everything I guess?
- monero-xmr 10mo ago
  If a democracy votes to not allow foreigners in, and to lower their standard of living year after year, and die out as the birth rate declines - I think it is the will of the citizens
  - bilbo0s 10mo ago
    Well, true. Sigh.
  - logicchains 10mo ago
    >and to lower their standard of living year after year, and die out as the birth rate declines Eventually the population will get low enough that standards of living start improving because there's so much land and resources per person, and the Japanese birth rate will start rising again. Which won't happen if they keep importing foreigners to compete with Japanese youth for resources.

tjpnz 10mo ago

Got my (Japanese) wife to vote for CDP at the last election after years of complaining about the LDP as a non-voter. She managed to get a few of her friends out too by merely expressing her intention to vote - nice work. There was no change in government but the LDP were given a bloody nose. Whether that resulted in anything good remains to be seen (as a foreign resident I'm keeping a keen eye on it).

donkeybeer 10mo ago
I hope you will obey the government and hand in your papers if it votes to deport you.
- raincole 10mo ago
  CDP is the more pro-immigration (by Japan's standard) party. But nice knee-jerking comment.

tuowei433234 10mo ago

Perhaps the problem lies in the Anglo-American "Democracy" as a system of rule itself ? I mean for the most part, democracy is a joke today. Most people have no say in how they get "governed" by increasingly haughty and disconnected elites. It's all but a farce today - worse, there's no central King whose greed for wealth can be satisfied once. Voting is just a means for legal legitimacy - nothing more. Until the systems become radically decentralized (ergo, ruling out every political theory in existence), this "liberal" trick of atomizing the public, while the elites centralize globally, will continue. There's a endless musical chair of parasites who come in to get their fill, and then leave - so 'people' don't even have one guy they can kill off to start anew.

aaa_aaa 10mo ago
You summarized the "democracy the god that failed" book.
anon291 10mo ago
The issue is we look upon the government for solutions. In reality, the answer always lies in us. What people don't get about 'Anglo-American' democracy is that the various political governmental bodies ARE NOT the governing mechanism of society If you're not president of some local board or organization, then YOU are the problem. America is a nation of presidents. Until we each do that, the country will always be missing something. Outside observers clearly noted this early on in this country's history. People completely misplace their trust today depending on the government. This is why transplanting American legal systems to foreign cultures doesn't work. The work to be done is not governmental but rather interior to each individual in society
bvrmn 10mo ago
> there's no central King whose greed for wealth can be satisfied once. King and court and lords are the same amount of greedy bastards. The issue with kings is on another plain, what to do with power transfer to a new king. Democracy try to solve exactly this problem. What to do with individuals bending laws to be new kings is another issue to solve.
aisisiiaai 10mo ago

morninglight 10mo ago

As Japan's economy weakened, Abe and now Takaichi have promoted remilitarization. The big money in military hardware can sway any election. The US is a obvious example. The best "democracy" that money can buy.

tjpnz 10mo ago
With all the saber rattling from China what else were they supposed to be doing?
yongjik 10mo ago
I doubt that. Takaichi has (IMHO needlessly) angered China and China is lashing out - because China is much bigger, the economic pain will be much greater for Japan. It's theoretically possible that Takaichi had a plan and decided the economic pain was worth it, but generally you don't win elections by hurting economy.

panny 10mo ago

I'm in Japan now. Whatever Japan is doing, they should continue doing it. Life is much better here than in the US. By a country mile. I could elaborate for hours on this small statement. Everything in the US is worse than in Japan, except perhaps the cheese selection at the grocery store. The US does a great job on cheese, I can give our team that one. Everything else, Japan wins. It's not even a contest. Crime rate: Japan is better. Divorce rate: Japan is better. Suicide rate: Japan is better. GINI score: Japan is better. Life expectancy: Japan is better. Obesity rate: Japan is best in the world. I could go on and on and on. If democracy isn't working out in Japan, that tells me democracy sucks, not Japan.

tjpnz 10mo ago
As a foreign resident I'm pretty happy. People like to make dollar comparisons (especially to US salaries) but it's a crude oversimplification.
- panny 10mo ago
  I understand it, the "disagree votes" and whatnot. At the end of the day, I fully expect to be a -4 wrongthinker for posting this. People get defensive when you start talking about their country, but they've never set foot here. It is mind blowing. You cannot buy a 30 year old vacation home ANYWHERE in the US for $650. Like, you get the land, the house, everything. You couldn't even RENT one for a month in the US at that price. https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/6979902125/ https://www.athome.co.jp/kodate/6979902125/ Life is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better in Japan than the US. It isn't even close.
fruitworks 10mo ago
Yet japan's parmesan score is rather uninspiring
blargey 10mo ago
They're talking about how recent trends are a departure from the existing trends that got Japan to where it is now (where you seem to like it).

roenxi 10mo ago

V-Dem seem to be redefining the word democracy somewhere here to mean something other than the demos being in charge of things. I agree that all this stuff is bad news but they're using the wrong word. The term is "illiberal" and the problem is a lack of personal freedom. Democracy is a technical concept about how decisions get made and is capable of doing some really evil and illiberal stuff in a perfectly democratic fashion. > A government panel has also started work on restricting entry into Japan by foreigners, a policy that could further spread xenophobia around Japan. This was the part that really set me off. I mean, democracy is fundamentally a little xenophobic. Democracies tend to be militarily aggressive and the people on the receiving end don't get a vote. One of the best arguments for being a capitalist democracy, in my opinion, is that the only way to hold off a foreign capitalist democratic military is to deploy one yourself. Otherwise it is hot knife through butter time. They are unkind to foreigners. > Populism that gains support through xenophobia and chest-pumping arguments is also spreading into Japan. This reflects the distortions in politics and society that fuel dissatisfaction among the public with their daily lives. And I get that this is not a good thing, but how are they to argue that it makes a country less democratic? There seems to be some bizarre academic re-appropriation of words here where it only counts as democratic if the majority can't act, can't be persuaded of new ideas that haven't been approved by Sweden and some blessed minority is secured. All that probably would be nice, but words mean something! It is hard to get much more democratic than populism. Mobs are very democratic organisations too, that is one of the arguments against going overboard with democracy. Too much of the stuff. It is good to have a few slow multi-year rituals to give people time to think over whether they want to do something really stupid.

like_any_other 10mo ago
> but how are they to argue that it makes a country less democratic? [..] words mean something! You misunderstand the purpose of editorials such as these. It is not to communicate, but to push an agenda [1], here by putting PR pressure on the Japanese government. Words are just a tool in pursuit of that goal. So 'democracy' is used because of its positive affect in the minds of the public, and because it can be successfully misused without most people noticing - the line between "a set of policies I like" (how they are using the word) and "rule of the people" (what the word actually means) has been blurred through years of media effort for this very reason. [1] I use the term neutrally, as in agendas can be either good or bad. E.g. fighting for the right for repair, and tobacco companies deceiving the public about the harm of their product, are both agendas.

Ekaros 10mo ago

Perhaps it is just population feeling that previously elected democratic leadership did not do their jobs very well. And I would tend to agree. When they then decide to instead vote for someone who promises to do better it is "populism". I think lot stems from the reality that many don't see the "plenty" themselves that is spend in many cases spend on others. Or notice that somehow "plenty" comes from ever increasing debt...

raincole 10mo ago

It's funny. LDP had been the ruling party for more than 50 years. By the standard of the west, Japan's democracy never work at all (Can you imagine the US or the UK being ruled by the same party for 50 years? Would people still call it them democracies?) But only when LDP is falling and becoming a minority government and so-called alt-right is rising, it's "joining the trend of declining democracy."

anthonj 10mo ago
Japan was already classified as "flawed democracy" for that reason and others. The likely reason for going even lower in that scale is the foundation of new parties that in some case goes as far ad calling for the restoration of the political power of the imperial family. Not really funny IMHO.
pseudohadamard 10mo ago
A single ruling party doesn't necessarily make you non-democratic. Bavaria has been run by a single party (the Christian Social Union) almost uninterrupted since 1945 without becoming an autocracy despite the party being rather on the conservative side by European standards (by US standards they're rabid socialists so it depends on your perspective).

SanjayMehta 10mo ago

What is V-Dem and what are their credentials?

tim333 10mo ago

The article cites as an anti democratic trend: >A government panel has also started work on restricting entry into Japan by foreigners but if the people want that and vote for that maybe that's democracy in action?

wahnfrieden 10mo ago
Hitler was voted in. Democracy can be ended through its own mechanisms.
- simonsarris 10mo ago
  There is nothing anti-democratic per se about restricting immigration, and in fact many countries create policy that is significantly to the left of their populaces surveyed desires with respect to immigration, who almost always wish for lower numbers. This has been true for decades, and fleshed out in the 90's in Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States by Freeman. Basically alleging that elected officials prefer client politics (what employers and small ethnic groups, etc want) over democratic politics (what people want). It gets remarked on all the time today by newer sources too.
  - wahnfrieden 10mo ago
    The article doesn’t say anti-immigration policy is antidemocratic (and my post is only to address the question of whether ending democracy through democratic means is antidemocratic). This thread you continue about the article claiming anti-immigration is antidemocratic is a non-sequitur, evidence of reading comprehension challenges

pjjpo 10mo ago

As it's flagged hoping the damage is done but in case anyone finds this - The original article starts with all-caps EDITORIAL:. It's rare to see such strong labeling but personally I couldn't find any facts in the piece and suspect it's to make that clear - The article is from Asahi, which along with Mainichi are the anti-government newspapers in Japan. Not an issue for normal news but this is an EDITORIAL (emphasis from the original article, not mine) Quietly take away from the article what you want but please don't make any claims based on this.