
German foundation says democracy is declining worldwide - imartin2k
http://www.laprensasa.com/309_america-in-english/3656369_german-foundation-says-democracy-is-declining-worldwide.html
======
yummyfajitas
The news report is wildly misleading, the underlying study barely measures
democracy at all. A more honest name would be the "governments that do what
Bertelsmann Stiftung wants them to do index".

[http://www.bti-project.org/en/index/methodology/](http://www.bti-
project.org/en/index/methodology/)

Various non-democratic elements that they include in the methodology are "No
interference of religious dogmas", "market based competition", "anti-monopoly
policy", "anti-inflation policy", "social safety nets", "equal opportunity"
(under welfare regime), "GNI cc PPP rescaled", "education index", and all
sorts of other things.

I'm all in favor of market based competition and anti-inflation, but you can
totally have a democracy that lacks these things - Greece, for example. Voters
might be influenced by religious dogmas and vote against market competition
and equal opportunity; this is a feature of democracy.

~~~
pjc50
_market based competition and anti-inflation, but you can totally have a
democracy that lacks these things - Greece, for example._

What? Greece is part of the Euro area and therefore under the ECB anti-
inflation umbrella. This resulted in moderate inflation until the crisis at
which point it's experienced deflation.

[http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/inflation-
cpi](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/inflation-cpi)

Greece also has market based competition under EU law; it's enshrined in the
_aquis communitaire_.

~~~
DasIch
The ECB is not that strongly against inflation. They have a goal of 2%
inflation. They've also received criticism from the German Bundesbank for
risking to much inflation with their programs.

~~~
pjc50
That _is_ strongly against inflation - targeting 2% is the generally accepted
optimum value, as price levels aren't uniform across the economy and targeting
0% requires actively driving down wages resulting in lots of needless strife.

(Also, think carefully about what a zero inflation target means in an economy
coupled to the German economy: it would mean Greek wage and price levels below
German price levels _forever_. In order for Europe to converge, local price
levels have to change.)

------
jhasse
It's a pity they only analyzed developing countries. Would be great to sea how
European countries and the USA would be ranked in comparison.

~~~
rogersmith
They didnt include EU and US because democracy there is dead and buried.

~~~
icebraining
Even if that was true, there's more to Europe than the EU.

~~~
rogersmith
Non EU European countries are actually included mind.

Also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_2015](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_2015)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005)
und so wieder...

Please entertain me with tales of how democracy in EU is alive and well... Not
even going to touch democracy in the US, current presidential campaign speaks
for itself...

~~~
rogersmith
yet downvoting me won't make that kool aid taste less bitter :)

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Here's the link to the actual index mentioned in the article: [http://www.bti-
project.org/en/index/status-index/](http://www.bti-
project.org/en/index/status-index/)

------
imartin2k
Here is the link to the press release by the way. Not sure if it would be
better to use that link.

[http://www.bfna.org/media_advisory/global-index-sees-
tough-t...](http://www.bfna.org/media_advisory/global-index-sees-tough-times-
for-democratic-change)

------
_Codemonkeyism
Not as misleading than the titles are the introductory sentences of the press
release:

"Democracy and models of social market economy are being challenged worldwide.
At the same time, the influence of religion on political institutions and
legal systems is on the rise."

------
vmorgulis
> ... and an increase in religion's influence in political and legal
> institutions.

It's local. It's not worldwide.

------
lr4444lr
"Democracy is declining worldwide", huh? I had no idea there were significant
instances of rule by citizen majority since the Roman Republic eclipsed
Hellenistic Greece, if you can even push it that late. Given that the HN forum
is populated by so many technologists, I'm surprised more people aren't
bothered by the loose and often wrong application of terminology.

~~~
dalke
That's because "democracy" includes more than "direct democracy".

1) "Several variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both
of which concern how the whole body of all eligible citizens executes its
will. One form of democracy is direct democracy, in which all eligible
citizens have active participation in the political decision making, for
example voting on policy initiatives directly. In most modern democracies, the
whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but political power
is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called a
representative democracy." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Types_of_democracies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Types_of_democracies)

2) "The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of
Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[16] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct
democracy (representative democracy with strong instruments of direct
democracy). The nature of direct democracy in Switzerland is fundamentally
complemented by its profound federal governmental structures (in German also
called the Subsidiaritätsprinzip).

Most western countries have representative systems. Switzerland is a rare
example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of
the municipalities, cantons, and federal state)." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland)

You may of course regard this as not sufficiently significant. Personally, I
include some of the things of Norse/Germanic law as examples of direct
democracy. Eg, from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_of_all_Swedes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_of_all_Swedes)
:

> All free men living in the realm and who were able to wield a weapon had the
> right to participate, and the assembly was led by the lawspeaker.

3) Voting eligibility then was not based only on citizenship. "Participation
was not open to all residents: to vote one had to be an adult, male citizen
who owned land and wasn't a slave, and the number of these "varied between
30,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of around 250,000 to 300,000." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy)
.

Thus, the women citizens couldn't vote, so it wasn't "citizen majority" in our
post-Suffragette understanding. Of course, the concept of "citizen" is tricky.
If you define 'citizen' as 'the people with the right to vote' then the women
of Athens were clearly not citizens. Then again, under that definition, felons
in the US who have their right to vote taken away would not be citizens
either. You might look to the government at the time to use their definition,
but letting the lawmakers decide what 'citizen' means is suspect. An absolute
monarchy, dictatorship, or other autocracy could count as a democracy if the
ruler declares "I am the only Citizen". Or, quoting Terry Pratchett:

> Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with
> that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the
> Man; he had the Vote.

~~~
lr4444lr
I think this is extremely significant. As I said elsewhere in replies, the
original study (or the summary brief about it linked here) gives zero insight
into the design of measures they use to quantify "democracy", and leaves all
of us commentators free to read different shades of meaning in the material
you reference, let alone our often misinformed personal opinions. My point
wasn't to revel in the pedantry of precise definitions, but "reductio ad
absurdum" of the idea that anyone reading the link could take seriously the
pedantic claim that democracy has been seeing "decline" without knowing what
definition was under the authors' assumption. This is why social science often
gets a bad rap.

------
danharaj
Neoliberalism is not the same thing as democracy.

