"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.
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
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
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 :
> 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 .
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.
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.
The HN forum is also populated by a large number of humans, who are wholly capable of understanding the intent of speech and text produced by others in an attempt to communicate.
No, I genuinely don't know what is meant by "democracy" here. The BTI is a complex measure that appears to include several aspects of national development which have nothing to do with direct representation of the popular citizen will. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Transformation_Ind...
(I wish I could get the original study, but it's not free.)
The word "democracy" has, surprisingly, shifted slightly in meaning over the last 2500 years or so. The most unfortunate part of this is a small but annoying cadre of "America is not a democracy, it's a republic" pedants.
I disagree. The founders of the United States very deliberately avoided democracy, as strictly defined, in lieu of a complex layering of representative government, to secure a set of values in public governance and personal life. That system has undergone evolution over time, and has as often as not hit "progress" when the law triumphed over the majority of popular opinion. In the briefing of this study, certain simplistic generalizations are made which I don't know that most people would agree with. The reporting should be clear.
Only a pedant insists that every else restrict themselves to the strictest of definitions.
Definition change over 200 years. Madison in Federalist #10, made a distinction between "pure democracy" - "by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person" - and a "republic" - "by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place".
You'll notice that only says a republic isn't a "pure democracy". It doesn't say that a republic isn't a form of democracy.
This quote by Madison seems to be the whole source of the pedantry, because it's an affliction which only seems to afflict Americans. Since the US is neither the source nor the subject of this report, it's particularly irrelevant.
Most of us are happy to say "direct democracy" or "Athenian democracy" if that's what we mean.
On the other hand, a popularly-elected dictatorship would be justified in calling itself a republic. It's useful to have a term which includes direct and representative democracies, while excluding dictatorships, and "democracy" is the commonly accepted term.
And of course "German Democratic Republic", "Democratic Republic of Vietnam", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", and "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic
Let me be more precise, I think representative democracy is a weaker form of democracy than direct democracy, and less desirable. The amount of real democracy we have these days is virtually nil, as in say over the affairs of our daily lives.
I don't think it's meaningful to use 'weaker' or 'pure' because it carries with it a moral dimension that says more about the speaker's views than the underlying social desirability or effectiveness.
I do not know enough to give a meaningful view on nuances of different forms of democratic governance. I will point out that much of the affairs of our daily lives take place in command hierarchical, aka, the workplace. The pressure (from corporate media and rich people) is often to run government more like a business. It should be to run a business like a democracy.
I don't think it was the wrong adjective, my statement was maybe with too little context, but I think "weak" is correct. Perhaps meaningful democracy would be a better choice.
I agree absolutely with you on the workplace, more people should start realizing that.
Yes, I think you think 'weak' is correct. Now tell a lower-r republican that their political system is weak and not meaningful, and see if the response is a knee-jerk reaction to the term 'weak' or a more thoughtful inquiry on how it might be improved.
"Weak" is also a broad term. Even if you come in with the terms first, you shouldn't use definitions that can easily be transformed to mean the opposite.
Many people do not think that a direct democracy can scale beyond a few thousand people. They may therefore say that direct democracy is "weak", because of that failing, and that it's "meaningless" for a large country like the US.
Ok, point taken. It depends on context, if people are in the mood for constructive discussion in the first place.
What's interesting is that Lincoln and the Republican Party in the 19th century fought to democratize industry, they condemned wage labour as wage slavery.
"if people are in the mood for constructive discussion in the first place"
Partially, yes. But even if they are in the mood, an antagonistic first comment can change the mood. Calling a preferred form of government "weak" can easily be seen as antagonistic, and it sets up the initial discussion to be about the correct term, rather than what you want it to be.
