> democracy is the worst possible system for running a country, except for all the others.
This is one of those chants that everyone keeps repeating for fear of looking at the alternatives, or to excuse the horrors. Keep repeating the chant, and you don't have to take a close look at the problem.
It's remarkable that this quote shows up on nearly every thread where somebody criticizes democracy on a non-specialist website. It's like the creationist assertion that life is too complex to arise by chance. The phrase short-circuits all discussion and protects the wielder from any doubt or any need to reconsider his beliefs.
Many people in history have thought their current way of doing things was pretty nifty and everything that came before was barbarism and idiocy. We have to be a little more open-minded than that to get at true or useful ideas. There is certainly something suboptimal about a government that can't pass a bill smaller than the size of a dictionary, or that in theory and practice protects concentrated interests at the expense of the broader good. I have my doubts that the American state is in a sustainable equilibrium given the astounding irrationality and paralysis of the legislative process.
On specialist websites, people might be familiar with the existence of an entire sub-discipline of economics dedicated to explaining the incentives facing voters and governments (Public Choice) and the historical lessons of hundreds of different governing forms in human history, so the discussion thankfully extends beyond Churchill's quote.
that appears to explain some phenomena that are not readily explained on other grounds. Public choice theory was a big part of the content of the course on legislation in the first year of law school, and had much to do with why I don't expect to solve all of my country's problems by passing new laws.
Yea. I agree with Churchill (at least for the correct quote: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."), but I think these glib slogans are non-constructive or worse.
The version of the quote I've heard has "from time to time" at the end of it. With more context:
> Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
I think this depends on what you define as "better". Certainly totalitarian regimes have lower economic growth. But if you measure economic growth as your measure of "better" then it seems that democracy is not as much a determinant as the economic system (eg: the more capitalist the faster the growth, higher the standard of living, the more powerful the central government and thus the more socialist, the lower the standard of living and the slower the growth.)
I wouldn't call China a democracy, but they have given up a lot of central power and are growing fast.
Certainly there are also example of successful societies that have lasted for very long periods of time that are not democracies, such as tribal communities. They don't exhibit significant economic growth, but they also are far less likely to make war, which would be a good candidate for being "Better" (it is bad to lose a generation of men every couple of generations.) Their lower economic growth may also be a result of their lower war making, but their higher standards of living of the populace relative to the overall standard of living, when compared to democracies, argues again for their form of government being superior.
My point being that it is very common for a culture to reinforce in its members a perception that the cultures way of doing things is "right" and that it produces a better outcome-- and it does it in such a way that people presume that this to be a fact, rather than a bias.
> I think this depends on what you define as "better".
I think by most standards that most people would agree on, democracies come out well.
For example, consider life expectancy -- this is IMO a good measure because nearly everyone wants to be alive, and someone who is alive is (usually) better off than someone who is dead. If you look at countries with the highest life expectancy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Expectancy_by_Country ) democracies seem to be over-represented at the top. This is particularly the case if you discount territories that aren't counties (such as Hong Kong).
Of if you go by UN Human Development Index, you get a similar story.
> Certainly there are also example of successful societies that have lasted for very long periods of time that are not democracies, such as tribal communities. They don't exhibit significant economic growth, but they also are far less likely to make war
I'm not sure this is the case. Are you familiar with the high rate of homicide among the Yanomamo?
> My point being that it is very common for a culture to reinforce in its members a perception that the cultures way of doing things is "right" and that it produces a better outcome-- and it does it in such a way that people presume that this to be a fact, rather than a bias.
You're right that this is a cognitive bias we should guard against.
When looking at statistics you must guard against differences in methods and political bias. The UN is not a neutral organization, and life expectancy is not measured in a consistent way (in my understanding.)
At any rate, I believe what you're seeing is the superiority of democracy as a form of tyranny, and I won't dispute that. Most of the comparisons, looking at those statistics are to other forms of tyranny. There are very few free countries, and few people who have been educated to respect human rights enough to take up arms to overthrow their government to defend them. When these people do this, though, as the somalis overthrew their dictator, they are visited by no end of warmaking from these so-called "peaceful" democracies. Somalia has been attacked without provocation by the US and UK many times since throwing off their dictator.
As for the Yanamamo, I'm not familiar with them, but it would be interesting to understand how many of these homicides are murders and how many are instances of the death penalty. (EG: crimes themselves or responses to crimes.) I, of course, can't say.
Other than people have a natural instinct for a form of morality, but this morality can be perverted by culture. (note americans propensity for supporting violence against the innocent in the forms of war and taxes.)
Immigration flows (which, indeed, involve people leaving one culture and entering another) do a lot to show that there probably are some genuine advantages to democracy over the other forms of government that have been tried from time to time. So far there isn't any fast-growing dictatorship that has achieved long-term prosperity greater than that of the various democratic countries around the world.
This is one of those chants that everyone keeps repeating for fear of looking at the alternatives, or to excuse the horrors. Keep repeating the chant, and you don't have to take a close look at the problem.