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...
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".
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.
That could be true, but if religion eliminates democracy then that should be reflected when measuring actual democracy.
Similarly, if you want to measure incidence of lung cancer, you measure "# of people with lung cancer" not "A x # of smokers + B x # of people with lung cancer".
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.
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.
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.)
Examining the ranks of economic freedom, we find Greece at 138. Italy, the next of the PIGS, is at 86. Only a couple of Euro nations (Bosnia and Croatia) are below Italy (102 and 108).
While I agree with you regarding the methodology, I think there is still some significant support for the overall premise. The thing that may be surprising and even rejected by many though is that my sense based on deep and broad insight is that the underpinning social attitudes are overshooting a correction triggered, really, by a negligence that had been allowed to permeate the west for a couple decades now.
"Democracy" is being eroded and undermined by the naive well intentioned types that wear their bleeding heart on their sleeves; the threat is really not even the "far right" or the "fascists". The real risk is the unseen, unrealized one that stares back at us when we look into the mirror. It is never the obvious risk that gets you. What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan.
"What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan."
I'll add "protection of private property rights", "liberalization of foreign trade", you mentioned "market band competition". These are largely ideological economic measurements.
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."
"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 86.3 ms ] threadhttp://www.bfna.org/media_advisory/global-index-sees-tough-t...
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r... 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...
It's local. It's not worldwide.
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.
Because the common religions tend not to be democratic(#), the influence of religious dogmas could make a nation less democratic.
EDIT: (#) but patriarchal / hierarchical / dogmatic / scripture-based / ...
Similarly, if you want to measure incidence of lung cancer, you measure "# of people with lung cancer" not "A x # of smokers + B x # of people with lung cancer".
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
Greece also has market based competition under EU law; it's enshrined in the aquis communitaire.
(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.)
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/07/why_is_greece_s....
Examining the ranks of economic freedom, we find Greece at 138. Italy, the next of the PIGS, is at 86. Only a couple of Euro nations (Bosnia and Croatia) are below Italy (102 and 108).
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
You are right about inflation - I spoke badly. What I should have said is that the elected officials of Greece are not anti-inflation.
"Democracy" is being eroded and undermined by the naive well intentioned types that wear their bleeding heart on their sleeves; the threat is really not even the "far right" or the "fascists". The real risk is the unseen, unrealized one that stares back at us when we look into the mirror. It is never the obvious risk that gets you. What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan.
Well put.
"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."
(I wish I could get the original study, but it's not free.)
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.
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 agree absolutely with you on the workplace, more people should start realizing that.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.