It is important to know the workings and infastructure of a country if one is to rule it, aide it or even live in it but it seems to me that in this day and age we have become obsessed with putting a label on everything. At times I feel as though I'm digging myself into a worm hole, trying to sort countries into classifications of democracies, delegative democracies, competitive authoritarianism's, and dictatorships when really, it is impossible to make a clean fit.
When every country is different in its history, ruler's institutions and governance is it really possible to sort it into a catergory by which it will them be defined along with others that also fit a few of the factors neccessary? There are so many scales and measures, on one hand there is the minimalist definition of democracy, 'a country with free and fair elections' , on the other, freedom house's long list of factors which are constitutes of a functioning democracy. However, what if the minimalists definition isn't enough, or if you agree with some but not all of the criteria from freedom house, or if you find that in some governments one factor can be breached if another still exists but in other governments this is not so.
In the end I think it comes down to conviction and knowledge, if you are educated and well informed and consider America to be the highest, purest democracy and Iran to be the purest form of dictatorship then that is your preference, but as Decartes once said 'I may not agree with what you have to say but I will defend to the end your right to say it.'
How can we use regime labels as a tool for analysing countries when everyone's definitions of democracy, dictatorship etc vary so greatly, especially when in practice?
Well, one way would be to substitute terms like "democracy" for more precise terms - e.g., "states with a free press," or "states with large selectorates and large winning coalitions" and forget about the bigger concept. These smaller terms will mostly be correlated with many of the things in the larger, less precise terms anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnother is to argue for a particular definition of democracy or dictatorship in terms of what you think you can achieve with it: e.g., a minimalist definition of democracy and dictatorship lets us study the effects of electoral accountability on economic outcomes, etc.
Definitions are (partly) tools; depending on what you want to achieve, some definitions will be more or less appropriate.
Minimalist definitions are important starting points when looking at different forms of government. It is from these minimalist definitions that one can start to look further into the said systems of government. These minimalist definitions may only apply in a board sense, but they are import tools because they are were many different forms of government stem form.
ReplyDeleteDefinitions for defining political systems are rather arbitrary. The importance of defining a political system seems to be over rated and we put to much emphasis on putting different countries into certain catagories.
ReplyDeleteSurely it is the results of the political system that matter more than any classification. As history shows there have been lots of poorly run democracies (and still are) as well as lots of poorly run dictatorships. The need for democracy seems to be more about western arrogance than anything, in the way that we believe we know whats best for everybody else.
As long as a country is running effectively surely it doesnt matter what we catagorise it as, wether it is a dictatorship or a democracy. I think our natural fear of dictatorship comes from the idea that absolute power corrupts, and being deeply synical about human nature we move towards the safer option of democracy where there is at least the allusion of checks on power.
Geoff (Benson), I don't think history shows any such thing - results matter, but the "results" depend on the institutions of a particular country. If democracies over the long run do better (have better results), then that is reason to prefer democracies over dictatorships. Institutions aren't everything (individual leaders matter, for example), but in the long run they dominate over almost everything else (individual leaders die or are replaced, for example). Moreover, even if there are lots of poorly run democracies, that would not necessarily show that democracy is a bad idea; the relevant comparison is with an alternative regime in the same place (which might have done just as badly, due to, e.g., poverty).
ReplyDeleteThe idea that "power corrupts" is not necessarily cynical about human nature. It may be true, for one thing, and yet it may also be true that human beings are capable of great goodness! These two things are not
contradictory.
That "democracies" have better checks and balances is not an illusion but generally demonstrable: it is much harder to sanction a dictator if you are not in the selectorate than it is to sanction a democratic leader (and we see this in the tenure of leaders: democratic leaders just last less than dictatorial leaders).
I would say the STV system seems the most "democratic" of all options. I believe its coming up for NZ referendum in 2011..
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