Questions tagged [democracy]
For questions about democracy, a system of government in many countries involving citizens voting, as opposed to dictatorships and other forms of government where normal people don't have control of what it does.
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Why did African Americans and Native Americans vote too oppositely on the Affirmative Action poll?
I found a tabular analysis on Wikipedia about affirmative action. It shows: "Supporters and opponents of affirmative action in California 2020".
Popular Group
For Affirmative Action
Against ...
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Can Rahul Gandhi ask other democratic nations to intervene in their democracy?
Rahul Gandhi a sitting Member of Parliament of India who went to London and asked Europe and USA to intervene in what he sees as the collapse of democracy in India, which is a sovereign nation.
Isn't ...
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Any successful example of democratic socialism in Latin America/South America that lasted at least twenty years?
Yes, I know there are versions of authoritarian socialism in South America that have been tried, but I want to know if there are any successful democratic socialist communities that lasted at least ...
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The changing relationship between Democracy and Economic Growth (log GDP)
There has been contradicting evidence on whether being a democratic state is correlated with economic growth and/or higher GDP per capita. For instance, Barro (1997) argues in his book that a ...
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Is there such a thing as an optimum size for democracy? [duplicate]
Democracy has been around for a long time, and varying through history, it has worked out more-or-less satisfactorily for the people.
In the world, people are usually nice, but some governments turn ...
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Are there examples of laws/patterns that prevent "Manufactured Consent"
This is a rewrite of a more biased and now closed question I thought had a good core.
In the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, Herman/Chomsky argued that corporate mass media have a symbiosis with the ...
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Is Chomsky's propaganda model valid?
In the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Chomsky argued that corporate mass media essentially controls the minds of the general population as an alternative to ...
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As a voter in a democratic country, how can I influence a single issue?
If I am a regular citizen in a democratic country, I exercise my political power by voting (somehow) for regional leaders and the national leader. If I agree with all the positions of a particular ...
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Why is Singapore currently considered to be a dictatorial regime and a multi-party democracy by different publications?
The 2011 parliamentary election clearly demonstrated that Singapore
has transformed into a competitive authoritarian regime. Not only did
the ruling People’s Action Party’s share of the popular vote ...
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How does modern day lobbying align with the ideals of Popular Sovereignty?
A core principle of The Declaration of Independence, Popular Sovereignty, is the idea that a government only exists to serve the will of the individuals it represents.
I understand this to mean that ...
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Is the practice of lobbying in the United States as it exists today constitutional? [duplicate]
A core principle of The Declaration of Independence, Popular Sovereignty, is the idea that a government only exists to serve the will of the individuals it represents.
I understand this to mean that ...
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Can a member of the royal family stand in parliamentary elections?
In monarchies where the monarch has limited power, with the government being mostly democratically elected, can a member of the royal family stand in elections to become a Member of Parliament and ...
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Could the government legally create an election in which only some people could vote? [closed]
I was considering that if I were in some lawmaking position I would consider advocating that abortion rights should be voted on by females and the result of that election would become law.
On ...
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Soviet funding for Communists
Russia has spent over $300 million on influencing foreign elections since 2014, US officials say
How does this amount compare with the money that the USSR spent on supporting various communist parties ...
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The paradox of majority power vs. contracts
For this question, let us assume that the only principle we care about in public decision making is majority power: the majority of citizens should be able to do whatever they want. There seems to be ...
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Why do the "Free World" oppose any system other than western form of democracy? [closed]
I have an impression that the Free World, in principle, is opposed to any system of government other than the Western form of democracy. At least the leader of the free world, the USA, likes to ...
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Political terminology or example for a leader making their crime a norm by highlighting an opponent's small mistakes?
Let's say that politician A is a corrupt person. His opponent is a moral guy with an honest reputation. The reputation of politician A is badly affected when a news story breaks about his corruption. ...
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Are monarchies like Kuwait authoritarian, autocratic, constitutional monarchies, or mixed political systems?
I am trying to find a clear conceptual difference in terms of how different monarchies are defined or classified. For example, let's consider three countries with monarchies: Kuwait, UAE, and Norway. ...
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Why is the US listed as a "flawed democracy" in the Democracy Index?
I was reading Wikipedia's Democracy Index and it shows the United States as a "Flawed Democracy". Reading in more detail, the article points out that the US has low scores in "...
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Apart from democratic republics, are there any other types of govt that elect representatives?
Apart from democratic republics, where a democratic republic is defined as a country that is effectively 'rule of the many', mostly through elected representatives, there any other types of ...
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What research has been done into "emotion-driven" politics?
Byung-Chul Han and other authors have pointed out that political discourses are undergoing a transmutation from the style prevailing in the 1980s to the current one, where post-truth, emotion and ...
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What is the point in having a democracy if it is unable to elect the smartest people? [closed]
Check this answer:
https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/11185/32479
The government is supposed to be representative of its people. If the people are a bunch of idiots then the government should ...
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How can democracy not be the rule of the poor?
Democracies are based on political equality. All individuals have equal weight in electing representatives. Parallel to the process of bringing individuals into the political arena of equal footing, ...
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Is democratic politics a force of unity? [closed]
Democracy involves competition among various political parties. Parties are partial and partisan. Their competition tends to divide any society. Is it correct to say that democratic politics is a ...
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Why are democracy and liberalism correlated?
For the purposes of this question, let me (loosely) define:
Democracy = situation where the government is chosen by the
population (using some ‘reasonable’ voting rule)
Liberal state = state which ...
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Does this "kind" of decentralized government even have a name?
Related to the problem of political ignorance, I was thinking about a goverment system as described below, and I want to know if this or something similar even has a name ("decentralized ...
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What is a successful policy against lobbying in a democratic country?
The US government is drowning in lobbyist that undermine the democratic power of the people in favor of wealthy corporations/oligarchs. My question is: are there any significantly successful policies ...
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What are the possible solutions for a "stupid people in large numbers" situation in a democracy? [closed]
Context
It's said that "Democracy counts the heads but doesn't weigh the brains". I think there's a book with that title but I didn't read it.
So, what if the less intelligent people ...
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How can a direct democracy, like Rojava, protect minorities from pure majoritarianism?
In representative democracy, often people can use the monopoly of violence for a good cause by enforcing protection of minorities that are enshrined in constitutions that can be violently imposed. ...
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What is the basis on which expats are allowed to vote in their home countries? [duplicate]
Despite being an expat (having a long-term permanent residence in a another country and not paying any taxes or similar obligations back in my country of citizenship), I still have the right to vote ...
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Is the "One Country, Two Systems" approach a viable option for Taiwan? [closed]
Why would Taiwan avoid this arrangement? Obviously, Taiwan would like to preserve its democracy, but at some point Taipei will have to reckon with the economic realities of the region and relative ...
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Why are there so few democratic governments with multiple rulers?
What I mean is most governments with multiple rulers are tribal communities, dictatorships, and monarchic coalitions.
Governments with multiple rulers are duumvirates/diarchies, triumvirates/...
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What if any role did the series "Servant of Nation" play in getting Volodymyr Zelenskyy elected as President?
It is well known that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a television personality before he became President of Ukraine. He played the lead character in the Ukrainian television series Servant of the Nation
It ...
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Is there a process for democratic elections that would be internationally recognizable as valid?
In recent years, claims on invalid elections have been a major source of conflict. In the USA, claims on "stolen elections" have almost started a civil war. In Ukraine, one claim used by ...
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Is true democracy impossible? - a theorem
Consider the following reasoning:
Humans have different values and ideologies.
In a democracy, there is always a group that is willing to violently impose their values and ideology over others, ...
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Why is the scale of ethnic conflicts so different in India vs African countries. Does it have to do with democratic institutions?
India and countries of Africa are equally diverse. However almost every African country has been plagued with genocidal level ethnic conflicts and disruptive civil wars. Central African Republic for ...
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Is Erdogan using Islam as a political tool to influence the masses or manipulate the government's foreign policy? [closed]
He right now is living like a Emperor, yes the definition here is right. Better than Putin right now. It has been said that he bought his own officials, deputies, judges, advocates etc.
The country is ...
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Is (and why is) the original theory of socialism/communism of Karl Marx very unlikely to become the theoretical foundation of any democratic regime?
Nowadays it seems that many young people are embracing Marxism (or some sort of illusion of it. As Obie 2.0 commented below, many of them probably don't really know what the original Marxism really is)...
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Why are term limits more lax in the legislature? [closed]
While many democratic countries impose term limits on their heads of government, legislative members usually enjoy much more lax rules, and often there is simply no term limit at all for ...
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What positive tests exists for determining what countries are considered democratic?
Many nations call themselves democratic (e.g. the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea), but most scholars would refute the idea that they are democratic.
In other cases, nations ...
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Why doesn't democracy show its strengths in large developing countries like BRICS?
I compared the democracy indexes of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) plus Turkey (although UN would classify Russian and Turkey into developed countries, in my opinion, they are ...
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Is there any formal mathematical analysis of democratic peace theory? [closed]
The democratic peace theory postulates that democracies are less likely to go to war, or at least less likely to go to war with other democracies. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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What does it mean to have a "functioning democratic political system based on a market economy"?
The NATO fact sheet linked in this answer states that one prerequisite for joining NATO is a
functioning democratic political system based on a market economy
What does that mean? A democracy "...
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How do the Republicans' recent laws make it harder for Democratic voters to vote?
I read this BBC article, but it's not totally clear for me why the recent voting rights laws passed in more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures affect the Democratic base, but not ...
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Did the Biden administration have a working definition of democracy when it chose which countries to invite to its "democracy summit"?
The New York Times' Biden Rallies Global Democracies as U.S. Hits a ‘Rough Patch’
The president kicked off his summit as critics questioned the guest list and whether the United States could be an ...
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What exactly is China's "whole-process people's democracy"? In what ways does it function "democratically" based on traditional definitions?
CNN's China claims its authoritarian one-party system is a democracy -- and one that works better than the US says:
In his keynote speech, Huang Kunming, the ruling Communist Party's propaganda tsar, ...
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Is Corporatocracy a result of Corporatism?
The way I understand it so far (and I could be wrong so fact-checking appreciated): capitalism can lead to corporatism, which can lead to corporatocracy? The nuances are tricky and have lots of ...
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What are the standard safeguards against arbitrary accusations of terrorism within democratic countries?
In a democratic country, core principles such as free speech are protected against arbitrary retaliation by the government in power (at least in theory).
On the other hand, security forces evaluate ...
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Any active wikidemocracy projects post-2019?
I have been reading about this form of electronic democracy called wikidemocracy. The article on wikipedia talks about attempts to implement Wikidemocracy in 2011, but it doesn't mention any modern ...
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How do democracies other than the US handle changes to district maps?
Every representative democracy needs to have some method of dividing up territory into districts such that the people within that district can choose someone to represent their interests to the state ...
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