Is democracy dying?

For the US specifically, I think we should be going back to letting states take the lead on social issues like wellfare, gay marriage, abortion, drug decriminalization/legalization, gun control and whatnot instead of trying to do everything at the federal level - especially via ever more contorted constitutional interpretation.

The benefits from this kind of approach would be the ability to do quicker, more focused policy iterations with less controversy at the state level for the willing states before getting locked in federally and difficult to change as opposed to the opaque backroom deals and guessing games of today.

Democracy has never been about electing the brightest, never. Democracy is actually not at all about how we choose the person who will rule (as is demonstrated by US who elected twice this century someone who lose the popular vote). It is about the fact that in face of enough unpopularity, the current leader will be gone in less time it would take to overthrow them.

The goal of democracy is not good governance, it is civil peace.

When you look at it this way, from the outside, democracy is working perfectly well in the US. The big test will be to see if the next transition goes peacefully, impeachment or not.

As far as systems go, the main competitor for the US system is the Chinese system, that is a meritocracy. Well, as imperfect a meritocracy as the US is a democracy, but looking at the diplomas of the leaders there, you will see far more scientists and less lawyers. For decades, it has managed to offer transitions and to evolve its dogmas. Xi Jinping's power grab offers a similar test than Trump's US. We shall see what happens at the next transition. We, democrats (in the non-US sense), do not thing that a power structure like the PCC can stay decent without counter powers and elections but the PCC's endurance and success at managing the biggest country in the world is to be acknowledged.

Another system that could, unexpectedly, reappear and offer a competition is plain old absolute monarchy. I keep an eye on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where the crown prince has decided to clean up some corruption and has (correctly, IMO) identified religious extremism to be the main reason his country lags behind. He has announced staunch reformism. It is yet to be seen if this will actually happen or if it just PR, but if it does, monarchies may come back in front of the scene too.

All in all, as much as I love democracy, I am happy that we seem to stop being complacent about our imperfect systems and may finally seek improvements. I believe that democracy is the most advanced and workable system but it is not the easiest to manage and our societies and cultures still have a lot of room for improvement.

In the US, the EU, India, and elsewhere, trust in the national-level institutions necessary to sustain any regime from democracy to dictatorship has been eroding. This seems to be part of a deliberate strategy, but that's less important than the result. In most of these places, there are moves toward fragmentation and separatism. In the US it hasn't quite gotten that far, but there sure is plenty of sniping between "red" and "blue" states. (It doesn't seem to matter that most states are really "purple" in actual elections because they still tend to identify one way or the other.) "States' rights" has been a theme on the conservative side forever, but now even liberal governors and state legislatures seem to be more inclined to defy the federal government on various policies. The sense of common purpose that others have pointed out seems to be missing at the national level. Maybe it can't be sustained at population levels of 300M or more. In the US, that might mean more decisions delegated to the states and a more limited federal government (which AFAICT is what the US founders actually intended even with their second attempt). Or maybe it will mean actual separate states with EU-like arrangements to facilitate migration and trade, and likewise elsewhere.

The vast majority of us share a common set of ethical norms. We are also relatively savvy. If we know someone has acted against our interests before we wont be keen on working with them again. Eg. A dodgy Mechanic. And this goes for everyone, regardless of education level or armchair-economist status.

There is a technical solution out there that combats misinformation and riling people up against each other. And promotes educated decision making. So that we can approximate an optimal policy that complies with ethical norms and shared longer-term goals. And evaluate the impact of policy as best we can.

This probably wouldn't mean direct democracy (as there are very few experts in a given field), but rather in built in validation of expert opinion and evaluation of consequences of decision making. A little less prone to abuse than our current systems.

You can even see hints of how it could be done in online communities such as HN, where despite a relatively diverse community the shared goals of learning is still optimised.

I dont think this is head in the clouds, technology impacts governance all the time, from printing presses to pamphlets to socmed. And we have done some pretty impactful things with it recently, governance could be next.

In Western countries, I think it's an issue to link the rise of national sentiment to a decline in democracy. Disinformation is certainly a thing, but for it to work, I believe there needs to be a general discontent with current politics such that people are using the urns for exactly what democracy has been designed to do: change government when people are unhappy with it.

US democracy will be in danger the day when access to some information is prohibited or some parties are forbidden, which is far from being the case.

These people at MIT forget that most republicans are fairly moderate, and a good chunk of Trump voters would have voted for Bernie Sanders if he had been nominated.

Reading the article though, this seems to be US-centric. Perhaps the title could be changed to "Is US democracy dying?", in which case, at least to an outsider looking in, it seems that death happened quite a long time ago. I'm not sure if Buckley v. Valeo was as big a turning point as some make out, or if it was really that different before that, but certainly modern US political decision-making seems quite disconnected from constituent concerns.

I haven't finished reading it yet, never mind digesting it, but it is fascinating and though-provoking. The following paragraph should wet your appetite:

In Moscow’s view, history is back and nothing is inevitable, least of all liberal democracy. Others, in Beijing, Ankara, Cairo, Caracas, and even Budapest, share Russia’s hostility to Western notions of progress, as do growing numbers of apostates in the West. Are they wrong?

This book is my attempt to answer that question. Let me declare now that nothing is pre-ordained. To a person whose life has coincided with the rise of democracy, the spread of market economics and signs that the world had finally subscribed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (even if much of it is paid only in lip service – hypocrisy, as they say, being the compliment vice pays to virtue), merely to pose the question is troubling enough. Wasn’t that debate settled a long time ago? Isn’t the march of human freedom unstoppable? Doesn’t the whole world crave to be Western? We can no longer have any confidence in that. It was remarkably arrogant to believe the rest of the world would passively adopt our script. Those who still believe in the inevitable triumph of the Western model might ask themselves whether it is faith, rather than facts, that fuels their worldview. We must cast a sceptical eye on what we have learned never to question.

Now, it seems like dictatorships is on the verge of getting the upper hand. In democracies, there are limitations on data accumulation (privacy laws) and data is distributed across government entities in a way that is (sometimes even intentionally) hard to consolidate. In dictatorships, data for all entities could be concentrated in one location, granting the government a lot of power if it will use the data to its full extent. China is a great such example, they are working towards this goal as we speak, by putting cameras everywhere, monitoring all Internet traffic, and more...

In reality the world has probably never been more democratic than it is today. The current political trends might flip in a few years. Things might be moving backwards, but the US might still have stronger oversight of it's intelligence agencies than it did in the 70'ties?

As long as people aren't silently outraged we'll be okay :)

Even if he's joking about the US giving that a shot, he's pandering to a newly-anointed "president for life".

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/968953652483379202

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/04/donald-trump...

I imagine there must be at least one political sciences/philosophy student somewhere who gave this a thought, but I never found anything.

Really though, in government it died with Athens.

As a species, we are ruled by special interest groups, greed, and lust for power. This has always been the case, and will remain to case for a long time to come. The only difference is that the ruling classes have learned that the best way to stave off violent revolution is to provide the masses with some creature comforts and the vision of "working hard (for them) to make more money (controlled by them) so you can buy more stuff (sold by them)". We live in a post-scarcity environment that is artificially kept under the thumb. The real problems we face - such as a rapidly approaching fresh water shortage, environmental calamity, and a rapidly changing production environment (robots and AI will eat the jobs) - are being ignored in preference to ever increasing profits.

However, democracy is already reasserting itself, as governments and capital learn how to shape consensus formation on the internet.

- We like to think that we keep our representatives accountable through transparency. Now we can no longer claim the information is too hard to get. Now tell me how often your rep voted in a way that suited your preference. Or tell me how many times he voted at all. Or tell me his name.

- Your representatives represent you on everything. Even things they didn't talk about in the election. And those things might actually matter to you.

- The space of politics has gotten huge. In the early days of democracy the state did not reach into every walk of life. Now of course there are political ideas about the size of government, but you can't deny the scope of it has massively increased. We're asking a lot of ordinary people to decide on things that they aren't experts on, that don't affect them because they are removed from that particular part of life.

- If you live in a country with multiple parties in parliament, your reps need to horse-trade issues they like for things they don't care so much about. Often this leads to them not being able to deliver on their program, with the excuse permanently being that they aren't a majority.

- Politics has become a career in most countries I follow. Especially in the European countries, it's almost like athletics: you have to have joined a party from a young age. Who makes it and who doesn't depends not on experience in the rest of society, but position within the party hierarchy. An old boy from my school was a UK MP, but he never made it to the front bench because he'd spent his whole working life doing an actual job in industry (rather than a job in media, which is a job in politics).

- Politics/career 2: once you're invested in a political career, the option to do a real life job is both closed and unappealing. There's some ordinary exits/sabbaticals: you get sent to Europe where you can hide from the media and spend lots of taxpayer's money without even showing up to work (they cheat and send their entry passes for one guy to scan), or you can work for a pseudo-government organisation like an NGO. But mainly you really, really want to just stay in your current position. Especially if you're a minister and you collect a lifetime pension after some threshold.

- Messiah Politics: If we elect Obama, a smart, educated guy who is a great speaker, everything will be better. He's so smart he'll know what to do about every issue. I don't have to do anything, he'll take care of it. And lets make the whole election campaign into a heartwarming movie.

- Organized interests: they're organized, and they know how to influence career politicians. Corporations that want to sell guns/butter, pollute the environment, and cheat the consumer. Trade unions who want unreasonable concessions. And so on. What can we do about this? And organized, specific interest group can win stuff because that interest is weighed against the diffuse interests of all other interests. To start with, we should probably make it completely clear who is doing the talking. Where is money coming from, and who have our reps been meeting with? I think the state of transparency varies a fair bit across countries, but I've never seen anywhere where it's completely clear and easy to discover this kind of information.

- Media culture: everything is sensational. Force the guy to say yes or no. Flip side of that, never say yes or no, just explain your position in a long winded way. Or talk around the question. Everything is myopic, there is no holistic impression, despite what I said about your rep being your rep on everything. Constant crisis: is this the issue that forces rep X to resign? Nothing is ever said that puts things into perspective, like the history of some topic (minimum wage, marijuana, gambling, everything...).

Potential improvements:

- Term limits. Ideas about how to govern, like liberalism or socialism don't die. But there's no reason a single person would have to stay in power to explain such ideas.

- Pay people what they made before. You don't discourage high earners from serving, and you don't encourage people for whom parliament is a huge salary increase.

- Complete transparency. Rep X will meet these people on these days. They represent XYZ organization, which is funded in these amounts by these people. Have an independent body review this, like the doping agency in sports.