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Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

Clearly, Turkey is not really a democracy anymore. As an outside observer, the Turkish "deep state" was a major problem, but having a nationalist network replaced by a conservative mafia is even worse. But if I understand correctly, this only comes out as a result of a power struggle between Erdogan and his former ally, the preacher Fethullah Gülen. If that's really the case, then it shows Turkish institutions have been infiltrated by two distinct Islamist networks, as well as the remains of the deep state network.

Isn't there any secular, non-nationalist political movement in Turkey?

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Actually, Turkey just started being democracy (was under military rule for a long time) and this is a push of non-democratic forces to leave things as usual.

> Isn't there any secular, non-nationalist political movement in Turkey?

Sure, such movements exist, but the conservative school is the most powerful; they possess most the money and media, and thus silence things.

> Clearly, Turkey is not really a democracy anymore.

Turkey's democracy has been buggy from the start. I believe the election system allows for situations like today, where one party can gain the absolute ruler status.

I wonder which country is a democracy anymore. Clearly not the UK or the US, absolutely not Greece (laughable), Italy (3 PM's in row without elections whatsoever! Napolitano, Italy's President should commit suicide out of embarrassment IMHO), Spain (I think they are in a better shape?!)... Who has a democracy these days?

In relative terms I'm pretty sure we have as much democracy in the UK as we've ever had - after all we have Scotland contemplating leaving the UK and it's being done in a reasonably civilized manner and it will ultimately be decided by a vote.

If a large chunk of a country can leave the country based purely on a vote then I'd say we do have democracy in the UK. It might not be perfect, and we have a lot of problems but to say we don't have democracy at all is just plain silly.

Indeed, a system with this many contradictions, and this much incompetence, smacks very much of mob rule, aka "democracy".

(in case I sound like I'd prefer an elitist administration instead, I should say that I wouldn't have it any other way. least worst, and all that.)

Just because things can happen based on a vote, it doesn't mean it's a democracy. Or to rephrase your comment:

If a large chunk of a country (like Crimea) can leave the country based purely on a vote then I'd say we do have democracy in Ukraine.

The difference being that the Westminster parliament complied with the wishes of the parliament in Edinburgh to have a referendum - which is hardly the case with the Ukraine and Crimea.

As far as I've noticed, guns and deaths have been absent from the debate around Scottish independence.

On the other hand, this was this Irish guy called Michael Collins, back in the day...

That was almost a century ago, I might as well mention that there was this Scots guy called William Wallace - I don't think either are particularly relevant to the status of democracy in the UK today.

Mind you, mentioning that there is an Irish guy called Gerry Adams might be - but that's getting a bit off topic.

This was a bit tongue in cheek, but I do have a point. AFAIK, the UK political system hasn't changed significantly since, people have. There is nothing intrinsic to democracy when it comes to peaceful secession. Or peaceful anything, really.

> Italy (3 PM's in row without elections whatsoever!

Bullshit. After Mario Monti's govern we got elections. The Democratic Party won. It put Letta as PM. Then Letta resigned and another man from the same party continued to govern. Since we do not elect the PM directly, what's the problem? We elected a party, and the party is still there. Is your concept of democracy "nothing is right unless my party wins"?

> Napolitano, Italy's President should commit suicide out of embarrassment IMHO)

... speachless

Yes - Italy has plenty of problems, but it's still a place where people vote, and it matters.

I hate this defeatist, cynical bullshit about "there are no democracies" - it only plays into the hands of those who want people to sit down, shut up and not get involved.

I'm not for not getting involved. Italy as Greece will never get elections if the results are not the ones the EU likes. The fact that suddenly Mario Monti and Papademos were put by the EU instead of voted (although extremely corrupted) PMs says a lot about democracy in both of these countries. Especially Greece of course.

That said, my comment didn't wanted to sound like it did. I should have been a little more careful and detailed... What I mean was that it's very relative on how one perceives democracy. For sure in Greece there's no democracy in the way most of people of a democratic government. On the other hand of course we're not banana-democracies either.

But I feel that instead of going to a more democratize governance worldwide, we're moving towards xenophobia, intolerance and uncertainty.

Anyway wanted to just clear out a couple of things.

> Italy as Greece will never get elections if the results are not the ones the EU likes.

Nearly 20 years of Berlusconi says otherwise, along with the large proportion of the vote that Beppe Grillo got during the last election.

Sure, that's why when things got out of control, they put Mario Monti and removed Berlusconi. Suddenly the population wasn't wise enough to make the right choice.

No it doesn't. It plays to a number of movements, one of which is revolution, which happened in Ukraine and could happen elsewhere.

It might, if people really believe it, which they don't, because it's bullshit in most western countries.

Imperfect democracies? Yes, of course. We need to be constantly vigilant and fight to improve things. No doubts about that. But "woe is us the US is a dictatorship" is silly talk. It is, like it has always been, an imperfect democracy in need of constant improvement.

Exactly. Fix your problematic democracies before attacking other ones or, worse yet, intervening (think: Egypt).

These countries are more democratic than most of the rest of the world. But in public opinion, transparency actually hurts the overall perception of democracy, whereas transparency is needed for a democracy to work its magic and deliver the benefits.

I think most western nations got more democratic over the past decades, rather than the opposite. It's just that we have reached a point were current dirt can be discovered in bigger quantities than past dirt.

You won't find a lot of antidemocratic scandals in Russia... No TV Stations is going to point out that the Krim-Referendum was a little hasty and done under russian guns. Does absence of transparency mean Russia is more democratic than the west?

Sure, they are "more democratic than most of the rest of the world". And maybe it is also true that it "got more democratic over the past decades". But if you want to assess the state of something from a more universal and neutral perspective you should define a clear criteria and then assess how well these are satisfied.

If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want. You can verify this easily by looking at some poll results. As soon as there are lobbyists who influence the elected representatives, there is an inequality in the power between different interest groups. This leads to less democratic societies. In our current societies not every citizen can participate equally, therefore these are not democracies. Compare it to a mathematical definition of equality... You cannot say 0.9 is equal to 1 just because it is almost equal. In a direct democracy everyone has almost equal possibilities to participate... In a representative democracy this "almost" get's a little weaker. In a representative democracy with powerful lobbyist groups this "almost" becomes even more weak so that you cannot even call it equal anymore.

So I completely agree when people look at current democracies from an idealistic point of view and say that they are not really democracies. My personal opinion is that a much more ideal democratic society is actually possible with the advances in IT. Direct democratic participation could be possible using end-to-end auditable voting systems with cryptographic methods.

"If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want."

The definition of democracy continues, pretty significantly:

"... either directly or indirectly through elected representatives"

Direct democracy is practised essentially nowhere (about 50,000 Swiss) and every other democracy in the world is representative. Clearly, when someone refers to 'democracy', with no other context, they're referring to a representative strain, and therefore the UK, USA, etc. are functioning democracies. If you want to discuss whether a representative democracy is worse than a direct one, we can have that debate, but don't try to distort things by making outlandish, untrue statements right off the bat.

Meaning no offense, I think you don't have a clue how politics work. Yes it is possible to ask every citizen cryptographically - although currently maybe 5% have the knowledge to participate - about every single issue but then that does not mean the overall system works.

When laws are passed, they are both compromises between major stakeholders (and aggregates of minor ones) and a relatively thought-through propositions. You just don't have a clue how much work it is to get laws in a shape that is technically, legally and politically feasible.

When you hold referendums for minor points of policies, you will get a package of policies that may not be workable, or worse: Because of the combinatorics of opinions, the final policy disagrees with the majority of the voters - just as in the current systems.

I hope you are aware italy has had PMs without elections since the '50s.

In fact, no PM was effectively ever elected by the people, since we do not vote for the PM, and the role of choosing it is in the hands of the parliament.

In the history of the italian republic, no single PM was in charge for the duration of a whole legislature (the record holder before the '90s was a year and a half), there is literally nothing new in the current state of the government, other than propaganda by the parties (majority and minority both).

Also, between mr monti and mr letta there actually were elections.

The Italian political system is notorious for being very unstable, though. There is really a systemic issue here. Of course, this wouldn't fix the fact that people have repeatedly voted for Berlusconi.

It's interesting to note that in Denmark, the system is almost completely proportional (the threshold to get into Folketing is 2%), but this, oddly enough, does not lead to unstable coalitions (maybe due to the Nordic culture of consensus). I'd say that Denmark (and presumably the rest of the Nordic countries) are good examples of functional democracies (though I strongly disagree with their close ties to the US in terms of security, this has nothing to do with the fact that the system appears to work).

And while you can't expect democracies to be perfect, there is a big difference between a less-than-ideal system with mostly independent institutions, and a nation where the key institutions are in the hands of various political networks.

So you would rather prefer more trustworthy security partners like Russia and China?

Why would Denmark need to partner with any of those places? The EU is neither poor nor weak (sure, we'd think twice about getting into a war with Russia, but so would anyone, US included). We're quite capable of securing ourselves.

I'm kind of curious if, emboldened, Putin will make a grab for some, all, or bits and pieces of the Baltic states. That would really cause the shit to hit the fan, and Europe to have to decide if they can and want to defend their borders.

Let us fervently hope it does not come to that.

Nah. He hasn't even sorted out Transnistria, which would be much less problematic than the Baltic states from a legitimacy point of view.

I personally don't see Putin as this evil dictator... He plays a very old game, yes, but this also means he's very predictable. He didn't get into Crimea because "he wanted Crimea", he did it because the alternative (his only major Southern port in NATO hands) would have been a disaster from a strategic perspective. As I keep repeating, would the US let Panama slip in Russian or Iranian hands? Of course not.

Denmark could choose to be neutral. It worked for the swiss, a small country with high mountains and not a lot going for it. But just imagine that poland had said to Stalin and Hitler, before WW2: "Hey, fight your wars without us, we'll just stay neutral!"

The danger of Russia as a neighbour is not its size, wealth or military power - the US+Europe have more of that - but the willingness to play rough.

Neutrality for Denmark and its neighbours means no benefits from alliances and all the negative aspects of regional competition...

Danish Defense has 24,000 active personnel. Of course it depends on the level of conflict, but I would argue that Denmark couldn't defend itself against much more than some internal unrest.

Why would the countries you listed not be democracies[1]? Despite corruption and civil liberties violations, the electoral process in each of those countries has not been compromised (at least no more than it's traditionally been).

[1] I assume by democracies, you would also include constitutional republics.

At least in the US there has been a subtle undermining of elections from a dependency on the organizations that fund campaigns.

Lawrence Lessig talks about it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...

Hence the "at least no more than it's traditionally been". Money in politics is an important issue, but an old problem. It's certainly not any worse than it was in the 1890s or the 1920s.

Also, the problem Lessig raises is sort of weird from a democracy perspective as it arguably stems from too much free speech. That is, when speech is not free as in beer but is free as in freedom, in a market economy, the wealthiest speakers tend to crowd out the rest and disproportionately influence campaigns and politicians. So I'm not sure I'd file that as "democracy is dying" so much as "democracy is hard".

I think his argument is that it is worse today, largely because the cost of running a campaign has dramatically increased and that funding doesn't depend on the people, but on an extremely small subset.

May I suggest Switzerland? At least quite close to a democracy in my opinion.

If we confuse referendums with democracy, of course.

But the basic tenet of a functional democracy is that it is functional (duh). I have some doubts if the swiss model will stay both functional and democratic, in the mid-term future.

The referendum about quotas for EU citizens has shown a few disturbing tendencies: It is now possible for a referendum to issue a constitutional crisis where the government does not see a way to implement the referendum without damaging the country.

And if I listen to swiss people, they are completely not in agreement over whom they want to oust. Somehow almost all EU citizens are employed, and they want to oust the unemployed like they could even before the referendum.

But if the government doesn't oust anyone, it can't implement the referendum.

Another danger is that there have been increasingly xenophobic referendums. If this escalation maintains, democratic freedoms will suffer. If anything, referendums do have this tendency of distorting "public opinion" toward the emotional and down right hateful side.

How are referendums not democracy? It's just direct democracy as opposed to the far more common representative democracy.

It does occasionally result in (in my views) appalling choices, but that doesn't make it non-democratic.

I said don't confuse referendums with democracy. There is a gut reaction in some people that referendums are inherently democratic. They are not. For one thing a whole string of details has to be gotten right (counter example: The Crimea conquest). For another a system with referendums still has to be a functional democracy. I seriously doubt that any other country than Switzerland will ever be able to incorporate referendums at that scale and still be a working , functional democracy.

And then democracy is not democracy without civil and human rights, even for minorities. The reasons are too many to discuss here. For starters someone who is in fear of the state or who fears for his property because the state doesn't protect him, can't vote or be elected freely.

But that also means that the majority can't vote to violate these rights for a minority. That's a point about democracy that is increasingly lost in the European democratic tradition and it will lead to ugly results down the road.

The extremists are capitalizing on this misconception: They want to restrict the rights of minorities by having referendums. And because of ignorance on the side of the voters, this actually "looks" more democratic...

Out of curiosity, how much rich/poor disparity do you have? I find it interesting that the political landscape in the Nordic countries is so consensual, as opposed to what you can see elsewhere in Europe, and wonder if that's a consequence of high tax pressure and the smaller difference between social classes.

Count Brazil out too. Our electronic ballot machines are ridiculously outdated, and are not auditable by anyone outside controlled closed-door situations. When glaring flaws are found, they're quickly dismissed by the government, saying they 'can't' happen in a real environment.

It's Diebold hardware and closed source software. Diebold had it's voting machines banned in the US.

The new mandatory biometric identification system to prevent fraud is completely 'side-steppable', just as before. Voters are required to re-register for voting again, and upon registration have their fingerprints taken (all ten digits) and a high resolution picture.

The software used to hold and manipulate all this biometric data is the same used by our Federal Police, which is the same used by the FBI.

The STE (a department which manages ALL aspects of elections) has an agreement to share all this data with Policia Federal, and which in turn have an agreement with the FBI!

The biggest bribery scheme discovered here, the 'mensalão', used government money to pay out bribes to the oposition. One of the heads of this criminal organization, José Dirceu, is serving time in a semi-closed regime.

He got a job as a hotel manager during the day. The previous manager, who he replaced, had a salaray of R$1,800. Dirceu has a R$20,000 salary. How absurd is this? It reaks of collusion with former associates.

Sorry for the rant, and any typos.

"clearly not the UK or the US". If it is so obvious, please explain to me. Obviously we are not technically a democracy, but if you were to ask that question you should know also that no government on earth is a democracy in the sense of the ancient Greeks, who elected positions via lottery (such that every citizen got they fair turn) and let everyone vote on issues. Surely the US & UK are not that, but what makes you say that they are so clearly not democracies by the definition so commonly used today?

Every time someone says something like this, I hope it is not out of ignorance towards the countries which actually do not have a democracy. Each country has its own inadequacies and I feel sarcasm might be of better use in pointing them out specifically.

You talk about democracy as if it's a fantastic system. It's not. One vote per person? So a guy who has a political degree has the same voice as a guy who votes depending on which candidate has the nicest eyes?

> So a guy who has a political degree has the same voice as a guy who votes depending on which candidate has the nicest eyes?

What is the alternative? Yes we are NOT all equal. Some of us are more rational and intelligent than others. But how would you go about determining one's intellectual and moral worthiness? (Education? IQ?) And who gets to decide the criteria for superiority?

If you were as smart as you think you are...you would have considered these issues before making such a shockingly elitist statement.

I don't consider myself especially smart. But giving everyone an equal say in the running of a country is pure madness. The better alternative is a friendly dictator, or a good monarchy.

My original comment was to point out that "Democracy" is not some perfect utopia that every country should strive for.

Democracy is not perfect, but it's the best option available.

Also, I can't tell if you're being facetious or if you truly believe we would be better of with dictatorships...because there are plenty of real-world examples to choose from and they're quite horrible.

What a load of elitist BS.

YES - that's exactly what should happen. Your "political degree" gives you no right to decide for other people what's good for them. If I like my leaders to have nice eyes, then I am entitled to my vote just as you are entitled to yours based on your "political degree" nonsense that I don't care about. You don't get to decide if having nice eyes is important or not. If enough people think it's important - then it is important by definition.

Imagine if companies were run that way:

Shop floor assistant at an Apple store gets the same say as the VP legal, about whether or not to sue someone for trademark infringement? One person one vote! yay democracy.

> If enough people think it's important - then it is important by definition.

Your logic is bad. If enough people think that vacinations cause autism, does that make it true? The majority is often wrong.

> Shop floor assistant at an Apple store gets the same say as the VP legal

In a representative democracy, a clerk in the social security office doesn't have the same authority and scope of power in the day to day operation of government as the Attorney-General. They both have the same say in, say, electing a member of Congress, just as shop floor assistant and a corporate VP who both had equal holdings in the relevant company's stock on things that go to votes of the shareholders.

> > If enough people think it's important - then it is important by definition.

> Your logic is bad. If enough people think that vacinations cause autism, does that make it true?

Your logic is bad. You draw a false equivalence between a matter of objective fact (causality) and a matter of subjective preference (importance). The two are not parallel.

> just as shop floor assistant and a corporate VP who both had equal holdings in the relevant company's stock on things that go to votes of the shareholders.

That's the point - in that logic, the amount of votes you get in a democracy would be tied to how much land you own. Which IMHO seems a probably better way to do things.

> That's the point - in that logic, the amount of votes you get in a democracy would be tied to how much land you own.

No, land is something you own subordinate to the nation, not an equity stake in the nation.

Though the idea that the problem with our government is that its not plutocratic enough is, well, amusing.

> So a guy who has a political degree has the same voice as a guy who votes depending on which candidate has the nicest eyes?

I have a Political Science degree, and I see no reason why this would be a problem. Could you clarify why you think this should not be the case?

Nobody would even attempt to run a company like that. You wouldn't give a checkout assistant the same say in a company as the CEO. Why do we suppose it's a good idea to run a country like that?

> Nobody would even attempt to run a company like that.

Citizens of a country run by representative democracy are like equal-equity shareholders in a corporation.

> You wouldn't give a checkout assistant the same say in a company as the CEO.

You would in things done by vote of the shareholders if they were each equal in that regard. Of course, those kind of things are mostly (1) ratifying or rejecting certain major decisions proposed by other equal members or by management (like the initiative/referendum process in many US states and some national governments) and (2) choosing the board of director and certain officers (like the proces of normal elections in most representative governments.)

Which covers, pretty much, the things done by elections in most representative governments. So, no, I don't think the difference you claim is at all valid.

> Nobody would even attempt to run a company like that.

Nobody would ever attempt to run a monastery like a bar, either.

"3 PM's in row without elections whatsoever" WTF are you talking about? In Italy we voted in February 2013. This is a blatant lie.

The Swiss. They have a strong currency as well. Hmm, wonder if not becoming a part of the EU has anything to do with it?

This is a dangerous misunderstanding. If I wanted to have a one-party cleptocracy on the cheap, I would hold tons of referendums. Putin for example should clearly do this more often. And because most people have the same misconceptions that you have, they will celebrate him as the best-ever democrat!

One problem is that referendums have to follow a very detailed process to actually mean something. As can be seen in the Crimea. Putin essentially asked down the barrel of a tank: "Do you want to join?" Of course he was somewhat more subtle, but in essence...

In Switzerland severely different conditions prevail. It's a small country with around 10 million inhabitants, quite a few of that non-voters. Try doing a referendum every couple of months with dozens of millions of voters! The potential for abuse abounds!

And then, don't think that referendums will be about important or at least relatively sane issues. No, no, most moderate parties are content with the way parlemantary democracy works. The referendums will be issued by the most right-wing and most left-wing parties there are, with each crack-pot idea becoming at least marginally possible for a time. In Switzerland there is the "concording principle", which tries to remedy some of that uncertainty and chaos. Try that in France, Germany or Italy...

Putin has successfully replaced referendums with opinion surveys and polls. For everything he does, he has a survey to back it up (he is free to ignore surveys on questions he doesn't like, tho).

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