As for the Republic/Democracy terminology dispute: We REALLY REALLY REALLY need an “official” taxonomy that puts America, Canada, the UK, and Japan in the same taxon and North Korea and Iran in another taxon. Any taxonomy which fails that test is absolutely useless in the real world.
I would count Pakistan as a democracy during the 1st Indo-Pakistani war, but from Derleth’s link, it appears the objection is that they hadn’t been around long enough to be considred stable democracies. If we need this many qualifications on the democracies who count, then the statement that two democracies have never gone to war is meaningless.
Well, the US, Canada, the UK and Japan are liberal democracies. As for North Korea and Iran, I don’t think they belong to the same category. North Korea is basically a totalitarian autocracy, as far as I know, while Iran has an hybrid system that mixes Muslim theocracy with illiberal democracy. They’re not at all the same thing.
On the other hand, they’re both “republics”, so in a sense you could say that they are in the same taxon. 
I dunno, it’s sort of a progression more than a hard-line taxonomy. While I don’t think anything is fundamentally unfair about the age requirement for office, philosophically speaking, how is that different from having to pass a theological committee’s muster in order to run?
Granted, the theocrats do have their hands in more than just who is allowed to run. But I think they are about equally spaced between us and North Korea. Forcing them in the same category as NK serves no purpose, because even from a practical standpoint Iran is not a dictatorship. Which is not to say they are a representative democracy: I believe, with no justification, that the theocratic control of their government is enough to place them outside the category of liberal democracy.
Or we could just do what most people in the real world do before they’re corrected by people whose terminology stopped evolving sometime prior to the First World War: Call every country where the people get a real say in how things are run a Democracy, call countries where people don’t get a say Dictatorships, and let the other terms alone until we actually need to subdivide the two main taxons.
But I suppose that would make sense, and “educated” people can never allow that.
Well, the thing is that there are places where people do get a say in the running of the state, but, say, women or members of a certain ethnic group aren’t allowed to say anything. Or, the country is divided into two ethnic groups, and violence between them is common. Or, the country is in peace, but the government doesn’t guarantee certain rights, such as the right not to be tortured, to its citizens. How would you call such countries?
Same for what you would call “dictatorships”: there are a lot of differences between a totalitarian autocracy and something that is a one-party state de jure or de facto (due, say, to the weakness of the opposition parties), but where the citizens are allowed a significant number of liberties and may express substantial dissent.
Trying to divide regimes into “democratic” and “dictatorial” only over-simplifies the issue. Ludovic is right that it’s more of a spectrum.
severus: Which is why I said Democracy/Dictatorship is a first cut. An initial dividing line. The first distinction you make. DIFFERENCE NUMBER ONE, THE FIRST, and PRIMARY. If you actually need to talk about the distinction between America in 1910 and the United Kingdom in 1850, you can make whatever subdivisions you really need without “correcting” the general public as if you were just another illiterate pedant.
What I’m saying is that I don’t think you can find a “dividing line” between “democracy” and “dictatorship”. It’s actually a continuum.
What is the line, according to you? Can you give two examples of similar regimes, but with one falling on the “democracy” side and the other one on the “dictatorship” side?
severus: You’re still misunderstanding me. You want a rather complex system with infinite shades, which is well and good for political science majors who have to distinguish the many kinds of government people have abandoned over the past four thousand years.
I am after something that average people can use to determine how much a given country is like other countries they know. Average people ask a series of questions to do this, and the first question they ask is something like “Is it democratic?” Then they get jumped on by illiterate pedants, the same people who think a split infinitive is something obscene, who claim there are no Democracies and that America and Canada fall into distinct major taxons despite being essentially identical in all practical respects from the point of view of someone who just wants to know if meaningful elections and referendums are held on a regular basis.
A bit of history, perhaps: The practice of making Republic a major taxon comes from the era when Democratic government was extremely rare, the most common form of government was a Monarchy, and no Monarchy had modern democratic practice. That era fully and finally died after WWI, when the majority of European Monarchies were killed and the remaining ones were roughly as Democratic as the Republics of the era. At that point, continuing to class the British Monarchy as something apart from the American and French Republics was quite moronic. It became increasingly moronic as the century went on and all Democracies became more democratic and the Dictatorships were completely without royalty.
Derleth, I think “lumping” behavior is inherently dangerous. While there are more dimensions to freedom than one, a much better approach would be to give them a 1-100 score on the “democracy” scale. If 100 is the highest score ever achieved, rather than the highest score possible, the US would be in the 90s as would the rest of the world’s liberal democracies. Whereas NK would be in the 0s or 10s, and Iran would be in the 50s or perhaps even higher from a historical perspective, and even from a global average perspective
I don’t think they are much more dictatorial on average as compared to the rest of the world. Now, if you want a separate scale for Civil Rights in general, they’d rank pretty low on that, as even democracies can enact laws restricting freedoms of minorities, and Iran certainly has restrictive laws and/or attitudes against homosexuality, sexuality in general, and women (less so than others in the region but moreso than average in the world.)
But what purpose would lumping Iran in with NK do? That’s a rhetorical question: the answer is: lump them together to make it easier to rally support for a blunt Struggle Against Dictatorship, that’s what.
Don’t get me wrong, if it were possible to enact regime change in Iran successfully, it would be worth a war to do so. I just don’t buy the false pretense that that they are somehow equivalent to NK makes it okay to do so.
Ludovic: God damn it, discussing governmental systems doesn’t always have to segue into a discussion of current world politics. Tell me, without resorting to appeals to what CNN and the BBC have on their front pages, how my system is flawed at doing what I designed it to do.
Because Iran’s not a dictatorship.
Now, Mussolini’s Italy was a dictatorship (despite the fact that the Fascist Council successfully deposed him.) But I’d rather have lived there than in modern Iran.
If you modified the naming of your classification system, it might be useful to describe those who are 0-30 in the democracy/human rights spectrum (like Iran and NK, with Iran being closer to 30), versus those that are 70-100 (like the US and Western Europe), with a whole mess of countries that fall in neither. I have a feeling you are looking for other criteria in your list than the simple mechanisms of democracy, and calling your taxon democracy/dictatorship is misleading if you wish to put Iran in the latter.
Sure. But me modifying my naming scheme will do nothing to change the names applied by the vast majority of people, the ones whose naming system I based my scheme on. My whole point with this thread was to point up the fact “Democracy” has changed meaning and become a useful term for a large number of governments despite the illiterate pedants.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911): Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion. Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. Positive, adj. Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
What about situations where a country has a government but also has seperate bodies that are effectively independant of the government and are too strong for the government to control? Examples would be Russia in 1918 where the Provisional Government couldn’t control the Soviets; Japan in the 1930s where the government had only nominal control over the Army and Navy; and Iran where the religious Assembly has veto power over actions taken by the President and legislature. Is a country really democratic if a non-democratic group holds the real power?
Then there is the case of places where a local authority has effectively challenged the government that claims suzerainty. Do the people who live there come under the new government or the old one?
Yes thank god wiser heads prevailed and we now have the truly sane and incorrupt regime of today .
Damn those evil Brits and Yanks!