The US is a Republic. With a strong tradition of democracy (voting for your representative, especially at the local level).
I don’t agree with this. In a pure ‘Democracy’, there is nothing to prevent complete domination by the majority, be that ideological or racial. A Republic has built-in safeguards against that kind of domination.
Spain? Well, sure today. But there are a lot of separatist movements.
However, During the Spanish Civil War, I submit the Franco was their best choice. The other choice was communism backed sorta democracy. Let us say the communist leaning and backed Republicans won. IMHO some Spanish states would have declared independence, while the “Republican” would have turned into a Communist Dictatorship. If so, either they played out the war as a supporter of the Soviets, stayin Communist until moderately recently- which would have been bad. OR Germany would have invaded, and that would have been REALLY bad. Franco was indeed a autocrat, many suffered under his rule, but he kept Spain out of WW2, and stood up to Hitler. Not to mention, he turned over the government peacefully and nicely set up with a Figurehead King and a decent democracy.
So yeah, Franco was a nasty piece of work… but the other choice would have been far worse.
I admit this isnt really “authoritarianism vs democracy” but instead “mild fascism vs Communism.”
“Republic”. What a pretty sounding word. Giving it a nice pretty name does not change reality. In practical terms, the US is an oligarchy/plutocracy with a nice shiny façade – not really “better” than all those other countries, we just have more efficient, wily Brahmin, most of the time.
That really has bugger-all to do with “justice”. The way the US handles maintaining the social order is merely a feudal/monarchist system that works well for a few, passably for many and sucks the big one for many more. But the plutocrats, who benefit the most from it, seek to keep it firmly in place.
Given that most nations are established by some form of violence, I guess it is not surprising that a militant police force is needed to restore order after the fracas. Sadly, no nation seems to have managed to grow past the ethos of a peacekeeping army – the US has had a quarter of a millenium to work on this and has not made any progress.
It’s always amazing to me how many Americans say the word “democracy” with a sneer and the word “Republic” with reverence and an audibly uppercased R.
And how generally cluless many of those folks are. They’ve certainly memorized what they thought they heard in high school civics. But usually don’t know much more than that about the rest of governance theory and political economy.
I think a Constitutional Monarchy has a much better ring to it. And much more pomp and circumstance.
I guess there are many clueless folks in the world. The US has its fair share. That’s why SD is here, right?
Responding to the OP (hope I’m not repeating anyone, I just read the first few and last few responses):
I recall data collated by The Economist which suggested that countries that escaped poverty most quickly were more often authoritarian. It seems that there is an efficiency cost to democracy, which can be carried easily when a country has industrialized, but can hamper progress prior to that.
Of course it requires benevolent, or at least neutral, leadership, but I think that goes without saying.
As mentioned previously, I lived for 8 years in China. Yes, we’re all aware of the failings of that country, but I can say there were many fantastic things too, things I envied, and now miss. This is not an argument that authoritarianism is better, merely that it can have advantages.
For example, the infrastructure was great. I never met anyone, including American expats, that missed driving. You could get anywhere in the city in minutes, on a clean, air-conditioned subway. And anywhere in the country in hours on high speed rail. Meanwhile back here in England, it seems my grandchildren may live to see HS2. If they can afford to pay for it.
Oh, and a final point: I don’t think democracy is doing that great right now. In the US, voters are increasingly voting against their own interests and politicians work measurably, demonstrably more for the corporations who put money in their pocket than the masses. That’s on both sides of the aisle, thanks to crazy expensive elections.
I am not advocating an end to democracy. I am just saying that putting it in black and white terms flatters the status quo. There’s a lot you could do to make democracy better represent the will of the people.
or look at Singapore, rich and you can walk the streets safely
anyone is entitled to criticize the US based on observation because this is a free country
First, some clarifications and quibbles.
But, almost certainly, there have been some moments when the authoritarians did better. When the US was formed, we were a fairly poor country and I’m not sure when we actually passed by the top Authoritarian nation in terms of quality of life.
When the first French Republic formed, it was a disaster. That said, I’m not sure how much the quality of life backslid - from the metric system, I know that science was ongoing during that time, so maybe things kept on mostly-as-normal, other than the murders?
To quote from this paper:
Between 1946 and 1999, one in every twenty-tree presidential regimes died (that is, became a dictatorship), whereas only one in every fifty-eight parliamentary regimes died.
I’d suggest that, probably, most of those nations that failed did not surpass the best authoritarian nation at the moment.
But, in the long view, so far democratic republics have done better. Authoritarian nations that have caught up or nearly caught up have almost always succeeded largely by integrating the technological developments of the democratic republics and, as such, trailed them and not surpassed.
That said, most technology doesn’t affect the home. Space lasers aren’t a component of quality of life. If an authoritarian country has modern cellphones, microwaves, dishwashers, etc. lower crime, a better diet, etc. then it’s arguable that they’re better.
It’s quite possible that were it not for weather/climate differences and population density, some authoritarian nations of the moment would be at or above much of the US and Europe.
Personally, I’d argue that the democratic republics need to perform an upgrade to our systems - taking what we’ve learned over the last two centuries about how our systems fail, and instituting measures to prevent them - so that we stay competitive. Authoritarians are advertising their greatness and the view from the ground, in most regions, isn’t that bad. Scary stories of tyranny aside, a lot of these places just feel like ordinary daily life, with cleaner streets and friendlier people than you get in the West.
We only win on consistency. The authoritarians will, eventually, get a bad leader who trashes everything or a good leader who gets too confident in his own greatness and ruins everything. In the long view, democratic republics are better. But if you’re relying on the long view to sell your average citizen, I’d greatly reconsider that outlook.
Listening to historical radio broadcasts, in the 1940s and 1950s they had the equivalent of what we would call today public service announcements in between news and entertainment programs. The world wars were fresh on everyone’s mind, and understandably so. I hesitate to call it Propaganda, because the Allies were the good guys, hm?
“Why We Fight”, was the idea that people have the right to self determination, and the right to be free, etc. Fair enough. What I found interesting though in the historical broadcasts is the flat out assertion that Democracy is the best form of government because the people will never allow a dictator to take over, it is a foolproof defense against that sort of thing.
Came in to mention Singapore. The government has been extremely authoritarian in practice since Singapore separated from Malaysia. Their first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew seemed to be increasing power as the sole executive up until he stepped down in 1990. I haven’t followed events since then after my contact with a company doing business there ended. By all accounts the country was quite successful under Yew’s heavy handed reign. He was very commerce oriented and in a change from the usual authoritarian model highly concerned with government corruption. He insisted that government ministers be well paid and enabled laws allowing strict government oversight of their activities. In terms of social policy and personal rights he was not liberal in nature, believing his personal views on such matters were more important than a democratic approach. I don’t know where the country is now, but he did manage a level of success for several decades acting as a sort of benevolent dictator.
Just before the start of the American Revolution, we had the highest standard of living in the western world, and quite possibly of anywhere on the globe. For the entire 18th century, U.S. per capita purchasing power had been greater than the British homeland (including earnings imputed to the enslaved). The economic devastation of the Revolution put a crimp in things, and the earlier Industrial Revolution of the British Isles may have kept them ahead for a bit of the 19th century, but the British colonies were ahead of European nations for a rather long time. In the colonies, natural resources and land were abundant, while wages were high due to demand for labor.
You are ignoring countries like Canada, Denmark, Japan, Spain, etc. In contemporary English, “democracy” simply means any country where the people elect their governments. Insisting that only a subclass of these countries can be described as democracies distracts from your points, which are good ones.
It’s historically correct that for about 100 years the common word used to describe the non-monarchy that was created in America was republic, although the Founders often used democracy in our modern sense. Words change. Over time, the word used to describe America became democracy. In fact, today America is the dictionary definition of a democracy.
Historical origins rarely matter in modern usage. Tens of thousands of English words have accreted meanings, changed historical meaning, or even reversed historical meaning. Democracy is very much one of those highly changed words. So much so that when anyone refuses to use it, that refusal stands out not a pedantic nicety but as an ideological dog whistle.
Hm…well, maybe I was wrong but I’m a bit skeptical.
When you say “discounting slaves” here, do you mean not counting them, or by counting only the imputed value of what was provided to slaves? I think the cites I gave were about the latter, but I wasn’t sure how you meant it.
It’s true that Europe was a significant source of manufactured goods for the colonies. Part of the issue with developing colonial manufacturing was English mercantilism; part was that expertise was less likely to travel across the ocean, as someone with valued labor skills would do “better than your average Englishman” and be more likely to stay at home, and some was probably comparative advantage - investing in industries in America where the cost of capital and labor were higher was economically less efficient.
Certainly the standard of living on the frontier was less than that in more-developed cities. Much trade in such situations probably relied on barter or paper scrip rather than a specie-based money, making comparisons more difficult. What’s more, the colonial-era cash crops of tobacco, rice, timber and fish were generally produced on or near the coasts, partly for ease of overseas transportation, while the backcountry spent much of its excess income on logistics.
It is still possible, though, to account for even bare subsistence farming when calculating per capita income. Also, even frontier areas moved quickly from a subsistence basis to a cash economy; the Mohawk valley farmer who barely kept his family fed on the 15 acres he manged to clear in his first year can be selling whiskey he made with his extra grain from his 80 acre farm in his fifth year, or possibly driving cattle to market in Albany.
The yardstick used by the JSTOR paper I cited was “purchasing power”, which would take into account differences in price levels at different locations. Econometrics of the 18th century being what they are, I’m sure it’s a less precise measure than we would like, but there is a great deal of historical price data for Britain and the colonies, just not gathered in a systematic manner. I’m not sure if the Alice Hanson Jones work cited in the mountvernon.org page did a purchasing power calculation or not.
Also, I would note that the excess production from backcountry areas would (less transport costs) yield lower prices elsewhere in the colonies, thus increasing purchasing power in the more “civilized” areas.
I highly suggest reading up on Chinese history, particularly Legalism Legalism (Chinese philosophy) - Wikipedia utilized in the Zhou Dynasty, 1046 BC – 256 BC, which is the longest reigning Chinese Dynasty.
I’ve forgotten the majority of what I learned in my Chinese history courses, but China has been ruled by almost every type of government, except democracy.
Yes, every dynasty rose and fell, but the U.S.A. model of democracy at 247 years is a baby compared to the some of the Chinese dynasties which varied in their philosophical based choice of leadership.
Point is, as I told a co-worker who visited Beijing, after she said that even their cab driver criticized the government. “What works for 300 million people, may not work for 1 billion.” Which ended our conversation on that topic.
Edit: To be clear, I’m not condoning the authoritarian governance of China. Just pointing out that they have the best recorded history and longest continual reign of their central provinces, and there can be valuable information and insight gained by researching, understanding and debating their historical forms of governance.
What was the Republic of China 1912-1949?
There also were local elections in the colonies.
And while the colonists could not vote for parliament, by the time of the American revolution, elected officials greatly constrained the power of the king (something the American revolutionaries played down so George III could be made a villain).
Another example of a colony where mother country democracy and local elections prevented real authoritarianism was Hong Kong after the British were forced out of Shanghai — where their rule had been highly autocratic — by the communists.
Singapore is the best example of successful one party rule. This is unusual and I expect they will transition to multi-party at some point.