This your own definition? I ask because it seems like people both here and in the public try real hard to make this term have meaning but it’s apparent meaning changes with each speaker.
Yes.
I do however believe it is a sensible and defensible definition, and it is one I’ve seen others using.
Different folks may have different exact definitions in mind, but the root of them is that mere voting in an election isn’t “enough” to create out of thin air a real/functioning democracy - what is needed is more.
That “more” is, in my opinion, robust institutions and a population/leaders who believe in them, to the point of having a realistic faith that the voting they had today, they are likely to enjoy tomorrow (or rather, in a few years).
Having a vote is easy. Creating robust institutions and getting the population/leaders to believe in them, rather than treating the vote as ‘winner take all’, is hard.
Not sure why you think this concept has no real meaning.
Well, there’s always East Germany vs. West Germany and North Korea vs. South Korea( though South Korea wasn’t always a democracy but they were during their economic growth period of the 80s-present ).
For that matter, since our forum’s authoriarian seems a fan of the PRC, how about comparing the PRC to Hong Kong and Taiwan?
The problem with these is that even pro-autocracy folks (or democracy skeptics, or whatever term fits) surely don’t believe that all autocracies are superior to all democracies, but instead that some autocracies are superior to some democracies. North Korea being a complete disaster could be indicative of a bad form of autocracy, and nothing more. Meanwhile, the GDR was a satellite of an empire, and not an truly independent nation, Haiti spent a vast fortune to buy its independence and had trouble recovering, and so on. There will always be differences in initial conditions sufficient to influence the outcome. There’s no control, in other words.
The blunt answer: Just because you can bullshit your way to an answer you like doesn’t mean the term is meaningful.
The less blunt answer: In the space of three hours on the day I started this thread, I learned: the USA is not “at the moment” a functioning democracy according to one respected former President; that Lebanon and Turkey are not functioning democracies according to Ivory Tower Denizen who if I remember right is a college professor; and in this thread there has been broad agreement that Iran is not a functioning democracy (I imagine the contributors to this thread are all very bright and knowledgeable in their own right).
A term, applied to such a broad spectrum of governments, must have absolutely no meaning. Instead it is simply a pejorative; a high-minded way of saying “We’re good but those guys fucking suck!”.
Still, I could be wrong. So I wanted to test the hypothesis by causing somebody to want to show me how I am wrong but the best efforts have provided rather standard definitions of democracy. That’s been interesting. The purpose of the modifier ‘functioning’ remains to be seen…
I do not speak for other posters, much less former US presidents. I have, however, provided a definition. If you don’t like it, perhaps you could describe why, rather than dismissing it as “bullshit”? If you want to do that, why are you bothering with debates? 
The weight of the evidence points to the term being a pejorative term. It’s consistent with its usage. The idea this term has some other valid meaning has failed to be supported. It has no intellectual utility other than expressing a particular form of distaste. That’s the position I’ve taken and it’s the right one.
A “perjorative term”? On the contrary. A “perjorative term” means one which depreciates. Saying that a democracy is “functioning” is complementary, not perjorative.
It has a valid meaning, as I’ve pointed out - a democracy which has developed robust institutions and a population/leaders capable of surviving multiple election cycles. That you dislike this meaning does not mean it does not exist.
This meaning has intellectual utility, as it expresses in a single simple phrase the difference between (say) the democracy in Canada, and that in Ukraine, or Gaza.
The “distate” you claim to find is on the same order as the ‘distaste’ that often causes the euphemism treadmill to run in other situations - it is inherent in the subject-matter. The opposite point of view is to assume that there is no functional difference between democracy in (say) Ukraine or Gaza on the one hand, and Canada on the other - which is an absurdity.
The position you have taken at the outset of this thread makes no sense, and you have not budged an inch on it despite much argument.
You seem to only be willing to accept the evidence that’s been offered if it supports the position you held before the debate began. You’re dismissing out of hand all of the contradictory evidence.
Yeah you’re right I was focusing on its negative uses. Good point. I’ll stick with what I originally said:
“I suspect this term has no real specific definition that will allow categorization of one country’s democracy as functioning while another country’s democracy as not functioning”
I’ll take back what I said about it being used “in any specific instance its use is to criticize and nothing more”.
In my OP I also talked about its usage as dividing Western governments from the other governments. I stated earlier in the thread that JDDelirious did a better job of stating what I meant.
Cite that this is its definition then. It should be easy to find. It should also be easy to find a place where scholars on the topic are using the term in a consistent manner to mean something. The way I’ve seen it used seems nearly arbitrary. I say nearly because I think AK84 put it best:
I just think your specification is what is included in a thorough definition of democracy. Little Nemo did the same earlier.Brainglutton provided a link to a scholar on the topic who seems to provide elements of these definitions as well.
So Ukraine and Gaza are alike in terms of their democracy?
No, the opposite point of view is that a statement like “Canada is a functioning democracy and Gaza and Ukraine are not functioning democracies.” is meaningless. What little I can gather from such a statement is that the speaker is criticizing one group’s handling of their democratic aspirations and complementing another. It’s why I started this thread.
I have budged in this reply and I have stated to other posters when they have reshaped my views on my OP. I guess I could restate my OP with these changes included. To be honest, I think the title of my thread is confusing.
Re: Dominican Republic vs. Haiti might work.
Except that if you compared the Dominican Republic to, I dunno, Cuba, then suddenly democracy doesn’t look so hot.
The Dominican Republic is perhaps not a great example since it was only pseudo-democratic under Balaguer (and a horrible tyranny under Trujillo, including a racial genocide). But Cuba also has a higher human development index than Costa Rica (by a hair), which has been a stable democracy since (iirc) 1948, and unlike Cuba was a ‘settler’ colony rather than a slave-based economy and thus might be expected to have a better basis for development.
List of countries by Human Development Index - Wikipedia
The human development index chart seems to indicate that while the countries at the top are all democracies (mostly in western Europe and North America) and the countries at the bottom are largely African non-democracies, in the middle there’s a big spread, and you find nondemocracies like Belarus and Cuba mixed together with democracies.
Re: The problem with these is that even pro-autocracy folks (or democracy skeptics, or whatever term fits) surely don’t believe that all autocracies are superior to all democracies, but instead that some autocracies are superior to some democracies.
I’m a democracy skeptic and this is one of the things I’d say. I’d also say that this kind of exercise, looking at countries and saying, gee, Democracy A looks better than Communist State B, or doing the same kind of comparison based on oil wealth, or abortion policy, or tax rates, or anything else, is pretty worthless. None of these exercises are controlling for other factors, none of them are taking genuinely independent samples (East Germany and the Soviet Union were not ‘independent’ of each other in terms of choosing economic and political policies), so I’d consider them dubious at best from a statistical point of view.
I have corrected my errors in thinking and tried to make up for imprecision in my writing as the thread has progressed. I, unfortunately, do not agree that I have seen evidence that the core of my problem with the term “functioning democracy” is due to my ignorance of its intended use. What I do see is a wide variety of definitions for the term. The evidence that I can gather from these varied definitions is that they overlap well with everyone’s varied understandings of what democracy is and is not.
Try “Functional Democracy: Responding to Failures of Accountability” Summer, 2003 44 Harv. Int’l L.J. 387.
I specifically direct you to part “B” of that article, starting on page 396.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/hilj44&div=18&g_sent=1&collection=journals#402
Is the Harvard International Law Journal “scholarly” enough for you?
They are more alike to each other than either is to Canada.
No, it is not. Gaza and Ukraine are failures as democracies, and Canada is not. Gaza and Ukraine have some elements of the form of democracies, but they lack the substance - and hence, their governments lack the legitimacy that democratic substance imparts.
What changes? You started saying it’s an “empty, ignorant term” and you continue to think it is “bullshit”.
Yes, I found what I had time to read of it interesting. Section B seems to reflect the variability in defining democracy seen in the thread, but offers a useful distinction over the types of elements that people include and exclude when defining functioning democracy.
I don’t think what you wrote was the noun ‘bullshit’. I think you were ‘bullshitting’, the verb. If you had cited what you had written and provided examples of how ‘functional democracy’ is used such that it communicates some consistent message then I would have just accepted it.
What I’ve seen in the space of a few days is that it is actually a controversial subject and that is why I can learn that the USA, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, the Ukraine, and Gaza are all in a category of nonfunctional democracies while Israel and Canada are in the category of functional democracies.