I wouldn’t think so, because those states had chosen to be in rebellion an d not to participate in the electoral process.
That’s a good question. Are cardinals automatically also citizens/passport holders of the Vatican? If so, then it’s the same argument as any other state in this discussion - a limited number of citizens can vote. The papal states go back to the early middle ages. According to Wikipedia, Charlemagne gave the pope the duchy of Rome in 781ad. That’s a pretty long stretch.
One can easily argue that Britain isn’t a democracy at all, since not all its citizens are equal. They’re all subjects of the Crown, but there’s a person under that crown, even if her political power is now wholly theoretical.
How was the Council elected between the 13th and 20th centuries?
And what about letting five unelected people decide who should be President of the United States?
If you want to make that a little more general, you could just bring up the College of Electors. Some of them have to follow the popular vote, but they are not themselves elected and they do select the president.
Does the OP actually want a democracy? I’m not particularly aware of any democracies outside of Ancient Greece – though I’m sure they’ve existed.
The US and other modern nations are Republics. The nation is governed by representatives. Unlike Rome, our representatives are elected by a subset of the general populace (excluding the young and some ex-convicts), making us a democratic Republic. The writers of the Constitution vigorously argued against establishing a Democratic government as they are often unstable, belligerent, and lead to abuses by the majority of the minority.
Huh? I thought the whole point was you vote for a college of electors.
I always thought the distinction was a “republic” elects their head of state, or president, or doge; as opposed to, in the good old days, a monarchy, theocracy (Tibet), tyranny etc. A democracy, OTOH, is a state ruled by its people, in a broad sense. If the selection of franchised voters was too restrictive, it may be considered an oligarchy instead. The two - republic and democracy - are obviously not identical or mutually exclusive.
So part of the debate obviously is how much power an assembly of the citizenry needs to have before it can be considered “governing”. Obviously, a town or state/province is considered democratic even though it has limited power, as long as it can exercise that power. If the governor/mayor/king can overrule the legislature (and in practice does) then it is not a functional democracy IMHO. For example, since about 1215 (theoretically) or 1645 (practically) the English parliament has its specific powers that cannot be overruled by the throne.
According to wikipedia, “Nomination of electors: Candidates for elector are nominated by their state political parties in the months prior to Election Day. The Constitution delegates to each state the authority for nominating and choosing its electors. In some states, the electors are nominated in primaries, the same way that other candidates are nominated. Other states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina nominate electors in party conventions. In Pennsylvania, the campaign committees of each candidate name their candidates for presidential elector (an attempt to discourage faithless electors).” Further: “A result of the present functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual significance on determining the outcome of the election.” Maybe I am understanding this wrong, but I don’t recall ever voting for an elector. Can someone correct me who understands this better than I do?
Is quibbling over whether the United States and United Kingdom presently, technically, qualify as democracies helpful? Because of the College of Electors, seriously? Or the Brits’ royal pets?
I thought the idea would be to explore the reasonable challengers to the United States which is sometimes taught as the answer to this question.
There is such of thing as an elective monarchy, of which 3 are left; Malaysia, Cambodia, and The Holy See/Vatican City. Ironically it’s the last one that has the widest electorate and largest pool of candidates. Then there’s really odd cases like Andorra and the UAE. You could also make the argument that Iran is an elective monarch despite being formally styled an “Islamic Republic” since it’s “Supreme Leader” rules for life and is elected by an assembly of learned clerics (sound familiar). Though unlike the College of Cardinals the Assembly of Experts is elected by the general public for set terms and Iran also has a directly elected president who serves for a set term. Or cases like Spain and Hungary were the monarchy was formally restored, but the throne deliberatly left vacant for decades while a regent reigned.
AFAIK Switzerland makes the most use of direct democracy at the national level of any country on Earth (& 2 cantons are still governed by an annual assembly of all adult citizens in a public square). At the subnational level many US states (California for example) make extensive use of direct democracy for better or worse.
Thus, thanks to the wisdom of the sainted Founding Fathers, the United States has never been a belligerent nation, has never seen any of its minorities abused by the majority, and has never experienced the ultimate instability of civil war.
According to how the word is actually used, America and the UK are both democracies, and ‘republic’ is the form of democracy that’s caught on, as opposed to direct democracy, which hasn’t. (No, North Korea isn’t actually a republic by that definition. This doesn’t seem to pose any true linguistic problems.)
This is one case where the supposedly ‘technical’ vocabulary is wrong more than it is precise.
Not to my knowledge, no.
Yes, but the Papal States ceased to exist in 1870. The founding documents of the Vatican City state make it quite clear that it as an entirely new creation, and not a continuation or revival of the Papal States.
The United Kingdom is clearly not a republic given that its head of state is a monarch. The United States is a republic, but not because it is a representative democracy. It’s a republic because it has no monarch as head of state.
Apennines, not Alps. As mentioned, San Marino was controlled by the Fascist Party for 20 years.
And my contention is that this is pointless if you wish to compare how things actually get done in those countries.
I mean, look at it this way: The UK is a monarchy, right? So… the queen decides which laws get passed? No, she has to assent to whatever Parliament passes. The queen picks the MP, right? Well, yeah, but if she doesn’t pick the one the party in control of Parliament wants she’s out on her ear. The queen controls the courts. I know that. However, if she decides to kill everyone in Strangeways she’d have to go Rambo to tally up a body count because the people in charge won’t do it for her. From what I understand, the queen doesn’t even vote because it would be improper for her to ever show partiality towards a political party.
The UK is run by Parliament. The people choose who’s in Parliament. Therefore, the people are exercising representative democracy. And our word for a country ruled by representative democracy is… a witch!
BURN HER!
That was the reason I referred to the five unelected people deciding a presidential election - it was in response to the suggestion that Britain (and, by extension, the other Commonwealth realms) can’t be democracies because they are constitutional monarchies. In answering the question about what is a democracy, I don’t think it is appropriate to focus in on particular aspects of a country’s constitution and to highlight where there may be unelected officials who exercise authority in that country’s constitutional structure. Rather, one should ask the general question: overall, is the government determined by the people of the country? By that standard, constitutional monarchies and republics such as the United States both qualify as democracies.
Thank you.
Now, I just want to take it one step further: Both the US and the UK are representative democracies, and we have a single, relatively short word to describe those things. That word is ‘republic’. What do we gain by refusing to apply it to both in the context of discussing comparative government?
If we want to get into the differences between parliamentary and congressional republicanism, we need more precise terms. Expanding our discussion to include the details of France and Germany would also likely involve some new definitions. In general, however, ‘republic’ serves very well to describe a form of government where the masses elect people who sit in a legislative body and do most or all of the work of passing laws.
Hmm…no. That word is “democracy”. Reprensentative democracy if you want to be more precise, as you wrote yourself.