I don’t think most of us would confuse it with a government, period.
The people who are currently running a given democracy could also favor democracies in general because it reinforces their own present power. Some of them have pointed out that democracy confers legitimacy onto the government by virtue of the statistical consent of the people to be governed by that particular government; this is a weaker argument than it sounds like, because we should be talking about informed consent, and so in that sense politicians that have lied cannot be said to share in this legitimacy, leaving the legitimate portion of the government pretty small.
Hey, I’m ready whenever the country needs me! 
I don’t see how you can justify not giving people a choice in what government they have.
Personally, I find it quite easy to “justify” on the basis of pragmatism and reasonable expectations. I would no more give the average person a vote than I would hand a live grenade to a toddler. The risks outweigh the benefits.
In some circles there might be dissatisfaction with the US Government, but that’s not to say people don’t necessarily support the concept of democracy. There’s been quite a few media stories that have this tone of fear that democracy is eroding around the world. For instance, the NPR story about Hungary (here) has quotes from Mr. Kovacs, the former EU commisioner, who expresses great concern about the state of democracy in the former communist country.
Former President Bush has repeatedly emphasized his push to spread democracy in the Middle East (see here and here)
War is much more palatable to voters on the home front and politically achievable in Congress when sold as “spreading democracy.”
True, and very pertinent to the question ‘Should my country be a democracy?’. Not necessarily pertinent, hovever, to the question ‘Should other countries be democracies?’.
many countries have long standing workable democracy tradition (e.g. Finland, Chile, Argentina, Japan to some extent) but have no tradition of beating up (verbally, economically and sometimes even militarily) on other countries accusing them of insufficient democracy. Which tells me that the issue is not so much democracy being so good that the good news must be spread to the whole world by word or by sword but rather that some countries just like having a nice excuse to push around others. If the ones doing the pushing around obviously cease being democratic they will find another ideological justification for their actions - be it CO2 emissions, or the right of children to get sex ed in kindergarten, or some other such worthy cause.
The other systems most people are familiar with are Communism (a system for starving your population to death), Fascism (a system for having one part of your population murder the other part), or Monarchy (a system that works by fits and starts until some moron inherits the throne and everything goes to hell).
Naturally, representative democracy is considered preferable.
Barring some actual divine intervention, there is no mandate to govern that is better than consent of the governed.
Isn’t having a low barrier to exit and letting citizens “vote with their feet” a better sign of the consent of the governed than aggregating the opinions of rationally ignorant voters?
No, I do not think that forcing someone to leave their home in order to replace their government is a better form of consent than letting people, whatever level of education or ignorance they choose to maintain, select their government.
Who decides and on what basis?
Which is all wonderfully idealistic, and would doubtlessly result in a gloriously perfect utopia in the perfect world.
Now, however, let’s come back to our real world, in which issues tend to be more complex. Here’s a typical scenario: the majority of State X faults the minority for whatever currently ails it. The majority wants the minority rounded up and shot. There is no question as to this mandate. Would you have this mandate carried out?
Would I? No.
Would a leader elected by those folks? Probably.
It’s still a more perfect mandate to govern than an un-elected dictator ever has. It might be an evil mandate, but it’s still an improvement over the arbitrariness of a dictator.
No it says something of the person saying it. We used to hear this all the time about South Africa.
That’s all very well, but this scenario is more likely in a non-democracy, not less (at least in the last few decades).
I’ve been meaning to make a reasonably long, comprehensive post for the last day or two. I’m sure I will get so far eventually.
Here in the real world, such mandates are commonly carried out by Communist, Fascist, and similar types of dictatorships rather than by democracies.
Every time I see this thread pop up I think ‘Well, if Democracy wouldn’t dress up in stockings and a mini-skirt all the time, West wouldn’t be like that…’
-XT
What is their justification for thinking that those countries don’t have democracy?