[restalis]

Democracies are demanding the political leaders to limit their power both in mandate time-span and share of it by seeking consensus among parties with different views. This forces the governance to be moderate by design compared to chosen moderation of other forms of government. However, this presents itself as an attack surface from external powers. Political interference is way easier. Also, to be in democracy leadership role, considering its power limitations, may be quite frustrating if you want to get results quickly. This alone is enough to explain a few of relapses to dictatorships through power encroachment by ambitious political leaders. Add in here other political context deficiencies like weak political opposition and dirty (as in crime-like) measures of rivalry, and you get the idea. The populace may live "content" by various degrees in many forms of governance, but this is not what is supposed to comprise a defining differentiation. The real difference lies in the inherent ability to cope with various challenges (that have to be dealt with on political levels), my favorite of which is change in all of its forms. All forms of governance have benefits and drawbacks and employing the right one is tricky, it's an ongoing experiment that humans are yet to learn from.

[redial]

We are in agreement then, democracies can fall for lots of reasons. They also have the potential to be very successful.

My point is democracy as it stands today is very young and if you only compare it against the failed attempts of Communism you will miss almost all of civilized human history.

[dforrestwilson1]

Yeah that makes sense, but it seems fair to argue that relative to other forms of government, a properly balanced democracy which offsets the functions of government tends to be more stable and last longer than competing alternatives such as dictatorships or communism.

[restalis]

Dictatorship (or totalitarianism, my preferred term for it) is not assured to be unstable. If done right, the totalitarian regimes manage to periodically weed out the internal threats, including dissidence, and thus keep the remaining masses content, a trick employed at least since the dawn of written history with Ancient Egyptian police[1]. As I see it, the totalitarian political system however, being one of the most rigid of all, is more prone to corruption than others. (You may think of the pun about power tending to corrupt and absolute dictatorial power - absolute corruption, but I'm more about the precarious ability to react to different form of corruption.) The communism's main idea is to please the majority, which happens to be the mass of mediocre, at the expense of the the ambitious minority, the needs of which are taking a back seat. This makes communism a lesser environment for development, but it's not in itself a destabilizing factor.

[1] http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/law_and_order/police.htm