[ethbro]

At least in the West, I'd say democracy has generally been fairly stable... but the forces opposed to it have strengthened or weakened over time.

Anything which deconcentrates or destroys capital (rapid innovation, war) relatively strengthens democracy.

An age of peace, and lack of political will to prevent innovation-capture by current monopolies, results in democracy weakening relative to commercial interests.

[parthdesai]

>At least in the West, I'd say democracy has generally been fairly stable

Preface: I'm happy to be corrected, since i'm not very well-versed in this topic.

In the US, is it even a democracy when a new party can't come up and win an election? You can legally lobby for a party which in reality is just a fancy word for a bribe, so how do you expect either of these parties to have a common's person best interest in mind when it comes to making policies?

Compare this to India, where a person went on a strike, and then a group of people formed a party with the said person and he ended up becoming the Chief Minister of Delhi. Now, did he turn out to be good or not is another debate, but my point is, people were fed up with established parties, and it was actually possible for a new person to form a party and make a government out of it. Majority of the population wanted a change, and it was possible for them to get it.

[johannes1234321]

The question is: Why can't a new party come up? Is it due to the system itself or the "will of the people"?

The other question is: How democratic are those parties? - he primaries seem as such ...

[nicoburns]

It's due to the first past the post system strongly favouring two or few parties per constituency (otherwise if you have two parties that are closer to each other politically, then they're at a disadvantage against the third one.

[rayvy]

> The question is: Why can't a new party come up? Is it due to the system itself or the "will of the people"?

I honestly and genuinely don't think that's much of a question.

I encourage you to read Lawrence Lessig's "Republic, Lost"[1] - which talks about how the big money behind campaign financing makes average Joe's feel as if they're choosing a politician based on their will, which turns out to not really be the case. Rather, they're choosing from a select group of politicians already rubber stamped "OK" by deep pocketed donors.

A good quote (not verbatim) from the book is basically how deep pocket donors have a sense of: "Let me choose the potential candidate options, and I don't really care who wins".

So it's the "will of the people" only so far as the people's will aligns with something they have 0 control over - the intentions/ambitions of those with money - which doesn't sound much like free will.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Version-Lawrence-Lessig...

[sjg007]

One more reason why we need to overturn Citizens United.

[ethbro]

Money has always been integral to political campaigning.

But I'd say the 2016 election clearly refutes your assertion.

Republican fundraising as of 6/22/2016 in USD$millions, {total}, {candidate}, {affiliated PAC} [1]: Donald Trump (67.1, 64.6, 2.5), Jeb Bush (162.1, 35.2, 126.9), Ted Cruz (158.0, 92.6, 65.4), Marco Rubio (125.0, 47.3, 61.8)

If one wants to blame the Illuminati for secretly supporting candidates... this is a harder point in history to find support.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electi...

[chongli]

It's due to the voting system. Plurality voting systems tend towards two-party rule. This observation is known as Duverger's law [1].

Now, if the US switched to a radically different voting system today, we probably wouldn't see a flourishing of outside parties tomorrow; it could take a little while. But people sympathetic to outside parties such as the Greens or the Libertarians would be far less reluctant to vote for them if it didn't mean splitting their vote and causing the "lesser of two evils" to lose their local district.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

[ethbro]

Thankfully, that's gradually changing.

This November, Maine will officially be using ranked choice voting for US House and Senate seats.

[OvermindDL1]

Not in the United States it's not at least. Even just the recent net neutrality pubic votes don't match what was done in the slightest. The USA is an oligarchy through and through.

[dantheman]

There are many who don't want the government involved in 'net neutrality.' The FCC under Obama was acting in an antidemocratic manner when they claimed authority to enforce net neutrality. The executive expanding its power without the interaction of congress is far more anti-democratic than a vote that turned out a way that you didn't like.

There are many who think the net is evolving in a great way and want to limit government interference until their is a real problem. If there's a real problem then pass a law and deal with the problem. Often times these harmless laws have terrible consequences and are difficult to undo.

[lovich]

Are many people != Large majority. The large majority publicly backed net neutrality and then the government choice the opposite choice, which only helped a set of large, rich companies.

Yes in a democracy you will frequently deal with votes not going the way you want. Having powerful groups who can get the law changed to benefit them is a different issue and is indicative of a de facto oligarchy

[frockington]

I would say the large majority doesn't care about net neutrality in any meaningful way. Personally, I researched it and couldn't find any reason to a have a stance on the issue.

[tomc1985]

According to the ratio of public comments accepted by the FCC, the "many" who think the net is evolving are something like 3%

[ambicapter]

I think it was actually 0.3% when you took out duplicated comments. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fcc+comments+99.7&t=ffsb&ia=web