[hayst4ck]

I have a puzzle for you:

Let's say we have a democracy where the only rule is highest vote wins. Let's say 51% of the people vote to enslave/oppress the other 49%.

Maybe they vote for literal chattel slavery. Maybe they vote for healthcare for themselves but not the others. Maybe they vote to tax the others at the maximum possible or implement tax policies that dis-proportionally affect the 49%. Maybe they vote the 49% cannot own homes and therefore must pay rent to a landlord. Maybe they vote that the 49% must register for the draft, but not them. Maybe they vote that the 49% aren't eligible for public school while they are. Maybe they vote that the 49% is not able to own stock or register for a company. Let's pretend those are legal, it is definitely possible. Slavery at one point was constitutionally allowed.

Is that a Democracy? A Liberal Democracy? A Democratic Republic? A Constitutional Democratic Republic if the law were enshrined on paper?

Would you want to live in that country? Would you want to live in that country if you were in the 49%?

What is the key ingredient that makes something a "Democracy" rather than tyranny of the majority, "mob rule," or "might makes right"?

[satvikpendem]

Well, it is a democracy, the key being that the majority of people voted for some law. Whether you'd want to live in the country is a different story. Sometimes, democracies are not always the best form of government, they are as susceptible to systemic issues as any other form of government.

[Juliate]

So you do not understand what a democracy is and how it works.

Balance of the three branches of government and the rule of law and protection of minorities are the complementary requirements to the majority vote, to qualify for a democracy.

[grg0]

That would exclude every parliamentary democracy in Europe, so no.

Also, the word 'democracy' does not appear in either the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, so it's weird to make the argument you are making. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a party system to begin with. Women and obviously slaves could not vote. The US has only been getting more democratic over time. Your argument looks a bit like historical revisionism to me.

The earliest "democracy" (demokratia) dates back to the Greeks (and for free men, anyway), and Aristotle's Politica will tell you a bit about it.

[Juliate]

> That would exclude every parliamentary democracy in Europe, so no.

There are variants (especially executive and legislative work more closely) but please list those where there is no constitutional or customary such a balance between executive, legislative and judiciary?

Thanks for suggesting I don’t know my classics, you seem not so certain about modern European democracies.

[grg0]

You don't need separation of powers to "qualify for democracy", per your statement above. That just simply isn't true. Democracy is, simply put, a form of government where power emanates from the people. That the separation of powers is for the best we obviously agree on, but to say that it is suddenly a necessary requirement for "democracy" is simply just redefining what the word "democracy" means.

[satvikpendem]

In the simplest sense of the word, none of that is needed. Athens had such a democracy, where a majority of people made a decision so. You are putting more stipulations on the word than are strictly necessary, hence why I said the democracy examples you gave would not be great places to live in.

[Juliate]

You referring back to only Athens when we have had several centuries of political history and progress, is embarrassing.

The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind. Until we realized its implementation went lacking from true believers, for what we can witness since January 20th.

Check also the constitutions of modern democracies throughout the world.

Something that depends only on the rule of the majority, without constitutional guarantees of the respect of the law, without a self-defense system against abuse of power is a relic of the past prototype democracies.

[grg0]

> You referring back to only Athens when we have had several centuries of political history and progress, is embarrassing.

> The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind.

Then how is it that the US in its inception, like Greece, did not allow neither women nor all men (slaves) to vote? Clearly not much progress had been made by then. Much of the progress was made in the Civil rights movement, for example. That was last century, not "several centuries".

To be clear, summarizing my other replies to your comments, I am 100% with you that all of the things you mention are good things, and that they should be defended. But your redefinition of democracy (and American democracy in particular) doesn't parse and seems to be the product of historical revisionism.

[Juliate]

I may have been more fussy than revisionist then, sorry for that.

What I was (unexplicitly enough) implying is that I don’t see how a stable democracy, going forward, could work, without implementing those improvements mechanisms that emerged through time and experience.

A pure Athenian democracy today at the scale of a country, with the complexities of the day, wouldn’t hold for more than a few years, at best.

[satvikpendem]

You asked whether something is a democracy, not a modern democracy, hence why I gave the examples I did. And even in a modern one, I am unconvinced that just because there are features like you mention for modern democracies does not make them not actual democracies. They very well can be, by the dictionary definition of the word, just not free ones.

Also, no need for the ad hominems, there is no reason to accuse me of not understanding something or it being "embarrassing," that is not helpful to any sort of conversation.

[Juliate]

I get your point. But calling your argument embarrassing is not an ad hominem.

I’m not saying you do not understand. I am implying that in a discussion in the XXIth century about the concept of democracy as it has evolved in both the littérature and the history, and has been demonstrably stable and efficient, “democracy” is understood in the modern acception, and especially here, in the context of the USA Constitution - and there it has the requirements I laid out.

Turning any country today into an antique democracy rule would make no sense, unless you accept a peculiar instability. We have experienced, in many nations, how to adjust and balance how a democracy can work and self-sustain. However, we also still experience how fragile they stay.

And the disappointment is abysmal. Hence, perhaps, me being a tad tense in my words, for that I present my apologies.

[aerhardt]

That sounds like Ancient Greek democracy except the gap was much larger than 51-49.