[shevy-java]

No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement.

Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either.

We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.

[Calazon]

If the decision-makers are elected by the people, it's not a dictatorship, no matter how many atrocities the nation commits.

You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.

[ClumsyPilot]

Many dictators were democratically elected, this is not a sensible approach.

[layer8]

The criterion is if the parties in power can be voted out of office again, which is very much the case in Europe (see the recent example of Hungary). A dictatorship is if this is not possible anymore.

[chrystalkey]

I think you mean something different than I when we think of dictatorships. I agree in being unhappy with this decision and maneuvering, but we do have to keep a watch out for actual, in the political sense, dictatorships and not mix them up with other concerns.

[phainopepla2]

What relationship does the death penalty and genocide have to democracy (or lack thereof)? That seems orthogonal to the definition.