Democracies Becoming Less Stable in Recent Decades
60 replies, posted
[img]http://i.imgur.com/CTeI6Jp.png?1[/img]
[quote]Political scientists have a theory called “democratic consolidation,” which holds that once countries develop democratic institutions, a robust civil society and a certain level of wealth, their democracy is secure.
For decades, global events seemed to support that idea. Data from Freedom House, a watchdog organization that measures democracy and freedom around the world, shows that the number of countries classified as “free” rose steadily from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. Many Latin American countries transitioned from military rule to democracy; after the end of the Cold War, much of Eastern Europe followed suit. And longstanding liberal democracies in North America, Western Europe and Australia seemed more secure than ever.
But since 2005, Freedom House’s index has shown a decline in global freedom each year. Is that a statistical anomaly, a result of a few random events in a relatively short period of time? Or does it indicate a meaningful pattern?[/quote]
[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html"]Source[/URL]
The author's of the studies themselves admit that its hard to equate correlation and causation in this scenario, but they do believe that nationalism is increasing at a tremendous (and frightening, imo) rate.
At least, that's what I picked up from the article. I'd encourage reading the whole thing and not just the snippet here: its really rather interesting.
I, too, welcome our autonomous robot overlords
who needs democracy when you can achieve singularity
no, but really, it's an interesting article. it seems that the countries they mention have problems with general trust in their government as well. I mean, who wants to live in a democracy where your representatives are corrupt?
Ironic how nationalism is surging at a time when government surveillance and shadiness is at an all time high. Its like people dont trust their government yet still deeply love it at the same time.
[quote]Of course, this is just one paper. And the researchers’ approach, like all data-driven social science, has limitations. It is only as good as the survey data that underlies it, for instance, [b]and it does not take into account other factors that could be important to overall stability, such as economic growth[/b]. At least one prominent political scientist argues that Mr. Mounk’s and Mr. Foa’s data is not as worrying as they believe it to be.[/quote]
Oh, well then the US should be fine then...
[QUOTE=paindoc;51448596]The author's of the studies themselves admit that its hard to equate correlation and causation in this scenario, but they do believe that nationalism is increasing at a tremendous (and frightening, imo) rate.
At least, that's what I picked up from the article. I'd encourage reading the whole thing and not just the snippet here: its really rather interesting.[/QUOTE]
What else can be expected when people feel like their communities and identities are being slowly disintegrated and destroyed?
[QUOTE=Firetornado;51448612]Ironic how nationalism is surging at a time when government surveillance and shadiness is at an all time high. Its like people dont trust their government yet still deeply love it at the same time.[/QUOTE]
I don't think nationalism has to mean agreeing with your government, I think the reason MAGA is so prevalent is because it seems to insinuate taking back your country from the corrupt people in power.
fascism is good
-snip-
[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;51448662]Question, Why then is Trump Still an unpopular president and Clinton got 2 million more votes.[/QUOTE]
Trump had a 54% approval rating last I checked. The vote discrepancy has to do with how our electoral system works, it doesn't extrapolate onto global political trends.
[QUOTE=King Tiger;51448669]Trump had a 54% approval rating last I checked. The vote discrepancy has to do with how our electoral system works, it doesn't extrapolate onto global political trends.[/QUOTE]
Whete on earth did you check this? If I recall correctly, both candidates have some of the lowest approval ratings in history
fascism is seriously taking the world by storm and it's scary how compliant people are being
Dont be suprised if greece has a facist uprising by 2030, considering the current economic and political climate.
[QUOTE=da space core;51448695]Whete on earth did you check this? If I recall correctly, both candidates have some of the lowest approval ratings in history[/QUOTE]
Looks like I got his rating mixed up with Obama's. Trump's at 46%, a big jump since the election ended.
Imbalanced polit-correctness has largely contributed to issue.
People are asked to tolerate way too much under presumption that if they are against said policy their opinion can be dismissed as unequal, not deserving attention.
Taste of overacceptance and overreaction became bitter.
People started noticing a pattern were these "ideas of proposed equality and prosperity" became a staple of double standard policy:
US nods to world as example of fighter of democracy and yet find new and new excuses to keep close ties with countries like Saudi Arabia, supporting nationalst goverment in Ukraine(forgiving them all the atrocies in the name of "its's ok since nor Russia doing it).
EU positions itself as unity of nations but Brussel's authority is based on idea of ignorance toward opinion of smaller players. And those in charge are soo clearly puppetered by White House (Merkel) that they have to put on hold large amount of issues till january just to make sure it appeals new master.
Majority got tired from globalization that repositions power - they want people with whom they can associate in charge of their own country, not some abroad cabinet of elected representatives making decisons for their life, giving them a second priority under reason of "larger issues".
Thats why populist Trump won and that is why nationalism pushing through.
[QUOTE=Judas;51448701]fascism is seriously taking the world by storm and it's scary how compliant people are being[/QUOTE]
I think these neo-fascists are going to be in for a shock when it turns out that fascism is just a bad idea now as it was 70 years ago.
People are just becoming complacent with democracy. Sure, the generation right after WW2 are going to think democracy is the greatest thing ever after dictatorships killed millions of people, but since that, there has been relative peace among Western countries, and due to the unchanging and inefficient nature of democracy, people are getting frustrated when all the world's problems aren't immediately going away.
I think it's mostly economic problems leading people to care about political correctness so much. Desperate populaces usually either directly attack the people who are fucking them over (e.g. october revolution) or they turn to things like nationalism, traditional values, etc. with fascism. They talk about political correctness, but if the jobs weren't leaving them and new generations weren't sacked with so much angst about the future it wouldn't really swing people to the far right.
Many of them hardly even actually make attacks against political correctness, just vaguely reference it when they want to say something slightly non-popular lol. It's pretty much just a scapegoat you can point at for all of the problems, Trump has even claimed that it's why we lose wars.
[QUOTE=King Tiger;51448669]Trump had a 54% approval rating last I checked. The vote discrepancy has to do with how our electoral system works, it doesn't extrapolate onto global political trends.[/QUOTE]
Trump hasn't even taken office yet.
That approval rating will drop faster than you or I can blink after half a year with him in office.
I refuse to believe less than 90% of people in any of those countries do not believe democracy is an essential let alone fucking 50%-25%
[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51449078]I refuse to believe less than 90% of people in any of those countries do not believe democracy is an essential let alone fucking 50%-25%[/QUOTE]
I'm just really wondering what the data is coming from, it shocked me at first, there is a red flag in which the author of the study himself said Correlation =/ Causation.
Please just be a fluctuation, I don't want this trend continuing, the last thing we need is another self-inflicted harmful world-war-style bullshit while we have climate change and other challenges facing humanity knocking on the door.
[QUOTE=Firetornado;51448612]Ironic how nationalism is surging at a time when government surveillance and shadiness is at an all time high. Its like people dont trust their government yet still deeply love it at the same time.[/QUOTE]
No, fascism is the want for an all powerful authoritarian government. And while that's got a bit of overlap with nationalism, they are not one and the same. Socialism isn't communism, but communism is socialism, for example.
It's not the concept of a government people want to celebrate with nationalism, it's really a sense of "community" in the larger sense. If they can articulate it or not, i think people want solidarity, unity and a more cohesive and functional society. Individualism has been pushed so far, the individual is elevated above the collective, to the point where it's at the [I]expense[/I] of the greater society. The individual is increasingly isolated and accommodated in today's world, and because of that, the social web that upholds a society is slowly crumbling as people slowly recede into their own little bubbles. Is it any wonder people react to this by moving to reaffirm the biggest social structure and collective identity we have?
People give the concept of a nation state or flag shit, but there's a reason we're so privy to making them. Swearing allegiance to a flag isn't entirely to strengthen loyalty to the nation state, it's to reaffirm or assert an individual's sense of belonging to the social group of the country. So to call nationalism a platforming and embracing of an authoritative institution is to fundamentally miss the point of what nationalism is.
If anything, wanting to reestablish the communal idea of a country is a direct reaction [I]to[/I] a broken goverment. If people start caring about the country again, they'll want to fix it in their own best interests, and in the interests of everyone around them, which they identify with. And that's probably one of the better ways to go about it. Beats the hell out of a russian style revolution for a start
nationalism is a hindrance to true progress imo
No wonder nationalism is on the rise when the ones in power paints people out as nazis and racist for being worried about how immigration is affecting their country.
[QUOTE=Saturn V;51451243]nationalism is a hindrance to true progress imo[/QUOTE]
Yeah the great progress of having a completely vanilla, monoculture world that's completely dominated by multinational corporate power. Too bad pesky nationalism is getting in the way!
Why am I not surprised Ireland isn't included in this?
[QUOTE=Firetornado;51448612]Ironic how nationalism is surging at a time when government surveillance and shadiness is at an all time high. Its like people dont trust their government yet still deeply love it at the same time.[/QUOTE]
I don't think you really understand
[QUOTE=King Tiger;51451273]Yeah the great progress of having a completely vanilla, monoculture world that's completely dominated by multinational corporate power. Too bad pesky nationalism is getting in the way![/QUOTE]
this is actually what i think
not even lying
the corporate part is a bit off but other than that i think shit's the way to go
[QUOTE=Saturn V;51451389]this is actually what i think
not even lying
the corporate part is a bit off but other than that i think shit's the way to go[/QUOTE]
How does it feel to see your terrible ideology fail and collapse worldwide before your very eyes?
[QUOTE=King Tiger;51451462]How does it feel to see your terrible ideology fail and collapse worldwide before your very eyes?[/QUOTE]
I dunno, hasn't nationalism done that before ?
Globalism just seems to be inevitable with how capitalism works. If you want to stick with that you're going to have to figure out how to reform and deal with the issues that it DOES bring up.
[QUOTE=thelurker1234;51451473]I dunno, hasn't nationalism done that before ?
Globalism just seems to be inevitable with how capitalism works. If you want to stick with that you're going to have to figure out how to reform and deal with the issues that it DOES bring up.[/QUOTE]
Nationalism is always going to be the basic human state unless you want to argue that humans aren't primates.
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