61–70 of 210 posts
ETA: It's not erroneous, as that gang is known as either Barrio 18 or Mara 18. At any rate, ignore the letters - it's 18 vs 13.
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The interesting one to watch out for is how often democracies form with the support of an existing democracy - I only have a loose understanding of the history but France seemed to have an outsized role in the US becoming what it is today. The failures (USSR, Republic of China for example) where democracy doesn't take on a wide scale are probably also interesting studies. The key problem in setting up a democracy is…
> The interesting one to watch out for is how often democracies form with the support of an existing democracy The more interesting one is how often a democracy can survive against democratic superpower wishes. I.e, during the cold war era, the US helped taking down more democratic governments than the USSR itself. That is a bit of ironic remark. People tend to forget that the US didn't like democracies outside its s…
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The practical experience of 20th century Latin America countries, and their history, both regarding domestic politics and dynamics and external influence and meddling?
This makes sense. Latin America is incompatible with democracy and the reason for that is history; such a conclusion is so obvious it is a surprise that anyone would support the idea of democracy anywhere in the continent
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I think democracy needs a “Deep State” to succeed. This can be imposed by a time of autocracy gradually evolving into democracy - see the UK, imposed during colonialism and then taken over after independence - see the Indian Civil Service, Courts, etc, or imposed by an occupying force - see Germany. Without that “Deep State” it will degenerate in alternating bouts of violence until people cry out for autocracy - See…
My general working thesis is that 99.9% of the time when people refer to the “deep state,” they just mean “the state.” Aren’t you just referring to regular government institutions or is there something I’m missing from your comment?
Which... can be a government institution... but not generally in a democracy.
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My general working thesis is that 99.9% of the time when people refer to the “deep state,” they just mean “the state.” Aren’t you just referring to regular government institutions or is there something I’m missing from your comment?
Can’t speak to the original comment, but I think part of a “deep state” is institutional inertia/tradition. A state without that deep-rooted sense of continuity is much more fragile. Having a civil service without political allegiance seems to be critical to preservation of a democratic system.
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Can’t speak to the original comment, but I think part of a “deep state” is institutional inertia/tradition. A state without that deep-rooted sense of continuity is much more fragile. Having a civil service without political allegiance seems to be critical to preservation of a democratic system.
Why are you under the impression that the bureaucracy class does not have a political leaning/allegiance? We know it does, 95% of DC votes for the people that want larger government.
In the U.S. I would say that Trump’s takeover of the GOP has generally de-emphasized smaller government as a plank of the party. He certainly doesn’t care about it.
Whether the bureaucrats lean towards one party or the other doesn’t change the fact that they aren’t compelled out of fear for their jobs to break the law at the president’s command.
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As a cynical idealist, I once tried to find 1 country of decent size that could escape the poverty/mis-governance trap while being a democracy. I found zero success stories. Every 20th century economic success story was a defacto autocratic nation. They only transitioned to democracy after they'd reached a certain level of development. (I excluded preexisting high HDI nations and ones that accidentally hit mineral go…
Iceland and Ireland went from being poor to wealthy and stable, both as small democracies, and during the 20th century.
I'm taking the OP as talking more about "you can't democracy your way out of being Haiti" kind of things.
It's crazy how popular authoritarian demagogues have gotten around the world. His campaign, mannerism, and treatment of media and opposition can be a cut and paste of a bunch of different politicians of the world. At the end of the day though, I really hope it all works out.
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Hmm... possibly a literal survivorship bias at work here? :)
Sure, that's part of it. The stats are the stats - the rest is anecdotes. But, with experience in a place you realize the crime is concentrated to certain places and groups of people.