What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that it comes in 2 levels: the hardware and the software.
The hardware are the objective written institutions: the laws, separation of powers, freedom of assembly, movement and opinion, open elections, etc.
The software is what is within the mind of every each citizen, how he respects and relates to the ones that are different from him, including different social classes, religions and ethnicity, how he feels about corruption, nepotism and abuse by authorities, how tribal or civilized are the disagreements, etc.
Most people think that to implement democracy you just need to make the hardware. But the hardware doesn't work without the software. Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Egypt and other countries (Eastern Germany and AfD?) tried democracy but felt back into tyranny, plutocracy and theocracy precisely because there wasn't a software, a democratic heart.
Why did Poland make your list? Democracy here is better than ever. And we've been democracy since at least 15th century, with exception of times when Poland was ruled by foreign powers.
What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that the nation most responsible for spreading it isn't one - it has a representative republic. There's a reason that the US government was not set up as a democracy - it is rule by mob. But I completely agree that in addition to having just rules and a fair legal system, people must believe in the same for it to work.
Comments
What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that it comes in 2 levels: the hardware and the software.
The hardware are the objective written institutions: the laws, separation of powers, freedom of assembly, movement and opinion, open elections, etc.
The software is what is within the mind of every each citizen, how he respects and relates to the ones that are different from him, including different social classes, religions and ethnicity, how he feels about corruption, nepotism and abuse by authorities, how tribal or civilized are the disagreements, etc.
Most people think that to implement democracy you just need to make the hardware. But the hardware doesn't work without the software. Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Egypt and other countries (Eastern Germany and AfD?) tried democracy but felt back into tyranny, plutocracy and theocracy precisely because there wasn't a software, a democratic heart.
Why did Poland make your list? Democracy here is better than ever. And we've been democracy since at least 15th century, with exception of times when Poland was ruled by foreign powers.
What a lot of people don't understand about democracy is that the nation most responsible for spreading it isn't one - it has a representative republic. There's a reason that the US government was not set up as a democracy - it is rule by mob. But I completely agree that in addition to having just rules and a fair legal system, people must believe in the same for it to work.
Direct democracy and representative democracy are both forms of democracy.