Russian developments

How about Costa Rica?

 

Irrelevent Akira. It functioned. I knew you'd bring up the women issue, but it's still irrelevent. Even in today's democracy, we have people who don't have the right or can't vote: permanent (non-citizen) residents, people younger than 18, illegal immigrants, felons, the illiterate.

So what's your point? That a Democracy with voting rights for women and minorities is only possible with authoritarism and industrialism, but if just men vote, it can be done with only farming? The original assertion was that Democracy isn't possible without a heavy hand and some industrialization first, and that's clearly wrong. Don't take Athens as an example, just look at the Iroquois.

The fact that voting rights in Athens was based on property rights was a improvement on the historical systems of birthright. Birthright can't be changed, property can be acquired. Birthright is a caste system, but however "evil" you think a property rights voting system is, it's more socially mobile and fair in comparison to what went before. "Citizenship" (the right to vote) was open to all male Athenians.

They had a system of representation (and like it or not, the men represented their family's interests). They had courts. They had public institutions, schools. And the system survived for over 2 hundred years, broken only by plague and foreign interference (Peloponnesian War).

That fact that it doesn't agree your modern liberal viewpoint is irrelevent. I'm sure 100 years from now, some morons will be claiming that the the US and Europe weren't democracies because they didn't extend some universal freebie that people in 100 years from now will view as a "basic human right"

 

Democoder - I wasn't condemning classical Athens for limiting suffrage, I was merely stating that majoritian democracy tends to be unworkable in non-industrial societies. Sure, you'll find an exception here and there (like Clashman's Costa Rica or your India) but the general trend speaks volumes.

I would also go as far as to say that majoritian "democracy" is a substandard electoral system even in an industrial state. Far more efficent IMO would be taxpayer-only suffrage with a Constitution that placed extremely strict* limits on the powers of government.

*Border defense, fraud + theft + violent crime prosecution, and contract enforcement.

 

And you called akira liberal demo

 

There are very clear, causal, relations between democracy and economic progress. Democracy alone may not be enough (depending on how much you put in the word "democracy"), but it sure is important.

For further details I recommend the excellent, matter-of-fact oriented, verifiable, easy-read book "In Defence of Global Capitalism".

 

To say that good economy brings democracy or the otherway around as some sort of de facto standard is a bit shallow I think, since there have been occurances of both ways already. I'm more along the lines of Robert Putnam (who did a HUGE research on northern vs southern Italy from the 70's to the 90's or so, on the subject of democracy), and to put it shortly he came to the conclusion that there was something more in the mix than just economy and democracy, and the missing link was something that he called 'civic society'. Basically he thinks that if a country (or just 'place') has strong traditions of commitment to social life, trust, tolerance, solidarity, social structures and so on will have a better chance of developing democratic and economic wealth. And he found that northern Italy had 'more civic society' than southern Italy and explained the differences of development from there.

[Edit: He found that both southern and northern Italy had similiar economical development at one point in history, and then wondered why there was now such a large difference in development now. His research went as far back as to around the thirteenth century.]

Obviously though that will lead to the question of "what brings more civic society?". Since Putnam thought that Civic Society -> wealth/democracy, then something must also occur before civic society, if you follow the same line of thought that Putnam did. But anyways, I'm quite short on time at the moment so I will refer to your friend google since I don't have time to write any more on the subject hehe.

 

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...040210/ap_on_re_eu/russia_missing_candidate_7

Damn! There goes my soda pop.

 

But internal peace, civil stability, and functioning institutions don't spring up ex nihilo, they arise due to the specialization of labor that industrialization makes possible. I do agree about strict market regulations - that's a personal bete noire.

The Future of Freedom - Illiberal Democracy by Fareed Zakaria is a excellent book, I'd advise everyone here to read it. Zakaria is usually dead-on about international affairs (except Turkey where he's dead wrong most of the time, but that's another story for another day).

 

So akira I assume you have relations to Turkey (or are from turkey) Most people probably say that he is dead wrong about wherever they are from ... or maybe not just a thought.

 

My mother was born in Constantinople and was chased out with her family during the September 6-7, 1955 anti-Greek/Armenian pogrom.

Does anyone know why this guy just disappeared for 4 days dring the middle of his Presidential campaign? I heard strange stories about Russian politics but this one is king over all others.

 

He's apparently saying he just wanted to get out of town for a couple of days and was visiting friends in Kiev. However, you'd think you'd tell your wife if something like that happened. Pretty wierd.

 

Of course that's likely not the whole story - something else is going on and we'll probably never know what...

 

So, is Mr. Ingvald Godal going to apologize for basically publicly accusing Putin of murder? (BTW, that story has magically disappeared from the website)