At times I think about how democracies, especially those plagued by winner-takes-all mechanics like presidential and semi-presidential republics, can pretend to be democratic while de facto being very authoritarian.
In the USSR, workers (in Soviets) voted their delegates and the delegates in turn elected the top hierarchy of the communist party.
So yes, the USSR was obviously an authoritarian regime controlled by a single party, but you still had to lobby and depend on getting elected by your party, whose delegates had to be first elected by the workers.
In modern Russia, Belarus, etc?
It's arguably even worse, the elected presidents and prime ministers de facto control the opposition which pretends to be an opposition, and real opposition faces either legal issues or direct threats.
And yet, you can pretend to be a democracy and tell your people its better than it was once, but is it really?
It's been 60 years now till the last parliamentary republic turned authoritarian, Sri Lanka. Every single other country to do so has always been a presidential or semi presidential republic. From the former Eastern Europe, to Asia, to Africa to South America.
We should now know that electing a single person to hold executive power is just non democratic and concentrates too much power in a single individual, but we keep falling in love with winner-takes-all elections and loving the idea of a single individual that doesn't need to win his own parties or PMs support every day can fix things quickly.
In the USSR, workers (in Soviets) voted their delegates and the delegates in turn elected the top hierarchy of the communist party.
So yes, the USSR was obviously an authoritarian regime controlled by a single party, but you still had to lobby and depend on getting elected by your party, whose delegates had to be first elected by the workers.
In modern Russia, Belarus, etc?
It's arguably even worse, the elected presidents and prime ministers de facto control the opposition which pretends to be an opposition, and real opposition faces either legal issues or direct threats.
And yet, you can pretend to be a democracy and tell your people its better than it was once, but is it really?
It's been 60 years now till the last parliamentary republic turned authoritarian, Sri Lanka. Every single other country to do so has always been a presidential or semi presidential republic. From the former Eastern Europe, to Asia, to Africa to South America.
We should now know that electing a single person to hold executive power is just non democratic and concentrates too much power in a single individual, but we keep falling in love with winner-takes-all elections and loving the idea of a single individual that doesn't need to win his own parties or PMs support every day can fix things quickly.