Mediaboss Marketing

Empirical ViewNumber of Democracies

The majority of the world's countries are now governed by democratic regimes, defined as systems with citizen political participation, constraints on the power of the executive, and a guarantee of civil liberties. The visualization below shows the slow increase of democratic countries over the last 200 years. The rise of democracies has been interrupted by the atrocities during the two World Wars many young democracies fell back to become autocratic ahead of the Second World War.

After 1945 the number of democracies has started to grow again, but the very dramatic shift towards a democratic world has been the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1989. By clicking on 'Autocracies' and 'Anocracies', you can also see that after 1989 the number of autocracies has decreased dramatically while the number of anocracies initially increased then has stayed fairly stable.

The mere number of democratic countries does not us how many people in the world actually enjoy democratic rights since the population in different countries varies hugely. Therefore it is more interesting to look at the number of people governed by different political regimes. This is shown in the chart below.

By clicking on 'Relative', the following graph shows the share of people living in different regimes over the last two centuries.

The chart shows the share of people living under different types of political regimes over the last 2 centuries. Throughout the 19th century more than a third of the population lived in in countries that were colonized by imperial powers and almost everyone else lived in autocratically ruled countries. The first expansion of political freedom from the late 19th century onward was crushed by the rise of authoritarian regimes that in many countries took their place in the time leading up to the Second World War.

In the second half of the 20th century the world has changed significantly: Colonial empires ended, and more and more countries turned democratic: The share of the world population living in democracies increased continuously particularly important was the breakdown of the Soviet Union which allowed more countries to democratise. Now more than every second person in the world lives in a democracy.

We see the same data on political regimes onthe mapbelow, but it is worth pointing out that 4 out of 5 people in the world that live in an autocracy live in China.

The world has changed: 2 centuries ago most countries were autocratically ruled or part of a colonial empire, today most countries are democracies. The map below shows the data for 2015, but you can move the slider at the bottom past to see this change over the last 2 centuries.

Most countries in Europe and the Americas have become democracies. Some parts of Africa - especially in the West and the South - have democratized and so have countries in Asia; India is the world's largest democracy. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Mongolia are all full democracies according to the Polity IV evaluation.

The following world mapof the age of democratic regimesshows that a democratic world is only a very recent achievement. It also indicates that economic success goes together with political liberation. The countries that have democratized first are mostly those countries that first achieved economic growth. The present rates of economic growth in the poorer countries of the world therefore give hope for further democratization around the world.

Below we will analyse what causes a country to turn democratic and vice versa what consequences democratisation has for the living conditions in the country.

But first I want to show how democratic countries differ from non-democratic countries.

The scatter plot below shows the latest observations for GDP per capita and the Polity IV score. No country that is an autocracy (score between -10 and -6) has an income of more than 15,000 international-$ if it is not heavily dependent on fossil-fuel exports. Countries that are autocratically ruled and do not have the option to export fossil fuels are poor.

As a measure for the health situation in a country I am looking at child mortality.

What we can see from the scatter plot below is that autocratic countries rarely have a healthy population. Few autocratic countries achieved a child mortality below 10 per 1,000. Democratic countries Polity score of 7 or higher on the other hand often have child mortality rates below 10 or even 5 per 1,000.

This cross section at one point in time does not tell us anything about the length of time that a country was ruled by a democratic government for this we have to study the link between democratisation and health in more detail and more carefully.

It is difficult to identify what causes countries to turn democratic and vice versa that is investigating how living conditions change in countries that turn democratic. The reason why social science gets so very difficult is that all good things tend to come together. We have just seen that in the preceding correlates section democratic countries are richer, healthier, happier, better educated and more. This means that if we study measures of all these aspects across countries we find a correlation between all of them; social scientists therefore use clever methods when trying to distinguish between correlation and causation.

A long-standing theory in political science stipulates that a country's level of education attainment is a key determinant of the emergence and sustainability of democratic political institutions, both because it promotes political participation at the individual level, and because it fosters a collective sense of civic duty.

Under this hypothesis, therefore, we should expect that education levels in a country correlate positively with measures of democratisation in subsequent years. The following visualization shows that this positive correlation is indeed supported by the data. As we can see, countries where adults had a higher average education level in 1970, are also more likely to have democratic political regimes today(you can read more about measures of education level in our entry on Global Rise of Education).

As usual, these results should be interpreted carefully, because they do not imply a causal link: it does not prove that increasing education necessarily produces democratic outcomes everywhere in the world.

However, the academic research here does suggest that there is a causal link between education and democratization indeed, a number of empirical academic papers have found that this positive relationship remains after controlling for many other country characteristics (see, for example, Lutz, Crespo-Cuaresma, and AbbasiShavazi 20103).

In considering the link between thetype of political regime and the protection of human rights it is important to note that the right to vote on those in political power is in itself a fundamental right. In this sensedemocratic countries are by definition those countries in which this important dimension of human rights is protected.

Butthere are several human rights and it isinteresting to study the link betweendemocracy and these. As we note in our entry on human rights it is however very difficult to measure human rights protections consistently. The best available human rights measure is theprotection score published by political scientist Christopher J. Fariss in Farriss (2014)4. This measure focusses on the protection of the physical integrity of citizensand captureswhethera government protects the physical integrity of its citizens and takes into accounttorture, government killing, political imprisonment, extrajudicial executions, mass killings and disappearances. Higher human rights scores indicate better human rights protection.

The visualisation below plotsthe regime type again captured bythe Polity IVmeasure as before against thishuman rightsprotection score.

Political regime scores of 6 and above indicate a democratic regime and we see from this chart that citizens of non-democratic countries have generally much lower chances of being governedby a regime that ensures the protection ofhuman rights in this dimension.With the exception of two countries Singapore and Oman all countries thathave human rights score of higher than 0.5 are democratic regimes.

Mulligan, Gil, and Sala-i-Martin (2004)5investigate the link between democratic rule and the protection of human rights in a sample of 121 counties controlling for other important variables. The authors find that relative to autocratic regimes countries that are democratically ruled are less likely to execute, regulate religion, and to censor the press.

We have seen above that there is empirical evidence that an expansion ofeducation is making it more likely that a country becomes a democracy. Now we want toask the question the other way around, isdemocratisation followed by an improvement of education?6

Evidence that democratisation leads to better education

It is notstraightforward to identify the possible effect of a democratic regime on the expansion of education because it has to be distinguished from the previously discussed reverse causation running from education to democracy.

Gallego (2010)7 presents the most careful analysis that we are aware of and presents evidencethat democracy hasindeed a causal effect on primary school enrollment.8

Other papers deal with the issue of possible reverse causality in a simpler fashion and use lagged observations of democracy as a possible determinant for the level of education.For example Baum and Lake (2001)find in 'The invisible hand of democracy' that democratisation increasedsecondary-school enrollment.9

Also, Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson (2015)10find that democracy is associated with an increase in secondary schooling.

In the following we summarize some evidence on the channels through which democratisation improves education:

Electoral competition in democraciesincreases the incentive to abolish school fees

Harding and Stasavage (2014)11 equally identify an impact ofdemocracy on primary education. The explanation the authors proposeis that electoral competitionin democracies increases the incentives for politicians toabolish primary school fees. The authors caution that democratisation hasa much small effect on the provisionof school inputs and consequently the quality of schooling, because executive actions on these issues are more difficult to monitor and thereforeconstitute a smalleradvantage to politicians in electoral competition.

Democratisation increaseseducational spending

In an earlier paper Stasvage (2005)12 focussed on Africa andfinds that the shift to multiparty competition in African countries in the 1990sincreased total educational spending as a percentage of GDP.

In an extensive study of 100 countries over 40 years Ansell (2010)13 presents evidence that democratisation increases bothtotal educational spending as a shareof GDP and as a shareof the government budget.

Evidence that democracy improvesteacherstudent ratios

Naidu (2011)14 studies the effect of the 19th century disenfranchisement of black citizens in the U.S. South throughpoll taxes and literacy tests. The author finds that this reversal of democracy"reduced the teacher-child ratio in black schools by 10-23%, with no significant effects on white teacher-child ratios".

Democracy improved local politics in China and lead to more educated politicians

Martinez-Bravo et al. (2012)15 study the gradual introduction oflocal elections in China.

Theauthors exploit the staggered timing ofthe introduction of village elections as a natural experiment for causal identification. The authors "find that elections significantly increase public goods expenditure, the increase corresponds to demand and is paralleled by an increase in public goods provision and local taxes" confirming some of the results elsewhere in this entry including increasedpublic education in villages with more children. Theincrease in public expenditures overall total public goods investment increased by 27 percent is funded by villagersand is accompanied by an increase in the amount of local taxes paid by villagers.

The introduction of elections also reduced inequality by redistributing from the rich to the poor partly through land redistribution fromelite-controlled enterprises to household farmland and improved agricultural productivity by increasing irrigation whichis likely to "disproportionately benefit poorer households".

Additionally the authors report that following the introduction of electionsthe turnover of village chairmen increased and their characteristics changed.Theyare less likely to be Communist Party members and the politcians are importantly bettereducated themselves.

It is necessarily controversial to measure a complex concept such as the type of a political regime in a single metric. But since it can be useful to quantify the political regime characteristics so that it is possible to compare political regimes over time and between countries and to study the drivers and consequences of political regime change quantitatively. For example a field of study where this can be useful is studying the link between democratisation and the end of mass famines.

A much cited, thorough evaluation of commonly used democracy measures has been presented by Munck and Verkuilen (2002).16 Unfortunately the authors find a trade-off between the comprehensiveness of the empirical scope and the quality of the assessment in terms of conceptualization, measurement and aggregation. According to the authors, the Polity IV measures are a 'partial exception' of this tradeoff, and therefore I rely on these measures mostly in this entry. In general, the Polity IV defines democracy as a system which has institutions in which citizens can express their preferences, has constraints on the power of the executive, and a guarantee of civil liberties. It defines an autocracy as a system that restricts political participation by citizens, has executives chosen within the political elite, and executives with few institutional constraints.

The Polity IV measure used here is certainly also questionable as would every other alternative but we chose it as my main source because based on our comparison with alternatives and the paper by Munck and Verkuilen (2002) it is the best available option, particularly if a long-run perspective is the main objective.

We also have to keep in mind that this measure cannot capture everything that matters for a political regime. For example it makes sense to measure corruption or human rights separately from the democracy concept. Not because it doesn't matter but because all aspects matter and for different question we want to be able to differentiate between the importance of different factors.

This graph compares the political regime measures that are available for a very long time - since the early 19th century: the Polyarchy measure and the Polity measure and for a shorter period the the Freedom House measure. Shown is the share of democratic countries among all independent countries. There are some differences but the graphs shows they largely move together.

See the original post here:
Democracy - Our World in Data

These examples are from the Cambridge English Corpus and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Advocates of market liberalization commonly worry that democracies will eschew economically rational policies because voters cannot tolerate short-term pain on the promise of long-term gain.

The demand for redistribution is fairly inelastic across industrialized democracies.

Further, while the number of new parties decreases gradually as democracies age, the support for new entrants follows no clear unidirectional pattern across time.

Establishing whether democracies adopt similar growth strategies is important : the economic strategies chosen by governments can have serious implications for income distribution and human welfare.

Moreover, my calculations of consensus democracies from the late 1960s to 1990 are not closely associated with neo-corporatism.

Such developing democracies clearly represent promising territory for research on the political impact of television.

To date, this coding procedure has been applied to over 1,500 programmes, in about thirty democracies, during the post-war period.

We tested this assertion on 113 elections in thirteen democracies.

The culmination of a decade-long process of harmonization and negotiation, this invitation symbolized the success of these countries in instituting political democracies and market economies.

Electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 62.5 percent of the world's population.

We expect that the more advanced democracies will have mass publics who are negative to a situation where religion plays an important role in politics.

The directive for emerging democracies is clear - promote democratically oriented parties and citizen participation in these parties.

In most parliamentary democracies, single parties are unable to command a majority of support in the legislature.

Finally, he finds evidence that new democracies with low levels of initial political competition are also more likely to meet with civil conflict.

Why do new parties keep emerging and winning votes in new democracies?

See all examples of democracy

Link:
DEMOCRACY | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

Democracy is a government simulation game that was first developed by Positech Games in 2005, with a sequel released in December 2007 and a third game in 2013. The player plays as if they are the president or prime minister of a democratic government. The player must introduce and alter policies in seven areas tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, transport, law and order and public services. Each policy has an effect on the happiness of various voter groups, as well as affecting factors such as crime and air quality. The player has to deal with "situations", which are typically problems such as petrol protests or homelessness, and also has to make decisions on dilemmas that arise each turn.

After deciding which nation to play as, the player must win the support of various factions which make up the electorate, including the religious, patriotic, parents, capitalists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and others, and thus win the ensuing elections that take place. The player introduces policies and uses sliders to change the amount of government funding, level of a tax or generally the law and regulations in that particular area. Of course, because each individual person belongs to several factions (e.g.: a Poor Conservative Smoker who is a Patriot or a Rich, Socialist person who is also a Drinker), it is practically impossible to control all the voters. Before each general election, two promises are made by the player to the electorate (e.g.: reduce unemployment by 10%). If the player has not kept these promises by the next election, the people become annoyed and cynicism increases.

To make policy changes, the player must spend political capital, which is generated by loyal ministers.

The player must also try to balance the budget and pay off the country's debts without losing votes and causing tax evasion due to very high taxes.

There are also many events, dilemmas and situations in the game which the player must deal with. An example of an event might be the curing of a disease, a dilemma may be who to appoint as a senior judge and a situation may be high levels of pollution. An event happens, sometimes due to policies however the player doesn't take part; they simply profit or suffer from it. A dilemma is an important decision which must be resolved for the turn to be ended and situations are ongoing conditions which must be dealt with or helped and enjoyed.

The games designer has described the code behind the game as being based on a neural network. This has allowed the game to be very easily modded, and most of the 'game logic' in it is openly editable in simple text CSV files, allowing players to change the way the core mechanics of the game operate. A number of mods have been released for both the first and second game in the series, and are generally released on the Positech forum. Mods have included new countries (and real countries for Democracy 2) and the addition of factors such as inflation, as well as enhancement of the voter cynicism factor in Democracy 2.

A sequel to the game was released in December 2007, which, while very similar to the original in terms of gameplay, differs in that it uses fictional nations (although modders have converted the real nations from the original for play on the new version), and has numerous new features, including party membership, terrorism and real world statistical data. Many of the previously existing features have been enhanced: for example, the amount of political capital needed to change a policy now differs depending on which policy one is changing, and whether one is introducing it, raising it, lowering it, or cancelling it. In December 2008, Democracy 2 won the Game Tunnel "Simulation game of the year" award, something the first game had already achieved. In October 2013, Democracy 3 was released.[1] In late 2015 Positech announced an 'expandalone' for the game set entirely in Africa, with a different simulation model, music and graphics entitled Democracy 3: Africa.

The original game was released in 2007 in the United States by Tri-Synergy, with added events and policies, and a special mode in which the player controls a fictional nation.[2] The game received "mixed" reviews, according to game aggregator Metacritic.[3] Website Game Tunnel scored the game 8/10 overall, stating "losing a game of Democracy is almost as rewarding as winning your next election" and "there is always the motivation to do better next time".[4] The website also awarded Democracy its own 2005 'Simulation Game of the Year' award.[5] About.com rated the game 3.5/5 and said "Democracy does exactly what it sets out to do - get you thinking about how even small changes effect [sic] different groups of people".[6]

Democracy 3 also received "mixed" reviews, according to Metacritic.[7] While Polish magazine CD-Action stated that the game "does much more for understanding democracy than any citizenship lesson,"[8] Daniel Schindel's critical review for Unwinnable noted several inaccuracies concerning the in-game effects of imposing death penalty, legalizing drugs, and strong labor laws.[9] A spin-off game, titled Democracy 3: Africa, was quietly released in early 2016. The game focused entirely on nations on the continent of Africa and added features to address the corruption, authoritarianism, military dictatorships, and female genital mutilation that is abundant on the continent. Players are tasked with fixing these issues, or regressing further into a dictatorship.[10][11]

In midsummer of 2018, Positech Games announced that it would release an updated version of the game, in the form of Democracy 4.[12][13] While a specific release date has not been presented, the official website declares that the game will be published in 2019. This title, as with the spin-off, Democracy: Africa, will be produced by a joint venture between Positech Games and Stargazy Studios. In addition to Democracy: Africa, Stargazy previously provided translation and localization services for Democracy 3. New features added to Democracy 4 will include simulated corruption, crackdowns on political freedoms and free speech, and even authoritarianism. Events and decisions in the game will be updated to reflect the passage of time between the release of Democracy 3 and Democracy 4.[14]

See original here:
Democracy (video game) - Wikipedia

The British National Party is proud to be in possession of some of the most modern and progressive concepts of democracy which are firmly at odds with the other parties increasing totalitarianism.

The British people invented modern Parliamentary democracy. Yet in recent years the British people have been denied their democratic rights. On issue after issue, the views of the majority of British people have been ignored and overridden by a politically correct elite which thinks it knows best.

On immigration, on capital punishment, on the surrender of British sovereignty to the EU and in numerous other areas, democracy has been absent as Labour, Tories and LibDems conspire in election after election to offer the British people no real choice on such vital issues.

The BNP exists to give the British people that choice, and thus to restore and defend the basic democratic rights we have all been denied. We favour more democracy, not less, at national, regional and local levels.

Power should be devolved to the lowest level possible so that local communities can make decisions which affect them.

We will remove legal curbs on freedom of speech imposed by successive governments over the last 40 years.

We will implement a Bill of Rights guaranteeing fundamental freedoms to the British people.

We will ensure that ordinary British people have real democratic power over their own lives and that Government, local and national, is truly accountable to the people who elect it.

In addition, the BNPs policy is to:

Abolish anti-discrimination laws which prevent people from making a free choice

Abolish the Human Rights Act which has been imposed on this country through the European Union, and which is nothing but an excuse to prevent British laws stopping the scroungers of the world parasiting off this nation

Abolish all restrictions on traditional free speech; common law provisions against incitement to violence are the only proper limits in a free society

Reject ID cards, intrusive surveillance and the retention of DNA samples of the innocent

Introduce an English parliament within the United Kingdom

Introduce citizen-initiated referenda whose outcome is binding on Parliament

The BNP Britains most democratic party.

comments

Here is the original post:
DEMOCRACY - British National Party

Overview

All around the world there has been a flurry of protest in the last couple of years as a new generation of activists challenge the transnational corporations and the governments that represent them. Why is there this backlash against globalization, which was supposed to generate peace and prosperity? Why is this happening in Canada, designated by the United Nations as the most desirable country in the world in which to live?

The real issue for most of us is the loss of security. Our jobs have been put at risk, and at the same time the social safety net in this country is being systematically shredded. Access to adequate unemployment insurance, welfare assistance, health care and old age security is rapidly becoming a luxury rather than a right of citizenship in this country. Citizens are feeling abandoned by their governments.

Previous generations of Canadians had struggled to extend their economic, social, and environmental rights. But their efforts to democratically regulate the economic sphere and redistribute national income encountered increasing resistance from corporations anxious to improve their profits.

Over the past thirty years, a power shift has been taking place--out of the hands of citizens and nation states and into the hands of transnational corporations (TNCs).

In this new climate of global competitiveness, governments compromise when corporations threaten to leave the country. They offering lower labour costs, lower environmental standards, lower corporate taxes, and lower social spending. The state is thus effectively re-tooled to serve the interests of big business. Increasingly, the prime role of governments today is to guarantee security for profitable transnational investment.

Giant corporations exercise more power than most nation states in the global economy.

Transnational corporations capture the public policy agenda and re-write the rules at local, national and international levels. People's values, attitudes and tastes are determined by a bombardment of corporate images and logos, beamed into their daily lives through satellite communications. Corporations trigger a sudden rise in stock prices by announcing a massive downsizing of their work-forces, paying lower corporate taxes while reaping the highest profit margins in history, and paying their chief executive officers 150 times more than what they pay their average worker.

Politicians are no longer the prime movers and shakers. Instead, those who own substantial assets are represented by a nexus of financial institutions the International Monetary Fund, bond rating agencies on Wall Street, the Bank of Canada, national banks on Bay Street, and financial investment houses. Investors and their agents dictate the priorities that govern our economic system.

It's not hard to identify the most powerful among them. The Business Council on National Issues is the senior voice in the business community - composed of 150 chief executive officers (CEO's) from the major, transnational corporations with over $1.6 trillion in assets, $500 billion in revenues, and 11/2 million employees. The leading business association in Canada, it orchestrates a consensus among other business organizations and brought untold rewards for themselves. They have orchestrated, among other things the Canada-US free trade agreement, and NAFTA, and the adoption of the Goods and Services tax, the fight for deficit reduction and increasingly the fight for tax cuts. These policies, and more, create more profits for corporations and effectively curb the role and size of the state.

Low and moderate-income people, our communities and our civic institutions have lost power to large corporations and asset-owners in the top 5 percent of households. At the root of the problem is an imbalance of power. Given how economic power and political power are linked, we need a two-part solution: reforming the democratic process to reduce concentrated power, and changing the rules governing our economy to increase equity and reduce concentrated wealth.

1. Expanded democracy We have to strengthen our democratic power in order tackle corporate power and reduce inequality. Or in simple terms, we need organized people power to counter the power of mega-corporations and their owners. This means:

2. Economic fairness We need to change the rules that govern our economy to reduce inequality and ensure that our prosperity is shared. This means:

The corporations are calling on us to sacrifice our power, our wages and our quality of life to help them lower their costs and increase their profits. We must cease putting their interests above those of the majority. Their policies do not bring enough jobs that provide living wages. Avenues to control them include solutions that level the playing field, reduce corporate power and profits, and break up concentrated wealth and power. Despite the opposition they will pose, we can and must make the case that we can have economic security and greater equality, individual liberty and stronger communities.

See original here:
Centre for Social Justice | Democracy & Corporate Power