An open question II
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 by AriSo I asked an open question last week because I was legitimately curious as to whether people considered elections to be the litmus test for democracy. Admittedly I did set of something of an extreme example, but I found the answers instructive, even if the sample size was small. No one thought my example (essentially an elected dictator) was a democracy. I suppose the obvious question is at what point it becomes a democracy. How much power does the legislature, (since most people seemed to believe it to be a better gauge of the will of the people than the head of government), need to have? What is they can override the prime minister’s veto, but need a 99% majority to do so? 80? 70? 60? At what point do they have enough power to be considered powerful enough? Or perhaps it’s the military – would people consider it a democracy if the military was left under the control of the legislature, or at least an alternate legislatively appointed person?
