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The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a ...
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." [2] Critics of democracy have often tried to highlight democracy's inconsistencies, paradoxes, and limits by contrasting it with other forms of government, such as epistocracy or lottocracy.
The term "boundary problem" was introduced by the American political scientist Frederick G. Whelan in 1983. Whelan noted that the concept of democracy "always makes reference to a determinate community of persons (...) who are collectively self-governing", yet the drawing of the boundaries of such communities "is a significant problem for democratic theory and practice" and "democratic theory ...
Democratic backsliding [a] or autocratization is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. [7] [8] [9] The process typically restricts the space for public contest and political participation in the process of government selection.
because a successive covenant cannot override a prior one, the subjects cannot (lawfully) change the form of government. because the covenant forming the commonwealth is the subjects giving to the sovereign the right to act for them, the sovereign cannot possibly breach the covenant; and therefore the subjects can never argue to be freed from ...
Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter is a 2013 book from Stanford University Press by George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. [1] [2] [3] Somin argues that people are ignorant and irrational about politics and that this creates problems for democracy. He further claims that this consideration argues in ...
75) ("An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics"), and even the father of the free market, Adam Smith (who warned of "great inequality" where "civil government" is "instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor") (p. 82).
Robert Dahl believes that the ideal of democracy assumes that political equality is desirable. [5] He goes on to argue that political equality and democracy are supported by the inherent intrinsic equal worth of every person (intrinsic equality) and the tendency of concentrated power to corrupt.