WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE FOR DEMOCRACY TO FALL?

The title explains all. If someone with the brains, gutsiness, and insanity to do it took over the US or another country where democracy is so firmly entrenched, How? And what would happen?
 
I think a dictator is the end of the process of democracy falling, not the start of it. Let's go with the USA - you'd need a lot more serious shocks. Since this isn't Future History, let's say the 1960s turmoil is a lot worse. Add up several more Kent State type incidents (maybe one or two involves an African-American ghetto, for some lovely racial tension :( ), more political assassinations a la JFK/MLK/RFK, a global economic meltdown, Communism making more inroads in the Americas triggering a couple bloody interventions on top of the ongoing mess in Vietnam... I can see that taking America to a very ugly place after a while.
 
Democracy works great when population is low and resources high; then you can have it all. However, when it's the other way around, as it's getting-- well, it's not good. Survival might, I say might, require a strong force to seize control of industry and distribution, and put it to the most efficient use. It could potentially happen all over the world, but only potentially. In America, it would be harder, since voting is a cornerstone of our culture. I'm sure either one of The Parties, would love to have absolute control.

Back to the resources; it might make society more militant, and more ruthless towards other nations. Being militant and being undemocratic are not necessarily mutual. Militant societies can still have elections.
 
All very well, but with economic collapse in the USA like in the scenario that Varyar mentioned, would the incumbent government declare martial law and try to stamp out any trace of resistance? Or would revolutionaries in the form of Communists take power? They would need a strong base, or at least lots of very hungry, very desperate people.
 
Historically, democracies fail when the constitutional order is not able to address the concerns of the people, and politics degenerates into a spoil system. Lacking credibility and facing political instability, a tyrant is able to take over because the democratic government lacks legitimacy.

Greek Democracies - Direct democracy degenerates into mob rule. Effective governance ceases as the mob pursues one policy then another. Tyrant takes over.

Roman Republic - The Roman political order, established to control a single city, proves incapable of successfully governing an entire empire. Continued political crises over a period of decades end when Augustus established the principate.

English Commonwealth - Competing religious and economic factions prevent effective govenance causing Cromwell to seize power.

Kerensky Russia - New democratic government in a culture not use to democracy and under pressure of war is unable to exert control causing a minority revolutionary group to seize power.

The problem with such a takeover in the US is that the US constitutional system was set up to precisely prevent such a takeover. Power is divided between the states and federal government. That government in turn is divided between three branches of government. Political offices have staggered elections, preventing any one election to overturn the government. For the US to fall to a dictatorship, there would need to be a profound political crises lasting many, many years.

Other well established democracies do not have the system of checks and balances that the US does, making it a little bit easier for one person or faction to take power.

But the main obstacle is the culture of an established democracy itself. It is much easier for immature democracies like Revolutionary France, Kerensky's Russia or Weimar Germany to fall to dictatorship than established ones like the US or UK.
 
The only democracy was the Athenian city state. Where every male citizen voted on issues directly. Today most countries that we call democracies are a form of parliamentary or representative republics. So in that context , democracy has already fallen. For the others, we see socialism slowly destroying the freedoms of the citizens by the state's increasing control of its people. All in the name of the greater good or in the name of safety. So we all are already living in the age of declining freedom to the states glorious programs of social welfare.
 
The only democracy was the Athenian city state. Where every male citizen voted on issues directly. Today most countries that we call democracies are a form of parliamentary or representative republics. So in that context , democracy has already fallen. For the others, we see socialism slowly destroying the freedoms of the citizens by the state's increasing control of its people. All in the name of the greater good or in the name of safety. So we all are already living in the age of declining freedom to the states glorious programs of social welfare.

Athens may well have been the only technical democracy in history but it was far from a free state. The male citizens were very much in the minority

It is arguable that democracies today are already in the process of falling. In most of them you need to be from a fairly exclusive class to have any hope of achieving real power as you need excessive wealth to pursue a career in politics. This combined with the fact that increasingly politicians have never had a non-political job in their lives means that they are increasingly estranged from the general population.

Just look at the UK, the leaders of all three parties are all from an exclusive upper middle/upper class background and they promote their peers. It is almost impossible these days for an ordinary person to even consider the possibility of entering politics, let alone achieving the highest office in the land. Similar tendencies seem to be being seen in the US with the birth of several political dynasties (Kennedys, Bushs, Clintons), a concept that is almost antithetical to some of the very basic myths that underlie the American psyche. Far from being a land without lords and kings, the US is rapidly developing a nobility of sorts (the aforementioned dynasties) even if they don't use those terms

Whether or not this process continues is of course another question
 
The only democracy was the Athenian city state. Where every male citizen voted on issues directly. Today most countries that we call democracies are a form of parliamentary or representative republics. So in that context , democracy has already fallen. For the others, we see socialism slowly destroying the freedoms of the citizens by the state's increasing control of its people. All in the name of the greater good or in the name of safety. So we all are already living in the age of declining freedom to the states glorious programs of social welfare.
This is speculting how democracy fell, not shouting about the "evils" of "socialism."
 
The only democracy was the Athenian city state. Where every male citizen voted on issues directly. Today most countries that we call democracies are a form of parliamentary or representative republics. So in that context , democracy has already fallen. For the others, we see socialism slowly destroying the freedoms of the citizens by the state's increasing control of its people. All in the name of the greater good or in the name of safety. So we all are already living in the age of declining freedom to the states glorious programs of social welfare.


This is speculting how democracy fell, not shouting about the "evils" of "socialism."

What this guy said. Don't post flamebait.
 

The Sandman

Banned
The title explains all. If someone with the brains, gutsiness, and insanity to do it took over the US or another country where democracy is so firmly entrenched, How? And what would happen?

The fall of democracy can only happen after the summer of our discontent.
 
Actually, this happened quite a lot of times.

Look at the First French Republic and the series of statelets Napoleon dropped on his campaigns - all of them were restored to the old monarchist order.
This was a transformation by force, but nevertheless it was stable for quite some time
(even in France, which was the first to return).

Or consider the interwar period in continental Europe, where republics in an ever more modern sense turned into dictatorships. These shifts were dominated by mass organizations, i.e.
large groups of the populations.

Look at the Soviet transformation of Eastern Europe into satellite state 1945-53.

Look at what happened to Russia between 1995, say, and 2005.

And, of course, you can have it very quickly by means of a putsch. See South America.


Note that I use a very broad definition of "democracy" here.
I think that makes the most sense here as the original question was so general.

Of course, I didn't comment here on the author's words "so firmly entrenched". But this is a very unclear term,
so it is not a priori clear to which states it refers.
One might claim that a posteriori, we know that democracy was not so deeply incorportated
in the above examples.
But that would mean we just can't tell in advance.
 
I agree with most of what's already been said. Killing representative democracy in the US would take some doing. Economic depression followed by a new dustbowl coupled with the Big One hitting the West Coast and topped off with a good super flu might do it, but even then local elections would still continue. Heck even during the Civil War soldiers demanded the right to elect their regimental officers. Americans just like to have a say in the process. Stamping that out would take generations.

If someone tried to make themselves a dictator, say following a contested election that got a lot uglier than the 2000 fiasco, it's very likely the military would step back and let an armed mob rectify the situation. It's happened, for good and bad, at the state level a couple times already. Remember the ideology of the Founding Fathers made a clear distinction between rebellion (an illegal uprising against a lawful government) and revolution (a legitimate uprising to overthrow an oppressive regime) which I'm betting would come to bite any would be dictator in the butt.

Benjamin
 
I agree with most of what's already been said. Killing representative democracy in the US would take some doing. Economic depression followed by a new dustbowl coupled with the Big One hitting the West Coast and topped off with a good super flu might do it, but even then local elections would still continue. Heck even during the Civil War soldiers demanded the right to elect their regimental officers. Americans just like to have a say in the process. Stamping that out would take generations.

If someone tried to make themselves a dictator, say following a contested election that got a lot uglier than the 2000 fiasco, it's very likely the military would step back and let an armed mob rectify the situation. It's happened, for good and bad, at the state level a couple times already. Remember the ideology of the Founding Fathers made a clear distinction between rebellion (an illegal uprising against a lawful government) and revolution (a legitimate uprising to overthrow an oppressive regime) which I'm betting would come to bite any would be dictator in the butt.

Benjamin

However, if someone could"legitimately" so to speak change the Constitution in their favor following said economic and social breakdown, and he promised to recctify the country, would thatt be possible?
 
My point is that we have never lived in a democracy. We , in the US live in a Representative Republic. There is a huge difference between the two. So the thread makes no sense. Now if you what to theorize on how a representative republic might fall.I think the introduction of socialism to it would be a good start.
 

Tsao

Banned
My point is that we have never lived in a democracy. We , in the US live in a Representative Republic. There is a huge difference between the two. So the thread makes no sense. Now if you what to theorize on how a representative republic might fall.I think the introduction of socialism to it would be a good start.

Eh, this isn't Chat.
 
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time ”

—Winston Churchill

I tend to agree. It's incredibly tough to kill democracy outright. In the USA the Great Depression is probably the best most recent POD.

I imagine that no New Deal or anything like it and an "austerity" policy plus a USA that stays out off WWII will collapse the country. It'll probably be a military take-over, rather than a socialist one though (as those guys were crushed in the Red Scare/WWI).

NO, PROBABLY NOT. IT TENDS TO WORK THE BEST OF THE VARIOUS GOVERNMENTS HUMANITY HAS TRIED.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. PLEASE SHOUT LOUDER. YOU KNOW, LIKE THE THREAD TITLE.

My point is that we have never lived in a democracy. We , in the US live in a Representative Republic. There is a huge difference between the two. So the thread makes no sense. Now if you what to theorize on how a representative republic might fall.I think the introduction of socialism to it would be a good start.

Can we please not wander off into the wilderness of defining exact terms? Almost everyone understands that democracy = place where people get to vote and have it count, be it a democracy, republic, parliamentary system, whatever. Sometimes in history that's limited by race or gender or property requirements (or all three, infamously in the USA) and they are still considered a "democracy" by pretty much all non-political science people. (Heck, I'm a political science guy and I use democracy like most people do.)

ETA to make it spoiler text, because this silly argument probably does belong in chat but I'll go for a paragraph.
The USA has already had "socialism" introduced if you for some reason consider welfare socialism. Feel free to look up Sweden. They're probably the most "socialist" democracy around, and they are doing incredibly fantastic in of themselves, and especially compared to the USA. I can't really think of a first world "democracy" with less regulation and less "socialist" things than the USA, and most of them are doing better than the USA these days except for the ones (like the UK) trying to be less "socialist".
 
My point is that we have never lived in a democracy. We , in the US live in a Representative Republic. There is a huge difference between the two. So the thread makes no sense. Now if you what to theorize on how a representative republic might fall.I think the introduction of socialism to it would be a good start.
You know, if you're going to use sophistry, at least use good sophistry. I'm not so much offended by what you said as insulted that you think I'd buy it.

And democracy isn't nearly as bulletproof as people like to think. This article came out of the US Army War College, and it details exactly how democracy winds up being turned on itself in a depressingly realistic scenario. The main thrust is that if the democratic governments can't provide security for the populace, they will turn to institutions that will.
 
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