The Australian parliamentary Education Office tells us:

Democracy means rule by the people. The word comes from the ancient Greek words ‘demos’ (the people) and ‘kratos’ (to rule). A democratic country has a system of government where people have the power to participate in decision-making.

Each democracy is unique and works in different ways. In some, people help make decisions directly by voting on laws and policy proposals. This is called direct democracy. In others, like Australia, citizens choose representatives to make decisions on their behalf. This is known as representative democracy.

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GUS: The power to PARTICIPATE in decision-making is the KEY deception in democracy. Participation does not mean decision. We know. For example, in Australia, the AUKUS decision was not even proposed to the people. DECISION was not made by the PEOPLE. So what’s the beef with OUR (and everybody else's) democracy?

Around the world, it has been noted by many academics that DEMOCRACIES are losing ground. We shall study a few cases, including the Romanian latest elections…

We start with Francis Fukuyama, who — famous for his quip “The End of History” when Gorbachev decided to scuttle the USSR and crowing about the American democracy — ended up in 2015, questioning why democratic ideals were biting the dust. For us, Gus and his mates, the answer is simple: the DUDES we voted for, made unilateral decisions which were/are UNDEMOCRATIC. From Germany, France, the UK, Australia and the USA, we, THE PEOPLE, got SWINDLED… The trust in our STYLE of democracy can only plummet…

Here is FUKUYAMA:

Why Is Democracy Performing So Poorly?

Francis Fukuyama

(2015) 

The Journal of Democracy published its inaugural issue a bit past the midpoint of what Samuel P. Huntington labeled the “third wave” of democratization, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall and just before the breakup of the former Soviet Union.1 The transitions in Southern Europe and most of those in Latin America had already happened, and Eastern Europe was moving at dizzying speed away from communism, while the democratic transitions in sub-Saharan Africa and the former USSR were just getting underway. Overall, there has been remarkable worldwide progress in democratization over a period of almost 45 years, raising the number of electoral democracies from about 35 in 1970 to well over 110 in 2014.

But as Larry Diamond has pointed out, there has been a democratic recession since 2006, with a decline in aggregate Freedom House scores every year since then.2 The year 2014 has not been good for democracy, with two big authoritarian powers, Russia and China, on the move at either end of Eurasia. The “Arab Spring” of 2011, which raised expectations that the Arab exception to the third wave might end, has degenerated into renewed dictatorship in the case of Egypt, and into anarchy in Libya, Yemen, and also Syria, which along with Iraq has seen the emergence of a new radical Islamist movement, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

It is hard to know whether we are experiencing a momentary setback in a general movement toward greater democracy around the world, similar to a stock-market correction, or whether the events of this year signal a broader shift in world politics and the rise of serious alternatives to democracy. In either case, it is hard not to feel that the performance of [End Page 11] democracies around the world has been deficient in recent years. This begins with the most developed and successful democracies, those of the United States and the European Union, which experienced massive economic crises in the late 2000s and seem to be mired in a period of slow growth and stagnating incomes. But a number of newer democracies, from Brazil to Turkey to India, have also been disappointing in their performance in many respects, and subject to their own protest movements.

Spontaneous democratic movements against authoritarian regimes continue to arise out of civil society, from Ukraine and Georgia to Tunisia and Egypt to Hong Kong. But few of these movements have been successful in leading to the establishment of stable, well-functioning democracies. It is worth asking why the performance of democracy around the world has been so disappointing.

In my view, a single important factor lies at the core of many democratic setbacks over the past generation. It has to do with a failure of institutionalization—the fact that state capacity in many new and existing democracies has not kept pace with popular demands for democratic accountability. It is much harder to move from a patrimonial or neopatrimonial state to a modern, impersonal one than it is to move from an authoritarian regime to one that holds regular, free, and fair elections. It is the failure to establish modern, well-governed states that has been the Achilles heel of recent democratic transitions.

Some Definitions

Modern liberal democracies combine three basic institutions: the state, rule of law, and democratic accountability.

The first of these, the state, is a legitimate monopoly of coercive power that exercises its authority over a defined territory. States concentrate and employ power to keep the peace, defend communities from external enemies, enforce laws, and provide basic public goods.

The rule of law is a set of rules, reflecting community values, that are binding not just on citizens, but also on the elites who wield coercive power. If law does not constrain the powerful, it amounts to commands of the executive and constitutes merely rule by law.

Finally, democratic accountability seeks to ensure that government acts in the interests of the whole community, rather than simply in the self-interest of the rulers. It is usually achieved through procedures such as free and fair multiparty elections, though procedural accountability is not always coincident…

GUS: BLAH BLAH BLAH….. DREAM ON....

WE MIGHT INVESTIGATE:

STYLES OF DEMOCRACIES

STYLES OF CHOICES WITHIN A DEMOCRACY

THE ENEMY (THIS TENDS TO UNIFY DIVERSE VIEWS WITHIN A DEMOCRACY TOWARDS AN EXTERNAL FACTOR: PRESENTLY SINOPHOBIA AND RUSSOPHOBIA ARE SUCH)

THE ILLUSIONS (ROYAL DEMOCRACY — THE GOUGH WHITLAM CASE)

THE ILLUSIONS (PARTY POLITICS)

DRESSED “CONSERVATIVE”

DRESSED “PROGRESSIVE” WITH CLOTHES DECORATED LIKE A POT PLANT

BEING A POT PLANT (PRONOUNS AND GENDERISED INDIVIDUALITY)

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, DEMOCRACY MIGHT ONLY MEAN BEING ABLE TO SMOKE POT

DISCOVERING THE WORLD’S OTHER SIDE: SHIFTY, GRUBBY, CORRUPT, DANGEROUS, HYPOCRITICAL, DEGRADED, SELF-INTERESTS, SUPERIORITY, "DEVIANT" PLEASURES INCLUDING SADISM, SELFISH VALUES, DEGRADING, COMPETITIVE CHEATING…, SLAVERY, EXCLUSION, RACISM, SEXISM... LONG LIST.

OPPOSITE TO A WELL-KEPT GARDEN, NATURAL BEAUTY, THE JUNGLE LAW, ADAPTATION TO CHANGE, CREATING CHANGE TO FORCE ADAPTATION OR EXTINCTION, SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF COSMIC PROCESSES...

LIES, DECEIT…

MORE TO COME......................

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.