Then what does produce democracies? There are a bunch of those about at the moment and, while some of them are faux democracies installed by freedom-loving-america there are several legitimate democracies - were they all voluntary transitions initiated by the former monarchs?
Democracies come about more often from gradualist reforms than from revolutions. Revolutions have a distinct tendency - though obviously this is not a hard rule - to produce strongman governments whose primary claim to legitimacy is that they ended the chaos of the revolution.
Well we just stood around until the UK imploded, and they told us we were off on our own haha. Canada rode the wave of deconialization that, it could be argued, began when the UK lost Hong Kong to Japan in WWII. Losing HK to Japan showed the empire could no longer defend its colonies and the bubble popped. It’ll be a while before we find out if such a strategy is effective in the PRC.
I mean, we still celebrate July 1st as Canada Day. I like to joke that it’s “Dependence Day” since it celebrates the signing of the British North America Act, which, and I’m paraphrasing here, says “this whole Queen thing is working for us let’s keep it going.” As compared to the Declaration of Independence, which, well, you know the rest.
First sentence: "The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 29 December 1989.
When I say that "Revolutions don't produce democracies", I'm talking about violent revolutions. A "non violent revolution" is a contradiction on terms to me.
> That was an utter and complete failure in every sense of the word.
No, if it was a failure the previous system and people would have remained in power. Though some did, there was an irrefutable change - whatever qualms one might have with the new regime.
> And in any case the reasons behind it had nothing to do with a desire for democracy
Each person has their reasons. The Group of Nine would certainly disagree with your claim.
The American Revolution shouldn't be considered as a revolution. It was a bunch of organized polities that broke their political ties, but largely preserved their political, economic, and social structures and organized leadership. It was successful in no small part because it was a rebellion rather than a revolution.
> but largely preserved their political, economic, and social structures and organized leadership
TIL we coronated King George Washington I and established yet another divine monarchy.
I mean sure, the colonies ended up directly translating to states, and (some of) those colonies happened to have bicameral legislatures with a lower house consisting of elected representatives, but that's about where the similarities between the colonies and resulting states end. Any existing leadership that continued to lead during/after the revolution did so by democratic rather than autocratic means.
> it was a rebellion rather than a revolution.
Those terms are not mutually exclusive. It was a revolution implemented by rebelling against the British Crown.
The colonies weren't day-to-day governed from London or directly by Parliament. It may be worth recalling that colonies had their own governments, many of which included elected legislatures. In fact, how these legislative bodies were treated was a rather specific point of complaint in the Declaration of Independence.
> It may be worth recalling that colonies had their own governments, many of which included elected legislatures
I mentioned this already in my comment, but to clarify/reiterate:
- Governors (AFAICT) were not democratically elected (they were - if I recall correctly - appointed by the Crown, as was standard for colonial governments)
- The only democratically elected legislators (in the colonies that even had legislatures) were in the Lower House of each colony; the governor typically (if not always) appointed the Upper House's legislators himself (reflecting British Parliament and its House of Commons v. House of Lords, respectively)
Very different from how things operate post-Revolution, what with democratically-elected governors and state senators. If any of the former colonial leadership prevailed as the new state leadership, it was by democratic rather than autocratic means.
This is perhaps nothing but my own opinion, but what you're describing sounds a great deal like removing a higher polity while preserving most of the political structures. I understand that some opinions may reasonably differ on the subject.
Just because the political structures are similar doesn't mean their composition is similar, which is more what I'm getting at.
Definitely fair to draw comparisons, though; you're right that there are structural similarities on a state and federal level to the old colonial and imperial governments (respectively). My argument is that how the legislators and executives of those governments are appointed (i.e. democratically v. autocratically) is the big change, and one that would make the American Independence movement more of a revolution; the polities themselves were outright replaced, at least nominally, as the existing polities were rooted in the Crown's authority.
Contrast this with Canada or Australia, where (last I checked) the British monarch is still formally the head of state despite them being sovereign nations with independent governments and separate heads of government. I suspect that's closer to what you're envisioning (i.e. colonial governments continuing to exist as-is after gaining political sovereignty).
> Just because the political structures are similar doesn't mean their composition is similar, which is more what I'm getting at.
You're absolutely correct!
In case I was unclear eariler, I was strictly addressing questions of structure. Please accept my sincere apologies for my failure to make my self clear.
It's all good! It's definitely a useful comparison to draw, since it's a critical piece of the puzzle on how "Western" government has evolved over the centuries in that gradual migration from absolute monarchies to democracies. It's always interesting to identify and examine those vestiges of governments old in their modern descendants, in the same way that wings, flippers, and arms can be so similar in structure yet so different in application :)
The status quo. You’re condemning men for maintaining the status quo in order to agree on something going forward on a handful of issues when every other word was essentially revolutionary.
This is prior to the Article I branch of government, Congress, abdicating much of its power and creating this myth of coequal branches of government, and when House districts were a lot smaller, and you and your neighbors has to decide between yourselves who was in charge of certain functions of keeping society going. You know, who was going to be the local Sheriff, who was going to run the local court, who was going to deliver the mail and so on. Many of these jobs were boring and without glory, but someone had to do them.
Had Madison’s Virginia Plan been implemented in full and the Connecticut Compromise wasn’t implemented, it would likely have been more democratic still.
Structurally, the United States constitution is overwhelmingly democratic, and especially for the time it was written and ratified. If it has grown less democratic at all, it is due to factors the signers and ratifiers of the Constitution could never have predicted that occurred in the 230 years since. No one could have foreseen Congress would abdicate much of it’s power and responsibilities in the 20th Century, or that the Industrial Revolution would lead to the single greatest explosion of the human population in history, or that we would choose to let in so many foreigners. Nobody thought each House member would be representing a district in the hundreds of thousands at a time when they thought one House member per 50K might be too few.
Is it democratic? Oh yes. It is the most democratic document of its time, and few legal documents written since then could plausibly claim to be more so.
Democracy was created in Ancient Greece, so it may or may not surprise you to learn Democracy itself isn't anything you'd call democracy in 2019 either, as they were a "slave state" also and not everyone actually had the right to vote (in fact women couldn't vote, own/inherit land)...so maybe post Revolutionary America was a lot closer to Democracy than you think...but either way its a Republican form of Government (at least according to the Constitution) not a democracy.
I am using "democracy" as a synonym for "liberal democracy."
If you tell me about a country that:
- Has a beautiful founding document that ensures what we'd recognize as basic rights of all citizens
- Has a well-designed federal system that empowers individuals and lower-level governments at the expense of the federal,
- Has hundreds of thousands of enslaved people who form the foundation of their economy and are indeed bred into captivity,
I would never, ever call that a democracy. The first two don't matter when the third is true, to me. If you would, that's fine; you wouldn't be objectively wrong.
>If you would, that's fine; you wouldn't be objectively wrong.
I call the US a Constitutional Republic, where the representatives are elected through various implementations of the democratic process.
Otherwise, I'm just highlighting the fact that the "inventors" of democracy had slaves just the same as the US (among other limitations on who had voting rights) at the time of the Revolutionary War/Independence.
In some respects slavery was an inherited evil of the new US Constitutional Republic, an evil which the Constitutional Republic was unable to abolish through law/voting/representatives (as evidenced by half of the country attempting to secede rather than honor the law) and instead resulted in a war to maintain the Union and enforcement of the law through use of arms. Unfortunately, democracy/liberal democracy/Constitutional Republic whatever we call it, it was not effective an abolishing slavery with the stroke of a pen and instead threatened to breakup the very form of government which was only maintained through the most deadly war the Country has ever fought (in fact deadlier than every other US war combined).
It begins to become a slippery slope when laws at the end of a gun, whether or not those laws are morally correct.
This is only somewhat correct. Following the Revolution, some northern states abolished slavery almost immediately and the bulk of the North eliminated slavery by ~1810.
In the South, though, inventions like the cotton gin, westward expansion into the Mississippi river basin, and logistical improvements like steamships brought about significant expansion in the South's slave economy. British slavery (particularly in the Caribbean) was more focused on sugar production. Slavery in the United States was distinct from slavery in the British Empire, the fact that the former used to be part of the British empire notwithstanding.
Nope, it's a pretty common term that springs from the fact that the gentry in question were such entirely due to their land holdings - there was no need to pursue outside wealth since their share of their tenant's earnings could support them entirely.
Well, when a society is ready for democracy, removing the old regime can produce democracy.
If it's a domestic dictatorship, it will usually evolve into a democracy on its own.
If it's a foreign power oppressing an inherently democratic nation, a revolution might have good results. This is one way to think of the American Revolution, as well as the Eastern European liberation.
You should read up on the French Revolution. It led to phenomenal amounts of tyranny and war. The small flickers of democracy were soon extinguished.
I don't know if the French Revolution is a good example. It certainly didn't produce a stable democracy. The First Republic quickly turned into an empire, and they didn't get a long-lasting democracy until the Third Republic in 1870, about 80 years after the Revolution.
It is difficult to portray the French Revolution as a successful democratic revolution with a straight face. The result was chaos, terror, death, and then Napoleon.
Napoleon was, to put it somewhat mildly, not much of a democrat.
