Talk:How Democratic Is the American Constitution?

Todo
-- Beland 04:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * This comparison should include many more nations in other parts of the world to allow for a diversified scrutiny. Especially with other American countries. (North American and South American)
 * The chart could be made nicer with some color coding.
 * The chart might be better organized by similarity with the U.S.
 * Markup improvements, especially footnotes and citations.


 * The stated intent was to compare the U.S. Constitution with the constitutions of other "stable democracies." The author of the book then proceeded to identify 22 such nations.  I think his intended meaning was that these 22 nations were the only stable democracies in the world.  For that reason, it would make no sense to include "many more nations," unless the author was completely wrong in his analysis.  For that matter, even if Dahl was wrong, this article is fundamentally about his book, not about free-floating "truth."  Paul (talk) 16:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Removed Cat
I removed as this is a book about the Constitution, not an institution of the U.S. Government.

Epolk 22:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Revert
I have reverted this article because it seems to have gotten messed up. BebopBob 19:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Criticism
I removed this from the article. It makes some fine points, but appears to be original research, and is unreferenced. -- Beland 06:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

This author's daft opinions about the American Constitution fail to specify the pretext to each of the supposed non-democratic points of the Constitution. The said pretext would include facts such as: Slavery was only allowed because the southern states wouldn't join the new federation unless slavery was permitted. Slavery was the base of the entire southern economy, and to abruptly end it would have caused a massive depression, much like the one we whitness after the Civil War. The end of slavery would have been great for humanitarians, but you can't start a nation on half an economy.

At this point in history, there was no successful democratic nation in the world. A monarchy was the governmental choice of the day. The founding fathers didn't have a viable government to model the emerging United States after, no government to see what has failed and what hasn't.

So the moral of the story is: Don't just judge a book (or document for that matter) by its cover; you need to read it for what it truly is. Never judge history through today's lense.

Thank you for your time.

I should add that criticism of Dahl and alternative viewpoints are welcome and encouraged, but additions will need to respect No original research and other project policies. I would add some myself, but I'm not familiar with any suitable published sources. -- Beland 07:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

West Germany?
The list of 22 "democracies" is intriguing, but it contains one peculiarity -- a reference to "West Germany," an entity which is obsolete as of the reunification of Germany in 1989 or the early 1990s. The year usually identified for this gradual event is 1990.

The publication date of the book cited for this material is 2000. All of this leaves the reader wondering whether the author somehow intended to denigrate the government of Germany since 1990 as somehow not qualifying as a democratic state, in contrast to the West German political system before 1990. I imagine that is not the answer, but the question remains -- why "West Germany" instead of "Germany"? Or perhaps both states could be included with their respective dates. Paul (talk) 16:31, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

The author wished to make a list of democracies that had been stable for at least fifty years. I think he included West Germany as to imply that the political system in Germany nowadays is the direct heir of the political system of West Germany, and thus may fit his criteria. Selvath (talk) 17:05, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

MMP for Italy
Italy has never used MMP (at least in the Republican era). The elections between 1948 and 1992 were with Party-List PR, '94, '96 and 2001 election used a complicated system called Mattarellum by the Italian press, which is technically a AMS, but decoy lists made it more similar to the Japanese system (parallel voting). 2008 and 2013 election used a MBS. In my opinion both AMS and MBS can be classified as Semi-PR.--Phyk (talk) 21:15, 26 June 2013 (UTC)