Talk:Liberal democracy/Archive 4

Love letter to Liberal Democracies?
I'm thinking that this page doesn't meet Wikipedia's criteria for neutrality or being well sourced. And, as is often found in modern discussion of anything, a disingenuous Nazi example is used. "enemy soldier may(speculation) surrender easier - using the example of high Russian deaths in Nazi camps. However, this is misleading to say the least - as the USSR (an undemocratic state that hadn't signed the geneva convention and where soldiers would be shot for retreating) was an exception, not the norm. If you look at American or British death rates in Nazi POW camps (less than 4%, ie a normal death rate) you will see that they were treated in a humane way and so that comparison doesn't exactly hold true as some form of universal evidence.

The Freedoms and rights section needs expanding but overall I'm happy with most of this I guess.My major beef is just that there is still a lack of sources in areas.

Deadagain33 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Merge Representative democracy here
Same comment as above. Tazmaniacs (talk) 11:35, 2 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think merging would be a great idea, because not all representative democracies are liberal democracies. -- Explodicle (T/C) 15:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Lack of sources
This article is severely lacking in sources. I've tagged the top of the article as needing sources for now, but if anyone wants more specific tags please let me know. -- Explodicle (T/C) 15:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Automatically archive this page?
Is anyone against using MiszaBot I to archive this page automatically? -- Explodicle (T/C) 20:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted section De facto liberal democracies
Deleted text:"' === De facto liberal democracies ==="

"'Liberal democracy is sometimes the de facto form of government, while other forms are technically the case; for example, the Canadian monarchy is in fact ruled by a democratically elected Parliament, and the government's ability to create laws that would infringe on individual liberty is curtailed by a codified constitution. In the United Kingdom, the sovereign is the hereditary monarch, but the de facto (legislative) sovereign is the people, via their elected representatives in Parliament, hence a democracy."

"Many disagree with any form of hereditary privilege, including monarchy. Monarchists reply that the monarchy in these nations is almost entirely ceremonial rather than political." I've removed this section from the article as it is weirdly non-NPOV, and I doubt it can be rescuedin anything like its current form. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden etc are liberal democracies with de jure written constitutions, there is nothing de facto about their liberal democracies. Despite claims to the contrary, the United Kingdom has a constitution which is mostly written (although not in a single document). See Constitution of the United Kingdom. Obviously the author(s) of this section have confused republics with democracies and the most charitable thing I can say about it in its current form is that it is republican propaganda.Kiore (talk) 09:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI
If people who watch this page are also interested in how Wikipedia is governed, be sure to check out this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Advisory_Council_on_Project_Development. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:19, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Worst article nominee
If there were a special category of woefully inadequate articles, this one would be among the contenders. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.35.50 (talk) 00:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Not hardly I've seen a lot worse than this. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 20:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The confusing nature of the article with its duplications, poor organisation and non secutors is abyssmal. The sentence I edited what was it meant to mean? The article needs complete re-writing.John D. Croft (talk) 04:58, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Issues list isn't
A lot of other boosterish crap is in that list. Maybe it should be separated into two lists, pluses and minuses. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 00:19, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Introduction misinformation
The introduction is poorly written with no good sources. The second paragraph written with a bias offended at using the term "liberal", since the term applies to one of the many ideals in current american politics. It's also a buzzword in americans current newcycle as a scare tactic. Having to define liberal isn't the basis of this article since it has very little, if anything to do, with american modern liberalism. Also The united states is not a "democratic republican democracy", its a federal constitutional republic. Why would you start an introduction with "the united states is NOT this" unless you were editing from a bias POV. "liberal democracy" is a two-word term that has a different meaning than both it's parts combined. Please no more BIAS POV. Christmasjones25 (talk) 05:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

NPOV, Citation needed
liberal democracy defined in article !!!!! A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms: it may be a federal republic, as the United States [citation needed]

I put a Citation needed !!!!! Really the whole Article is written without Citations !!!!--Kimmy (talk) 22:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

logical contradiction
There is a logical contradiction with respect to Germany's political system. In the introduction it is - quite unfortunately, in my humble opinion - named as an example for a "presidential democracy", while it is further down in the chart "States by their systems of government as of April 2006" referred to as a "parliamentary republic" (which seems to be more correct to me - disclaimer: I am a German citizen).

Whoever feels entitled to, please unify! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.176.158.250 (talk) 15:07, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Germany is definitely not a presidential democracy. The country should be removed here as an example (it is not unfortunately but really wrong here) 89.0.41.130 (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.41.130 (talk) 16:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Corrected! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.91.123.50 (talk) 06:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Bourgeois Democracy?
Should that really be in the aka in the intro sentence? That's more of a Marxist epithet and that criticism is explained later in the article, and is not the general term for it. Gtbob12 (talk) 16:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Terms Used
In the TYPES section the difference between proportional representation and single member voting is discussed. The terms used to describe these are "Proportional Representation" and "Plurality Voting". No problem there although possibly more could go to define what Plurality voting actually is. However further down when describing the Australian system the aforementioned term suddenly becomes the highly confusing "preferential voting". In fairness to the writer, the Australian Electoral Commission does use that term to describe single member voting as done in the elections they regulate. However notwithstanding that, it is still an incredible dumb term to use. Practically any voting system can and sometimes is preferential, including ironically, the comparative proportional representation also used in Australia. What the writer is effectively saying is that for Senate you have proportional representation, which happens in this case to be preferential, and compared to that for the House of Representatives you have a voting system which is preferential. Someone please change it to Single Member voting, or at least Plurality voting. Edward Carson (talk) 02:59, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Libya
The new government is said to become a constitutional democracy, when should we add it? --Spesh531, My talk, and External links 03:28, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

potential resource
The Democratic Malaise; Globalization and the Threat to the West by Charles A. Kupchan Foreign Affairs January/February 2012; excerpt ... 99.19.44.155 (talk) 15:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

potential resource
The Strange Triumph of Liberal Democracy; Europe’s Ideological Contest by Shlomo Avineri January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs 99.19.44.155 (talk) 15:47, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Rights and freedoms
I think this section is more related to the 'Liberalism'-aspect of liberal democracy than directly to 'democracy'. Wouldn't you agree? Democracy could be quite collective and not respect individual rights. It is Liberalism that defends those rights, sometimes over democracy itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.152.148.22 (talk) 22:30, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggested section: Democratic Values
The United States' political parties contrast Republic and Liberal Democracy as models, in it's two-party system. This assertion should be seriously reconsidered given recent study from Princeton University.

Freedom of Inquiry; Equality and freedom of Choice; Personal Responsibility; Recourse; Obligation to Publish or Perish; Has legitimate dissent been heard in national discussion (versus merely the right to dissent.) The idea being that in a "Cato" sense, everyone should be conversant with the leading contraindicaters ("cons."); Freedom of Association; Individual Privacy (starting, for example, with adolescents.); Accountability;

I have enumerated a short (incomplete) list of ideals or democratic values. Republic does not define itself in terms of these, while historically having been a very just form of government. I do not suppose that an exhaustive list can easily be compiled by any individual, but if Wikipedia started a list, are we united enough to distill some representative list of democratic values? Infodater (talk) 05:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Well I believe the confusion arise, because there is no consensus on what democracy is. Whenever you go to a specific source, the writer have their own individual definitions and even in many scholarly texts, those definitions are rarely explicitly described. This is a massive, global and urgent problem, but I dont see any competent people working on solving it.
 * Personal Comment: Underneath any politics runs the undertows of capitalism. You can throw name-tags like democracy, liberalism, socialism, whatever you like - it is all governed by capitalism. Lets use the proper words, lets be real. The world is governed by capitalism. Period. All the extra glossy stuff are a mumbo-jumbo of religion, ethics, personal preferences, propaganda and political bluff, cultural values, etc. RhinoMind (talk) 00:48, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

One 'why?' too many?
"Get out the vote campaigns, either by governments or private groups, may increase voter turnout, but distinctions must be made[why?] between general campaigns to raise the turnout rate and partisan efforts to aid a particular candidate, party or cause."

Because, almost by definition, partisan efforts to aid a particular candidate, party, or cause are not campaigns to increase overall voter turnout, to advertise them as such is dishonest and misleading. If, for example, Hillary Clinton started using her vast fortunes to fund/start/endorse a campaign to increase voter turnout while simultaneously running for president, would that really be the same as a group of mixed/none-partisan citizens getting together and doing the same, while none of them or anyone directly connected to them was running for political office?

I think what I'm trying to say can be worded/demonstrated much better, but I think either the 'why?' annotation of this particular paragraph should be taken out (because explaining why seems redundant in this instance) or someone who can demonstrate this glaringly obvious 'why?' more clearly than I can (at least ATM) should do so. Or, the entire bit should just be taken out, though I think it makes a good and important point.208.107.110.14 (talk) 14:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Is Italy a democratic country?
many Italian citizens say that they know Italy is a partycracy, obviously not even a "democracy".

There's no respect for citizens' right to know what effectively they are asked to vote, and even to know what alternative (and lawful) nominations they could support as candidatures.

In a partycracy Italian-style almost all media (and their respective segmentated targets) are controlled by the Regime, everyday they offers lively, silly and amazing scenarios of quarreling factions (parties) within the partycracy, omitting that they shadowly agree on the most important issues, omitting to report how the quasi-totalitarian blackmailing system works, and omitting the catastrophic absence of rule of law.

For many decades Italian government continues violating each Article of its own Consitution. There is no democracy without rule of law. Since the 80's the Italian authorities violated systematically almost all repealing referenda, until generations of citizens understood that there's no hope to get a constitutional and democratic government, or what they call "democracy" is only corruption, or that whatever change could only worsen this situation. The latter partecipate to the elections. Blackmailing both the whole media and the judicial power, the Regime seems go on indefinitely. Unlawful elections are not democratic elections. Massive blind voting is not free voting.

20 years of Fascism destroyed most of the liberal culture in Italy, then 50 years of Catholic-Communist polarization continued that as heirs of Fascism and Corporativism (Post-fascism). Due to the absence of practice of lawful democratic methods since 5-24-1915 Coup (Pre-fascism), there's almost no democratic culture.

Fascisms, Communisms and Clericalisms are single-party Totalitarianisms, Partycracy is a multi-party Totalitarianism, in East Germany there were at least 5 parties allowed by the Regime.

Italy is still neither a liberal democracy, nor a democracy at all. Remove us from the listed countries in the Article.79.44.191.20 (talk) 00:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Italy is wrongly accounted as a liberal democracy: italian Constitution put it Social_Democracy category; it should be removed as example for parlamentary system Anglachel~itwiki (talk) 20:50, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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Need to re write lead
After slicing and dicing, this is what Google and others use for their page-one info box search results (extracted directly and mechanically from Wikipedia):


 * Liberal democracy
 * Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. It is also called western democracy. More at Wikipedia

That as a definition suffers from the Curse of knowledge. Repeating the word "liberal" and using the term "classical liberalism" in the predicate side of the definition sentence obfuscates more than it reveals.

Personally, I like the definition in Freedom_in_the_World


 * The presence of a substantial array of civil liberties
 * A competitive, multiparty political system
 * Universal adult suffrage for all citizens (with exceptions for restrictions that states may legitimately place on citizens as sanctions for criminal offenses)
 * Regularly contested elections conducted in conditions of ballot secrecy, reasonable ballot security, and the absence of massive voter fraud that yields results that are unrepresentative of the public will
 * Significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open political campaigning.

The list of countries that qualify is also instantly illuminating, but might be hard to cram into the definition section. Rick (talk) 20:13, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

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Origins and Definitions PLEASE
Could someone please write an ORIGINS and DEFINITIONS section? Did any of the founders of the US described themselves as "liberal". Is the term "liberal democracy" embedded in any founding documents or Federalist papers? What does liberal mean - liberty, libertarian, libertine, Democrat Party, left-wing? ORIGINS: Could someone write an origins section that traces the use of the words "liberal democracy" first usage together and later usages together. The term "liberal democracy" was almost NEVER used before 1980 (according to corpus of historical american english) What happened in 1980 that made everyone start using that word combination? why not "conservative democracy"? This article seriously needs to provide some historical context for this usage since it is relatively new. --N0w8st8s (talk) 07:18, 15 September 2017 (UTC)n0w8st8s
 * There already is a section and origins, and the definitions you are asking for are all well covered in other articles. It should be noted that "liberal" is used here in the global historical sense of the term, and is not necessarily synonymous with the way it is used in political terms in some countries. For example in Canada the Liberal party is arguably more centrist than left wing, with the "left wing" party being the New Democrats. Note also that it is possible to be both a political conservative and a supporter of liberal democracy. Mediatech492 (talk) 13:35, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

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