At 03:13 PM 7/9/2007, you wrote: >one question: what democracy really is? The article points out that >singapore, malaysia and russia are not 'truly' democratic despite elections >being done frequently and relatively free. But for example, UK is usually >defined as one of the true democracies while it has royal family which has >many privileges over the commoners..
Democracy is a system based on feedback - as the opposite of authoritarianism which lack of political feedback (you're either be silent or die). And further question will be - how effective is the feedback? In most cases the effectiveness of a political feedback system determined by the presence of oppositions, either by influence (pressure on issues) or by numbers. You can have few oppositions (like US or UK) with strong influence over many issues, or you can have many oppositions (like Indonesia, India, etc.) with a lower influence. Now let we analyze Singapore, Malaysia and Russia. There are many similarities over those countries, Not only there are very few oppositions but also those oppositions have a very weak influence. That's why those countries can't be said as having a true democratic system. An election by itself is not the whole democracy - as elections also held in most countries in the world regardless of the intentions. North Korea and Cuba for example in the past held elections (with the results of : 99.99% winning votes for the ruling party). What kind of feedback we can get from such system? Nothing. How about UK? Well, the monarch is more like a symbol and has no effective political power. All political decisions regarding British policy determined by political parties which represented by the elected members of House of Commons. The other British parliament members - that is House of Lords (post held by the aristocrats) still play some roles in British political system, but in the modern era the powers of the House of Lords have been steadily declining.
