bobr (07/08/82)
A. You have to have a half-decent constitution in order to qualify
as a democratic state, i.e. there will be issues on which a
majority vote will never be solicited.
(Example: in West Germany, the death penalty is constitutionally
outlawed *under any circumstance, even in wartimes*.)
In the vast majority of cases, the process of designing a constitution
was "undemocratic"; constitutions were made up by the respective
elites of the respective societies.
B. Communist countries have constitutions, too.
So in order to qualify as a democracy, you gotta give the appearance
that constitutional rights can be enfrorced. One watchdog to do this
is an independent and free press.
Now, Western European media seem to be more open-minded and less
uniform than their American counterparts, hence there is "more"
democracy "media-wise" in Western Europe than in North America.
C. If lobbying can influence parliamentary votes significantly
against the common good, then the society under consideration is
in worse shape than if there did not exist so many detrimental
effects of lobbying in the particular society we consider.
D. The more the individual citizens are allowed to participate freely
in the democratic process, the better obviously the quality
of the respective democracy.
E. All of which serves to say: there are apparently only various
degrees of democracy; the less potential a society has to be
abused against its own citizens, the more democracy (probably).
Nonetheless:"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter, too"
(Rosa Luxemburg, utopian socialist)
Christoph
...!decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!bobr