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Realistic limitations of a democratic system

her209

her209

No Lifer
Theoretically, a democratic system should work on any size society. But, would democracy work on a nation as big as China? At what point does it start to break down? And yes, I know that we have a representative democratic system (electoral votes) as opposed to counting every vote.
 
P&N

the United States is a Constitution-based federal republic

i am not sure how size adversely affects such a system, not sure why it wouldn't work in china/larger country

do you have some specific reason you think it wouldn't work?
 
I suppose it would start to break down when the representation gets too large.


...but then you could always have representatives for the representatives. 😛
 
Originally posted by: her209
Theoretically, a democratic system should work on any size society. But, would democracy work on a nation as big as China? At what point does it start to break down? And yes, I know that we have a representative democratic system (electoral votes) as opposed to counting every vote.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The rep system works great with large, disperse populations.

Conceivably, a pure democracy could work today because of modern communications. But a pure democracy would have to have one hell of a constitution to restrict "sheepherders" (anti-smoking lobby is a great example here in the US).
 
P&N

pure democracy is pure evil

tyranny by the majority would mean the oppression of all minorities (race/religion/sex/etc, etc)
 
Pure democracy could work in any size nation with the help of computers but in the real world, no computer network is secure enough to handle something so large and critical. If everyone in China or the US had a home comp and went home every night and voted on a bevy of issues, the results could be tallied in a day. Like I said though, hackerz would throw a big monkey wrench in there. Without comps, democracy in anything resembling a pure form, would simply require too much time to be effective in a nation of much more then a few million imo.

For the real world, I like parlimentary systems the best. The 2 party system in the US is a travesty, again, imo.
 
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