A dynamic that would thwart democracy taking hold (or remaining in place)
Last edited Thu Aug 15, 2013, 01:38 PM - Edit history (3)
Imagine a hypothetical nation that is 40%-40%-20%, with two 40% parties that are tea-party-plus. Very intense. And they will not accept the other party winning.
If it happened to be the case that no government with 40% fanatical opposition can survive in office then it won't matter what the 20% in the middle does. That middle is incapable of electing any stable leadership.
Meanwhile, any possible president finds that he can only stay in office by limiting the opposition 40% extra-constitutionally. (Against whatever above-everything-else rules are functioning as a constitution.)
Every executive would be deposed or become a dictator, or be deposed for being a dictator, etc.. (Removed from office outside the pre-established process.)
The trick is to find something that almost everyone can live with.
That's just a little games theory type hypothetical, but you can see that it would be a ping-pong of coups and people making themselves dictators and more coups forever until the opposing sides lost enough size or intensity that *some* possible election result would represent something almost everyone could live with.
I have no idea what the magic numbers would be in a given real world political environment. But even here, in the world's oldest democracy, the breaking-point proportion of fanatics is still a concern.
In the USA we have, what, like 20% fanatical opposition to Obama? And we have a Congress that plans to shut down the government. A senate where it takes 60% to proceed on anything. States scheming to prevent people who tend to support one party not getting to vote.
If 40% of the nation was fanatical tea-partiers the whole system would be under terrific stress. For instance, a number of states would defy the Supreme Court on abortion laws. Congress would shut down the federal government for real... the House really does have the power to fund nothing. How long would it be before a state seceded? A 40% Tea-Party nation would feature some 75% Tea Party states.
And if the nation was 45% tea-party and the teahadists won the presidency and then they lost the next election narrowly would they leave? (And then which president would the military take their orders from... the one in the White House or the one innagurated?) Or perhaps they would just strike enough non-teahadists from the voting rolls that they wouldn't lose that next election... or any election...
And all that despite the fact that we have centuries of democratic traditions.
I think Egypt has a long haul ahead of her.
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