<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">A good question. What is democracy and how can it turn into authoritarianism or fascism? There are a number of good books about fascism, like "The Anatomy of Fascism" from Robert Paxton, but as far as I know there is no agent-based model how a democratic backsliding works in terms of agents, systems and subsystems.<br><br>I would like to work in my free time on an agent-based model how countries can experience a democratic backsliding into an authoritarian system. The site https://www.democratic-erosion.com/ has a number of good links, for example to the books from Acemoglu & Robinson (e.g. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy") or to the book "What is populism?" from Jan-Werner Müller.<br><br>Anyone else interested in this topic?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: glen <gepropella@gmail.com> </div><div>Date: 1/6/22 15:36 (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: friam@redfish.com </div><div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Insurrection Index </div><div><br></div></div>I hear that quote repeated and I can't help but think it's a bit exceptionalist. I'm no scholar of types of government. But the quote, and the sentiment, always seems flawed to me, as if "democracy" were well defined. I mean, if we can call the US and the many European governments "democracies", all in the same vague class, with all the different voting protocols, representation methods, local -> national hierarchy, etc., what can the word really even mean? It's just too vague to hold the water implied by "all the other one's we've tried".<br><br>On 1/5/22 18:58, Steve Smith wrote:<br>> "The *worst* form of government, except for all the other one's we've tried!" I suppose it is time to try some other forms of "governANCE" ?<br><br>-- <br>glen<br>Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.<br><br><br>.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam<br>un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com<br>FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/<br>archives:<br> 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/<br> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/<br></body></html>