[FRIAM] Democracy at work

[Jochen Fromm]

I believe we have someone from India as well? I read in "The Economist" today that Narendra Modi lost his majority in the recent elections which would be a sign that democracy is working. -J.
-------- Original message --------From: steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> Date: 6/17/24  9:19 PM  (GMT+01:00) To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Democracy at work 
    Pieter -
    Congratulations on what sounds like a win from your
      perspective... we sure haven't exhibited much grace lately.   I
      felt like Gore (2000) and Hillary 2016), despite fighting for
      transparency and fairness backed out/down pretty gracefully pretty
      quickly... absolutely not so in 2020 and possibly never again?  I
      think bad habits might be harder to break than good ones...
    
    Did I hear correctly that SA was the first (main?) country to ask
      the ICC to treat the Netanyahu gov't as war criminals?  With the
      new President of MX running on that as part of her platform?   Was
      it the outgoing SA government or the incoming (or new coalition?)
      who holds that stance?   Was that stance part of the political
      calculus that pushed the ANC out?  
    
    There are many here who are more politically astute than I am so
      I'm asking for feedback on my observations:
    
      Parliamentary Democracies.   A shallow search tells me that
        there are easily a half-dozen variations which are for the most
        part too subtly differentiated for me to know what to think
        about them.  Overall it seems to me that some/many of these
        systems have been able to avoid the political lock-in that comes
        with some of our own "winner take all" systems.   Is this even
        vaguely accurate, are there notable exceptions?
      I sometimes hear that Parliamentary Democracies are "better"
        in that they are more able to represent centrist majorities over
        extremist populism as it feels we have been
        courting/experiencing through modern history.   I also sometimes
        hear that the volatile nature of the possibility of on-demand
        elections and reformulation of coalitions yields "too much"
        change too quickly to settle into good governance?
      I feel as if our Presidential system and style of separation
        of powers was well intentioned and perhaps worked well up to a
        point but that either evolutionary pressures (over time) have
        undermined that separation or perhaps simply that astute (and
        aggressive/greedy?) individuals have "gamed" it into ???
      We have discussed Ranked Choice voting and elimination of
        (obsolute?) institutions like the Electoral College to try to
        remedy this in the US but I'm not sure how quickly we will get a
        'round tuit.
      
    
    I don't know how many non US (active/interested?) members of
      FriAM we have here but I do recognize we have notable engagement
      from you (SA) and Germany (JF) and Australia and India and Ecuador
      (GS) and NL (JQ/DW) and Egypt/Sweden (Mohammed ex-officio?) with
      first-hand experience under various forms of parliamentary gov'ts
      and the many hear are very well traveled and have close colleagues
      globally who must report/confer on these issues from time to time.
    
    I think of SA as being somewhat unique in a number of ways that
      might be salient to the contemporary questions at hand in the
      world which include maybe most notably the waning (or ringing)
      legacy of the colonialism that started during the age of
      exploration and then took a strange turn during modern (golden age
      of transportation/communication forward?) times?
    
    - Steve
    
    On 6/16/24 8:59 PM, Pieter Steenekamp
      wrote:
    
    
      
      We recently had a general election here in South
        Africa, and I am extremely proud to be South African given the
        current developments. The ANC, which has been in power since the
        first democratic election in 1994, lost their absolute majority,
        with their percentage share of the vote decreasing from around
        58% to 40%.
        
        What makes me proud is the dignified manner in which they are
        handling this significant loss. They negotiated an agreement
        with the second-largest party to form a Government of National
        Unity and are currently working with various smaller political
        parties to share power based on a formula that considers the
        relative share of votes. The extremist left-wing parties are
        rejecting this and will form the opposition.
        
        While many things could still go wrong, it currently appears
        that this is how democracy is meant to function.
      
      
      
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