Hot answers tagged democracy
8
Quite a few of them, especially in Central and South America.
Here are lists of attempted and successful coups d'etat, listed by date in the former, by nation in the latter.
7
Presumably this would be ancient Rome during the early Empire. The best numbers available come, I think, from Augustus' official autobiography. The English text can be found here. In paragraph 8 he says that in the Empire-wide census of 14CE "were counted 4,937,000 of the heads of Roman citizens". Now, it seems to be a vexing questions for historians what ...
7
The question is poorly stated. The Founding Fathers were not all of one mind on many subjects— the Federalists saw danger in direct democracy, whereas the Anti-Federalists did not. Additionally, popular usage of terms like "democracy" or "republic" is quite different from a political scientist's use of such terms— indeed, quite a lot of things "don't mean ...
6
The 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile seems to fit the criteria you outline. A democratically elected president of a Western country ousted by the military.
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event of the Cold War and the history of Chile. Following an extended period of social and political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile ...
6
The Graeco-Roman world is a unique example of intertwined cultures, the geographical and historical proximity of the two civilizations is such that's it's often impossible to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. In extremely broad terms, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the political system of the Romans were heavily influenced by the ...
5
The word "caliph" comes from the Arabic "khalifa", which means "successor [of the Prophet]". The caliph claims a religion-based legitimacy, instead of popular support as in republics. The philosophy is totally different. A caliphate's objective is to have a government based on the Sharia, while a republic seeks to have a government based on popular will.
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4
First of all, reading history depends strongly on what glasses you put on when you do so. The level of satisfaction regarding the answer to your question will therefore depend very strongly on what you think of when you say "democracy". This is true when you look at a polity in the past as well as the present: in order to compare before with after, you need ...
3
I found an interesting article that discusses this topic, and I believe it provided a pretty realistic explanation for this. Basically, it stated that the economic and diplomatic sanctions placed on Myanmar by the West had a major impact. The reasoning is not that the rulers of Myanmar particularly cared about the impact of said sanctions on the citizens as ...
2
1.) Germany, before WWI, was a very successful capitalist autocracy - they only became democratic at (literal) gunpoint. The rulers were hereditary - it was an imperial monarchy. Ditto Austria-Hungary.
2.) Spain spent most of the 20th Century as a capitalist power-house under Franco's dictatorship, something like the 8th largest economy. Portugal lasted ...
2
@ChintaLaura's explanation is excellent - well researched and reasoned analysis of the question you asked. Your question however hints at a deeper interest in the function of government and various alternative mechanisms to fulfill that function. I think Fukayama's Origins of Political Order might provide a useful analytical framework. Loosely summarizing ...
2
Rather a lot of Western European countries spent the modern era vascilating between Democratic and Authoritarian governments. This is common enough that it is common when talking about the modern history of said countries to refer to a period as either "The nth Republic" or "The nth Monarchy/Empire/Reich/Whatever".
Countries in this boat include Portugal, ...
1
Britain, dictatorship 1653-1658
France, absolute monarchy until 1789, then dictatorship (1799), absolute empire (1804), again monarchy (1814), then dictatorship (1848) and absolute empire again (1852).
Germany, absolute monarchy (1871-1918), then dictatorship (1933)
Spain, absolute monarchy before 1873, restoration of monarchy by a coup (1874-1931), ...
1
I would characterize the 1973 overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende by GENERAL Augosto Pinochet as an example of a "military takeover of a democracy in the western world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende
Chile was a western democracy in 1973. People might debate as to whether or not it was "advanced."
1
I'll answer only for the United States, the country I know best, but the answer is yes.
Prior to the Civil War, there as a "crazy quilt" of parties. A 36 year period from 1824-1860 began with the ruling party as the "Democratic-Republican" Party. The main opposition party morphed from the Federalist party to the Whig Party. A third party, the Free Soil ...
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