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rfmcdonaldFollowing up on yesterday's [FORUM] post about the problems facing democracies, I've started to wonder--inspired by ongoing issues in the Middle East, of course--about the extent to which established democracies themselves might be new to competitive democracy.
Consider: I've written before about the pervasive parochialisms and bigotries of Prince Edward Island, rooted in largely unspoken issues of ethnicity and religion and reinforced by a strongly articulated ideology of family. There is very strong voter turnout, but this is a byproduct of these loyalties, as people fulfill their responsibilities to their communities and try to make sure that their government jobs will be guaranteed by the party they want (and, conversely, that jobs will be freed up if the incumbent party they dislike is opposed). The Liberal and Conservative parties dominate the Island with only a single exception, a New Democratic Party man elected to one term to the Legislative Assembly because of his popularity as a local doctor with his local West Prince community (that a region out of step with the rest of the province owing to its strongly Irish and Acadian Catholic population, subject to the sort of mockery of stupid strange-people hicks that I suppose is gentle). Democracy, yes. Competitive? Um.
What say you? How complex does a society have to be to support a relatively unhindered exchange in public life substantially not defined by matters genealogical?
Consider: I've written before about the pervasive parochialisms and bigotries of Prince Edward Island, rooted in largely unspoken issues of ethnicity and religion and reinforced by a strongly articulated ideology of family. There is very strong voter turnout, but this is a byproduct of these loyalties, as people fulfill their responsibilities to their communities and try to make sure that their government jobs will be guaranteed by the party they want (and, conversely, that jobs will be freed up if the incumbent party they dislike is opposed). The Liberal and Conservative parties dominate the Island with only a single exception, a New Democratic Party man elected to one term to the Legislative Assembly because of his popularity as a local doctor with his local West Prince community (that a region out of step with the rest of the province owing to its strongly Irish and Acadian Catholic population, subject to the sort of mockery of stupid strange-people hicks that I suppose is gentle). Democracy, yes. Competitive? Um.
What say you? How complex does a society have to be to support a relatively unhindered exchange in public life substantially not defined by matters genealogical?
