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skeptical_lurker comments on [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat - Less Wrong Discussion
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Well, its my understanding that Russia is generally described as 'partially democratic' meaning something along the line of there are elections, but state control of parts of the media and other factors mean that the ruling party hasn't lost any elections. But, state control of the media only goes so far. Japan's ruling party didn't lose any elections for over 50 years, and then following the financial crash of 2008 they did.
I don't think Russia is really democratic in any meaningful sense we understand in the West. Putin et al just find it useful to maintain this as a polite fiction. In particular, my prediction is that changing demographics will have no effect whatsoever on the distribution of political power in Russia without other drastic changes (e.g. a coup d'etat)
Do you think Russia was democratic at any recent point? Mid-1990s, maybe?
Interestingly, The LOR -see 1 and 2 democratically elect their own officers. It's almost like extreme authoritarian salafism of the ISIL brings out extreme democratic libertarian fighters out of the woodwork (nb. many of them are actually marxist, but at least they can get along for the time being).