Is a country that holds regular elections a democracy? We take the electoral process to be the first symptom of a democracy, but that in and of itself is very far from sufficient. By that measure, Russia is a democracy, as are Iran and Singapore – and indeed, many of the former Cold War Warsaw Pact regimes.
Yet we all understand that these countries fall well short of the status of democracies. And that is not, as is often alleged, merely because these countries are opposed to the US and its Western allies that do seem to have an effective monopoly …read more
Source: The Huffington Post
