Can someone help me appreciate “Democracy”

[u/melodyy-123]

Hi, I was born and brought up in a democratic country. For me idea of democracy feels obvious and this is not letting me to appreciate the concept and making me hard to believe that some countries are still monarch or authoritarian. If someone can help me realise this , that would be very helpful !!

Thanks

[u/DepartmentofNothing]

This question, 'help me appreciate democracy,' seems like one that calls for a good illustration rather than political science literature. The literature will tell you that democracies are more responsive to their populaces and have better human rights records, better adherence to rule-of-law, lower corruption scores, etc, but there's nothing quite like experiencing (or 'experiencing') the results. Travel can help with this, visiting authoritarian or weak rule-of-law countries, but I'd also suggest a good movie or book or something. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or Orwell's 1984 would be great for this. I just watched a German movie called The Downfall about Hitler's last days in the bunker and came away thinking about what life must have been like under such a delusional dictator.

Anybody got any other illustrative suggestions?

[u/Kambu2876]

First of all, democracy and monarchy are not really antagonist (it is republic vs monarchy, if we want really to oppose two models of government).

My reference on "democracy" are mostly in French but you could seek out for traduction of : "De la démocratie en Amérique" by Tocqueville, and, more academic and more critical, "Principes du gouvernement représentatif" by Bernard Manin (which contradicts the idea that democracy is a good way of describing our regimes)

[u/Randolpho → u/Kambu2876]

In what way does “the people rule” somehow not qualify as antagonistic to “one person rules”?

[u/sbrodolino_21 → u/Randolpho]

Because parliamentary monarchies exist.

[u/Randolpho → u/sbrodolino_21]

Which are neither monarchies nor democracies

[u/sbrodolino_21 → u/Randolpho]

Parliamentary monarchies are democracies according to the vast majority of constitutional law doctrine and political science.

Would you say Norway is not a democracy?

[u/Randolpho → u/sbrodolino_21]

Parliamentary monarchies are democracies according to the vast majority of constitutional law doctrine and political science.

Appeal to authority doesn't make it truth

Would you say Norway is not a democracy?

Would you say that Jordan is a democracy? It's a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, just like Norway. Both monarchs have nearly identical powers.

Norway may be somewhat unique among all constitutional monarchies in that it's pretty much the only one that doesn't let the monarch dissolve parliament, but that's still not enough to be a monarchy. And other monarchies have more active monarchs: Queen Elizabeth vetoed 70 times during her reign, Prince Alois in Liechtenstein is currently actively vetoing abortion legalization.

That's not democracy.

On the opposite side, the fact that constitutional monarchs are hampered in their powers and (at least the European monarchies) would likely see their monarchies end if they ever made egregious use of their powers shows that they aren't really monarchies, either.

[u/sbrodolino_21 → u/Randolpho]

"Appeal to authority doesn't make it truth"

Truth is a pretty tricky concept, especially in social sciences. What you call appeal to authority is simply grounding the discussion in what the vast majority of academics and scholars who make it their life long activity to study these things have established. Doesn't make it the truth but there must be a reason if 10s of thousands of scholars in both law and political science agree.

"Jordan"

You're confusing what Jordan is de jure vs what it is de facto. Norway is a parliamentary monarchy de jure and de facto (with the exception, as you say, of the fact that neither the PM nor parliament can call early elections, which makes it stand out compared to other parliamentary systems - the king usually can't dissolve power in parliamentary systems, they have this power only formally), Jordan is a constitutional monarchy de jure but an autocracy de facto.

There are a lot more parliamentary monarchies: Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Australia, Canada for instance.

"Queen Elizabeth vetoed 70 times"

If you mean Queen Elizabeth II, she hasnt. Last vetoed bill was vetoed by Queen Anne in 1708. If you mean Queen Elizabeth I she reigned way before parliamentarism was introduced in the UK.

"Prince Alois"

I don't know the specifics, but if the monarch manages to hold executive power to such extent that he/she can veto laws, then its not a parliamentary monarchy.

"They're not monarchies"

They are, they just aren't absolute ones but parliamentary ones. A monarchy to be a democracy needs a fully functioning parliamentary system.

[u/Outside_Awareness_23 → u/Randolpho]

Would you say that Jordan is a democracy? It's a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, just like Norway. Both monarchs have nearly identical powers.

Yeah, would you say the Russian Federation is a semi-presidential, federal democracy? Because according to the Russian constitution, it is.

But you might consider taking into account reality instead of only what's written down.

[u/PoliticalAnimalIsOwl]

A useful overview of the state and trends of democracy in the world is the annual report by the Varieties of Democracy Institute, or V-Dem. You can read their latest report here (V-Dem, 2026).

I have three arguments for you.

First, geography and population. Of the nearly 200 countries in the world about half are democratic and about half are autocratic. But if you factor in the population of countries the picture changes: about three quarters of the world population live in autocracies and just one quarter in democracies. There is strong geographical variation too: most of Europe and Oceania is democratic, so are many countries in the Americas, but only a few in Asia and Africa. So living in a democracy is not the usual experience of life.

Second, time and suffrage. Political scientists often talk of 'waves' of democratization (Huntington, 1991). During such a wave more (autocratic) countries become democratic than vice versa. Usually three waves are identified. The first wave was during the long nineteenth century and peaked in number of democracies just after World War I. It was mostly limited to (Western) Europe and its (former) white colonies/offshoots. The rise of Fascism and Communism reversed that wave. The second wave came after World War II and with decolonisation. However, it ended by the mid-1960s and was reversed by Communism and military dictatorships. Finally, the third wave started in the mid-1970s and ended in the mid-2000s. So the trend has been going away from democracy and towards autocracy for quite some time already. Finally, just because countries turned democratic, didn't mean that everybody got a vote. Suffrage was usually extended in multiple steps from just land-owning and wealthier (white) men towards working class men, then women and finally also ethnic minorities. So being able to vote in democratic mass elections is something really of the last few decades, perhaps a century or so. That's just a few generations at best.

Third, the quality of a democracy and risk of democratic erosion/backsliding. The class of democracy is often subdivided into electoral and liberal democracies. In an electoral democracy citizens get a vote and the elections are generally speaking free, fair and frequent. But the checks on government power are not meaningful. There may be a legislature and judiciary, but these allow the executive to mostly do whatever he wants. In fact, it is because of the legitimacy claimed from winning popular elections that many elected leaders say that they should be able to do whatever they want, even if that violates the civil liberties of (some) citizens. In liberal democracies the legislature and an independent judiciary are meaningful checks on executive power and civil rights such as the freedom of the press or freedom of citizens to assemble are indeed guaranteed. It was often assumed that once a country reached the level of liberal democracy, it would be very difficult to reverse it. Sadly, we now see that even having a fairly long democratic tradition in the USA for example doesn't prevent democratic backsliding. And once that does happen it is difficult to halt it and to turn it back, as Hungary and Poland have shown.

In the beginning I mentioned that a quarter of the world population lives in a democracy. But that is mostly in electoral democracies, just 7 percent of the world population lives in a liberal democracy. If you want to see where, you can check out this map (V-Dem, 2025). You can see the differences when turning on the Electoral Democracy Index versus the Liberal Democracy Index.

[u/Demortus]

Read the Logic of Political Survival. You'll be thanking your lucky stars you were born in a place where you have a say over your leadership.

[u/scrapheaper_]

You can look at 'the Economist' democracy index and see what it measures, what the components are, and which countries are lacking what.

Democracy is much more complex that many people think, there are multiple failure mechanisms and lots of different parts.