Re: Vox's CIA-Backed 'Democracy' Standard Is OK With Slavery and Women Not Voting (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Interesting.

However, I have been beginning to have my doubts about large, centralized
democracies.  People don't own up to their votes and accept
responsibility.  Instead, people vote and either forget about what or who
they voted on, accept some resemblance of regret about their vote, or just
lie about how they voted.

I'm not sure how this can be fixed per se because the alternatives to
democracy are even worse.  In any case, large centralized governments of
any sort have their own advantages and disadvantages, and unaccountability
of the voters is one of the disadvantages.

There's an interesting post about randomocracy here:

 https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/randomocracy-as-a-form-of-government/

There's also the argument that it would create corruption because the
"leaders" would be unaccountable.  I think that would be a good thing,
actually, because that would end up spreading the wealth through other
means -- the lottery, in this case, would actually mean something.

I wonder if you could do this in a coop?  I.e., force members onto voting
panels and boards, randomly?  Something to think about.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 08:46:58 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: [** utf-8 charset **] FAIR<http://www.fair.org/~fair>
 >  > Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 21:48:49 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > Defining democracy is a notoriously difficult thing, but much is revealed by 
 >  > how media outlets choose to do so.
 >  > One popular metric is called â??Polity IVâ??â??a methodology created by the 
 >  > Center for Systemic Peace, headed by Dr. Monty G. Marshall of Georgetown 
 >  > University, which has been cited in prestigious outlets like the Washington 
 >  > Post and New York Times. But few outlets have embraced the method as 
 >  > enthusiastically as the â??news explainerâ?? site Vox.
 >  > Vox, which constantly tells its readers that life is actually swell, with 
 >  > the momentum of history indisputably on the road to justice, decreased 
 >  > poverty and less war, consistently uses Polity IV to prop up its argument 
 >  > that â??democracyâ?? is on the rise:
 >  > 
 >  > How the Fall of the Berlin Wall Changed the World, in One Chart (11/10/14)
 >  > 26 Charts and Maps That Show the World Is Getting Much, Much Better (
 >  > 11/24/14)
 >  > The Animated Map That Explains the World (4/22/14)
 >  > The World Is Getting Better All the Time, in 11 Maps and Charts (7/13/15)
 >  > World Hunger Is at Its Lowest Point in at Least 25 Years. Thank Democracy (
 >  > 5/9/16)
 >  > 
 >  > But dig into the criteria being used and you find a troubling definition of â
 >  > ??democracyâ?? that serves the interests of US powerâ??and wealthy elites. 
 >  > According to the Polity IV method, the United States during the time of 
 >  > slavery scored 9 out of 10 on the democracy scale. During the era of Jim 
 >  > Crow, when most blacks and women of all races couldnâ??t vote, it scored a 
 >  > perfect 10 out of 10â??or â??full democracy.â??
 >  > The metric makes many equally dubious assertions. Todayâ??s Israelâ??which 
 >  > occupies the lands of 4.5 million Palestinians, who cannot vote in Israeli 
 >  > elections, do not have freedom of movement and are restricted in dozens of 
 >  > waysâ??receives a score of â??full democracy,â?? or 10 out of 10. Â Since 
 >  > the nation of Palestine is not included in Polity IVâ??s list of countries, 
 >  > one can only assume it must fall under the purview of Israel, which renders 
 >  > the score even more risible. How can a country with 35 percent of its 
 >  > population disenfranchised be a â??full democracyâ??? The same way, 
 >  > presumably, that the antebellum United Statesâ??with 3.5 million slavesâ??
 >  > can be 90 percent democratic.
 >  > Similarly, countries that suffered colonialism at the hands of European and 
 >  > US â??democracy,â?? like most of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East 
 >  > prior to 1960, are simply listed as â??no data.â?? For those still suffering 
 >  > the brutal legacy of colonialism, this map from 1900 leaves a lot to be 
 >  > desired:
 >  > 
 >  > As with Palestinians, those occupied and subjugated by â??democraciesâ?? are 
 >  > simply ignored. The existence of unpersonsâ??whether they be slaves, serfs 
 >  > or disenfranchised and exploited imperial subjectsâ??does not affect a 
 >  > countryâ??s â??democraticâ?? status, for reasons that are never explained.
 >  > This isnâ??t too much of a surprise, since the data used come from the 
 >  > Political Instability Task Forceâ??a research project set up  with funding 
 >  > from the Central Intelligence Agency. (The Center for Systemic Peaceâ??s 
 >  > Monty Marshall also runs this Agency-funded think tank). That the CIA would 
 >  > fund a project that produces absurd results favorable to US ideological 
 >  > interests is not a scandal; that our media would so uncritically adopt it 
 >  > should be.
 >  > 
 >  > â??The limits of my language,â?? philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, 
 >  > â??mean the limits of my world.â?? How one defines â??democracyâ?? is a 
 >  > question loaded with ideological baggage that â??explainerâ?? journalists at 
 >  > Vox donâ??t seem too concerned with unpacking. Thereâ??s a â??widely 
 >  > accepted standardâ?? among elite institutions, as Voxâ??s Zack Beauchamp 
 >  > remarks, and this taken-for-granted assumption is simply recycled until it 
 >  > is self-evidently true.
 >  > Assumptions are also made about what constitutes a meaningful relationship 
 >  > between citizen and state. Countries that limit free speech are naturally 
 >  > docked democracy points, but those that leave 22 percent of children in 
 >  > poverty, like the US, can still be â??full democracies.â?? How robust can a 
 >  > democracy be, though, when so many lack the resources, or the security, to 
 >  > push back against the system? How robust can a democracy be that routinely, 
 >  > and predictably, serves the interests of the super-wealthy? Such questions 
 >  > are rarely asked by Voxâ??and when they are, theyâ??re dismissed as 
 >  > distractions.
 >  > FAIR reached out to the researcher Vox cited, Oxford research fellow Max 
 >  > Roser, who uses Polity IV. After conceding Polity IV was â??far from perfect,
 >  > â?? Roser told FAIR via email:
 >  > I chose it as my main source because of the comparison with alternatives 
 >  > that I cite on the data entry on democratization. We also have to keep in 
 >  > mind that this measure cannot capture everything that matters for a 
 >  > political regime. For example, it makes sense to measure corruption or 
 >  > economic exploitation separately from the democracy concept. Not because it 
 >  > doesn&#8217;t matter, but because [it] all matters, and for different 
 >  > questions we want to be able to differentiate between the importance of 
 >  > different factors.
 >  > So an intentionally narrow and admittedly flawed metric used for a very 
 >  > specific input is being held up by Vox and others as per se evidence of â??
 >  > democracy.â?? Voxâ??s Zack Beauchamp (4/22/14) uses Polity IVâ??s cut off of 
 >  > â??6â?? to assert â??democracy has conquered the world.â?? Â His nifty gif 
 >  > begins with the US (naturally) as the sole democracy in 1842â??despite being 
 >  > one of the few countries left in the Western world that still had legalized 
 >  > slavery:
 >  > 
 >  > According to the link Vox provided to back up the claim that Polity IV is a â
 >  > ??widely accepted academic standard,â?? â??democracy reflects three 
 >  > essential elementsâ??:
 >  > 
 >  > The â??presence of institutions and procedures through which citizens can 
 >  > express preferences about alternative policies and leadersâ??;
 >  > The â??existence of institutionalized constraints on the power of the 
 >  > executiveâ??;
 >  > The â??guarantee of civil liberties to all citizensâ??â??although whether 
 >  > these guarantees are respected is not actually measured.
 >  > 
 >  > The â??guarantee of civil liberties to all citizensâ??? Even setting aside 
 >  > the absurd historical ratings, how does Polity IV award a perfect score to a 
 >  > country like the United States that incarcerates the highest number of 
 >  > people in world, maintains offshore penal colonies where people are denied 
 >  > basic due process, routinely shoots unarmed people of color, runs a massive 
 >  > domestic and global spying apparatus and passes increasingly restrictive 
 >  > disenfranchisement laws. While the explanation of the United Statesâ?? 
 >  > perfect democracy score vaguely references Jim Crow and present-day 
 >  > discrimination, there is no explanation of how the USâ??s racist and 
 >  > oppressive past and present allow it to remain virtually perfect for the 
 >  > past 150 years.
 >  > When asked in a follow up email by FAIR if Polity IVâ??s source of funds 
 >  > from the CIA bothered him, Roser responded, â??Yes, it does. Very much so,â??
 >  >  but he reiterated that he knows it&#8217;s flawed, but uses it due to a 
 >  > lack of a better alternative.
 >  > Even if a CIA-funded â??democracyâ?? rating could produce entirely objective 
 >  > results, certainly disclosing this funding to Voxâ??s readers would give an 
 >  > important piece of context to the ideological framing at work. No such 
 >  > context is provided: just a quick assertion of academic consensus and a 
 >  > series of sexy-clickbait graphs with American exceptionalismâ??and, frankly, 
 >  > white supremacismâ??baked into Voxâ??s content cake.
 >  > 
 >  > Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter 
 >  > at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
 >  > You can contact Vox here (or via Twitter: @VoxDotCom). Please remember that 
 >  > respectful communication is the most effective.