Comment by scoofy
9 hours ago
It is difficult to instigate regime change for democratically elected governments.
Iran has an unelected supreme leader.
Israel has a large portion of its population completely disenfranchised.
The US has a generally democratically elected government.
If one of these governments is going to fall during military instabilities, it would most likely be Iran. The US will have significant regime change in November if polling holds.
> Israel has a large portion of its population completely disenfranchised.
Care to elaborate? As far as I know, this is false. All Israeli citizens 18 or older can vote; there are no voting restrictions based on race, religion, gender or property; prisoners can vote (unlike in many US states for example); permanent residents who are not citizens cannot vote in national elections but may vote in municipal elections (not the case in the US). National turnout ranges between 65% and 75%.
Minorities are well represented: Arab and Druze citizens vote and have representation in the Knesset.
I struggle to find any dimension in which your statement is correct.
Very obviously, I’m referring to the Palestinians in the “Palestinian Territories” being de facto governed by Israel and are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections.
There is nothing obvious about that statement. In fact it's catastrophically wrong.
Palestinians in Gaza have been governed by Hamas since 2006. Before that, they had been governed by the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) since 1994.
Palestinians in Judea and Samaria ("West bank") have been governed by the Palestinian Authority continuously since 1994, with the exception of Area C.
Palestinians who live there are NOT "de facto governed" by Israel. They pay taxes to the Palestinian Authority; receive birth certificates, IDs, business licenses and social security payments from the P.A.; Go to schools, hospitals, courts, police stations and jails run by the P.A. And most importantly, they vote in elections run by the P.A. To say that they are "de facto governed" by Israel is ridiculous, and shows a lack of basic understanding of Israel and Palestine, and the conflict between them.
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Wow can you stop spreading misinformation.
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Yes, but how many adults in land controlled by Israel are Israeli citizens?
The US is at “flawed democracy” in the Economist Democracy Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
The US is a republic with some democratic institutions, but the economists index isn’t some platonic indicator that gets to define who’s a good government and who isn’t. Several of its higher ranking countries have outright banned extremely popular political parties in recent years.
Care to tell us what the politics of those parties were?
Because a functioning democracy would ban a nazi party.
So is France.
And both have a similarly executive-centric form of government where the president and the majority party hold a disproportionate amount of power. Although the US is even worse than France on this regard as far as I know.
I think it makes sense that both are categorised as flawed.
democracy is a lower form of government in the ancient world
I wonder who those critics were and what they were motivated by. (Rhetorical)
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The US and Israel are elected governments, but that should certainly not presuppose democratic. The Roman Republic was, for example, fully elected but simultaneously it was intentionally autocratic to the elite. That is why it fell to a dictatorship which then increased the liberty and standards of the people.
Democracy is the directness by which social participation equates to governance. The US is a federal republic with only two parties each bound by the same hostile funding system that benefits political contributions over the vote. That is far from democratic.
Democracy and Republic both mean “normal people are in charge of government” and are in opposition to monarchy. The distinction you are referring to was a contrived interpretation in the federalist papers to make a point.
No. Democracy and republic are fundamentally different. You want to equivocate them because there is a vote. They have always been different going back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans who each invented those terms.
For democratically elected governments, doesn't regime change occur when any sitting politician loses the next election to their oponent?
In my thinking regime change doesn't only refer to the complete collapse of the political system, just change in direction of the leaders.
If the legislature changes party, that party —-“the regime” if we can use that term—- will be unseated from power.
> Israel has a large portion of its population completely disenfranchised.
Does it?
The Israeli government has de facto control of large sections of the Palestinian Territories. The people in those territories, however cannot participate in the elections of that government.
The distinction being de jure and de facto control is something worth debating, but it’s trivially true that Israel controls large swaths of territory where people are not eligible to participate in that government.
Prior to October 7th this is simply not true.
Consider the meanings of the following words:
- sovereignty
- border
- population
In that order, in the context of that region. Then consider their meanings in the context of (say) Canada. Consider how conventional applications of those terms are different for the two.
> if polling holds.
And The Constitution.
You still believe the US regimes will allow elections as the they know it?
> It is difficult to instigate regime change for democratically elected governments.
Just ask the folks who tried on January 6.
> The US will have significant regime change in November if polling holds.
Assuming elections are held fairly. "Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency":
* https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2...