Home

2026-11-07

Democracies that have strengthened in recent years

Disclaimer

• Thinking aloud, may not endorse after lot of thought
• target audience - mainly written for myself, but may also be useful for others

Main

• Making chaotic notes because I don't want to prioritise time to study this (though it is a very important topic).
• Background context for this post is that I support mass movement to stop ASI. However, mass movements also often lead to breakdown of law and order, they can sometimes just lead to a new authoritarian taking over the country (under pretext of restoring law and order) and so on. I want to know in the last 25 years how many countries have in fact become stronger democracies, was it due to a mass movement, what else was required for it to go well and so on.
• List (could be incomplete, biased, blah blah blah)
  • Albania - to do - study operation alba and to what extent was Italy's involvement necessary to stabilise the country
  • Malaysia - what on earth happened in the 2018 general election? first time an opposition party came to power after so long
  • Dominican Republic - Did they actually become more democratic after 1996 or has the US just installed their puppet there?
  • Ghana - holy shit this is metal. Rawlings' military coup. (Not mass movement, military coup)
    • "He and the AFRC governed for 112 days and arranged the execution by firing squad of eight military officers, including Generals Kotei, Joy Amedume, Roger Felli, and Utuka, as well as the three former Ghanaian heads of state: Acheampong, Akuffo, and Akwasi Afrifa."
    • "Rawlings later implemented a much wider "house-cleaning exercise" involving the killings and abduction of over 300 Ghanaians."
    • After murdering all these people he actually managed to convert Ghana into a democracy. Holy shit.
    • Benevolent dictators do exist after all I guess? +1 to scott alexander
  • Malawi - 1993 referendum. This seems like a relatively clearcut example of mass movement actually making things better, and not necessarily leading of breakdown of law and order
  • Senegal - has had many mass protests. idk seems unclear on first glance if this is helping, my guess is it is, but I will need to read a lot more to be sure either way

Subscribe

Enter "Subscribe: " followed by Signal username, email address or whatsapp phone number. You will receive atmost one update per month. View previous updates here.

Alternatively, you can use RSS, or a third-party service like blogtrottr.

Comment

Enter "Comment: " followed by comment. Alternatively, contact me