Many countries include ‘Democratic’ or ‘People’s’ in their names, even though they are not democratic and do not serve their people. Examples: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Lao People’s Democratic Republic People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria Democratic Republic of the Congo And German Democratic Republic (East Side) in 1949–1990. None of these states are democratic, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. Who are they fooling with these names?
In the West we’ve been getting 50/50 splits on voting, whereas out east it’s all 99/sent for re-education. Which of these seems more hegemonic to you?
Edit @+2hrs & change: At time of edit, the votes I see on my response here are 6/5, which is pretty close to 50/50. I can’t tell whether that’s been deliberately engineered by naysayers or the most juicy of ironies. Either way. Bravo. That’s hilarious.
Elections≠Democracy. Again, you are expecting liberal west (or hegemonic) “democracy”. I am not making a moral judgement of either, just trying to explain that the definition of democracy that has been shoved to the people’s brain of the global north (hegemony) is not the only or the correct one.
Unfortunately nuance has no place here, nor does the anti-colonialist context or distinction between party and governance.
What does hegemony mean here? And what would a non-hegemonic democracy look like?
I mean it in Gramsci’s terms. For the second question I would say the ones cited by OP are good examples but horizontal organization is my preferred one, look about EZLN ways of horizontal democracy. Again not saying they are the correct or morally good ones either.
How is North Korea a democracy?
These seem to be distributed communities that internally use direct democracy (public assemblies). And I agree that direct democracy is a form of democracy. A very inefficient form that doesn’t scale past the size of Greece or EZLN, but still a democracy.
Voting is incredibly minimal at best but has marginally expanded since 2023 with some primaries.
North Korea is basically if a trauma victim was a country, shellshocked after a genocidal bombing campaign. Blowback Season 4 goes into crazy detail about the war. That’s what caused them to pioneer the tunnel technology we saw in Vietnam and also Gaza today.
Neither of those supports the stance that it should be considered a democracy though…
You’re missing the point…
That’s their version of Democratic Republic represention within the party, shaped by the material conditions of both the before-mentioned genocidal bombing campaign and the continued attempts of outside forces to collapse the state via CIA Activities and Sanctions designed to starve and isolate the entire country.
You should check out the Blowback podcast if you’re interested in The Korea War and how those events shaped Present-day North and South Korea
OP’s post is a simple observation about the names of countries and their political alignment. There are probably numerous reasons and causes for both the name and the political alignment. But the observation still holds.
Close elections are a fairly meaningless metric, especially when all candidates agree on certain key issues.
“Out east?” Where? There’s tons of different countries with all kinds of different governments in what’s classically considered the East. There isn’t even a Comintern to generalize about, but it doesn’t seem to slow you down at all.
Have you actually studied the government structure of, say, Laos? I doubt it. So, where did you get this information you’re confidently repeating about it? Mind-boggling how liberals will just say shit. Lazy stereotyping at best.