How Democracies Die

Hitler’s assumption of power on the 30th of January 1933 was seemingly due to the mass popularity of the Nazi party. However it was far off achieving the 50% majority it needed to put Hitler automatically in power. As well as popularity, backstairs intrigue and the short-sightedness of those in power enabled Hitler to become Chancellor. The weaknesses of Germany’s political leadership were fundamental to Hitler’s success. In some senses the popularity of the party only provided an opening, available for exploitation.

After Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War I, Germans had little faith in their government, and in the early 1930s following the stock market crash in New York, Germany was economically struggling . Millions of people were out of work due to the world wide catastrophe making it an opportune time for Hitler and the Nazis to rise into power. Hitler, who was a powerful and spellbinding speaker, attracted Germans desperate for change. He promised to make Germany a better country and promised the disenchanted, a better life. Nazis appealed especially to the youth, unemployed, and members of the lower to middle class. Hitler’s rise to power seemed instantaneous. Before the economic depression, Nazis were virtually unknown, winning less than 3 percent of the vote to the Reichstag, which was the German Parliament. However, in the 1924 elections, the Nazis won a whopping 33 percent of the votes which was more than any other party. In January of 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the head of German Government . The Germans were convinced that they had found a savior for the Nation. The timing of his rise made it very easy for Hitler to gain power in a democratic government because people were hopeless and wanted a fast solution to the deficit. He promised things like a stronger economy, prosperity, and anything that they desired . He focused on first getting noticed and then grew from there. He didn’t say anything but what the people wanted to hear. Getting the people of Germany to trust him was how he started to gain so much control. Unfortunately, Hitler’s charm and persuasion was not the sole reason why Hitler gained so much power in a democratic

We know that democracies are common among the economically urbanized countries and rare between the very deprived ones. The reason we scrutinize this pattern is not that democracies are more probable to emerge, as a result, of economic development but that they are to a large extent more possible to survive if they occur to emerge in most urbanized countries. The paths to democracy are diverse. Indeed, they appear to follow no unsurprising pattern. But once democracy is conventional, for whatever reasons, its endurance depends on a few, easily particular, factors.

Fourth, the definition of the word "democracy" has changed. The way Americans see the word doesn't refer to a static system as it once did, it is ever changing and improving.

On The 30th of January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. In the 18 months succeeding this, Hitler became, essentially, a dictator. This essay will look at what a dictatorship is and how it operates, how the population is brought to a point where they accept a dictatorship, and examine and analyze the vital events that took place in Germany which lead to Hitler assuming dictatorial power: the Reichstag fire, the Emergency Decree, the Enabling Act, the banning of trade unions and other political parties, the Night Of The Long Knives, the death of President Hindenburg, and the German army’s oath of loyalty to Hitler. It will

In two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, Americans fought and died so that democracy would prevail around the world. In the minds of many Americans, America is the bastion of democracy. But how democratic is America? Today’s America was “born” with the signing of the constitution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, it was determined how democratic America would be. And every American should ask himself how democratic America was made at that constitutional convention in Philadelphia.

With incompetent leadership and an unhappy nation, the German people began to realize that their country was in a vulnerable situation and began to look for stable alternatives to democracy. Hitler’s

Despite being one of the oldest and most consistently stable democracies in the Western world, the American government, and American democracy as a whole, has frequently come under fire in recent years. Whether it is political parties, pundits, bloggers or citizens, Americans and non-Americans are all lining up to take shots at what they diagnose as a storied democracy crumbling before their eyes. Two of Robert Dahl’s criteria for a healthy democracy are enlightened understanding: are citizens able to acquire the political information necessary to participate in their own democracy, and control of the agenda: do the American senators and members of congress have exclusive and

Democracy, as defined in American Government: Power and Purpose, is “a system of rule that permits citizens to play a significant part in the governmental process, usually through the selection of key public officials.” In the centuries before and since its founding, the United States has indubitably had undemocratic elements. In colonial times, the thirteen colonies’ government derived most of its authority from the elites, depriving many of those residing in lower socioeconomic classes from a voice in government. During the time of the American Revolution,

The United States was the first successful democracy in modern. Why democracy has worked well in the United States. Why Iraq cannot become a democracy? Why Judaism is not compatible with democracy? What true democracy requires a time commitment? Proponents of democracy believe it is the best political system, although opponents believe it is more complicated, particularly in Mid-East nations.

“How Democratic Is the American Consitution?” written by Robert A. Dahl is a novel that’s main purpose is to “suggest changes in the way we think about our constitution” (Dahl 2003, p.1). Robert A. Dahl revolves his book around a few questions. However, the main focus of all the questions are “why should we Americans uphold our constitution” (Dahl 2003, p.1)? This question is asked because he questions why we uphold something that was written more than two centuries ago. He also questions how democratic our society is because of our constitution. Dahl examines the fact that some Americans have no problem with the constitution as it is today and then he also states that some find it to lack in some crucial areas. Dahl explains that there are seven crucial areas in which the constitution lacks democracy. These include: slavery, suffrage, election of the president, choosing senators, equal representation in the Senate, Judicial power, and Congressional power.

American politics has proved to be flawed in structure over, and over again. Although our founding fathers had the best intentions when they implemented democracy, they like most modern day politicians, failed to actually make things better. Yes we gained our Independence, but with the ability to make our own choices we tend to make childish and impulsive decisions. The election of Donald Trump stands to be the most recent of those mistakes, and the politicians who work for him are either blinded or full of regret. Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Lowell paint vivid pictures of these very mistakes that seem to recur with the thought of democracy.

On the other hand, if this were to have existed in a dictatorship, one would merely get used to how something went because that was how life would be from now on if there was a dictator present. With all the mess and distress already present, the body of laws present in a democracy is much slower to be established, while it usually took much less time with a dictator. Rather than one person having to agree on a law or come up with one, a democracy requires the whole body instead to ratify or accept it. This is due to the fact that your own personal needs must be given up in a dictatorship, while they are respected and valued on the other hand in a democracy. Therefore, seeing from all these changes, the alteration in government that the German government faced must have produced overwhelming challenges for Germany as a whole. They must completely abandon the norm for them and accustom themselves once again to a new way of life. Not only will these bring upon conflicts within the human population, but in all aspects including political, social, and economic qualities. In specificity to all these problems, it was many problems that accumulated and grew through time that presented a chance for Hitler to rise to power. Adolf Hitler was not only a strong and powerful leader that could have rose to power completely on his own, yet many of the inhabitants in Germany was tired of everything and needed a changed

The United States of America is one of the oldest contemporary democracies, is currently the second largest democracy, and is ranked the 16th best democracy in the world (Campbell et. Al, 2014). Yet there is a legitimate question over whether or not the United States can still truly be considered a democracy, with some studies even suggesting it has begun to resemble an oligarchy (Chumley, 2014). In this essay, I will use Dahl’s criteria of voting equality and effective participation to determine whether or not the United States are truly a democracy.

Churchill’s claim that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” is deliberately provocative and intended to challenge the reader’s simplistic ideal that democracy is without faults. There are an estimated 114 democracies in the world today (Wong, Oct 3rd lecture). A figure that has increased rapidly in the last century not necessarily because democracy is the best form of government, but primarily for reason that in practice, under stable social, economic and political conditions, it has the least limitations in comparison to other forms of government. Be it the transparency of a democratic government or the prevalence of majority rule, all subdivisions of democracy benefit and hinder its