Austrian elections?!

[Dill]

(10-17-2017, 08:42 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: It is frustrating, there is no doubt at all about that. But, that's democracy. We administrators and policy wonks know what we do, but because we are accountable to elected officials at the top level, who are accountable to the people. If the people don't want something, then it isn't going to happen. Now, what would be great is if we could rely on logical and reasonable discussions about the issues to inform voters. What we get instead is a game of political football with tons of misinformation coming from people that don't understand the policy, they just understand politics.

There are pros and cons, but I still favor a representative democracy over a technocracy.

That used to be a no brainer for me. But now I am thinking it over. Representative democracy requires special conditions in "late modernity" I think. More attention to public education, especially in history.

Without that the cons begin to outweigh pros. 

Since Nov. 8 I've been thinking a lot about the demise of ancient Athens. Maybe you read Thucydides somewhere in your Poly Sci education? He seems to think democracy didn't work well under the stress of war. The Peloponnesian War has such apt descriptions of demagogues fooling voters because the values which make a state functional are inverted, exiling good leaders for demonstrating competence, and finally just crashing the ship of state.