{"id":25336,"date":"2019-12-06T11:28:58","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T10:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25336"},"modified":"2019-12-06T11:29:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T10:29:00","slug":"the-crisis-in-the-older-democracies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25336","title":{"rendered":"The crisis in the older democracies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Democracy is not so much a stable political system as a work in permanent progress. It takes decades, even centuries, to embed in a society &#8211; but, even then, it is never settled and never totally secure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Indeed the distinction between democratic countries and non-democratic countries is a blurred one and it is better to see nations on a spectrum from fully democratic to outright authoritarian. Positions on that spectrum can and do change, sometimes &#8211; for good or bad &#8211; very rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is very obvious with nations that have only recently attempted democratic forms, such as Russia, South Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is much less well understood is that even the older democracies are facing serious challenges which, in some cases, amount to a crisis. Sadly this is the case in many of the nations of Europe and much of the remainder of the developed world including the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These are the opening paragraphs of my website essay on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/democracy\">&#8220;The crisis in the older democracies&#8221;.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democracy is not so much a stable political system as a work in permanent progress. It takes decades, even centuries, to embed in a society &#8211; but, even then, it is never settled and never totally secure. Indeed the distinction between democratic countries and non-democratic countries is a blurred one and it is better to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25338,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25336\/revisions\/25338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}