When did Hungary, Poland, Venezuela, Turkey, and The Philippines began democratic backsliding?
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  When did Hungary, Poland, Venezuela, Turkey, and The Philippines began democratic backsliding?
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Author Topic: When did Hungary, Poland, Venezuela, Turkey, and The Philippines began democratic backsliding?  (Read 837 times)
thebeloitmoderate
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« on: September 23, 2021, 12:32:31 PM »

All of these countries except Poland and the Philippines are run by increasingly strongman leaders who are curtailing last remnants of democracy. Poland while not as authoritarian as the other countries has a messed up rule of law, feuding with the EU frequently, and the state broadcaster being biased towards Duda. And Philippines having ABS-CBN being blacked out intentionally.
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PSOL
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« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2021, 12:41:14 PM »

Poland—1973 as the start of the junta going onwards
Hungary: 1989 Gorbachev-backed counterrevolution
Venezuela: Maduro and the idiocy of his sycophants
Turkey: has always been like this
Philippines: since the American overthrow of the Philippine revolutionary government in 1902
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thebeloitmoderate
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« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2021, 01:05:32 PM »

I know but in more recent years/decades when Did Orban, Law and Justice, Chavez, Erdogan and Duterte began acting like strongmen
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PSOL
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« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2021, 01:29:48 PM »

I know but in more recent years/decades when Did Orban, Law and Justice, Chavez, Erdogan and Duterte began acting like strongmen
Chavez won each election democratically and empowered local communities to operate by direct democracy, so the issue of electoral fraud cannot be thrown at him. What we see now is actually very similar to the position of democratic norms pre-1989 in how the previous two party system treated smaller, less establishment movements.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2021, 02:03:09 PM »

In Hungary it started as soon as Orban regained power at the 2010 election, but as his landslide win (which gave him enough seats to start fiddling with the constitution) was a direct consequence of the complete and permanent collapse of the MSZP following what might best be described as... The Incident, so you could alternatively date it to that and the protests that followed.
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Nathan
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« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2021, 02:03:49 PM »

There's some truth to what PSOL is saying about Poland and Hungary, in the sense that these weren't polities that ever really completed a transition to liberal democracy in the first place and so the democratic backsliding there is really best understood as the West no longer having the moral capital to force them to LARP as liberal democracies. He's also right that Turkey has always been like this and that the death knell for Venezuela was probably Maduro succeeding Chavez (I'd add that if Capriles had beaten Maduro in 2013 there might have been an Eisenhower-style consolidation of a somewhat-watered-down Bolivarian consensus, rather than what Venezuela actually got.)  I don't know enough about the Philippines to say for sure but I suspect that it's, again, kind of always been like this on one level or another.
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Pick Up the Phone
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« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2021, 03:13:59 PM »

All of these countries except Poland and the Philippines are run by increasingly strongman leaders

So 3 out of 5? Not that many if you ask me. And certainly not worth all the attention.

who are curtailing last remnants of democracy.

That's an exaggeration, at least in the case of Turkey and Hungary.

Poland while not as authoritarian as the other countries has a messed up rule of law,

As do most countries in this world.


As do many countries in the EU.

and the state broadcaster being biased towards Duda.

Well... media biases are not ideal but hardly the worst thing in the universe.
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CumbrianLefty
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« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2021, 09:28:27 AM »

Poland really isn't the same as Hungary despite some superficial similarities. Civil society and actual opposition parties are a lot stronger in the former.
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Agonized-Statism
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« Reply #8 on: September 24, 2021, 10:17:29 AM »

Anna Lührmann and Staffan Lindberg wrote an essay tying recent instances of democratic backsliding to a "third wave of autocratization" that might interest you, but the extent to which liberal governments are democratic to begin with should be debated: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029
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thebeloitmoderate
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« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2021, 12:50:49 PM »

I see Poland has a good opposition and more civil society than Hungary but it has clashed more frequently with the EU than any other country besides Hungary
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« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2021, 02:21:52 PM »

I know but in more recent years/decades when Did Orban, Law and Justice, Chavez, Erdogan and Duterte began acting like strongmen

I'd say they were always strongmen at heart, cause you know, "power doesn't corrupt, power reveals" and all that. I mean yeah, Chavez wasn't as autocratic as his succesor, but he did attempted a military coup in 1992, the disregard for democracy was there from the begining.  The countries' backsliding under those leaders began as soon as they got to power.
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PSOL
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« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2021, 02:48:23 PM »

I know but in more recent years/decades when Did Orban, Law and Justice, Chavez, Erdogan and Duterte began acting like strongmen

I'd say they were always strongmen at heart, cause you know, "power doesn't corrupt, power reveals" and all that. I mean yeah, Chavez wasn't as autocratic as his succesor, but he did attempted a military coup in 1992, the disregard for democracy was there from the begining.  The countries' backsliding under those leaders began as soon as they got to power.
The system in Venezuela before Chavez was incredibly undemocratic, with massive counts of oppression of smaller movements acting on behalf of the poorer and more mestizo population. The 1999 constitution and its revisions under Chavez opened up the country by allowing more voices to be heard and greater diversity of people to actually govern themselves.

Where this goes haywire is that the Bolivarian revolution was not completed. Chavez, the social democrat he was, would not crack down on the oligarchy and instead worked along side them while boosting the Army’s standing to replace the large plantation owners. Come 2014, well the plantation owners used the awful corruption and rule of the Army and industrial sector’s bosses and owners to get the middle class professionals to their side.

Venezuela should be the shining example of how, even buttressed and fortified it is, the limitations of social democracy—modification and usage of appeasement concessions to “perfect capitalism”— and colluding with a faction of the elites using their own game is a fools errand. Only through the creation of true democracy through the dismantling of capitalism entirely can people be free.

I can’t say this enough, but the reason why Maduro isn’t coup’d is because he has empowered the Army and the industrial sector, along with corrupted collectives, to run people over and dismantle the Bolivarian revolution—calling actual social ownership as a goal a pipe dream and the methods to get their as “authoritarian”. It’s why the Left has its own electoral coalition.

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Samof94
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« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2021, 11:22:22 AM »

I see Poland has a good opposition and more civil society than Hungary but it has clashed more frequently with the EU than any other country besides Hungary
I always ask saw much of the spectrum as unusually right wing compared to European standards. The Texas of Europe.
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LAKISYLVANIA
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« Reply #13 on: September 27, 2021, 08:47:58 AM »
« Edited: September 27, 2021, 09:00:02 AM by Laki »

Poland—1973 as the start of the junta going onwards
Hungary: 1989 Gorbachev-backed counterrevolution
Venezuela: Maduro and the idiocy of his sycophants
Turkey: has always been like this
Philippines: since the American overthrow of the Philippine revolutionary government in 1902


Cuba has never truly been democratic (so there was no backslide, at the contrary the communist government is an improvement over Batista dictatorship, and it's slightly getting better.

Venezuela is a farce since the early 1990s. It's the exact environment which allowed Chavez to seize power, as the leftist "Trumpian" answer sort of, and to be honest, Venezuela did pretty well in the 2000s but he governed like a moron... economically. Like a literal moron. The entire crisis could have been easily anticipated, because Venezuela had to know oil is a remnant of the past, and if 50% of GDP is oil income. Than you're in deep sh**t, regardless of who is iin power, unless you're able to deal with it. And he did not (and neither did the right before Chavez took power). I don't think he's an dictator, but I truly believe the country has been governed by idiots, although still more competent than the biggest idiot that ever took power named Jair Bolsonaro. And on top of that, the latter is a jerk.

There's some truth to what PSOL is saying about Poland and Hungary, in the sense that these weren't polities that ever really completed a transition to liberal democracy in the first place and so the democratic backsliding there is really best understood as the West no longer having the moral capital to force them to LARP as liberal democracies. He's also right that Turkey has always been like this and that the death knell for Venezuela was probably Maduro succeeding Chavez (I'd add that if Capriles had beaten Maduro in 2013 there might have been an Eisenhower-style consolidation of a somewhat-watered-down Bolivarian consensus, rather than what Venezuela actually got.)  I don't know enough about the Philippines to say for sure but I suspect that it's, again, kind of always been like this on one level or another.

Capriles might've been better than Maduro, but I still doubt he would have avoided what was going to happen. The damage was long done. And he might have gotten all the blame, and perhaps there would have been a coup, you never know.

Guaido is also an idiot btw.

Turkey, Poland & Hungary always have been like this. And there are more Eastern European nations that will fall. Romania is probably next. In every Eastern European nation, except Czech Republic & Estonia, this could easily happen. The one more likely than the other. And in Romania the same will happen if the corrupt soccon Russianbacked socdems and far-right take power together.

It's just those semi-auth "half democracies" will all hate each other somewhat. Because Romania is going to hate Hungary, and Ukraine is going to hate Hungary & Romania for their Russian influence (and Moldova / Belarus are obviously no friends either). And Bulgaria & some Balkan nations is going to hate Romania. It's like Eastern Europe will be extremely divided again in the future, as if the Balkans weren't a mess already.

I have hopes for Poland but their demographics aren't ideal. It's way too religious.
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LAKISYLVANIA
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« Reply #14 on: September 27, 2021, 09:03:08 AM »

I know but in more recent years/decades when Did Orban, Law and Justice, Chavez, Erdogan and Duterte began acting like strongmen

I'd say they were always strongmen at heart, cause you know, "power doesn't corrupt, power reveals" and all that. I mean yeah, Chavez wasn't as autocratic as his succesor, but he did attempted a military coup in 1992, the disregard for democracy was there from the begining.  The countries' backsliding under those leaders began as soon as they got to power.
The system in Venezuela before Chavez was incredibly undemocratic, with massive counts of oppression of smaller movements acting on behalf of the poorer and more mestizo population. The 1999 constitution and its revisions under Chavez opened up the country by allowing more voices to be heard and greater diversity of people to actually govern themselves.

Where this goes haywire is that the Bolivarian revolution was not completed. Chavez, the social democrat he was, would not crack down on the oligarchy and instead worked along side them while boosting the Army’s standing to replace the large plantation owners. Come 2014, well the plantation owners used the awful corruption and rule of the Army and industrial sector’s bosses and owners to get the middle class professionals to their side.

Venezuela should be the shining example of how, even buttressed and fortified it is, the limitations of social democracy—modification and usage of appeasement concessions to “perfect capitalism”— and colluding with a faction of the elites using their own game is a fools errand. Only through the creation of true democracy through the dismantling of capitalism entirely can people be free.

I can’t say this enough, but the reason why Maduro isn’t coup’d is because he has empowered the Army and the industrial sector, along with corrupted collectives, to run people over and dismantle the Bolivarian revolution—calling actual social ownership as a goal a pipe dream and the methods to get their as “authoritarian”. It’s why the Left has its own electoral coalition.



Yes, but it's the case with many communist revolutions. The "revolution" was never completed. Maybe there is a reason why it is never completed. Than Chavez -> Maduro is similar to what happened with Lenin -> Stalin according to you (even though Maduro is miles better than Stalin). Maduro probably empowered the army because he knew this was going to happen. If he didn't empower the army, there would be no Maduro of PSUV in Venezuela anymore.

Quote
The Popular Revolutionary Alternative (Spanish: Alternativa Popular Revolucionaria, APR) is a Venezuelan Chavista political coalition made up of socialist and leftist parties critical of the administration of Nicolás Maduro.

The coalition was created in the leadup to the 2020 Venezuelan parliamentary election to bring together the political and social forces that support a deepening and radicalization of the ongoing "Bolivarian process",[2][3] as begun by Hugo Chávez, and who also seek to demarcate themselves from governmental policy.

I appreciate what they do, but I fail to see how they can solve the crisis (i feel to see how anyone can). And on top of that, they don't get much support from Venezuelians.
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