Do Democracies Fail?

Alex Poulin
The Shore of my Ignorance
3 min readOct 13, 2020

Democracies are fragile, but do they fail? The surprising answer is yes: it is no exemption to the cycles of history. It is one of its rhymes. It repeats.

Plato’s Political Cycle

Plato observed and theorized that forms of political power repeat. Aristocracy turns into oligarchy. The latter into democracy then to tyranny or autocracy followed by the original reversion to aristocracy. From here — or from whichever starting point one chooses — this cycle of history repeats. Why?

In Story of Philosophy, Will Durant neatly sum up Plato’s thoughts behind the mechanism driving the political cycle: “each system tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.” The cycle follows roughly along these lines:

· Aristocracies fail because they overly concentrate power within their hands.

· Oligarchies fail because greed and lust for wealth does not enrich, it ruins.

· Democracies fail because given that people are all equals, at some point they “are not properly equipped by education to select the best and wisest rulers.”

· Tyrannies fail because it tries to extend its power beyond capability.

The question must be asked for democracies throughout the globe: will they fail and give way to tyranny some day?

Credits to: https://unsplash.com/@joshuas

The Founding Fathers of America on Democracy

Thomas Jefferson once said that the end of democracy is voting. He knew all too well that voting is a last resort. Democracies need much more than voting to survive. They need civic engagement and one invigorated by educated and thoughtful engagement through all strata of society. George Washington said that they would give the American people a Republic if they would know how to run it. Understanding government through education was foundational to this nascent democracy.

With populism on the rise and threatening democratic institutions, seldom is it appreciated symptomatic of lack of education, the life and blood to civic engagement, to democracy.

Education Lacking

Below are charts pointing to the decaying educational system in the United States:

Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio/
Reference : https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2018/the-history-ba-since-the-great-recession-the-2018-aha-majors-report

It is important to note this is education in the United States and the situation is brighter in other democracies. However, we are not concerned for all of education here but only with the subject that informs thought on government, the humanities. Here too the situation is brim. As a proxy for the decline in humanities studies globally, American universities, the total number of history Bas in the past decade has fallen from 6% of total Bas to 2%. In relative terms, this seems minor but in absolute terms that is a 60% decrease within only 10 years. Given that American Universities host some of the most prestigious and best humanities departments throughout the globe, who is to say of the decline across the globe.

If the citizens of democracy are uninformed of it, how can they maintain it. As a result, the lack of quality civic engagement is down but also civic engagement in total has drastically declined and at alarming rates since the 1960s.

Avoiding the Political Cycle of History

They say history is doomed to repeat itself if we do not learn from history. Undoubtedly, this too becomes a cycle of history. It provides the syllables that feeds into its rhymes. With perspective we could attempt to break the cycle. If not, then we become mere passengers.

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Alex Poulin
The Shore of my Ignorance

Aspiring polymath. Driven by questions and ideas to reduce existential risks.