Don't forget our wonderful, non democratic means for selecting a president.<serious> This "opposition" criterium will exclude the USA - for all non-USAns, the Democratic and Republican Parties are clones, so there's no opposition in the USA for the past 150 years :-P </serious>
Exactly.
What I'm driving at is that elections do not make the democracy. They are merely one characteristic among many, and it is the existance of a sizable plurality of these characteristics that makes a democracy. In other words, identifying democracy is a bit more art than logic.I agree - and it's this ambiguity that suggests erring in the side of _inclusion_ and not of _exclusion_.
Doug
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