Pranab Bardhan at his own Substack:
Many Indians are never tired of telling others that theirs is the largest democracy in the world, just as many Americans, at least until very recently, would tell you that theirs is the ‘greatest’ democracy. There is considerable doubt now if either country can be called a democracy.
Much, of course, depends on what you mean by democracy. Even among democracy theorists there is a dispute about definitions. For example, for theorists like Robert Dahl or Adam Przeworski, as long as there are contested elections, and there is a chance of the incumbent losing and having lost, of accepting the electoral defeat, the country is definitely a democracy. For other theorists what happens in between elections, particularly on vital matters like freedom of expression and rights of minorities and dissenters, determines if a country is democratic or not.
By the first criteria it is arguable that the US is still a democracy, although elections have long been seriously circumscribed by widespread gerrymandering of electoral constituencies and by the role of big money in election funding that makes barriers to entry for neophytes rather high; and in spite of Trump’s atrocious denial of defeat in 2020, he after all left the White House at that time to come back to a more decisive victory in 2024.
More here.
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