Democracy is the Most Desirable Form of Government

Thanks again to KC. In this round I will define some terms and present my constructive arguments.DEFINITIONSMost - "greatest in quantity, extent, or degree"Desirable - "worth seeking or doing as advantageous, beneficial, or wise: advisable"Government - "the complex of political institutions, laws, and customs through which the function of governing is carried out"All definitions are from Merriam Webster. [1]Therefore it is my job to show that on balance, i.e. generally speaking, democratic governments are the most beneficial forms over government out there. This means that Con cannot negate the resolution by providing a few individual examples of successful nondemocratic governments, because that does not negate the resolution from an "on balance" perspective. In other words, a few examples of failed democracies or a few examples of successful nondemocratic regimes do not disprove that generally speaking, democratic governments are the most beneficial forms of government.Con needs to provide evidence that analyzes democracy in general, and that can impact under a cost-benefit analysis.ARGUMENTSContention One: Democracy is the best way to Maximize Human RightsFirstly, what are human rights? “Human rights exist as norms accepted in all or almost all actual human moralities. If almost all human groups have moralities containing norms prohibiting murder, for example, these norms would constitute the human right to life. Human rights can be seen as basic moral norms shared by all or almost all accepted human moralities.” [2] We can understand that there a few basic rights that all citizens should have, ranging from due process of law, to access to food, to equal status under the law. Many of these rights can be found in the ICCPR, and it provides a good reference point to begin any discussion of human rights, though I certainly don't agree with all of the document. [3]Regardless, their are certain basic rights, like life, liberty, property, due process, and equality that should be accorded to every human being. Democracies have, both theoretically and empirically, the best chances of maximizing these rights within their societies.“Democracy provides the best institutional arrangement for holding rulers accountable to the people. If leaders must compete for popular support to stay in power, they will respond to their citizens’ preferences. Rulers who do not need popular support to gain or maintain power will likely be more responsive to whatever group--the family, the military, the mullahs, or the communist party--controls their fate. The larger the number of people needed to elect a leader, the more inclined that leader will be to pursue public policies that benefit the majority. Not surprisingly, therefore, democracies ‘have consistently generated superior levels of social welfare’ compared to autocracies at similar income levels. Second, the institutions of democracy prevent abusive rule, constrain bad government, and provide a mechanism for getting rid of corrupt or ineffective leaders. Truly oppressive leaders cannot remain in power for long if they must seek the electoral mandate of those being oppressed. Autocrats face no such constraints. Mass terror and genocide occur in autocracies, not democracies. Democracies do not prevent all abusive behavior, but over the centuries, democratic leaders have unquestionably inflicted less pain and suffering on their people than have autocratic leaders.” [4]This analysis is easily backed up by empirical analysis. If we look at the world's democracies [10] and compare them to the world's most free nations [5, 6], we can see that there is a positive correlation between democracy and freedom, and a negative correlation between authoritarianism and freedom. When examined by economic freedom, 31 out of the 34 most free nations or self-governing regions are democratic in nature. [7] Finally, when examined by levels of corruption, democracies also outperformed other nations in that democracies tended to have less corruption. [8]http://www.debate.org...Contention Two: Nondemocratic regimes have killed millions"The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more it is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide [government mass murder]. At the extremes of Power, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions, while many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers…more people died from democide in the 20th century than from all its wars combined...To this I would add that the less democratic two states the more likely that they will fight each other...They create an oasis of peace...In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century [millions of] men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners. The dead even could conceivably be near 360,000,000 people. This is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power and not germs. Putting the human cost of war and democide together, Power has killed over 203,000,000 people in this century. As the arbitrary power of a regime increases massively, that is, as we move from democratic to totalitarian regimes, the amount of killing jumps by huge multiples.” [9]If we look at the worlds current dictatorships today, excluding transitional governments which are oftentimes in the process of shifting towards democratic rule, we can see that in the majority of them, human rights abuses are occurring. This map displays authoritarian nations in orange and red [10, 11]. Just looking at it, we can readily identify a variety of state that abuse human rights: Russia, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Laos, Myanmar, Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, CAR, DROC, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Angola, Burkina Faso, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, and North Korea. Of the 50 or so nations labeled "authoritarian," I can easily identify 28 that have had significant human rights abuses in the last year or more. If Con wishes, I can provide sources to corroborate any country that I've identified which he believes has not significantly violated human rights.http://www.debate.org...We can also compare that map, to this one [12, 13]. This illustrates just how much authoritarianism correlates with human rights abuses. The more nondemocratic a regime becomes, the more likely it is that people in that country will have their human rights infringed. http://www.debate.org...Thus, we can clearly see the major downsides to living outside of a democracy, particularly electoral democracies [5, 14].http://www.debate.org...SOURCES1 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...2 - http://plato.stanford.edu...3 - http://www.ohchr.org...4 - McFaul, Michael, 2010 [Hoover Senior Fellow, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford and nonresident associate at Carnegie] “Advancing Democracy Abroad,” p. 35-375 - http://www.ask.com...6 - http://en.wikipedia.org...7 - http://www.heritage.org...8 - http://cpi.transparency.org...9 - http://www.scribd.com...10 - http://en.wikipedia.org...11 - http://www.ask.com...12 - http://reliefweb.int...13 - http://reliefweb.int...14 - http://en.wikipedia.org...Thanks! Hopefully my pictures displayed as pictures instead of links, lol. Over to Con...