by hnbad | 2025-07-21 12:20:44+00:00
I would like to know where you draw the line for "working democracy".

The German Democratic Republic had elections, it even had political mechanisms that allowed other parties to participate (which the East CDU made plenty of use of btw). It even had a lower rate of incarceration than the US and a far more primitive surveillance system.

Pre-WW2 Germany was a working democracy for the most part despite its court system still having being extremely biased in favor of monarchists and anti-leftism. Most of the violence committed by the Nazis at the time resulted in prosecutions even if many were excused for "being motivated by patriotism". Hitler even went to prison for attempting a coup before being pardoned - and the punishment succeeded in changing the NSDAP's strategy to mostly remain within the limits of the law. Hitler's absolute power was even legally granted through the Enabling Act, passed with the help of the government coalition partners including the ideological precursor to the modern CDU/CSU, the Christian (Catholic) conservative "Center" party.

Post-WW2 West Germany under Adenauer (who btw was a massive antisemite to the point of explaining the necessity of zionism with the need to appease the "very powerful" international Jewish community) on the other hand had the government pressuring its constitutional court to ban political parties, reinstate the Nazi era crime of "high treason" to criminalize any political attempts at reunification other than outright annexation and cracked down on pacifists and opponents to the remilitarization as desired by the US to have a regional power base in the Cold War. It also ran a system of rubber stamp courts to rehabilitate former NSDAP members, even when it required a re-trial after the destruction of incriminating evidence from prior unfavorable rulings.

And of course even after Adenauer German policing only ever-so-incrementally moved away from the traditional authoritarian "peace through power" approach following the bloodshed in its handling of the student protests in the 1960s (which led to the formation of the RAF terrorist group) although German federal and state governments still oppose any outside investigations into police violence nowadays even when it's evident enough to make international news headlines like in Lüzerath. Meanwhile corruption in the federal government has become so rampant there are literally score lists available for each political party showing how many of their representatives are tied up in legal corruption scandals with Jens Spahn probably being the most widely talked about case for funnelling government funds into his pockets during the pandemic only followed by former chancellor Schroeder's close business relations to Gazprom and Olaf Scholz's deliberate intervention in investigations of never seen before amounts of massive tax fraud (i.e. the Cum Ex scandal).

And that's just Germany. So: if interwar Germany and pre-reunification East Germany were not "working democracies" but every "western" democracy (I presume this means anything this side of the Cold War iron curtain) post-WW2 is - what's your yardstick? Where do you draw the line?