Illiberal Democracies
Channel: Salvatore Babones
Date: 2016-04-25

Liberal democracy may have triumphed in the West, but many intellectuals and political leaders in non-Western countries have very different ideas about just what democracy should mean.

China and Vietnam share a Leninist conception of democracy in which the Communist Party rules on behalf of the people.

In other, less ideological contexts democracy has come to mean "winner take all" elections.

In general, representative democracy has not turned out to be as much of a challenge to entrenched traditional elites as has the liberal exchange of ideas, reflected most of all in a free press.