mteb/BIRCO-Arguana-Test huggingface dataset:
y political philosophy politics defence government house would impose democracy Even if individuals within a nation do not overtly support democracy, that does not mean that democracy does not serve their interests, and that they will not support it once it exists.  There are two reasons this might be true. First, individuals may be too scared to show support for democracy, for fear of repercussion. Second, individuals may not realize that they want democracy, but come to understand and appreciate it once it is there. Power analysis theory helps us understand how individuals are manipulated into supporting systems that work against their interests: for example anti-feminists during the early and mid 20th century, who accepted male dominance as a necessary and desirable fact of life. Thus, it may take some foreign intervention to create support for democracy. And, despite the fact that imposed democracy often does fail, there have been success stories (as well as Germany and Japan, less oft-cited examples, like Sri Lanka), suggesting that democracy can be imposed with the right strategy and under the right conditions.
y political philosophy politics defence government house would impose democracy Imposing democracy can be a way to support individuals unable to fight for democracy themselves.  If the people within a nation want democracy, it is not wrong -- indeed it may even be morally required -- for us to assist them by imposing democracy against the will of the governing class. Often internal movements lack resources, weapons, or organization, making the fight for democracy very difficult. When individuals seek to defend their rights against an oppressive regime, other nations do them a disservice by allowing evil to win out. Thus NATO's intervention in Libya was in support of rebels often seen as part of the 'Arab spring' wave of democratization but the internal movement even if it had large amounts of support was being suppressed and would have been destroyed without outside intervention1.  1 Traub, James. "Stepping In", Foreign Policy
y political philosophy politics defence government house would impose democracy Interventions are far more likely to fail than to succeed. As explained further in Opposition Argument 2, empirically and logically imposed democracy is likely to fail. Governments can try and minimize the risk of failure, but it is inherent to the nature of imposition that a government is being instated against the country's will. It is consequently very unlikely to generate support and remain stable.
speech debate internet freedom law human rights digital freedoms freedom expression The liberal democratic paradigm is not the only legitimate model of government, a fact that democracies should accept and embrace  Ultimately, states’ laws have to be respected. Liberal democracy has not proven to be the end of history as Fukuyama suggested, but is rather one robust system of government among many. China has become the example of a state-led capitalist model that relies on a covenant with the people fundamentally different from that between democratic governments and their citizens. [1] Chinas ruling communist party has legitimacy as a result of its performance and its role in modernising the country. [2] China’s people have accepted a trade-off; economic growth and prosperity in exchange for their liberties. When dissidents challenge this paradigm, the government becomes aggrieved and seeks to re-establish its power and authority. If the dissidents are breaking that country’s laws then the state has every right to punish them. Singapore similarly has an authoritarian version of democracy that delivers an efficient, peaceful state at the expense of constraints on the ability to criticise the government. [3] This collective model of rights has no inherent value that is lesser to that of the civil liberties-centric model of liberal democracy. In the end, as the geopolitical map becomes complicated with different versions of governance, states must learn to live with one another. The problem of offering amnesty to bloggers is that democracies and the West seek to enforce their paradigm onto that of states that differ. This will engender resentment and conflict. The world economy and social system relies on cooperation, trade, and peace. The difference between systems and cultures should be celebrated rather than simply assuming that there is only one true model and all others are somehow inferior.  [1] Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. “Is State Capitalism Winning?”. Project Syndicate. 31 December 2012.   [2] Li, Eric X, “The Life of the Party”, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013,   [3] Henderson, Drew, “Singapore suppresses dissident” Yale Daily News, 5 November 2010,
y political philosophy politics defence government house would impose democracy Attempting to impose democracy may escalate conflict.  Intervening in a country, and attempting to impose a different government, is likely to a) result in backlash and b) destabilize the country by destroying infrastructure and disrupting services. Both these things make it far more likely that violent conflict will emerge, either between the country and the imposers, or within the country, as rival factions are forced to compete for scarce resources and rights protection. Iraq is a prime example of intervention causing a civil war. The previous gulf war combined with sanctions and weeks of bombing destroyed Iraq's infrastructure resulting in what General Odierno called 'societal devastation'1 and the disbanding of the army and debaathification forced the experienced administrators who ran the country out of their jobs.(Kane, 'Don't repeat the mistakes of Iraq in Libya', 2011) The result was the attempt to impose democracy was bloody and only partially successful.  1 Parrish, Karen, "Odierno, Crocker: Iraq's Future Still Hinges on U.S. Support", American Forces Press Service, November 15, 2010,  2 Kane, Sean., 'Don't repeat the mistakes of Iraq in Libya', ForeignPolicy.com, April 27, 2011,
y political philosophy politics defence government house would impose democracy Promoting democracy promotes peace.  By most accounts, there has not been a war between two democracies in the past 200 years. Immanuel Kant argued in Perpetual Peace (1795) that a) democratic governments are more constrained by their people's opposition to war and b) that a democratic culture of negotiation, as well as the checks and balances inherent in such a system, make war less likely. Thus by promoting democracy through imposing it, we increase the chance of a peaceful world. Furthermore, terrorism may be less likely to arise in democratic countries, where people are allowed to air their views and human rights norms prevent feelings of marginalization. This is good for human rights worldwide, including the rights and safety of individuals in our own country.1  1 "Do Democracies Fight Each Other?" BBC.
government voting house believes house lords should be reformed The fear of controversy or of an ‘unworkable’ government is not reason to stall reform. If we adopt the stance that a government knows best or if we excuse a government to override the will of its people in the name of the greater good, then we pave the way for the misuse of power. Democracy should be held in the highest regard, only free societies can be secure and developed as shown in numerous historic example. Only fundamentally free societies can be fundamentally secure and developed, which is backed up by many examples from history. [1] Democracy has proved itself as better than the alternatives, where autocracies, oligarchies and theocracies have failed, democracy has prevailed.  [1] Grizold, Professor Anton, Peacebuilding and the impact of post-conflict areas on European security (Department of Political Science, University of Ljublana)
government voting house would have no elections rather sham elections Sham elections do not mean the elections have no influence or impact.  For an autocracy the election for the top job needs to be predetermined, but the other elections do not. This means that elections for the legislature can still be competitive. The seats do have some influence, provide patronage, and have status attached so there are plenty of people who want to contest them. In the Arab world before the Arab spring there was a less than 25% incumbency rate for legislatures. [1] Having elections that determine control in local areas or allow opposition some control in parliament is far preferable to the alternative where the government appoints everyone. Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy in Burma have for example gained entry into Parliament and have despite being a minority had an impact. This has particularly been the case internationally. They have helped liberalise the new Foreign Investment Law and have encouraged more liberalised freedom of the press and association. [2]  [1] Lust, Ellen, ‘The Multiple Meanings of Elections In Non-Democratic Regimes: Breakdown, Response and Outcome in the Arab Uprisings’, Yale University, p.7.   [2] Turnell, Sean, ‘Myanmar has made a good start to economic reform’, East Asia Forum, 27 March 2013,
government voting house would have no elections rather sham elections Some kind of election is more likely to lead to real democracy than no election  The acceptance by most autocrats that there need to be elections shows the idea that legitimacy derives from the people is generally accepted. Meaning that these states are already part way to having a genuine democracy. Having regular elections, even if the outcome is preordained, means that the electorate becomes used to voting and the idea of voting to make their voice heard. In such circumstances eventually they are going to want their vote to really count. If there is a creeping process of reform eventually this will result in free and fair elections.  Having any kind of elections means that there are people who are recognised as an opposition. This means that there is a viable alternative to the ruling party which can be turned to in a crisis, or can take on the leadership role when the regime is finally toppled. For example in Philippines the opposition was able to create a united opposition party in 1984 and coalesce around Corazon Aquino in the snap elections of 1985. [1] This meant that Aquino was in a position to swiftly set up a government following the people power revolution and flight of Marcos. [2]  [1] Kline, William E., ‘The Fall of Marcos: A Problem in U.S. Foreign Policymaking’, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1992,  Pp.4, 10  [2] Reaves, Joseph A., ‘Marcos Flees, Aquino Rules’, Chicago Tribune, 26 February 1986,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The Settlements are seen by Palestinians as a sign of bad faith on the part of Israel, and therefore weaken the hand of Pro-Peace elements  As important as the existence of the settlements themselves is their continued growth. The very fact that Israel has continued to ostensibly negotiate for the independence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank on one hand while rapidly expanding the population and the size of Israeli settlements can be interpreted as a sign of bad faith.  For one thing, it raises questions of the seriousness with which Israel is attempting to reach an agreement. Even if the programs of Settlement expansion are intended as a temporary policy in lieu of a settlement, the very fact that Israel’s plan B is arguably as popular as peace, and being pursued with far more vigour could lead many Palestinians to conclude that Israel is attempting to run out the clock.  The consequences of this are inauspicious for the Peace Process. As Palestinian faith in the prospect of peaceful negotiations falters, groups like Hamas are likely to find an increasingly receptive audience for their view that only force will compel Israel to negotiate seriously. This in turn will make compromise all the more difficult to achieve.
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west Settlements remove Palestinians from their own land, and they produce a self-perpetuating cycle in their sear  The settlements themselves are self-perpetuating in a manner that makes them pernicious to the rights and very existence of neighbouring Palestinian communities.  For one thing, a settlement cannot function in isolation. It needs a road for its residents to safely travel to and from work in Israel. Security needs subsequently require that this road be protected from attacks by creating a large military presence along its route, and in many cases moving existing Palestinian settlements. At the very least Palestinian areas are bisected by impassable thoroughfares. [1]  In turn settlements require their fields to be protected by high walls and electric fences to protect them from attack, and the construction crews building them also require protection.  The result is that even a settlement of a few hundred families rapidly requires the takeover of an amount of land out of all proportion to the actual number of settlers involved, and any further expansion compounds the problem. [2] The security needs of settlements create a situation which makes the livelihood of Palestinians impossible. The existence of the settlements makes these security policies a necessity. As a consequence, the only clear solution is the removal of the settlements.  [1] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs occupied Palestinian territory, ‘The Humanitarian Impact of Israeli Settlement Policies’, January 2012,   [2] CBS News, ‘Group: Israel Controls 42% of West Bank’, 6 July 2010,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The settlements are a sideshow that provide a convenient excuse for the Palestinians and their foreign friends to ignore the real (and difficult to solve) issues such as Jerusalem and what sort of sovereignty a Palestinian state would have.  For one thing, international law is very unclear on who owns the West Bank. Jordan gave up all claim to it in 1988, but its unclear as to whether their annexation in 1949 was legitimate in the first place. [1] Only Pakistan and Great Britain ever legally recognized Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank. Secondly, the current border of the West Bank are arbitrary, the results of the military conflict of 1948-49 for which they represent the cease-fire line. As a consequence, even if one accepts the principle that there should be a Palestinian state in the West Bank, it does not follow that the final international border should follow the regions border exactly. It might for instance to make sense, as Israelis like Avigador Lieberman have suggested, to trade Arab villages in Israel proper for settlement areas on the West Bank. [2]  The Settlement issue mainly serves the purpose of putting Israel in the wrong, so as to distract from the need on the part of the Palestinians to define what sort of state they are willing to accept. The problem is not territory per se, but what happens to that territory and it’s on that issue that previous efforts to reach peace deals have faltered.  [1] ‘Jordan Renounced Claims to West Bank, 1988’, Palestine Facts,   [2] Carlstrom, Gregg, ‘Lieberman sees common ground with Livni’, Al Jazeera, 25 January 2011,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west First, it is unclear if this is even true. A 2010 poll showed support for dismantling settlements in exchange for Peace at an all-time high in Israel. [1]  Secondly, even if it is true that settlements complicate the internal Israeli political picture, the impact on the Peace Process is limited to the extent to which one accepts that the West Bank borders are sacrosanct. Beyond that, the difference in political cost between uprooting 180,000 and 300,000 settlers is marginal at best – both are likely impossible concessions for any Israeli government to make except under enormous international pressure in which case the numerical difference is of limited importance.  Far more important is accepting that the assumption that the West Bank boundaries are sacrosanct has done far more harm than good. It gives neither side room to compromise on the issues of vital importance to them. For Israel, providing defence in depth for Tel Aviv which is only sixteen miles from Jerusalem, for the Palestinians, ensuring that their national home is economically viable.  Far better would be to use the existent of the settlements to pressure both sides to accept that some portion of the West Bank will remain with Israel in any settlement, while in exchange, some portion of Israel proper approximately equal in size will be transferred to a future Palestinian entity. Once both sides accept this premise, the number of options for an agreement and for compensations on the issues of dispute increase astronomically.  It is perhaps for this reason that support for this exchange has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of Israel Political thinking with even Tzipi Livni of the Center-Left Kadima now open to it. [2]  [1] Richman, Alvin, ‘Israeli Public’s Support for Dismantling Most Settlements Has Risen to a Five-Year High’, World Public Opinion.org, 15 April 2010,   [2] Carlstrom, Gregg, ‘Lieberman sees common ground with Livni’, Al Jazeera, 25 January 2011,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The Settlements are justified based on the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands after 1967  Settlement construction, and in fact the whole settlement of Jews in the West Bank has to be viewed in the wider context of the Middle East conflict as a whole.  Jews lived in the West Bank for thousands of years before the creation of Israel, and it was only after the 1948 war when Jews were fully ethnically cleansed from the region. While a Diaspora took place among the Arabs of Israel it was neither as deliberate nor as thorough – a large Arab population remained. No Jews remained in the West Bank under Jordanian rule.  As such many of these settlements are not artificial constructions but built on the ruins of pre-1948 Jewish communities.  Furthermore, the same 1967 War that brought on the Israeli conquest of the West Bank was also followed by a new round of pogroms against the nearly 800,000 Jews living in Arab countries more than 95% of which were driven into exile in Israel. [1] Israel has not responded by expelling or compensating them at the expense of their own Arabs, as they would be morally justified in doing, but rather has settled them on empty land in the West Bank. Any claim that the Palestinians have an inherent right to property which they do not explicitly own must also take into account Israel’s need to compensate these refugees.  [1] Aharoni, Ada, ‘The Forced Migration of Jews From Arab Countries and Peace’, August 2002, Historical Society of Jews from Egypt,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The Settlements commit future Israeli governments to a harder stand in future negotiations  Whether deliberate or not, the settlements are changing the “facts on the ground” by changing the political calculus for future Israeli governments.  While most Israeli politicians accept the need to abandon some smaller settlements, the vast majority are unlikely to be evacuated. It was politically divisive to the point of breaking the Likud party in two when Ariel Sharon, a man with more credit than anyone else on the Israeli right pulled out of Gaza in 2005, and there were only a little over 7000 Israeli settlers there. By contrast there are now more than 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and this number is rising fast. [1] There were less than 200,000 in 2000. [2]  Of these settlers, many are religious and vote for the Haridam (Orthodox) parties like the National Religious Party . [3] Because the party has served in governments of both the Left and the Right in recent years, in practice they and the ultra-nationalist Israel Beitinu tend to hold the balance of power in the Israeli Knesset.  Therefore every time Israel expands settlements, they are reducing their room to manoeuvre in future Peace Negotiations, and forcing themselves to take a harder stance. This means that Peace will either become less likely (because Israel will set more extreme terms) or that Israel will face more internal divisions in order to offer it. In either case, as the settlements expand  [1] Levinson, Chaim, ‘IDF: More than 300, 000 settlers live in West Bank’, Haaretz.com, 27 July 2009,   [2] Wikipedia, ‘Population statistics for Israeli West Bank settlements’, en.wikipedia.org,  , accessed 20 January 2012  [3] Etkes, Dror, ‘The Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the West Bank’, Peace Now, October 2005,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The settlements at the current time occupy less than 3% of the West Bank, [1] and even if one were to take into account the land needed for their security in any settlement, most have predicted that at most 9-11% of the region would be affected, much less than the area currently controlled by the settlements, [2] and this would be subject to compensation elsewhere.  The vast majority of this growth is taking place existing settlements or adjacent to them, so even large amounts of proportional growth are not shifting the percentages sharply.  Furthermore, a time factor is far from a uniform negative. A large portion of the Palestinian strategy from the mid-1990s onwards has arguably been to drag out negotiations while hoping that a better international climate would lead other countries to exert pressure on Israel for concessions. This strategy has seen their negotiating position deteriorate and undermined support for an agreement within Israel.  By adding a time element, it incentives the Palestinians to think seriously about pressing for an agreement now, rather than looking to fantasy solutions like potential UN recognition that would do nothing to alter the fundamental fact that any possible agreement will have to be made with, and therefore be acceptable to, Israel.  [1] Fleischer, Tzvi, ‘How much land do West Bank settlements take up?’, Australian/Israel &amp; Jewish Affairs Council,   [2] CBS News, ‘Group: Israel Controls 42% of West Bank’, 6 July 2010,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west First of all, the security precautions are not a perquisite of settlements in and of themselves, but a consequence of the violent condition of the West Bank. Similar settlements in the Negev do not require anywhere near the degree of investment in security and protection.  Such precautions will almost certainly be removed not only in a final settlement but also in any intermediate ones. Israel has already shown a preparedness of to lift travel restrictions on Palestinians in exchange for reductions in violence. [1]  [1] Hass, Amira, ‘Israel to lift restrictions on Palestinian Jordan Valley travel’, Haaretz.com, 26 April 2007,
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west The Palestinians themselves did not enjoy self-rule after 1948 and the blame for the expulsions should not be placed on them but on the Jordanian authorities, and they are the ones who should be obligated to provide compensation if any is due. And the Palestinians played no role in the expulsion of Jews from states like Iraq and Egypt and therefore to impose compensation at their expense is deeply unfair.  Furthermore, while many of the settlement may have been built near the sites of abandoned Jewish communities, most have expanded far beyond those locations and the need to provide security for them has led to the confiscation of historically Arab land.
rnational middle east law human rights international law house believes israels west It is absurd to argue that because someone is hypocritical that they lose their rights. The fact is that the Palestinians today are not guilty of the crimes of their ancestors anymore than the Israelis are.  Rather than being evaluated based on history, they should be evaluated based on what is justified now. And settlements make both sides less secure, and render peace less and less likely.