Well, the 5th French Republic is going well since the 50s, isn't it? As is the post-war BRD in Germany. Both used to have an Emperor at some point, Italy went from Kingdom to Facist regime to democracy. So yes, if the situation changes you can change your government form. Basing 21st Century politics on something written in the 18th century is... weird. Especially as it is more the interpretation of what the authors thought, and might think today, based on these writings. Just my outside opinion.
I don't know about most of it being changed, but yeah, a number of things have been changed. The argument there is that you need to strike a balance between making changes too difficult and too easy, and of course there are arguments on both sides.
One point of comparison might be France, which is currently on its fifth attempt at a republic (with intervening reigns of terror, emperors, restored kings, anarchies, and Nazi collaborationist regimes), while we're still on our first one (or second, if you want to count the Articles of Confederation). Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. have all had multiple attempts as well.
Indeed, about every couple century in history we come up with some new form of government. It's only ever so incremental (hence why 'revolutions' are few and major in scope), and often has to do with adapting to new conditions (technological and social change mostly).
Could you cite some examples, especially of the first paragraph? I don't recall many (any?) mature democracies that changed to another system of government.
Interesting, I'm very curious about the politics of structures (kingdoms and such) before the revolution/democracy era. Pardon the cynicism, but many times I end up doubting today's democracy is pragmatic enough, instead becomes a thin cult absolving the need for good sense by trusting the 'public choice every N years' system. Like believing the invisible hand of the free market will balance things out gracefully.
As a French, we tend to change political regimes every so often. Since 1789 we've had five republics, two empires and a couple of other things. I would bet that I'll outlive the fifth republic because of that.
If anything, keeping the same constitution for more than 230 years is a horrifying thought to me.
Since the revolution, France has been an Empire twice, a monarchy other than an Empire once, plus the five republics; it has not been each form several times. And the changes to non-republic forms were not through democratic wind of the moment overturning the rule of law.
Also, the US had been through at least one change since the revolution parallel to the change between the fourth and fifth republic in France, that between the US under the Articles of Confederation and the US under the Constitution.
Young democracies usually have a period in which both politicians and the people need to get used to a new way of doing things, and defining the new way of doing things. This can take a while, e.g. see the Napoleonic period and its aftermath. A nice feature about the French republic is the tradition of the reboot: they're at v5 of the Republic now, with fully revised constitutions and significantly changed shapes (parliamentary to presidential systems for instance), something many countries could learn from I think. A defacto dictatorial period is often one of the first phases of new democracies.
Secondly, a problem common to quite a few eastern European countries is an unclear separation of powers (trias politica) and even unclarity about the need for it among many voters. Such an instance could (and should) be able to overrule certain kinds of fundamental changes.
Some scholars describe democracies as inherent experiments, which I think is very fitting and something we need to emphasize more. Obviously trying to organize things in a cooperative, or not that cooperatively, is a ongoing affair. There is no way to guarantee anything, but the people's continued involvement. I'd hope they typically wouldn't need guns, but can use tools like constitutionals courts, and, of course the ballot box at various levels of government. Like you say, a more regionalist design can make more local autonomy possible, see Germanys states vs highly centralized French style of governing.
France returned back to monarchy a couple of times. They kept switching back and forth between various kind of monarchies and republics. Fortunately not with the kind of bloodbaths that accompanied the initial revolution.
You're implying that there's a possibility for a regime that starts from commumist ideas not to become a monarchy or oligarchy. Can you point out a real-life example where that didn't happen, please?
We... several different constitutions. The current one is called the Fifth Republic. The Third Republic ended when Germany took over the country, and the Fourth Republic was kind of an abortive mess. It was more akin to the US taking a mulligan after the Articles of Confederation.
The Third Republic had actually lasted quite a while. There was definitely a mess before that: monarchy, revolution that created a republic that turned into an empire, then a monarchy again, then a republic again, then the nephew of the original emperor being declared emperor... the 19th century was not a good time to be French. (And I'm leaving out some revolutions and constitutions that didn't go anywhere.)
But after that they really had settled down, until an outside force blew it all up. The 19th century wasn't really all that solid anywhere in Europe. Germany and Italy didn't do any better.
Not really: people can point at the stability of the Fifth Republic and compare it against the previous regimes, which were quite the opposite. That creates a lot of inertia against scrapping a system of Republican government that currently fundamentally still works.
I didn't say that... In fact I made almost no judgement on the quality of the changes...
But, if I had to discuss this subject: I would say that in a nuclear computer powered world, a political system originally designed for farmers and horses, on which we consistently hack workarounds, isn't the best choice.
And on the subject of the Fourth Republic, would you agree with me that this was a direct consequence of WWII and that in terms of "political time" it was changed very quickly?
Systems continue to exist, but most of them also change in various aspects - some superficial, some fundamental. Republican Rome was quite different from what Imperial Rome ended up being; the US of the 1800s is very different from the US of today.
Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an improvement from before in modern constitutional republic context. Beats going to war to change rulers.
I mean that in the UK say, we only moved to a constitutional monarchy and had a bill of rights in 1689. And there have been glitches like Hitler and Franco coming to power. Europe has only really been stable and fully democratic government structure wise since Franco died in 1975.
The German Empire was a constitutional monarchy, like many European countries of the time. Even today, it's a common form of democratic government. Before the empire, most of the states that formed it were constitutional monarchies, while the free cities were republics. And while there were only three free cities left at the time, there used to be many more. In some cases, their republican form of government stretched back all the way to the middle ages, though usually in an oligarchic flavor.
It doesn't work for everyone, no. But just like in 1800s Europe, when monarchists died off suddenly republics were obvious. I suspect much of the same will come to pass regarding systems of government tending towards anarchism and boomers.
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