Western voting systems work more or less because the parties are in a mexican standoff when counting the ballots. This requires at least two parties and doesn't translate very well to electronic voting or vote-by-mail where a comparatively small minority (programmers or postal workers) can heavily skew the results in their favor.
[–] yogthos 17 hours ago
[–] za_creature 16 hours ago
Multiple parties do hold guns at each other's heads in every voting station. Party 1 ensures that Party 2 doesn't steal any votes and vice versa. A party that does not have representatives in any given station will most likely lose some votes there.
You can shit on western democracy all you want, and you are probably correct in most cases however a single party system is not and cannot be democratic. In that case, the legitimacy of the party is guaranteed by the lack of alternatives that can fill the political power vacuum.
[–] yogthos 15 hours ago
https://allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index
What makes this report interesting is that the organization publishing it was started by an ex-NATO chief and claims to unite democracies, meaning Western liberal style democracies. So it can’t be accused of having some sort of anti-Western bias. Their methodology is also straightforward, where they simply ask people if they feel their government works in their interest and whether they can hold it accountable. That’s the whole ballgame, because if people don’t believe the system is democratic then it inherently lacks legitimacy no matter what the constitution says. While people will surely attack this methodology, the sheer fact that a NATO-connected group published such a report gives its claims a certain credence given how dire these results are for the Western model of democracy. France now ranks alongside Kazakhstan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe in its own citizens’ eyes while the U.S. is split down the middle with about half of Americans saying they don’t think they live in a democracy anymore. China, on the other hand, sits up there with the Scandinavians and Switzerland, and Chinese people overwhelmingly say the system works for them. Notably, we can also see that perceptions of transparency, rule of law, and free speech are on the rise across the board in China.
And before you start trying to claim that people in China are simply afraid to speak their mind, the same report shows Russia at -21 points and Belarus at -9, so that whole excuse falls apart. Turns out that people living in states the West labels as being authoritarian do, in fact, complain when they’re unhappy. Various other western publications have reported the same thing for many years.
https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-...
https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democr...
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilif...
On the other hand, your claim that multiple parties hold guns at each other's heads is directly at odds with empirical research on the subject:
> What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Single party democratic model is a well defined principle known as Democratic Centralism and all the actual data shows that the way it is implemented in China produces far better tangible results than the western attempt at democracy. I'm sorry this hurts your feelings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism
[–] graemep 14 hours ago
That just proves how nonsensical the numbers are. People have different standards, and peoples perceptions are not accurate.
Looking are the two countries I have lived in, people in one are “very positive” because journalists are no longer disappearing and they are confident the government will accept an election defeat. In the other, people are “neutral” because many feel the political class are out of touch, or that freedom of speech has been compromised by things like hate speech laws, or other issues at that level.
Perceptions are shaped by the media too. Other things being equal effective state control of media will make people more positive.
[–] yogthos 14 hours ago
[–] mopsi 12 hours ago
> No amount of media can paper over the fact that your life sucks.
1. A Chinese citizen experiences rising living costs.
2. Their social media feed is filled with videos of Americans struggling with medical bills, homelessness and housing costs.
3. They start feeling like they're better off by comparison.
4. Their satisfaction with their own country may increase without any improvement in their personal circumstances.
If media ownership was meaningless, governments and oligarchs wouldn't spend so much effort controlling it.
[–] yogthos 11 hours ago
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-peop...
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jone...
Social mobility in China being far better than in the US https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/ch...
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-ri...
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w231...
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growt...
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019...
And your whole narrative falls apart when we look at how MAGA actively voted against Trump once the war hit them in the wallet. Also, look at the riots happening all across Europe where the media tells people things are going great.
Meanwhile, Western voting systems are much more of a game of hot potato than a Mexican standoff. Each party just blames the other party for all the problems, and you just a revolving door policy with no accountability. With a one party system, there's no scapegoat to blame. The very legitimacy of the party hangs on it delivering on the promises.