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Showing posts from December, 2017

State government: not necessary for democracy

Got your attention? This statement may seem counter-intuitive, but it may very well be true. Democracy can mean a whole lot of things, but it does not necessarily require or imply state government. A state can be thought of as a political entity, typically with perceived sovereignty over some geographic territory, a single unified government, and a monopoly on the legal deployment of an army or other enforcement agency. If we understand democracy as structures and processes for people to make decisions about their communities, then are any of the above items necessary? You might think the answer is yes - that at the least we need some kind of unified government. But what if we define government more holistically as systems and structures that govern some kind of organized community? Is this possible without the additional features of a state : geographic sovereignty, a single unitary government, and a monopoly on organized force? I would suggest that yes, it might be possible