Yes, I think the knowledge that they will never get to be Top Dog – however many boots they lick – must act as quite a good psychological deterrent against wannabe aithoritarians like BoJo

Hungary:

• Non-proportional parliament (easy to get a single party majority)
• Single chamber
• President appointed by said chamber, not by popular vote as in some other countries

As you can see, the Hungarian system has a single point of failure – the majority in parliament. It is then no surprise that when Viktor Orban’s party won the 2010 election, where was practically no stopping them going on from there

Compare that to Slovakia:

• Also single chamber parliament
• Proportional system
• President elected in elections

Slovakia has just as shitty politicians as Hungary does but the fact that power in Parliament is distributed across a coalition plus the fact that their president is elected completely independently to that means that it is much harder for any single party to rule alone, unchecked.

I goess that does leave the congressional route far more viable. Idk when the convention route would ever be easoer

Oh I see, 2/3 isn’t that bad. I was under the impression it required 3/4 of all states – but that’s the alternative method, right?

Yes, Canada’s Notwithstanding clauses have also seemed like stupidity to me. That said, democracy with even a toothless constitution seems to be possible, as demonstrated by the UK. I guess the question is whether Canada has the same political environment that has made it work in the UK for so long

Czechia: IMO pretty durable

• Two chambers – House and Senate
• one is proportional, one is majoritarian => different compositions
• Senate has staggered terms, takes 6 years to replace
• Need 60% in both for constitutional changes

Here comes the clever part:

Abolishing democracy would requite breaking a Catch-22. All you need to govern is a majority in the lower house. Hence populist leaders only fight to gain majorities in the House. The Senate is powerless when it comes to everyday government (it can be overruled) and only has teeth when it comes to blocking changes to the constitution. Most emotionally driven voters find the Senate pointless and hence do not go to vote in its elections. The only people who go to vote in Senate elections are those who understand its importance as a constitutional break. So the chamber self-filters an electorate that finds democracy important.

UK:

• No constitution, no hard checks and balances
• A law introducing slavery could be passed with a simple majority vote
• No guarantee of stability, a new govt can repeal any of the previous govt’s laws

You’d think this would be playing with fire but the fact that it has managed to last this long makes you question a lot of the assumptions that people usually use to justify entrenched, codified constitutions.

It would seem that checks in the UK system do exist, but just weren’t explicitly designed and aren’t written into law anywhere:

• The population has lived in relative freedom for so long that anyone trying to abolish democracy would face immense pushback. Compare this to post communist democracies like Serbia where people are used to authoritarian rule and comply in advance.
• A prime minister may have a majority on paper, but British political parties are fractious and rebels often appear even in the PM’s own party
• The legislative process seems to contain a lot of friction as is, even theoretically OK laws have problems passing for a myriad of reasons
• Whereas in other countries long-term policies would be entrenched in constitutions, in the UK MPs have to think of more creative ways to make them difficult to repeal (usually connecting repealing them with some large political or logistical cost).

Italy:

Government needs confidence of both chambers at once (Perfect Bicameralism)

Wtf how do you guys manage to have any kind of stable government?

US:

• Very very high threshold for amendment
• 2-party system

Honestly I think that if you removed these two hurdles, the rest of the problems would sort themselves out. IMO a very strong point of the US constitution is the strong federalism that it has, making it hard for someone to centralize all power in the country, however hard they might be trying right now.

The one other main weak point I can think of is:

• Politicised judicial nominations

Haha :-) Actually Czech is refreshingly straight-forward to pronounce – it’s a phonetic language, meaning that once you know what sound each letter makes, you literally just string them together!

The Ž is pronounced like the J in J’ai m’appelle

Zde prosím odložte židle na konci dne 🇨🇿

It’s so funny that the internet came up with a language that you need to know not one but 2 languages to understand.

Laws in place to govern the collection, use, ownership, and patenting of human genes and genetic information.

I feel that for laws to exist, you first need some accidents to prompt the public outcry to get them passed. And accidents in genetics are going to be very messy indeed

Yeah, you coukd extend the social media reality bubbles ppl are living in to actual perceived reality. You coukd also block out homeless people and this hyper individuallism that it wouod enable would stop those kinds of problems from having any hope of being solved.

Same – where are they all? Probably in their pasticcerias drinking coffee and enjoying the sun (jealous!)

Ah of course! What illness are you off becaause of today?

Are they particularly globalised? Like more than France or Spain?

The amount of American politics and culture on here for a start

Interesting, although seeing as being sensitive about privacy isn’t as big in other post communist countries (at least not here in Czechia), I assume it must just be a generic cultural trait