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In 1994, legal scholar Lani Guinier used the phrase as the title for a collection of law review articles. [16] A term used in Classical and Hellenistic Greece for oppressive popular rule was ochlocracy ("mob rule"); tyranny meant rule by one man—whether undesirable or not.
U.S. officials have been accused of collaborating with oppressive and anti-democratic governments to secure their military bases in Central America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Economist Democracy Index classifies many of the forty-five currently non-democratic U.S. military base host countries as "authoritarian governments". [4]
The threat of "mob rule" to a democracy is restrained by ensuring that the rule of law protects minorities or individuals against short-term demagoguery or moral panic. [8] However, considering how laws in a democracy are established or repealed by the majority, the protection of minorities by rule of law is questionable.
Democracy is sometimes referred to as "rule of the majority". Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend on what participants do, but no single force controls what occurs and its outcomes. This does include citizens being able to vote for different laws and leaders. France Germany Cape Verde Chile Estonia
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
According to Peter Rutland (1993), with the death of Stalin, "this was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one." [4] This view is echoed by Igor Krupnik (1995), "The era of 'social engineering' in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself."
The Iranian judiciary, acting as an arm of suppression rather than a pillar of justice, has begun resorting to increasingly harsh measures.
The laws vary in scope; some grant the right to resist an unlawful coup or foreign aggression while others are more broad, encompassing human rights violations or other oppression. [ 39 ] Constitutional right to resist installed by revolutionary governments may later be cited by opponents of these regimes.