As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens

Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by slededit on Sunday April 30, 2017 @07:44PM (#14234571)

Western Germany was ruled for a short period by both the UK and the United States after World War II, where they spent a great deal of effort to setup a functional and self sufficient government. Prior to that they did have a short lived democratic government but Hitler saw to its demise rather quickly.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by MatthiasP on Sunday April 30, 2017 @09:48PM (#14234991)

Even before the Weimar Republic Germany already had many democratic elements. There were political parties, a constitution, checks and balances for governing officers and a somewhat free press. The Kaiser could not rule despotically and had to take public opinion into account.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by vacri on Monday May 01, 2017 @02:32AM (#14235959)

Germany has had democratic elements for half a millenium - the Holy Roman Empire was a sort-of democracy of nobles. But however you carve it, the current democracy in Germany is functioning very well, better and more representative than any of its forebears.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by petre on Monday May 01, 2017 @12:29AM (#14235578)

Democratic elements does not equate to true democracy. There weren't enough safeguards. It took a motivated Austrian less than ten years to undo them and turn Germany into a totalitarian state.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by nl on Monday May 01, 2017 @03:51AM (#14236164)

Ten years is actually a pretty long time for it to take a popular leader to destroy a functioning democracy.

There are numerous examples of democracies collapsing from what seemed a stable state much quicker than that.

The collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958 is a good example[1]. In that case it led to another democracy, but that is only because the army wanted de Gaulle, and de Gaulle was happy to be president in a parliamentary system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fourth_Republic#Algeria...

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by allendoerfer on Monday May 01, 2017 @02:40AM (#14235976)

> It took a motivated Austrian less than ten years to undo them and turn Germany into a totalitarian state.

I agree, that the Weimar republic was weak. Main problem was a missing election threshold, resulting in a divided, weak parliament. But some other minor things happened, too. For example several militaristic regimes packed on a small continent were competing to divide the world resulting in a world war, for which Germany was made solely accountable for and had to give up territory and pay huge reparations.

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Re:As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens by bamboozled on Sunday April 30, 2017 @09:01PM (#14234831)

That might be a fact but it doesn't really support the OPs original idea right? "centuries of tradition and institutions to make it work well."

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