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A comment on Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli?. Parent comment

Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by wheels on Thursday September 03, 2020 @12:23PM (#24365633)
It's definitely a theocracy, but the president does have some measure of real power (e.g. for better or worse, the nuclear deal almost certainly wouldn't have happened had Rouhani not been elected). I'm not saying that the government isn't problematic, just that every problematic government isn't a dictatorship.
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by LegitShady on Thursday September 03, 2020 @12:36PM (#24365785)
All presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council. It's democracy pastiche at best
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by wheels on Thursday September 03, 2020 @12:37PM (#24365810)
That was where the "semi-" in "semi-democratic" came from in my original comment. It's in ways similar to Hong Kong's council elections.
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by dogma1138 on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:58PM (#24369353)
It’s not semi because there is a completely parallel government and an executive branch that holds supreme power over everything even if they don’t administer the day to day dealings of the “normies”.

The IRGC could arrest the entire parliament and execute them at the public square and no one can officially stop them, not judges, not ministers no one.

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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by philistine on Thursday September 03, 2020 @12:56PM (#24366047)
I would be careful of using semi-democracy as a word. Democracy is power by the people, and the Iranian theocracy is ultimately not a democracy. There are too many caveats, too many powers under the authority of religious unelected people to call it a democracy. It’s a theocracy through and through.
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by Hamcrest on Thursday September 03, 2020 @01:42PM (#24366540)
What country doesn't have caveats to its democracy tho? I live in the UK and there are far too many caveats to call it a democracy IMO. At the end of the day it is subjective.
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by tgv on Thursday September 03, 2020 @02:32PM (#24367170)
This is getting absurd: a representative democracy as many European countries have is not a close relation to the GP's "semi democratic" Iran. It's as "subjective" as being hit with a brick.
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Re:Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? by sudosysgen on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:23PM (#24369045)
The UK is more complicated than that.

In the end, democracy refers to who hold power. In the UK, it's very possible for a minority to have the majority of the power or even worse due to various details, and a lot of power is just not accountable to the people. So depending on where you draw the line it makes sense.

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