This is a strange conclusion considering non-democratic political changes cause plenty of chaos. Russian Revolution, the Chinese Civil War, the Protestant Reformation and accompanying violence, the Boxer Rebellion, all come to mind. Of course changing political systems will cause violence. Look at Kazakhstan. The current protests have very little to do with democracy in their cause. People would have been protesting high gas prices without the goal of having democracy. But autocrats will blame the political side of things when the cause is purely economic.

The real question is what happens once democracy has taken hold.

Are revolutions undemocratic? Would Mao have won the Chinese civil war if he did not in fact have the support of the people?

Democracy is not inherently stable, in fact I would argue they are the opposite. An election is like flipping a coin.

An election is like flipping a coin that lands on a side with relatively substantial weight of public support (quirks of electoral systems mean it's not guaranteed to be the most popular or least unpopular side, but unless it's blatantly rigged, substantial public support will be there). A revolution is flipping a coin that lands on the side most effectively able to concentrate violence. Sometimes that's achieved by overwhelming public support, but if your "revolution" is a military coup, it doesn't need many people to be on side at all.

Mao won the Civil War only after getting US backing during WW2, and allowing the nationalists to do the bulk of the fight againsg the Japanese while gathering his strength.

Chaos and violence are not the sea thing in your definition. I would much rather have political chaos and no violence than violence and political stability.

> The spread of democracy has caused a great deal of chaos as well documented by Amy Chua in her book World on Fire.

No surprise there actually. Sensible people have always been aware that liberal/bourgeois values and Constitutional protection of fundamental rights are basic prerequisites for meaningful democracy, as practiced throughout the West. Elections alone are practically irrelevant if these more basic things are missing.

> Sensible people have always been aware ...

Indeed. And yet it seems sensible people are quite impotent whenever there's such trouble, real or imagined, in some far-away land that a US Administration feels an uncontrollable urge to send in the Marines first, and try to "nation-build" afterward. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq -- we just never learn.

George Orwell: "Not much is learned from the lessons of history. And that is the greatest of the lessons of history."

> try to "nation-build" afterward.

This hasn't happened, though. True nation-building has not been seriously attempted since post-WWII Germany and Japan. Cargo-cult efforts to "export" the figments of electoral democracy (as seen in Afghanistan and 2000s Iraq) do not matter. They were always doomed to failure.

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t expect democracy to destabilize non-democratic nation states. You’re moving from an authoritarian system that can squash legitimate grievances and desires (e.g. Yugoslavia) that would otherwise need to be addressed under a democracy.

If you look at history, a jump from authoritarian systems to stable democratic systems seems to happen in either countries had some quasi-democratic system prior (e.g. Poland) or a strong national identity to unite the population (e.g. Japan).

Most other democracies transitioned through decades of instability and non-democratic government when given independence (e.g. South Korea, Taiwan).

Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Koreas transition to modern democracy required US military occupation (indeed United States occupying forces wrote Japan's constitution)

Among the countries that today maintain the same constitutional order as they have for centuries are democracies. Switzerland, the United States, the UK come to mind. All autocracies that existed 100 years ago have been overthrown—multiple times in many cases.

In what way is democracy to be considered destabilizing?

Looking at history and at the present moment, one could say that instability is an inherent feature of human society, but that democracy substantially reduces that instability.

It seems to be quite destabilising for autocracies. Some might consider that a a good thing though

Autocracy is destabilizing for autocracies. Looking at history, autocracies are constantly prone to being overthrown from within, and from without.

This is a feature of the autocracy being overthown, and not necessarily a feature of the system of government that replaces it.

> autocracies are constantly prone to being overthrown from within, and from without

And this is quite fundamental to the autocratic model. Coming in #2 in a democratic contest for power means you don’t get to be President. Coming in #2 in an autocratic contest for power means losing your property, liberty and likely life. The former encourages reconciliation. The latter, challenging the outcome at all costs.

To build on that, coming in at #2 in a democratic contest for power means you don't get to be President yet. A properly functioning democracy affords you or your faction a second chance usually enhanced by accepting the result. A properly functioning autocracy doesn't.

>In what way is democracy to be considered destabilizing?

I think it's interesting to think of the receiving side of this as well: how stable are democratic allies when their foreign policy can change election cycle to election cycle?

The foreign policy choices of liberal democracies tend to be far more stable, consensus-driven and cooperation-oriented actually. This is what the whole notion of a "liberal international order" ultimately boils down to. And it was hardly a failure - even the most recent and salient seeming "successes" of various more-or-less authoritarian polities are ultimately reliant on the "liberal" order working as well as it does.

> why democracy not only fails to contribute to stabilization but in fact destabilizes nation states

This has been known since antiquity, and is why the Founding Fathers designed not a democracy but a republic that combines elements of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. (The three branches of government.) That we’ve forgotten this lesson is a likely contributor to the current instability.

The almighty Founding Farme^H^H^Hthers were upper class slave owners, not some omniscient illuminati. In the century after the constitution was ratified there were financial crises, domestic terrorism, skirmishes, ethnic cleansing, lynching, and civil war. The idea that the US republic is the ideal institution is propaganda drummed into the head of US school children. The US is where it is in the world order because of _resources_, access to a large amount of slaves at the time of colonization, geographical isolation, and many other fortunate circumstances.

> idea that the US republic is the ideal institution

This is a straw man. Nobody, including the Founding Fathers, claimed the original Republic was ideal. The Constitution's vagueness and incompleteness were widely admitted at its signing.

Pure democracies don't work. They devolve into populist, majoritarian nightmares that tear themselves apart. This has been a consistent failure mode across over three millennia. We have minority-protecting, stabilizing features built into our system that have been systematically dismantled and attacked over the past decades, all in the name of more democracy. That more democracy isn't always a good thing has been absent from the discussion, in part due to Cold War and ensuing dynamics, in part due to ad hominem rejections like the one you made.

My counter to that is that the common act of holding the framers (and constitution) in reverence, which you did in the comment upthread, stultifies the ability of the country to react to changing mores and needs. There's a lot of absurdity in US law and politics that simply doesn't exist in countries with more modern and/or fluid constitutions.

Suppose that the US were to create a constitution today, based on today's needs and the anticipated needs of the next 50 years. How different do you think it would look from what was written in the 18th century? (Put aside the impossibility of doing this in today's political climate, as that's not the point of the question.)

I've gone back and forth on this. On one hand, the reverence is stifling and often mis-used. But it's also stabilizing. The fact that we've forgotten the balanced nature of our republic, and that the easiest way to remind us of that fact--which still holds merit today--is by appealing to the authority of the Founding Fathers, would be my Exhibit A to this argument.

How is that stabilising though?

It starts to sound demi-religious. You shall not disobey the word of a larger power/figure.

And then society starts to rift over time, through the interpretation by different sects about what the words meant.

Over centuries you get a pretty twisted view of the original values, interpreted by a few different sects, and an ever growing wedge between those interpretations that gets harder and harder to reconcile.

Just like most major religions.

They kind of did think they were building the ideal government, though. One of the major, under-emphasized influences on the framers (especially Jefferson) was Destutt de Tracey, who developed the term “ideology.” For Destutt de Tracey, ideology meant the formal study of ideas as scientific objects. Large parts of his writings deal with determining the scientifically optimal form of government (cf. Marx). In his correspondences with Jefferson, you can read how much the new government took from Destutt de Tracey, both in form and outlook, to the point that Jefferson felt compelled to explain deviations from the Count’s prescriptions.

Regarding the first half of your comment about instability and planning in the founding of the US, I've been reading a book that totally agrees and goes into more detail. Folks (like myself) whose only exposure to US history is public school classes and modern talking points might like it.

It's called Empire of Liberty. It's about the first 3 decades of the US and definitely shows how much was not planned at the time and how much of the constitution was intended as just a starting point to be edited soon after. Very much not the perfect document people treat it (knowingly or unknowingly) today.

The constitution calls for a "republican form of government," however the conventional understanding at the time was that such a government is one in which the people choose their rulers. We could use the term "democratic republic" if that term hadn't been co-opted by states that are the exact opposite.

In contrast, states in which the rulers are elected from among a limited set of candidates chosen by the government, do not qualify. For instance, some states curate the selection of candidates by jailing or murdering opposition candidates. Others vet their candidates through a separate body of religious leaders.

In the US, gerrymandering probably does not pass a basic constitutional sniff test, but getting governments to relinquish powers that they enjoy is no small feat.

That "republic" is effectively the same as the "liberal democracy" mentioned in the article. Which, in turn, is the default meaning of "democracy" in contemporary discussion. Democracy doesn't mean mob rule by the majority anymore. It's about elected representatives, constitutional protections, civil liberties, rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, and so on.

Not so. Constitutional monarchies may qualify as liberal democracies, yet are by definition not republics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

European constitutional monarchies are effectively republics with some state-sponsored celebrities. North Korea is a republic that is effectively a hereditary monarchy. Official labels don't always match reality.

Anyway, my point was that "republic" effectively means "liberal democracy" in this specific context, where someone invokes the Founding Fathers and contrasts it with direct democracy. And when someone talks about present-day democracy, they usually refer to the entire Western system rather than to simple majority rule.

I think it was Lord Vetinari who said, “pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny; free men pull in all kinds of directions”

One up for the Sir Terry reference.

I think The Patrician is probably the wisest ruler the world has never known.

I disagree, man is a social animal that has survived throughout the eons by living in packs. Sociology is clear on this: leaders arise, villages are built, work is distributed.

Democracy does contribute to stabilization, but the people have to want it. In the same way that the liberal order requires all nations to sacrifice some self-interest to enable that stability, factions within a country must do the same. We’re now reaching a point where some nations, as well as some factions, no longer see this as a worthwhile sacrifice. They prefer to take power where they can get it and manage the chaos that ensues.

It's also strange that the author discards everything prior to 1989 with "Well, that was just the West." To the extent that small-l liberalism is crumbling, it's largely from the inside in Western democracies; foreign policy doesn't just spring into being from empty space.