- A strong leader and a weak bureaucracy, so that your vote means something. - A good constitution that puts hard limits on what they can do, no boiling the frog with freedom of speech restrictions like Canada, Australia, and The UK

So basically an elected dictator with a functioning kill switch. Not a parade of faceless, temporary, unimportant prime ministers and elections which don't matter.

> freedom of speech restrictions like Canada, Australia, and The UK

Unlike in the USA, where speaking out to, or disagreeing with, the president will get you removed from positions of authority?

(If you haven't already gathered, such bogus claims of free speech restrictions in other countries are distracting you from the reality of what is happening in your own country.)

This was an incredibly stupid comment, for the following reasons:

- I never mentioned the US

- I am not from the US

- I wasn't talking about the US

You had some axe to grind and you ground it false pretexts.

Do better.

> your vote means something. - A good constitution that puts hard limits on what they can do

Quite a lot of serious problems arise when voters want things that are ""unconstitutional"". What if the voters want speech restrictions? That's a big part of why they're implemented, public/media campaigning for them.

So essentially Soviet democracy (at least as it was supposed to have worked in theory)?

How would you ensure that the strong leader wouldn't just bring in the Cheka as quickly as Lenin did?

We both have very different ideas of what "Soviet democracy" is :)

Theirs was a party democracy. Or are you referring to the actual soviets (workers councils) pre Bolshevik coup?

The actual soviets - they remained in operation for the first few years after the Bolshevik coup, and the revolutionary slogan "All power to the soviets!" gave Lenin a convenient figleaf for sidelining the elected Duma.

Of course, the soviets also proved unwilling to entirely subjugate themselves to Lenin's whims, and made a habit of choosing non-Bolshevik delegates. This culminated in the failed Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, after which any pretense at democracy was finally ended.

But - in theory - the soviet model sounds akin to what you're looking for. Being made up of delegates rather than representatives meant that the power of recall on demand was baked-in at every level, and power flowed upwards to a strong executive leadership.

In reality, it's hard to see how any sufficiently strong leader wouldn't be able to override or simply ignore any sort of kill switch or other constitutional arrangements that might happen to stand in their way - as has happened every time it's been tried in the past.

Ah you have misunderstood me.

I think the person elected should hold a lot of powers. Because otherwise, what is the point of voting if they're just going to leak it all to the civil service?

By "kill switch", I just mean you need a way to stop a leader with a lot of powers in exceptional circumstances - such as violation of a constitution.