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If states with elections can be authoritarian, and various forms of mnarchy, from feudalism to absolutism can be democratic, it's starting to sound like democracy is just the friends we made along the way.
"Comparatively democratic" is intended to be read literally, as in, comparatively more cratos in the hands of demos than in other parts of Europe. Not as, it was democratic as 20th century had democracies. But lack of serfdom since early Middle Ages, continuous presence of institutions for deliberative, representational decisionmaking, and right to participate (in the said institutions) granted to large part of population, all of that, it is the traditional social capital argument.
Well, but if they weren't democratic compared to today, and if they weren't corrupt (emphasis on IF here, since I don't have hard data), then that sounds like there are more important factors than democracy, at least as we understand it today, no? Or do you think Ben would nod approvingly if Mexico went full Carolus Rex?
The line of thought goes, simplified, their society had elements that share commonalities with a modern conception of democracy (mid-lower level social landholding had some minor but existent social and economic power, the freemen had rights recognized by everyone in the "everyone knows that everyone knows" way, the ideas how the decisionmaking institutions are supposed to work). Thus it is a confound: perhaps the democratic commonalities contributed to weird by-the-books behavior. And these democratic elements formed social capital (knowledge and preconceived ideas how to do things, transmitted intergenerationally) making it easier to run democracy!20thcentury in ethos, not only rubberstamping the correct procedures in the books approved by philosophers. The idea that ethos part is important in other democratic societies is not exactly a new idea. ^1
Naturally all this is comparative. From what I gather, they Nordics were corrupt (still are corrupt, just less in comparison than some other countries), the amount of corruption waxed and waned depending on the politics. Also, we know of the corruption because the peasants suffering from its effects mounted numerous legal complaints registered in the legal system, existence of which is somewhat positive sign.
I don't know about Ben. I would grant the possibility that Mexico could be a better place after 200 years the state running the show as the supreme gangboss, not tolerating other bosses that those serving him, applying principles of consistent governance, basing his powerbase on the free small-mid-sized enterprises against the high capital. But 200 year long experiments are difficult to run and the economic situation of the lucrative narcotics trade is difficult to square.
Narcotics is bit like the resource curse: You get lots of profit that don't require investments to rest of the local economy which would result in long-term benefit to rest of the society. Not only that, the resource curse profits are much higher and more concentrated than what others can made from rest of economy. The outsized profit, concentrated, makes it possible to hire armed enforcers to enforce control and continuation of profitable business in the hands of its current owner, and make any problems to go away.
^1: Tocqueville writes about the mores of American democracy:
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