yes, the concept of democracy is shaped and impacted by the pre-conditions as you mention. I can not agree more.@

I agree with Khachaturian's quoted thesis. "Democracy" is not an objective instrument of scientific inquiry, but part of society's self-understanding, i. e. its is part of what Eric Voegelin called a cosmion illuminated from within by signs of society's self-understanding (to quote off the top of my head). What is the remedy? I recommend book Jason Blakely's and mark Bevir's book called "Interpretive Social Science: An Anti-Naturalist Approach". Within anti-naturalistic approach we can examine concepts such as democracy as elements of on-going process of auto-interpretation of a society in a state of constant transition.

I live in Thailand where the king still has some power, it is not entirely democratic here. I can say that I like the idea of having a human being be above the law, because he is so heavily watched by everyone that if he makes a mistake, according to their culture, he will be condemned by the people. A human king can touch situations that are normally governed by laws and correct them to be more human, according to the current idea of a human. I believe the USA, where I lived half of my life, has laws that are in a sense impersonal and even if the law is failing us, it is kept in place as if the mechanisms of law were more important than the people being governed. I wouldn't call Thai government fascist, nor would I call myself fascist, but there is something lost if the work to amend the laws, given every twist and turn of values and generations, is an inhuman amount of work.

Taiwan is facing the coming presidential election in 2024. Democracy is actually a hermeneutic game, which needs scholars' interpreation and observation. Whether the staus quo of Taiwan's geopolitical politics will change deserves scholars' further observation and comments.

I agree. Yet, it's now much worse. The reality is clearly observable here and at Academia."edu" and elsewhere in academia, etc. I call it the complex symptoms of pseudomythic neoPtolemaic orthodoxy. It maintains this 'modern' civilization's ecocidal status quo.

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Donald Schon -- in his classic "Beyond the Stable State" etc. -- called the key subliminal 'mechanism' the "dynamic conservatism" of a group's or society's 'power' structure. Of course, the main seemingly 'external' causal factors are fueled and perpetuated by the dominant elite's parasitic financial system and their essentially anti-ethical, biocidal cultural paradigm, the piracy paradigm. However, as I show in [my preprint draft of] "Trump, Hitler, Freud, and Mostrosity", the other subliminal mechanism that we see in this advanced Stage-4 phase of cultural illness can be seen as pandemic mass-authoritarian personality disorder. Worse still, the further the syndrome and catastrophic consequences are allowed to persist, the more people are either infected or more severely threatened (and damaged or worse).

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Unfortunately, the worst-case examples are Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Trump et al, and their loyal fanactical dupes. I use "dupes" because they have been duped, conned into believing the monstrous lies and propaganda of the malignant narcissists who maniulate and exploit them. However, as Carl Sagan sadly realized, most of us are too easily bamboozled, and the longer and worse, the less the victims want to know about it. Unfortunately, as Edward R. Murrow predicted at his farewell dinner, the world and corporate media of today were enabled by the same subliminal cowardice; and because '"most of us are allergic to reality"' and very unpleasant news.

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Now, more to the point, what could seem more unpleasant than discovering that our tenure, funding, and socioeconomic status are threatened by new and better science or maths?

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We can see this in subliminal censorship and virtual suppression (and/or ostracism) of creative evolutionaries and discoverers of unorthodox truths and realities -- proving that the status quo paradigm of 'mordern' science is obsolete and/or deficient. For example, 'successful physics experts' either refuse to seriously consider my Work or they prefer selective inattention, or hostile negativity, ostracism, or whatever. Another example of neoPtolemaic academic orthodoxy retarding progress is the nearly total refusal and/or inability of 'successful' mathematical technicians to consider any new theory or metatheory (and related proofs) beyond their view of their favorite subjects of interest and narrow domain of special knowledge. For instance, my preprint paper on the solutions of the Rieman Hypothesis (RH) and P/NP problems, Goldbach's and Collatz's conjectures (and the actual basis of geometry, mathematics, numeric logic, and physics) have been posted and circulated (via email) since 2017. Yet, not one of the many allegedly leading-edge mathematicians has read it closely, considered it seriously, understood it, reviewed it, and critiqued or recommended it.

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Now, that latter case may seem a strictly self-serving example, but none of the most well-respected 'leading-edge' mathematical technicians -- not even Riemann himself -- have found a truly satisfactory, comprehensive proof of RH or whether all complete NP problems are or are not computationally solvable as economically feasible P problems. In fact, as I show and verify in my Work, the RH and P/NP problems are perfect examples, proving that all NP problems are not quickly solvable as P problems.

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So, clearly, the real problem perpetuating the malignant decline of Stage-4 democracies infected by anti-ethical corporate monopolism and/or fascism is the systemic corruption (perverse socialization) of the egos of an ever-greater majority of seemingly trustworthy, respectable people.

This discussion prompts a few thoughts for me. The first is that I perceive a resonance with Michel Foucault's conception of power-knowledge and power regimes that permeate and shape individuals' thought processes, practices, and ultimately how we see the world (Foucault, 1995). While subsequent scholarship has helped communicate that there is still capacity for agency in Foucault's thought through analysis of his lectures and writings that were published posthumously (Keating, 1995; Lambert, 2020), an application to those researching politics is that these researchers themselves must contend with their own biases and perhaps try to understand how to address them

On a more practical level, Bukamal (2022) outlines the need for researchers to examine how their biases and connections to what they are researching can be used to augment their analysis. While this would include being up front about one's biases, Bukamal discusses the concept of having an insider or an outsider perspective. In some cases, having a connection to a phenomenon may allow a researcher to engage with participants due to a pre-established trust that a researcher completely separated from the phenomenon may not be able to build. Having an insider perspective may also allow one to gain access to networks that that not otherwise would have been able to. On the other hand, having an outsider perspective and not being embroiled in the political phenomena being researched may allow access to certain participants and networks that would not be options for the insider.

Perhaps a way to look at this is with the help of the concept of the scholar-practitioner, meaning someone who not only researches something, but is also a participant in the phenomenon they are researching, thus being able to see things from the perspective of both a researcher and a practitioner (Labaree, 2003). For the study of politics, it seems like all who research it are inevitably scholar practitioners, because they are inherently a part of some kind of politics, and/or micropolitics, within political institutions and/or Foucauldian power regimes that interact with and influence each other. Perhaps embracing and foregrounding the scholar-practitioner nature of researching politics is a way to use this positionality to augment our research and move our disciplines forward instead of facing the limitations and risks of unaddressed biases if this is not acknowledged.

Bukamal, H. (2022). Deconstructing insider–outsider researcher positionality. British Journal of Special Education, 49(3), 327–349. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12426

Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (2nd ed. edition). Vintage.

Keating, C. R. (1995). Foucault, Vitalism, Resistance: The Subject of Resistance in the Thought of Michel Foucault [Doctor of Philosophy (History), McMaster University].

Labaree, D. F. (2003). The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 13–22. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004013

Lambert, G. (2020). The Elements of Foucault. University of Minnesota Press.