As optimistic as I want to be, this is the fourth term for a president?? That cannot be good for democracy.
It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.
As optimistic as I want to be, this is the fourth term for a president?? That cannot be good for democracy.
It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.
The idea that you must fire your most competent employees after ~8 years on the job, in a exceedingly difficult job that requires on-the-job training, is in fact one of the most inane and damaging things to democracy.
They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials. The longer you stay the easier it is for you to get elected.
That’s why it is very important to have a time limit in power.
It's even more important that time limit gives those in power a planned off-ramp.
The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.
TBH the idea that one person could have so much power is bad imho, it only attracts sociopaths.
I like the swiss model more where one party never gets full power, even if it means societal changes take more time to happen[1], it seems less risky to me as there is never one power grab whose decision can influence the next election by stuff like redistricting, puting clearly leaning judges to federal court, etc.
[1] famous example is the women right to vote in the general election happened in 1971 which is quite shameful
> They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
If it was not clear, I am not stating that anyone who is in office is automatically the most competent. However, the entire point of a democracy is that you have the option to fire bad candidates. And yet, with term limits, when you do get a competent candidate in office, you do not have the option to keep them in office.
The most commonly repeated pattern across literally all of human history is that power grows.
Being the chief executive in a system like brazil's results in a lot of power, for several perfectly good reasons, but it does mean you have to build in safe guards against that power growing.
Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
> Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
Term limits are not a solution either, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate. Clearly there is a need to check power, but perhaps the mechanisms that check power should not also ensure you will never have a truly excellent leader && increase instability from flipflopping policies && give more opportunities for people who will abuse power to take office and ignore the term limits because that's what people who abuse power do. A term limit is only effective against a mildly bad candidate who is not truly willing to abuse their power, because if they are willing to abuse their power they can just ignore it. In that way, you've created a system that caps upside but leaves downside uncapped in practice.
There's the view that republican Rome's military success was due to their public career path churning out OK military commanders at a steady rate. Not necessarily great, just good enough with a solid understanding of the basics.
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
There's a reason the US military cycles officers to different duty postings every 2-4 years...
What it loses in efficiency, it gains in avoiding centralization, cult of personality, and encouraging standardization.
> you will never have a truly excellent leader
Democracies shouldn't have a "leader", they should have functional governments and strong oppositions. Focusing on a single person never ends well.
Tbh, a single politician should never have enough power to move the needle significantly to either side. And even in companies, the "bus factor" is a thing (eg everybody must be replaceable).
Disagree. Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career. I want people who can serve with high dedication and then go back to private life. I'd like to see term limits on representatives and senators as well, and also an upper age limit.
> Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career.
As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?
The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same. And humans have biases against change. Term limits guarantee the downside is limited and they are healthy for a real democracy.
Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.
The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
> And humans have biases against change
Funnily enough, a lot of people who voted for Flávio only did it because they wanted a change from Lula.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
Well how's that working out? There's a reason the rest of the developed democratic world hasn't adopted a strong executive.
American system maintained being a super power for 80 years, great stability and giant prosperity.
Worked out very well for the American system till recently.
I think that's just because both parties managed to keep demagogues from being nominated until 2016.
> The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same.
Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.
> You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits.
The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.
And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.
hardly the worst leaderships. Would you rather have Mao/Stalin/Putin?
The entire republican tradition (with a small r) rests on the assumption that leadership is a common skill. The society is supposed to give ambitious young people opportunities to demonstrate their skills, and then select the most capable ones and give them increasingly challenging roles. At any given time, there should be an order of magnitude more potential leaders (with the necessary skills and experience) than what the society actually needs. And the leaders should be replaced often enough, to avoid giving them the idea that they are somehow special.
Democracy is not about figuring out who’s most competent at the job, it’s about being able to get rid of everybody in power at some point without using weapons or waiting for them to die of natural causes. A term limit is a very good idea and I’d even implement it for legislators and other government officials.
Part of being competent is building legislative and other public service systems that run without you being at the helm, and bringing up younger leaders behind you who keep things going upward. Memento mori, and all that.
It’s a nice argument but there’s another axis: fatigue. Leading takes its toll. To be charitable it’s not plausible that you can run a country, with all the stress that entails, and out compete everyone not at the apex of the front line.
I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.
Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!
i feel like democracy isn't about the most competent but about the "least bad" option you could have. an effective dictator (lol) can cut thru the red tape but what people are worried about are the terrible ones. at least with a democracy you can rotate them out.
Switzerland rotates their President every year.
First among equals, the president of the Confederation has no powers over and above the other six councillors and continues to head the assigned department. Traditionally the duty rotates among the members in order of seniority; the vice president of the Federal Council assumes the presidency the year after the officeholder's tenure. The president of the Confederation is not the head of state because the entire Federal Council is the collective head of state.
Per wikipedia.
Exactly, this prevents personality cults and power hoarding.
No, it means that the role of the Swiss president cannot be compared to the cases discussed. It requires a different organization of the state, not just a term or age limit.
Wrt to the latter: the Swiss system prefers the elder candidate.
Power corrupts.
Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals.
Except when those employees also have command of armies, at which point history has shown that swapping them out before they get too comfortable is key for keeping a republic a republic.
> history has shown
It doesn't really show that, though. Putin was not stopped by term limits. Hitler seized power within a year of being elected. Lukashenko established his rigged state within two years. Fujimori launched a self-coup within two years. I'm actually not aware of evidence that term limits have ever meaningfully did anything to impede a would-be wrongdoer.
Is Trump and his administration most competent employees?
I would rather limit not amount of terms, but the age. Not eligible for any kind of elections if you are 60+, both as candidate and as voter.
There is nothing competent about Lula. It’s a populist “corrupticracy”.
I really can’t understand how Brazilians (that actually have a multi party system) keep having to choose between two awful candidates.
Please, let's not cherry-pick our worries about what's not good for democracy. Yes, perhaps term-limits might aid in a healthy democracy, perhaps not. But please read this [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Jair...
Why? If they’re democratically voted, what’s wrong with it?
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
I wish Australia had term limits for all politicians, and not just for the PM. Term limits prevents people becoming career politicians, which i think would be a good thing.
The argument against aggressive term limits that I’ve read: there are many people making a career in politics as a whole—lobbyists, influence groups, party committees, etc. They have a huge advantage over the term-limited elected politician.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
Sheeeeeeeeeeit
Modern democracy is not about enforcing the populates will whatever that is. It’s about limiting tyranny.
Mark Rutte, Netherlands, 14 years prime minister, four terms in office. It is hard to say if he represented the general will of the population given that his party, the liberal-right VVD favors the more well-to-do part of the population. I think many voters voted for him as a trustworthy face and friendly, amicable man. Vote for the personality. He was also characterized as Mr Tefal for his ability to make nothing stick to him in terms of criticism, and utterly pragmatic, denouncing vision. As a result the big problems and areas where reform were most needed, were always pushed to the future.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
I think the real weakness of democracy is that governments can’t make difficult changes. The current government wanted to but both the right and the left did not accept those changes. Similar story as France, a big need to change, but everybody expects others to pay, not themselves.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.
It's not. Brazil has a good elections system with the 2 turns. But still on the first turn more than 90% voted for these 2 parties. The only party on "the left" is a Unionist president and a right wing vice president. There's no serious politics on the left, and people vote like they are cheering for football teams. Voting for Lula was the evident lesser evil (as in, proven track record, and no concrete evidence of corruption like his opponent), but half the country disagrees...
I think limiting presidential terms is pretty American, I can't see why its undemocratic to stand for longer as long as there are still elections, free press, right to protest etc.
In the US, FDR stood 4 terms, and he was hardly the end of democracy.
His first two terms were 2003-2011
Not in a row.
Lula served two terms from 2002-2010, and came back in 2022 (now to serve until 2030, if he lives until then).
Yeah this is valuable context. He Jerry Brown'd it.
I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.
It's very situationally dependent. Term limits stop bad politicians doing too much damage, they also stop good politicians getting too much momentum on their side.
Term limits result in dynasties "behind the scenes" running things.
Long-term politicians result in "behind the scenes" doing the real work of running things.
Wait a minute ...
everything should be juged by the action/output, not by the identity. too bad most democracy counties is focus on the later.
Plus he's 80 today and will be 84 by the time his term ends. Gerontocracy for the win.
There's a limit of two consecutive terms.
we dont have a lot of hoices in south america and he is top notch
It’s good for Putin. He and Lula are allies, and their friendship goes way back.
Let's do takes for the sake of takes.
Roosevelt has entered chat.
Repeal the 22nd.
FDR served four terms and basically saved the USA from the jaws of ruin, fascism and the oligarchy. It's not necessarily a bad thing.