The westerners got into the habit of equating democracy with elections, which at best is intellectual laziness and at worst deception of monumental proportions. In reality, elections are window dressing disguising a rather undemocratic nature of governance in the US and probably most of the OECD countries, not to mention the non-OECD ones. Getting rid of elections and rep-lacing them with some alternative system of designating political representation would almost certainly be an improvement over the status quo.
I recall a study being done in NZ or Oz showing that a random selection from a pool of qualified citizens does a better job of making political decisions than reliance on the so-called elected representatives and experts. For one thing, it minimizes the role of special interests, money, and connections. I am fairly certain that if we summarily sacked the entire political class and their experts - or better yet - sent them to reeducation camps and used a random selection process for appointing legislators and members of the executive branch (similar to jury selection) we would have a more democratic system than the existing plutocracy.
I would go as far as saying that an enlighten philosopher-king would do a better job than the silly beauty contests bankrolled by monied interests currently in place. or, for that matter, a progressively minded military junta - as in the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. From that pov, the fact that the military opposes an elected - meaning handpicked by the political bosses and getting 50% +1 vote in a popular beauty contest - figure is not necessarily a bad thing.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."