Iraq never had democracy before, while Venezuela was a pretty functioning democracy for half a century. And the civilizational distance between Venezuelans and democracy was quite a bit shorter than for people in Iraq. Even non-democratic countries in Latin America are still the beneficiaries of a millennia of European social development, specifically the erasure of extended family, clan, and tribal identities (which makes functional democracy impossible).
It's not Switzerland, but it is worlds apart from Venezuela where they blatantly and obviously just changed vote totals to keep Maduro on top. Iraq is currently a participatory and factional democracy.
Seems likely to go the way of Iraq, particularly with the current administration in charge, who are more interested in looting than democracy.
Iraq never had democracy before, while Venezuela was a pretty functioning democracy for half a century. And the civilizational distance between Venezuelans and democracy was quite a bit shorter than for people in Iraq. Even non-democratic countries in Latin America are still the beneficiaries of a millennia of European social development, specifically the erasure of extended family, clan, and tribal identities (which makes functional democracy impossible).
I mean, Iraq is currently an imperfect but functioning democracy, so the contrast you are drawing doesn't really work.
For certain values of democracy.
Do you know what you are talking about? They had parliamentary elections last year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iraqi_parliamentary_elect...
It's not Switzerland, but it is worlds apart from Venezuela where they blatantly and obviously just changed vote totals to keep Maduro on top. Iraq is currently a participatory and factional democracy.
https://archive.ph/CIQ3Q
The economist is no longer capable of writing unbiased articles unfortunately.
It’s an opinion piece, it’s not supposed to be unbiased…