There are many types of democracy in the literature: “sovereign,” plebiscite, elite (Schumpeter), delegate (O’Donnell), participatory (Fromm), and others. It is said that the types reach 100. Russian politicians close to the Kremlin especially like to talk about that topic. There is one form of democracy in the United States, another in Russia, another in China, and everyone is, so to speak, happy in their own way. Theoretically, of course, I am not against the division of democracy into types, but it seems to me that there should be some criterion that allows us to name all the variants of this phenomenon in one word.
For example, Covid-19 has different manifestations, but there are features by which the PCR test identifies all of these variation by that name.
For me, the main “test” of democracy is the control of the government, the mutual counterbalances and restraints of its wings, a situation where all power is not concentrated in the hands of the first person. In that sense, Armenia has never been a democracy. Many people say, let’s write this or that in the constitution, and that issue will be resolved. We have already written different things three times, now it seems that we are going to write a fourth time, but the issue is not resolved in any way. Because democracy is not conditioned by the wise words written on a piece of paper, democracy is a culture.
If the leader of the country is, in fact, a monarch, then the remaining undemocratic manifestations are a derivative of this. The monarch is interested in having judges who follow their whims. They demands from their “viziers” to persecute the elected leaders of local self-government bodies who can show independence. They try to silence all those who criticize them through their “Oprichniks.” Another important circumstance, about which relatively little is said: the monarch sends their party “commissars” to run universities to prevent them from obstructing academic and educational freedom. “Viziers,” “Oprichniks,” and “commissars,” no matter what they are called today, are elements of an undemocratic culture.
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So, democracy is not the “brand” of Armenia at all.
But the problem is not whether it is a “brand” or not. Suppose all democracies, all international or human rights organizations unanimously declare that Armenia is the best example of democracy in the world. What does it give us? I think we need democracy first of all to solve our internal and external problems. It is a tool, not a “brand.”
Aram Abrahamyan
