• usualsuspect191
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    2 months ago

    Wait, is there another? The US is often cited as the oldest democracy. It’s not the first of course, but that’s a different thing

      • usualsuspect191
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        2 months ago

        Those are pretty neat! I’m guessing the commenter who made the original statement was referring to countries so doubt this would invalidate their statement.

        The country I see people saying that’s older is England, but with the monarch messes things up depending on definitions (the US constitution even mentions the king quite a few times so was England considered a democracy yet?).

        It’s probably one of those things where the definition is loose enough that many different countries/organizations can claim to be the oldest and be right under whatever criteria they’ve decided

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Technically the 6 Nations, which the US copied a lot of their democracy, is older by several thousand years, but people like to pretend they are all dead.

      • usualsuspect191
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        2 months ago

        It’s probably a bit arbitrary, but best I can find England’s democracy is younger. Likely due to the king still having certain powers preventing England from being considered a democracy until a good bit after the founding of the US

        • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Yes, the american democracy is the oldest under a very narrow view of what constitutes a democracy, which basically the republic style yall invented, not even a real democracy anyways.