I had thought I was the only person in the world who took this perverse-seeming position!

"The common people are in control in a democracy (at the very least they decide which oligarchy runs the place and so if an oligarchy wants to be in power they have to get the support of the common people)."

Well, I guess the U.S. and Western European nations are out of the running - special interest groups do that job while the common voter just provides an aura of legitimacy for them to hide behind...

Also bestonnet,

"Not to mention that it is possible for common people to become politicians (even if they have to learn to behave worse than a child)."

Common people seldom go anywhere near the high eschelons of the political class (they typically just stop around local schoolboard rep.) - all the congressmen, major beaurocratic heads, cabinet members and other high-level authorities come from the existing social elite or else have many friends within the existing elite: regardless of who actually holds office, the political class is tight-knit enough the elites are always in charge of the system at the end of the day.

No matter who gets elected, the status quo remains constant - revolution from the top-down is impossible under this system...

Besides, if the statement I responded to earlier was indeed correct it would be moot - as there are no democracies, just oligarchies with irrelevent elections who's only purpose is to make the common people feel like their still in control.

The common people are in control in a democracy (at the very least they decide which oligarchy runs the place and so if an oligarchy wants to be in power they have to get the support of the common people).

Not to mention that it is possible for common people to become politicians (even if they have to learn to behave worse than a child).

"For most of human history, ink on paper or similar methods were the ONLY means of transmitting information. I assume you'll ditch your computer now?"

No - I won't ditch my computer, but are computer-generated documents now the only legitimate ones?

Besides, if the statement I responded to earlier was indeed correct it would be moot - as there are no democracies, just oligarchies with irrelevent elections who's only purpose is to make the common people feel like their still in control.

Says who? Thoughout most of human history, they where the ONLY governments!

For most of human history, ink on paper or similar methods were the ONLY means of transmitting information. I assume you'll ditch your computer now?

"For a country to be truly democratic (as opposed to democratic in ritual only) the people must have a real choice as to who to vote for (which means that any country which uses intimidation of the opposition is automatically not a democracy) and the votes must be accurately counted (meaning that a country with massive electoral fraud also isn't democratic as the people committing the fraud are the ones that decide who gets into power, not the citizens of the country)."

And this just proves a point I made earlier - there are no long-lasting democracies: either the voter is robbed of any real choice through party systems or else some one rigs the system to best suit his own purposes (through means such as intimidation or fake ballots)!

Also it does seem to take about 3 years for democratic norms to truly become established and for other countries to recognise a country as democratic and treat it like a democracy. Aside from young democracies, non-democracies and democracies that didn't actually have a monopoly on the use of force (either because they didn't have control of their military (which then went off and started a war without government approval) or because they couldn't deal with a terrorist organisation (that began firing rockets at a neighbouring country)).

It doesn't matter how it happened, a democratic Israel attacked (an act of war) a democratic Lebanon. They why's and wherefore's don't matter in this instance. Whether they feel or you feel (I certainly don't feel) they had a good reason or whether there was a group acting outside of the law is inconsequential to your hypothesis that democracies don't attack other democracies. It happened, period, end of story. It's not the only example as others have shown.

Now, maybe this is the exception to the rule, but that doesn't seem like your argument.

At the moment electoral fraud in the US is small enough that the opposition were still able to take most of congress in the last elections (and I don't think the democrats were involved in more than the republicans) and the republicans aren't doing any systematic oppression of the democrats.

A hand waving dismissal of the non-democratic nature of the apparent exceptions to the democratic peace theorem ultimately doesn't make any sense at all. The reasons for the dismissal of democracy in all such exceptions are quite strong unless you think a one party state with massive electoral fraud is a democracy.

Do any of you really think that a one party state with rigged elections should be called a democracy? Because that's what it would take for the objections of correcting the dataset to be valid.