![]() Of course, a disparity of voting rights is a great source of conflict. But if your characters wax philosophically about how these rules are necessary to protect the state from peasants voting themselves too many benefits, * it’s likely to come off as antidemocratic propaganda unless you clearly show this view is wrong. If you craft a nation that operates like Rome, with aristocrats given vastly more voting power than the poor, most readers will accept that as simply the way things are. There’s no rule saying you have to build a world with full suffrage, but be aware what messages your story is sending by not doing so. Other factors like wealth and race can still create divides, of course, but if people can vote, they at least have some recourse when faced with other problems. In general, the more people who can vote and the more equally those votes are counted, the more egalitarian your society will be. It’s difficult to say which of these states technically qualifies as a democracy, but some are clearly more democratic than others, and that dynamic is important for your setting. Ancient Athens was a little better, with male citizens having equal voting power regardless of class, but that still leaves out most of the adult population. * In the early years of the United States, each person’s vote was more or less equal in power, but you had to be a white male landowner to vote at all. Then you have the Roman Republic, where all adult male citizens could vote, but the system was so ridiculously stacked that a tiny number of wealthy Romans had more voting power than the rest of the population put together. * That’s technically an election, but almost no one would call it a democracy. * At the other extreme end, you have something like the Holy Roman Empire, where a handful of princes got to vote on who among them would be emperor. At one end, you have the modern norm: universal suffrage for all adults, even if we sometimes argue what the voting age should be. It’s more of a sliding scale, measured in who is enfranchised with votes and how much those votes count for. Who Is Enfranchised?īelieve it or not, there’s no easy definition for exactly what counts as a democracy. As long as your story isn’t saying that an authoritarian government is better than a democratic one, there’s no problem. They can even be benevolent if you’re building a more upbeat world that’s fine. If you ever find yourself in that position, remember there’s nothing wrong with a story including monarchies, oligarchies, magocracies, or any other form of government normally found in fantasy. Occasionally, I’ve worked with writers who had the opposite problem: they were including democracy because they felt obligated to. Democracy is still the best form of government, or if you prefer: democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other form of government. Yes, it’s always possible for a democratic institution to cause harm, but nine times out of ten an authoritarian institution would be worse. In most cases, it doesn’t matter how well you construct the scenario or if you have a historical precedent in mind. Or maybe it’s a story about an otherwise morally upright leader turning evil because they must pander to the hedonistic mob.Įither way, these stories reinforce the idea that democracy is bad at a time when that same idea is gaining traction in far too many countries. The hero is a monarch or general, and they could surely save the day if they weren’t always being held back by those bleeding hearts and bureaucratic pedants in the legislature. In the vast majority of stories, it’s best to avoid plots where democratic institutions are a hindrance to the protagonist. It’s really easy to create a story that reinforces antidemocratic biases, especially when so many of us have learned to take democracy for granted. This makes people particularly sensitive to how democratic government is represented in stories, which makes sense. That said, democracies are often more complicated than monarchies or oligarchies, so there are a few extra things to consider when designing one.īefore you set out to create any fictional form of government, it’s important to remember that in real life, democracies across the world are under threat. This form of government is generally called a democracy, and while that often seems like a modern concept, democracies are perfectly at home in most fantasy settings, be they based on history or devised entirely from your own mind. ![]() It’s also possible to build settings where the ultimate power rests with the people and politicians govern only with popular approval. ![]() But those aren’t the only options available. From feudal hierarchies to autocratic empires, readers and authors alike are used to power being wielded by a select few through force of arms, divine right, or whoever has the fanciest hat. Most governments in fantasy settings are authoritarian. ![]()
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