oligopsoneia:

oligopsoneia:

There are exactly three modes of democratic governance:

1. Transformism. Two identical or nearly identical parties rotate in and out of power, sometimes on an explicitly agreed-upon schedule (though they need not do so explicitly.) Sometimes they may differ on cultural questions - in particular it’s common to have a liberal urban secular party and a conservative rural religious party - but everyone involved is united on maintaining social peace, capitalist rule, and the rule of law while not being fanatic about these, using corruption, protectionism, and other devices as necessary to ward off threats to their right or left, as well as to redirect surplus towards themselves.
2. Social Democracy. High growth rates and union density allow workers to exact a share of the surplus from capitalists in exchange for capitalist control of the shop floor and social peace. Typically has a more explicitly party system than transformism, with one party directly accountable to labor and spearheading redistribution efforts, while the other is more cautious (but forced to tail.) Certain fractions of capital (high-risk sectors, or ones dependent on government spending or low-wage consumers, for instance) can be won over as long as demands are limited. (High growth rates can come from technological innovation or extracting tribute or what have you.)
3. Ceasarism. Middle classes who don’t want to pay the danegeld of social democracy, or virtually anybody who’s tired of transformism and can’t get bought off by it, turns to forces seen as “outside party politics” but, according to the rules of democratic legitimacy, nevertheless “representing the people.” This never actually achieves its goals and instead almost always becomes a form of transformism, though there are kinds that can look similar to social democracy as well (depending on the presence of the real preconditions for the same.)

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just realized these are just oligarchy, democracy, monarchy with democratic modes of legitimation