Attachment Theory, Bonding in Close Relationships, and the Characteristics of Secure and Insecure Styles: Take the ECR-R personality test online for a free scientfic assessment

Have you ever wondered about how you and your loved ones interact and bond with one another? A flawed attachment style can make your experience on this Earth a living hell even when it's a personality trait of only one of the people involved in a relationship (regardless of how many people are involved).

How we interact with those closest to us — those we lean on and trust to take care of us — has been one of the most fruitful areas of scientific research in psychology for more than half a century. At present, there are many university laboratories and research centers focused exclusively on deepening our understanding of this matter, such as the Adult Attachment Lab at the University of California, Davis, and the Center for Attachment Research of the Department of Psychology at The New School in New York City, to name a few.

If only for a few minutes you lower your psychological defenses—if you move beyond denial—and answer honestly, you may quickly test yourself to gain a clearer picture, thus obtaining a data-driven scientific assessment of your attachment style. If your loved ones are also willing to respond truthfully, you may all obtain important insights concerning the potential problems, if any, that already exist or that could arise in the future such that these may be avoided or resolved together through cooperation and corrective action. It ought to be noted, however, that testing young children carries with it some complexity, as is discussed in a following sections where all the scientific testing methods currently available are listed, including those tailored to identify relational tendencies in toddlers.

A link to the ECR-R, a leading psychological assessment of adult attachment styles is provided below, in the same manner that is always done here at Cognitive Dynamics. Not only is this personality test free of charge and not that time-consuming, but also the results it will output are so straightforward that anyone can understand them.



Nevertheless, before delving into the test, it is imperative to review the background of Attachment Theory, the model's history, its various classifications and their key features, as well as to point out some of the cognitive dynamics that frequently occur. Though some of what follows is a bit technical in nature, you ought to read it in its entirety in order to better grasp the implications of the results and the possible outcomes that routinely follow the utilization (and internalization) of each bonding strategy.

What are Attachment Styles? Diagnostic Status and Related Diagnoses

To begin, it is important to preemptively prevent a possible confusion. While attachment styles do describe mental and behavioral patterns, these are not generally diagnostic categories in a clinical setting. Even the most harmful styles do not constitute diagnosable mental disorders under the two presently dominant classification systems: the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), developed by the American Psychiatric Association — a simplistic yet detailed gargantuan book that can be downloaded in full for free here and constitutes the officialdom in psychiatry and clinical psychology in the United States of America (hence, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO HAVE AT HAND!)— and the ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease) created by the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO), which provides codes for all known diseases, wherein mental disorders are coded and defined under "Chapter V: Mental and behavioral disorders". [*Secure WHO site here yet only a secured connection is allowed to enter.]  To those who may be interested, there is a Medicare search engine for the ICD-10 categories either via code or by keywords, though this federal platform appears to still be a work in progress. You may download the full ICD-10's Bluebook and Greenbook by clicking on these links.

The Greenbook provides the full list of codes for mental disorders and the criteria that must be satisfied to assign each diagnosis. The Bluebook, in contrast, provides the psychopathology codes but, instead of formal diagnostic criteria, it offers clinical descriptions and guidelines to help practitioners in their identification of the disorders. The Bluebook discussions may be of immense value not only to professionals attempting to arrive at optimal classifications but also to the layperson who may thus grasp the basic truth that mental disorders are all different, even within each code type, such that semantically these are nothing if not vague gray areas or, differently stated: if a person has HIV... well... there have a Human Immunodeficiency Virus inside them and that is a truth that can be tested, retested, and will not change unless the countless HIV organisms are killed either via drug therapy or through a powerful (or chemically aided) psychoneuroimmunological response, but the same is not true of a mental disorder. Most people today consider a psychopathology as a disease, as an illness quite alike—if not exactly like—HIV, any strain of influenza, or a fungal infection like sarcoidosis.

This kind of thinking is not only wrong as a matter of fact, it also stigmatizes the person diagnosed and, if the diagnosed individual also thinks this way, easily leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to cognitive deterioration because the label given comes to define them. Ever met a kooky person that when their behavior is called out simply replies that it is okay because they are bipolar and they can't help it? People love excuses, and they also love to play the role of victim. The seldom stated truth is that mental disorder are closer to being nominalistic labels (sort of like conceptual placeholders) than to being diseases similar to those caused by viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi, or genetic mutations.

Drug-related marketing over the past decades has had a lot to do with spreading this misshapen analogy by bombarding the public with propaganda that employ declarative sentences such as "Major Depression Disorder is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain", an assertion that presupposes a philosophical ideology known as mind-body dualism that most people readily accept and want to adopt largely because it is congruous with their preexisting spiritual and religious conceptions. Nevertheless, dualism is not only philosophically wrongheaded, it is scientifically unsound to the point that, in our day and age, it hinders progress in Psychology and the field of Cognitive Science more generally considered. Persistent major depression—to continue the same example—isn't caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. The chemical imbalance IS the depression. Minds are neither separate from bodies, nor are minds caused by bodies. This kind of belief is gibberish, the stuff of a millenary, pre-scientific, folk psychology that societies and even many practitioners have not been able to rid themselves of. To put it bluntly: psychological disorders are physical through and through.

Still, just because mental deviations are physical this does not make the analogy to diseases stemming from viruses an accurate depiction because it is one thing to have large quantities of a harmful type of virus, fungi, parasite, or bacteria living inside you and it is quite another to have a pernicious neural pattern the repetitive activation of which leads to certain outcomes that hinder the quality of a person's everyday life. In the former case, the virus or bacteria must be killed or purged enough to eliminate the ability to cause a disease, but in the latter case a sudden change in the related behaviors is enough to destroy the neural configuration thereby ridding the individual of the mental disorder. The typical neural time-frame for such a change is 3 days, but on many occasions real, lasting change can occur in a matter of seconds. [For more information on neural processing, read How You Know What You Know.]

Just because most people do not change — making psychological diagnoses more stable than need be true — does not mean that a person cannot change. Except in the exceptionally few cases where a disorder results from genetic mutations present at birth, mental disorders can be thwarted by changing their defining behaviors such that the underlying neural networks undergo a rapid process of de-calibration and subsequent reconfiguration that no longer embodies the functions that act out the patterns that had become harmful for day-to-day quality of life. Using a psychological diagnosis as a excuse or justification for being a certain way (e.g., "That's not my fault. I'm bipolar!" or "I'm an alcoholic; I just can't help it.") is a convenient yet self-defeatist form of cowardice. Courage has long been known to be not only a virtue, one of the virtues of self-efficacy, but also a mature psychological defense mechanism, the health-related value of which George E. Vaillant recently attempted to remind us of in the 2011 peer-reviewed journal article "Involuntary coping mechanisms: a psychodynamic perspective". [Test your psychological defenses here, and please read, e.g., "Courage and Fear", or "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.]

Self-actualization (a.k.a., self-realization) has been recognized for millennium, from Aristotle to Abraham Maslow and Lawrence Kohlberg, as a rare and exceptional state reached only by the healthiest few. That infrequency, however, does not entail that it is inaccessible; all it means is that some people focus much, much more of their effort into working on their own mental development than what is common among the general human population.

Back to the topic at hand, the codes of the ICD-10 were been adopted by the DSM-5; however, the DSM-5 includes disorders that the ICD-10 does not recognize and for which it provides no codes.

Click to Enlarge Image.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders(DSM-5)
title page and basic
Table of Contents. A longer,
detailed Table of Contents,
listing all mental disorder and
their ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes
appears a few pages later.

Insofar as concerns the diagnostic status of Attachment Styles, I must note that there are disorders that do have a direct link to attachment which result from specific insecure styles, including Reactive Attachment Disorder (ICD-9-CM code 313.89, ICD-10-CM code F94.1) [Note: this dual code format will be followed in the rest of this article because most of the Internet has not kept information up-to-date and still use the old codes and categories, which is potentially dangerous. Please understand that only the second code is currently valid.], Separation Anxiety Disorder (309.21, F93.0), and Avoidant Personality Disorder (301.82, F60.6). Although current norms forbid most diagnoses from being attributed to children, both Reactive Attachment Disorder and Separation Anxiety Disorder are eye-opening exceptions inasmuch as these codes may be issued to infants, not just children, for the purposes of healthcare insurance coverage. Reactive Attachment Disorder (313.89, F94.1) is a consistent and constant emotional withdrawn behavior, originally directed at caregivers, in which the child neither seeks comfort nor responds to comfort given when distressed.

This original pattern later extends into a ubiquitous habit of inhibited minimal responsiveness to others, marked deficiency in the ability to experience positive emotions, along with unexplained bursts of anger, irritability, sadness, or fearfulness during normal circumstances. The disorder is caused by frequently having emotional needs go unfulfilled, regardless of whether physical needs are attended to, a scenario that is generated either by an unresponsive or humiliating caregiver (usually the mother) or by a recurrent shift in caregivers. This disorder is the ultimate, most drastic form of an Insecure Anxious-Avoidant Attachment Style (described in the next section). Almost the exact opposite of Reactive Attachment, Separation Anxiety Disorder (309.21, F93.0) is characterized by excessive fear or anxiety associated with any commonplace departure of caregiver that is necessarily a normal and necessary part of everyday life. The DSM-5 places the following criteria for the designation of the aforementioned clinical label—

Click to Enlarge Image.
DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for 309.21 (F93.0) -
Separation Anxiety Disorder, which is characterized
by a pathological fear, anxiety, and unwillingness to be
without the company of a perceived, primary caregiver.

Whereas Reactive Attachment Disorder is an extreme form of the Insecure Anxious-Avoidant Attachment Style, Separation Anxiety Disorder is the maximum expression of an Insecure Anxious-Resistant Attachment Style, otherwise referred to as Ambivalent Attachment because of the characteristic behavioral swings that quickly shift from seeking a caregiver's comfort to outright scolding them for having left even if momentarily. Both attachment styles are described in detailed as pertain infancy in the following section, along with their sub-types and the most frequent developmental trajectories emerging from these. In the final section of this article, the classifications that correspond to these during adulthood are indicated and outlined, with a test being provided so that you may ascertain what your (or your loved one's) attachment style is and what it means for your own personal development and entails for your closest relationships.

Having stated that Attachment Styles are not clinical diagnostic categories, it ought to be observed that their immense psychological importance emerges from their being highly predictive not only of the quality and quantity of a person's later peer relationships but also of the development of a mental disorder and the eventual need to use mental heath services. A 2013 peer-reviewed journal article presenting preliminary results of an ongoing 20 year longitudinal study reports that —

"for each additional withdrawing behavior displayed by mothers in relation to their infant's attachment cues in the Strange Situation Procedure, the likelihood of clinical referral by service providers was increased by 50%."

[Lyons-Ruth, Karlen, Bureau, Jean-Francois, Easterbrooks, M. Ann, Obsuth, Ingrid, Hennighausen, Kate, and Vulliez-Coady, Lauriane (2013) "Parsing the construct of maternal insensitivity: distinct longitudinal pathways associated with early maternal withdrawal". Attachment & Human Development 15 (5–6): 562–582. The previous link is to a preliminary draft, the final edited version is behind a subscription firewall here.]

Click to Enlarge Image.
Maternal withdrawal and adolescent outcomes on the SCID in late
adolescence.Effect sizes shown are beta for continuous outcomes
or eta for dichotomous outcomes. From Pechtel et al. (2012)
Shi et al. (2011), and Lyons-Ruth, Brumariu, et al. (2013).

Eating disorders and conduct symptoms were unpublished
at the date of publication of this graph.

The immense effect of an non-secure attachment style can be readily seen in the very problematic mental disorder, all-too-frequently both misdiagnosed and mistreated by psychologists and psychiatrist alike, known as Borderline Personality Disorder (301.83, F60.3), a disorder that gets its oft-protested name because the individual lives within the thin boundary between psychosis and neurosis. [For a narrative of the professional battle over neurosis as a clinical term, see "Neurosis, psychodynamics, and DSM-III. A history of the controversy."; as for the other term, see "Psychosis: a history of the concept."]

Living at this perilous intersection or borderline means that these individuals often worry about falling into psychosis and/or neurosis (or simply "losing their minds"), yet that very rarely happens — less so than the general population epidemiological averages averages — mainly because they are accustomed to the prodrome symptoms (or prodromal stage) that typically drive other non-borderline individuals into psychological crisis or outright madness because they are unfamiliar with these. And why are borderline people so familiar with these symptoms? It is worth repeating... because they live there! That is why the diagnostic term hasn't been changed like so many others have even with under the duress of massive pressuring and lobbying. ["Vaginismus" anyone? Errhm... I mean... "Genito-Pelvic Pain / Penetration Disorder"... Seriously, they couldn't even come up with a politically correct term so they had to hyphen and backslash three dissimilar terms, none of which capture the disorder as well as did the simpler word "vaginismus" (302.76, F52.6). Isn't it bad enough that this is an absolutely horrible disorder that affects 2% of women worldwide—around 72 million women globally!—and yet is almost never diagnosed and is never treated correctly even though it is easily curable in a week or so because the cure isn't legal in a clinical setting? Truly, current clinical psychology and psychiatry are a complete and utter wasteland. No wonder people prefer to talk to ministers and priests; and why shouldn't it be so if these con-artists-of-the-cloth provide the same service free of charge?]

In the case of Borderline Personality Disorder, which is often co-morbid with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (309.81, F43.10), the data show that early caregiver deficiency is more predictive of the disorder's symptomatology levels than is the severity of the abuse that the individual has received.

Click to Enlarge Image.
Degree of Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms
is predicted to a greater extent by caregiver deficiency
than by childhood physical, psychological, and/or sexual abuse.

Many mothers play victim, complaining that everything always gets blamed on the mother. Perhaps Freud exaggerated a bit, which has led to the cultural spread of the belief that mothers are responsible for the issues of their offspring, and so, in their defense, I would like to suggest that it is the caregivers, not necessarily the mothers, that are of extreme importance. Nevertheless, mothers are typically the primary caregivers in societies throughout the Earth and the reason for this is a natural one, mainly that mothers provide most of the nourishment and warmth that an infant requires and receives during the first year of life. So, if you are a mother and you want to use the meme that mothers get blamed for everything, possibly to guilt trip the adolescent or young adult that no one obligated you to create, don't blame Sigmund Freud; go ahead and blame nature (or God, or the Holy Spirit, or gods, or whatever other imaginary entity you enjoy cursing at the most). Even as a man who is now a primary caregiver to his offspring, it is still impossible for me to understate the role of maternal presence in the eventual developmental outcome of any child. The following chart illustrates the most common effects and cognitive trajectories resulting from lack of maternal involvement and maternal withdrawal behaviors, and it is a scary picture.

Click to Enlarge Image.
Developmental outcomes and mental disorders
that have been linked to maternal withdrawal behaviors
and to maternal lack of involvement during infancy,
tested from infancy, through childhood, into 20 years of age.

The assessment personality test for adults provided in this article, which is free of charge and takes little time to complete, produces a graph exactly like the one below, where the blue dot marks not only a person's bonding style to their partner but also that tendency's psychosocial strength and its particular tendencies . [If anyone is wondering how I got that particularly healthy chart, yes, those are my own bonafide results. :) ] Given the aforementioned outcomes, you may grasp the immense importance of taking this test, of talking your partner into taking it too, and of continuing to read this article through to the end in order to grasp the cognitive dynamics that result in adulthood such that you may break the cycles and not pass them off onto your children. Just think of both the emotional and material costs that you could spare yourself of!

Click to Enlarge Image.
Example results from the free online assessment provided
of adult Attachment Style. The four quadrants graph
an adult's tendency, its strength, and inclinations.
Top left = Secure; Top right = Preoccupied;
Bottom left = Dismissive; Bottom right = Fearful.
These adult bonding patterns, described the final section,
typically follow the cognitive dynamics set in motion
by the attachment style acquired during infancy -
the order of the terms above corresponds to the order
listed below. Healthy graph shown are my bonafide results.

Infant Attachment Styles: Frequent Developmental Trajectories

There are 4 main attachment styles adopted by infants in response to the behavior of their caregivers:

1. Secure Attachment
2. Anxious-Resistant Insecure Attachment, also known as Insecure Ambivalent Attachment
3. Anxious-Avoidant Insecure Attachment
4. Disorganized / Disoriented Insecure Attachment

Each style has subcategories, listed at the end of this section. The following descriptions are simplified yet accurate summaries of the overall tendencies. Secure infants will readily explore the surroundings, interact with strangers, show being upset when their caregiver departs, and exhibit happiness upon their return.

Secure attachment develops if caregivers:

• Are readily available to the infant when he or she feels a caregiver is needed
• Are able to satisfy the infant's needs in an optimal manner
• Consistently provide a "safe base" that affords the infant a feeling of safety that allows him or her to explore the surrounding environment and to which they can return whenever the infant feels a need to be protected

The aforementioned characteristics ought not to be confused with over-protectiveness or unnecessary intrusion into the child's life. The caregiver needs to be perceived as reliable, well-meaning, responsive, as someone who is there when needed, not as someone who is always there. Children need to explore the world freely, at their own pace, but their defenselessness requires a caregiver to be somewhere known such that the child can seek their protection whenever they see fit. As the child becomes more secure and the caregivers proves to be dependable, both the willingness to venture out and the perimeter around the base that is deemed safe to explore progressively increase. This leads to increased learning, which in turn produces happiness, and a faster development of skills, cognitive abilities, and general intelligence, the combination of which has a massive, lasting impact on a mind's self-esteem. The beneficial effects of the resulting positive cycle should be easy to grasp, and the data accumulated through decades of experimental studies shows that a secure style usually leads later in life to better peer relationship, both insofar as their quantity and quality, as well as academic success, occupational competency, overall happiness, personal wellness, and physical health. Even if the parenting quality deteriorates, the lasting protective effect of early security tend to remain. Of course, as these are probabilistic tendencies, it is by no means guaranteed that no mental disorder will develop, and the inverse is true too for the styles described below.

[Cognitive Dynamics original article: The prototypical relations between Secure Attachment and specific MMPI-2 scales, Enneagram Personality Types, Myers-Briggs  Jungian archetypes, and the mature, neurotic, and immature scales measured by the Defense Style Questionnaire.  COMING SOON]

In contrast to secure attachment, anxious-resistant insecure infants tend not to interact with strangers even when their caregiver is present. Moreover, though when their guardian leaves the resistant infant exhibits evident distress, once they come back the infant uses cues signaling anger or helplessness to foster closeness instead of the natural behavior of approaching them directly. These infants barely explore their surroundings even when their caregiver is present.

Anxious-resistant attachment is an adaptation to a caregivers whose behavior is:

• Frequently incoherent inasmuch as the rules that underlie their responses to the child or the application of these rules. The incoherence lies either in the behavioral pattern of a single parent, or in the lack of coordination between primary caregivers, thereby acting incoherently when grouped by the infant into the concept of "those who satisfy my needs".
• Unreliable. The combination of unreliability with incoherence yields the correct neural generalization that behavioral responses to expressed are unpredictable. Therefore, since the infant cannot arrive at the principles guiding the caretakers' actions, the ensuing feeling is that no such principles exist, which is why these infants do not explore even when their caregiver is nearby. Why would they if don't even know if their "base" will be there when they turn back around? A human infant is very helpless by nature and the world is perceived by all infants as wrought with dangers; without a reliable base to return to, their surrounding environment is unassailable.
• Inconsistent insofar as simply being there, that is, providing their ongoing presence or support in a way that respond to the infant's needs as these emerge. However, since the caregivers are sometimes available, responsive, and do treat the infant fairly well as a general rule, the infant continues to seek out their presence, love, and affection, doing so with more fervor than all other attachment styles.

As ambivalent infants grow up they tend to develop greater interpersonal sensitivity, a tendency to think obsessively about their loved ones, and an accompanying fear of loss and abandonment. Related preoccupations accumulate progressively, flooding the mind with mostly useless thoughts that consume time better spent on productive actions or coping maneuvers. Worrying by itself decreases the power and speed of cognitive capacities, yet the mind's deceleration is exponentially worse when coupled with persistent fear and anxiety. This cognitive debilitation often facilitates the occurrence of a drawn-out chain of personal, familial, educational, occupational, and relationship failures; however, the anxious-preoccupied adult typically finds a way to shield their self-esteem from taking a nosedive through a defensive amalgamation of mechanisms such as ego inflation, externalization of blame, projection, reaction-formation, fantasy, wishful thinking, and hypomanic activation. The deployment of these compensations tend to achieve its goal, such that anxious-preoccupied adults do not report significantly lower self-esteem than those with a secure bonding style, but this strategy isn't without risks as their chosen dynamics' trajectories can backfire through the emergence of a wide-array of mental disorders, among which are noteworthy are Generalized Anxiety Disorder (300.02, F41.1), Panic Disorder (300.01, F41.0), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (313.81, F91.3), Histrionic Personality Disorder (301.50, F60.4), Bipolar Disorders I & II (296.40-296.56 & 296.89, F31 with decimals as subtypes), and the sudden onset of a Psychosis (297.1, 298.8, 298.9, F22, F23, F28, F29)of relatively short duration.

[Cognitive Dynamics original article: The prototypical relations between Insecure Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment and specific MMPI-2 scales, Enneagram Personality Types, Myers-Briggs Jungian archetypes and the mature, neurotic, and immature scales measured by the Defense Style Questionnaire. COMING SOON]

Anxious-avoidant insecure infants ignore caregivers and attempt to hide the emotions experienced. Even when they attempt to approach their caregiver, they abort the process midway, at times repeating the approach-abort sequence several times. This style is a covert strategy to maintain a close enough distance to their guardian to feel safe without risking being overwhelmed by the uncontrollable emotions that would be evoked should greater proximity be attempted. That they do not look anxious is just a mask, a fact that can be readily confirmed by measuring the clear-cut shifts in cardiovascular activity when their overtly hidden distress sets in.

An anxious-avoidant attachment style is a learned adaptation to guardians that:

• repeatedly reject endeavors to obtain closeness.
• are routinely are unresponsive to need-based requests.
• do not attend to the needs expressed by the infant.
• is incompetent inasmuch as meeting the infant's needs.
• display negative affect frequently but not always.
• rebuff the infant's attempt at achieving greater closeness, either via depriving attention, showing anger (or physically hitting), or acting in a way that is an overt attempt at causing humiliation or shame.

Caregiving behavior mixing the traits above conduces the infant brain's neural network to infer that communication is useless and counterproductive, and consequently the infants begins to camouflage their distress through an aloof and unresponsive demeanor. This behavior is analogous to the infant retaliating by displaying—"You don't care about me, so I don't care about you". Sadly, parents may be so neurotic and/or self-involved that not only will they not notice what the infant is trying to portray, but also the baby's new behavior is found to be convenient because, in practice, it allows the parents to dedicate even less time and attention to their caregiver duties, thereby reinforcing and cementing the pattern, making life even more miserable for the infant in a manner that starts a vicious cycle which often proceeds uncorrected far into adulthood. Have you ever heard a self-involved person say something to the effect of "My baby was the best; he never cried or threw tantrums and was barely any work at all!"? Well, now you know why.

Anxious-avoidant infants do not explore much, do not display anger or any type of suffering when the caregiver leaves, and either turn away, ignore, or execute aborted approaches when he or she returns (i.e., they reject their rejecter). If the caregivers' behavior goes unchecked and this style proceeds without altering course, these cognitive dynamics tend to progress along a couple of distinct trajectories. On the one hand, the mask may stay as just a mask yet ultimately prove ineffective insofar as getting basic needs satisfied, which could evolve intoAvoidant Personality Disorder (301.82, F60.6), Borderline Personality Disorder (301.83, F60.3), Dysthymia (a.k.a., Persistent Depressive Disorder, 300.4, F34.1), or Schizotypal Personality Disorder (301.22, F21). On the other hand, the overt mask can slowly become a psychological reality conducive to disorders such as Depersonalization / Derealization Disorder (300.6, F48.1), Schizoid Personality Disorder (301.20, F60.1), Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7, F60.2; see the "Discussion" section at the end of Shi et al. (2012) "Childhood Maltreatment and Prospectively Observed Quality of Early Care as Predictors of Antisocial Personality Disorder Features", Infant Mental Health Journal, Jan-Feb 33,1:55-96 that reports findings indicating that it is not the infant attachment style but rather the mother's avoidance and failure to interact with the child directly, for example by soothing the child with toys instead of via human contact, that predicts Antisocial Personality in adults), among others.

The anxious-avoidant attachment style is the most likely to result in adult low self-esteem. It is also the more conductive in drug abuse and substance dependence (since the DSM-5 dropped the use of Substance Abuse Disorder and Substance Dependence Disorder, replacing it by a long list defined by the particular drug involved, the corresponding codes are too many to bother to list).

[Cognitive Dynamics original article: The prototypical relations between Insecure Anxious-Avoidant Attachment and specific MMPI-2 scales, Enneagram Personality Types, Myers-Briggs Jungian archetypes, and the mature, neurotic, and immature scales measured by the Defense Style Questionnaire. COMING SOON]

Disorganized/Disoriented attachment puzzled researchers initially, so much so that many subjects were improperly classified in the early experiments, until Mary Main discerned the pattern once enough data had been accumulated and added this fourth classification. Infants with a disorganized attachment style display tense and jerky movements in an attempt to stop their impulse to cry—movements that stop when they do cry—because they are afraid of what their caregiver might do to them in response to any sign of weakness. Overwhelmed by fear, these infants' behavior is inconsistent, contradictory, and often display clear signs of psychological dissociation; nonetheless, about half of these infants still approach their caregivers without resistance or avoidance. This disoriented attachment style, unlike the prior three, may emerge as an adaptation to several different types of events, including—

• physical and sexual abuse
• maternal trauma, which typically occurs shortly prior or following (or during) childbirth
• the mother had suffered (when is irrelevant) a major loss which was never fully processed and, hence, had not overcome, such as the death of a parent, best friend, or beloved mate
• maternal major depression, typically (though not always) as a consequence resulting from one of the prior two points

Maternal trauma and loss accompanies over 50% of infants classified under this category. Strangely enough, though the disorganized/disoriented style is associated with the worst forms of neglect and abuse (both physical and psychological), the two insecure attachments mentioned above turn out to afford distinctively worse outcomes during development. How can this be? The reason is that infants displaying this last style develop a strategy in which they alternate between approaching strategies, experimenting with all the manners of action displayed by secure, ambivalent, and avoidant infants, like little pragmatists trying to figure out what courses of actions work best in which situation and in relation to particular people and groups. This scientific way of testing strategies through interaction makes psychological change not only possible but likely. Were the child to become embedded in a healthier or more nourishing environment, he or she will quickly adapt accordingly, rendering the secure attachment style as something that is always within arms rich. Sadly, however, what is unlikely is that the child will have the opportunity to immerse in healthier settings with access to well-adjusted people and a wide array of enriching stimuli.

[Cognitive Dynamics original article: The prototypical relations between Disorganized/Disoriented Insecure Attachment and specific MMPI-2 scales, Enneagram Personality Types, Myers-Briggs Jungian archetypes, and the mature, neurotic, and immature scales measured by the Defense Style Questionnaire. COMING SOON]

The following list outlines the different infant attachment styles and their subtypes. Asterisks mark types for to which I have provided my own terminology, mainly because I do not like referring to people in terms of letter-number codes has been done by researchers since the beginning and still today. The codes preceding the terms are the ones that have been and continue to be employed.

• B: Secure Attachment
• B1: Secure Reserved
• Even as they use their caregivers as a base to explore and as aides in learning new skills, this style is characterized by a lesser need for contact and a repeated seeking of autonomy, independence, and privacy, preferring to develop new abilities on their own when able to yet seeking assistance when facing difficulty. Being reserved isn't introverted, which may lead later in life to the gray area between introversion and extroversion.
• B2: Secure Inhibited
• These shy introverts require more learning by example and positive reinforcement.  They also seek more independence but, unlike the reserved style, return to approaching the caregiver after a long period of time; however, infants of both styles do not resist physical contact if the parent initiates it, yet inhibited infants display less mixed feelings than reserved ones.
• B3: Secure Balanced
• Among the secure groups, these are the ones that seek the most physical contact and suffer the most distress after repeated separation. Nevertheless, when the mother is present, the infant isn't preocuppied with her and readily engages in exploring, unlike insecure infants.
• B4: Secure Reactive
• The reactive style is the most clingy and most distressed of the bunch, displaying a constant preocuppation for the place of her mother, but their seeking of contact is much less than in the anxious-resistant insecure styles.
• C: Anxious-Resistant Insecure Attachment, also known as Ambivalent Attachment
• C1: Angry Resistant*
• Seeking out contact is a constant for the angry resistant infant even before the caregiver first leaves. The return of the parent is accompanied by aborted approximations and the child displays a clear angry quality once contact is established, as if to reproach them for having left them.
• C2: Passive Ambivalent*
• These babies show severely limited exploration of the environment. They signal wanting contact instead of approaching, and protest when being put down without resisting it. The resistance increases as more separations happen yet is never as much as the C1 infant and, though distressed, does not exhibit anger
• A: Anxious-Avoidant Insecure Attachment
• A1: Apathetic Avoidant*
• This child shows his disdain by looking away or turning so that the back is turned towards the primary caregiver. When approaching, the apathetic infant will abort that behavior by walking past them. If picked up, the baby does not cuddle and tends to squirm to be put down.
• A2: Reproaching Avoidant*
• Of all the attachment styles, this is the most characterized by mixed feelings. Wanting proximity and approaching at times, the infant still looks or turns away, aborts approaches sometimes, gazes away when picked up and squirm when put down, yet still may protest or resist at times when put down.
• D: Disorganized/Disoriented Insecure Attachment
• Frightened Disorganized**
• With a generalized fear of the world, these infants may seek comfort through physical contact, yet when the mother leaves or the stranger is present, they may exhibit jerky bodily movements, try to hold back tears, may look around frenetically without exploring. When the mother returns, they may scream, run and hide, or grimace, but if the mother makes contact, they do not resist or protest. It may also be the case that strategies belonging to the other groups are carried out in different instances of reunion and/or separation.
• Flooded Disorganized**
• Flooded disorganized children are paralyzed by their conflicting emotions.  Clear signs of dissociation or depersonalization are common.  A flooded disorganized child may start to approach a stranger seeking comfort and lose muscular function upon reaching proximity, falling to the ground, as the fear and internal incoherence becomes so much that it overwhelms their neuronal functions.
• Desperate Disoriented**
• Behave unpredictably insofar as seeking and avoiding physical contact.  May display random emotions that appear to bear no connection to what is going on around them.  Actions may be carried out inconsistently or incoherently towards caregiver, strangers, or when alone.
• Pragmatic Disoriented**
• All actions are available and may be executed, and these may seem to be consistent, leading these to be erroneously classified until test-retest bears out the pragmatic aspect of the disorientation.  The course of action carried out is chosen through the reading of interpersonal cues, such as the other's mood, velocity and calmness of bodily movements, or verbal intonation.  The behavioral trajectory forms on a case-by-case basis. 

*Unofficial terminology of my own creation. Only secure strategies have been given names, though these are still considered loose and unofficial. The styles are usually referred to by the coding system (e.g., C1, C2... as listed) originally develop to classify the infants during the Strange Situation Protocol experiments [see next section].  
**The delayed identification of the Disorganized/Disoriented category and the mix of behaviors grouped therein has yet to be standardized. Traditionally, many studies have excluded this classification because it is rare, consisting of less than 5% of cases; thus, very large samples are required in order to obtain statistically significant results.  However, much of the Attachment Theory related grant funding is currently being directed at understanding this category, mainly because those are the humans most at risk, most likely to be costly to governments, and most responsive to social interventions during middle-childhood.  The distinctions and descriptions above represent unofficial approximations based on past findings and the descriptions of leading theorists.

History of Attachment Theory and the Attachment Styles Model

Attachment Theory stems from the seminal work of John Bowlby, who began publishing papers on the subject in 1958 and developed the ideas into a full-blown model in the trilogy of books Attachment and Loss, with Volume I: Attachment being published in 1969, Volume II: Separation: Anxiety & Anger in 1972, and finally Volume III: Loss: Sadness & Depression becoming available in 1980. Mary Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation Protocol to observe empirically infants behavior from 12 months to 20 months of age. The protocol was usually carried out as follows:

• Episode 1: Mother (or other primary caregiver), Baby, Experimenter (30 seconds)
• Episode 2: Mother, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 3: Mother, Baby, Stranger (3 mins or less)
• Episode 4: Stranger, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 5: Mother, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 6: Baby Alone (3 mins or less)
• Episode 7: Stranger, Baby (3 mins or less)
• Episode 8: Mother, Baby (3 mins)

Though many observations were important in all "Episodes", the key observations are mostly obtained in Episode 5 and Episode 8 when how the infant responds to the caregiver's return provides the key characteristics of their behavioral pattern associated to their primary caregiver, usually their mother. The classification system that resulted from these and further experiments are commonly referred to as Attachment Styles.

Many other experimental protocols and questionnaires have been developed over the years, some closely controlling variables and others taking a more naturalistic approach.  Developing instruments to follow individuals as they grow has been pivotal both to evidence the empirical robustness of the theory, particularly the predictions entailed by it, and to be able to follow the stability of infant styles and the frequency with which these can and do change.   The following is a list of the different methods-  

Other controlled variables methods for minors

1. Preschool Strange Situation (for 3 to 4 y/o) - Modifies the original protocol to elicit stress by having longer separations, varying the gender and role of the stranger, or simply leaving the child alone twice, and the classification system integrates talking as a form of maintaining contact.  Besides the 4 main style categories, participating children are measured on a 9-point security scale and 7-point one for avoidance.
2. Main and Cassidy attachment classification system (for 6 y/o) - The children are left alone once, for a full hour.
3. Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA; for 18 m/o to 5 y/o) - Replaces the categories of avoidant with "defended" and ambivalent with "coercive", with no type for disorganized, and attempts to distinct dangerous compulsive and obsessive patterns.
4. Marschak Interaction Method (MIM) and MIM Behavior Rating Scale (MIMBRS) - Two standardized variants of a structured observation of parent-child interaction.

Naturalistic methods for minors

Attachment Q-set (1 to 5 y/o) - Set observation periods across contexts, covering almost a hundred data points about attachment, exploration, emotional responses, and social cognition.  It rates the child from 1.0 to -1.0, from very secure to very insecure, without sub-specifications. Representational methods - Use of story stems, narratives, and pictures, along with dolls standing in for family members, so that the child can enact a story that is begun by the interviewer.

1. MacArthur Story Completion Test (3 to 8 y/o)
2. Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP; 4 to 8 y/o)
3. Attachment Doll Play Assessment (4.5 to 11 y/o)
4. Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST; 4 to 8.5 y/o) - Four story stem with play dolls with a semi-structure methodology to assess the child's mental representations of their relationship with their primary caregiver by using two dolls and a doll house, with the stories presented by arousing emotions to more accurately evoke the attachment ideas in an engaging manner.  The session is videotaped for rating purposes, with an attachment classification given, and special attention is placed on disorganized attachment.  The MCAST has been progressively been tested and used across cultural contests, and training is required for proper use.
5. Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; 3 to 9 y/o) - Child resolves 5 stories involving that induce stress using props as family figures in a 30 minute interview.

Interview methods 

1. Child Attachment Interview (CAI; 7 to 11 y/o) - Focuses on relationship to parents and events known to elicit attachment styles in a semi-structured interview that is scored on verbal and non-verbal communication.
2. Disturbances of Attachment Interview (DAI) - Assesses Reactive Attachment Disorder [see link and ICD/DSM code in first subsection of this article] as well as discriminated adult, preferred adult, distressed comfort-seeking, response to offered comfort, social reciprocity, emotional reciprocity, emotional regulation, "safe base" use while exploring, reticence with strangers, willingness to follow strangers, self-endangerment, vigilance, hypercompliance (a.k.a. compulsive obedience; see last list in prior section), excessive clinging to caregiver, and role reversal.
3. Attachment Interview for Childhood and Adolescence (AICA) - An age-appropriate adaptation of the Adult Attachment Interview (AII) that classifies participants as secure, preoccupied [analogous to Resistant/Ambivalent, same as test provided below] , dismissing [analogous to avoidant; same as test provided below], and unresolved [analogous to disorganized/disoriented in the standard classification system for infants, and to fearful/avoidant in the test provided below] 

Methods for adults:

1. Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) - A collaboration with Mary Main, who devised the disorganized style classification, the AAI is a 20 question, one hour semi-structured interview that has yielded solid supporting data since its creation in 1984.  The AAI looks at style functions via childhood memories, rating coherence and content.
2. Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) - Participants tell stories about 8 pictures presented to them.  Data obtained through the AAP, employed since 1999, overwhelmingly corroborate the ratings obtained through the AAI, and viceversa.
3. Relationship Questionnaire (RQ-CV) - A very simple 4 statement question from which participants must pick the one statement they most identify with.  The questionnaire was validated in 62 cultures using independent psychological tests that measure traits associated with the different styles.  The RQ-CV spawned a wide-array of modifications, varying mainly insofar as how items are rated, but the most used currently is the next measurement system listed. 
4. Experiences in Close Relationships - Revised (ECR-R) - First created in 1998 and revised in 2000, this is the assessment test provided at the end of this article. The items measure relational anxiety, on the one hand, and avoidance, on the other.

Adult Relationship Attachment Styles

An individual's attachment style may change over the years depending on the quality of their experiences during development. Although romantic relationships do not share many traits with caregiver-infant relationships, not only do romantic links involve many of the core tenets of earlier attachments, but also traces of those first attachments do tend to carry over into adulthood, remaining constant in many cases. The adult romantic attachment styles are:

• Secure
• Also sometimes called autonomous when describing adults, though the category secure is much more on point because a secure person doesn't necessarily have to be autonomous even if not clingy.  The Avoidant Style ("dismissing" below) tends much more to the objective of autonomy than most secure people do.
• Preoccupied
• Corresponds to Insecure Anxious-Resistant, otherwise known as Insecure Ambivalent Attachment.
• Dismissive (or Dismissing)
• Corresponds to the Insecure Avoidant category in infants.
• Fearful
• Corresponds to Insecure Disorganized / Disoriented Attachment in infants. The use of the term fearful is unfortunate, as explained below. This category is probably not even the most fearful of the bunch as people with this attachment style tend to swing wildly between periods of intense bonding and periods of total evasion, the latter following precisely because of the fear that is caused by the intensity of the former. Considering that fact, both disorganized and disoriented make for more accurate nomenclature.

These four styles can be graphed by plotting them in a four quadrant chart with Anxiety as the X-axis and Avoidance as the Y-axis.  Bartholomew and Horowitz, the creators of the simple Relationship Questionnaire (RQ-CV), tried to arrive at some analytic elegance when they posted the styles as aligning with self-esteem and the esteem of others as shown in the table below.

The concept configuration upon which ECR-R results are based.
Please read the explanations and caveats explained in this section
to understand why this framework, though helpful, tends to mislead.

But one ought to be skeptical of the anxiety axis given what was noted earlier about infants with an avoidant style, that is, they appear as if they are not anxious but their cardiovascular activity shows otherwise. The lack of anxiety is, thus, merely a façade, an act that does not reflect the inner life of that person at all; stated differently, the calm demeanor is nothing more than a defense mechanism, a fact that usually reveals itself when the dismissing individual finally has a sudden and harsh outburst of hostility that the person appears unable or barely able to control. Though the four quadrant format of description has been empirically proven to be of value, these proposed continuum are not just misleading, they are also factually wrong, and the available data show this clearly.

Using the Experiences in Close Relationship questionnaire provided below and the "Questionario della Gelosia" (QUEGE) as an independent, culturally-appropriate measure of jealousy as corroboration, Marazziti et al. (2010), working out of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurobiology, Pharmacology, and Biotechnology at the University of Pisa, found that fearful style participants scored higher on the fear of loss only, dismissive individuals scored lower in self-esteem, yet the preoccupied group recorded higher scores on obsessionality, interpersonal sensitivity, and fear of loss. Yet these findings contradict almost everything in the way the axis are conceived in the chart above.

To start, dismissive individuals are marked as having a positive view of themselves; however, that is the group that showed the lowest scores on self-esteem. Similarly, it is quite a stretch to say that preoccupied individuals who obsess over their partner, fear losing them, and also report higher sensitivity towards them have a positive view of their partner; clearly, someone who feels that way most likely does not have a positive view of their partner. If their view was positive, why would they obsess and fear and be so sensitive to every little painful word and act that their partner does to them?

Even as infants and all throughout childhood, the preoccupied style is characterized by a distinctively angry or resentful quality. As for the fearful category, there is too much to say to be able to express it here; suffice it to say that the very nomenclature is unjust—all insecure people are fearful by definition! They may express it in different ways, but they are all similar in that regard. They also all tend towards having low self-esteem, and though it is true that some achieve high self-esteem, usually through the dominion of a skill or a field of knowledge, still more use ego inflation as camouflage. 
These last point—the overwhelming pain of fear and constant anxiety—are constantly being evidenced, with studies leading to peer-reviewed journal articles such as Davies et al. (2009) "Insecure attachment is associated with chronic widespread pain" and McCarthy et al. (2012) "Attachment Style Predicts Anxiety in Undergraduates' Romantic Relationships".

Though the avoidant or dismissive style is harder to crack and potentially leads to worst outcomes, it is the preoccupied group that has the clearest vicious cycle, one that most people who have actively dated have encountered at one point or another. Whereas the dismissive function may be found to be convenient, the preoccupied or ambivalent mode of operation can be quite the nuisance. When dysfunctional, the avoidant relationship pattern proceeds like this—
 

Click to enlarge.
Diagram of the vicious cycle that a person with an 
Insecure Avoidant (a.k.a., Dismissive) Attachment Style
may display repeatedly over the course of a relationship.

In contrast, the dysfunctional vicious cycle of the preoccupied style in a relationship proceeds as follows—

Click to enlarge.
Diagram of the vicious cycle that a person with an
Insecure Ambivalent (a.k.a., Anxious Resistant, or Preoccupied)
Attachment Style may become stuck in during a relationship.

• Secure Attachment
• Secure Consistent-Bonding
• Because of how their family dynamic progressed over time, combined with contextual proximity, these secure individuals tend to stay close to their parents and/or their extended family while at the same time setting healthy boundaries to shield their privacy, autonomy, personal development, and overall wellbeing. People with insecure attachments are often more closely tied to the immediate and extended families, but they fail to set similar boundaries, which results in further damage being inflicted upon them and makes it more likely for them to repeat the pattern with their own children.
• Secure Independent
• Though these individuals may still be able to open up to their parents and state what they feel needs to be stated, they find that keeping their ascendancy and extended family at a distance provides for greater wellbeing, perhaps (but not necessarily) because family dynamics have deteriorated over the years.
• Secure Pragmatic
• These secure adults read the people, family systems, and situations in order to determine whether closeness or distance is best at any given point.
• Insecure Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment
• Angry-Oppositional Planner*
• Having been angry children who frequently lashed out, though not usually rebelled, against their parents, as adults angry-oppositional plan ferociously but seldom have the persistence and perseverance to complete their plans.  As workers or in relationships, they oppose almost any instruction that is given to them.
• Reserved-Obedient Planner*
• Having explored very little throughout their childhood, reserved-obedient adults tend not to have the skills necessary to venture out on their own.  Almost opposite to the angry-oppositional adult, these individuals crave structure, organization, and to be given guidance and instruction at all times.  Their anger gets repressed, suppressed, or sublimated into immersing themselves in their occupation.
• A: Insecure Anxious-Avoidant Attachment
• Aloof Avoidant
• Having dissimulated their true emotions as children, the aloof avoidant adult can no longer recognize the emotions, be them positive or negative.  Negative emotions have them draw a blank.  Positive emotions may prove to be disorienting and even cause nausea or vertigo-like feelings.  As a result, any strong emotion is stumped immediately and the person often fails to recognize that any such drowned emotion existed.
• Approaching-Reproaching Avoidant*
• All the insecure anxious-avoidant attachment styles may show some degree of this dynamic, but some people have it as a strict modus operandi (MO) without the characteristics of the other styles.  Succinctly, these adults seek closeness when negative emotions are felt or expressed and distance when positive emotional states appear in the context of the relationship.
• Compulsive Obsessional*
• Appearing often before middle-childhood and progressively intensifying into adulthood, as avoidance of affect, vulnerability, and intimacy, be it with family or close peers, result in negative feelings, thoughts, generating anxiety and low self-esteem. Compulsive acts, often learned from surrounding family members, are executed to occupy the mind thereby temporarily suppressing the stress provoking perceptions.  Low self-esteem, anxiety, and the longing to keep their safe base at close enough proximity combine to generate a compulsive obedience to the parents, though that mode usually does not extend to the rest of the world because, intuitively, they obtain little benefit from being obedient.  The attachments have no authentic intimacy, but closeness is kept via the habit of satisfying parental requests, which some of the time involves confused or inverted roles where the child takes care of the parents more than the parents care for them.  Because negative ideas are suppressed whenever possible, brief yet severe outburst of anger and hostility ensue.
• D: Disorganized/Disoriented Insecure Attachment
• Frightened Disorganized*
• With a generalized fear of the world, these adults may seek comfort through physical contact, yet may exhibit jerky movements or tense body parts, as well as trying to hold back tears.  They long for an intimacy that they do not believe they are capable of achieving themselves. If achieved, the risk of flight from the relationship becomes very high, mainly to spare the person they love from what they see as their own nature.
•  Volatile Disorganized*
• Developing from flooded disorganized children, paralyzed by their conflicting emotions, these adults swing between intense bonds and the feeling of not being there.  Clear signs of dissociation or depersonalization are common.  Their  internal incoherence may lead to very pernicious conditions, like recurring dissociative fugues or sexual dysfunctions, like vaginismus in women or both premature ejaculation and the inability to sustain sexual excitement in men.
• Seesawing Disoriented*
• These adults behave unpredictably, and their internal states feel like a rapidly moving pendulum that sometimes reaches the full edge but most of the time just cycles rapidly somewhere in the middle.  Inconsistency may be readily perceived by their romantic partners.
• Pragmatic Disoriented*
• Perhaps the best among the disorganized/disoriented, all styles are available to these individuals to be executed depending on the partner and the context.  The course of action carried out is chosen through the reading of interpersonal cues, such as the other's mood, velocity and calmness of bodily movements, or verbal intonation.  If these adults become involved with somebody with a secure attachment style, they may assimilate that style for good; hence, they have the best prognosis out of all the insecure types.

*Unofficial terminology of my own creation.  See the infant typology above for more information.

Now that you are armed with knowledge of attachment styles and their developmental dynamics, you are ready to go ahead: Test yourself!

What is your Attachment Style?

Take the Free, Online Personality Test: Experiences in Close Relationships - Revised (ECR-R)

------------------ Other psychological personality tests you may enjoy:

The Defense Style Questionnaire

The Enneagram Personality Test

The Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Assess your current mental state: Lüscher Color Test

The MMPI-2 Personality Inventory

How many Democracies are there today?

The way that we currently refer to governments was largely defined by Aristotle in the 4th century B.C.E.  Unlike his predecessors whose demarcations were limited and grossly incomplete, such as occurs in Plato's idealist The Republic, Aristotle clearly defined in Politics not only the different types of governments that exist but also the vast array that could be generated by combining features of the different types of main configurations; moreover, it also provided the mechanisms through which each government gained its character.  Most of this work would be later paraphrased during the Enlightenment, in a simplified manner, with The Spirit of Laws published in 1748 by Montesquieu (whose full name was Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu).  These works, along with the political writings of John Locke, were greatly influential throughout Occidental culture, both in the Old and the New World.

In the case of Locke, his influence was such that he is often referred to as "the philosopher of the Glorious Revolution" of 1688 in England when King James II was overthrown via invasion by a Dutch fleet and army that without much initial pushback managed to institute William III as King of England, Ireland, and Scotland, leading to the Bill of Rights of 1689, one of most important documents in U.K. politics still today.  The Glorious Revolution marks the end of the specter of absolutism in England, and the Bill of Rights cemented the status of the country as a parliamentary system in which the powers of the monarch would be heavily constrained.  The Constitutional Monarchy thus established has continued uninterrupted from 1689 until the present day.

Still, John Locke's notoriety, in contrast to Montesquieu, did not arise out of his political demarcations but rather because he articulated the conditions for what would become the Liberal State; for example, he wrote about checks and balances of power, the rule of law, the right to due process, and the necessity for Life, Liberty, and Property, which Thomas Jefferson rephrased as Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness in the Declaration of Independence for rhetoric effect, that is, naming property would not provoke a similar rise in the passions underlying public sentiment, passions that were extremely needed at that time as independence from British rule only enjoyed about one-third support from the colonist even though the war between imperial forces and the colonies had already been ranging for over a year, thus you can imagine how much the support for independence was prior to the start of the conflict.



As will be seen further along, it is actually the Liberal State that people refer to as democracies, with countries that do not abide to its tenants being labeled as nefarious or failing states even though their actual governments and political processes are identical to those of countries considered democracies.  This is, of course, a grave error, but if political debates centered around Liberal States, they would be unable to garner support for the position because of the unyielding opposition that exists to the term liberal. Democracy and democratic, therefore, are nothing more than euphemism for the correct term that people no longer want to use or rather, because some no longer wanted to use it, most people in our societies no longer understand what it means.

Be that as it may, it was Aristotle who provided the definitions that have stood the test of time. He did not create the terminologies, of course, as these were already widely in use long before his birth; rather, he properly compiled and defined them in a systematic manner, demarcating their mechanisms and also showing how these could be meshed to create mixed republics that combined qualities of the different sorts.

Portrait of Aristotle, the man whose succinct arguments 

 allowed his copious written production to leave a

significant mark on almost every subject.

Defining Political Systems: Aristotle's Advantage over Modern Theorists

Today, our modern societies and even some of the world's foremost scholars find it hard to define the types of governments, a fact that often becomes a bit embarrassing when a nation's institutions are overthrown and a newly formed government takes over. An underlying debate often rages on how to refer to the new political system. That debate is always messy and, when it continues for a long time, borders on humiliating. Why is it so hard for us to define what form a new government takes? It isn't actually, but political loyalties and affiliations stand in the way of participants stating the correct terms outright, sometimes to the point that these affinities prevent people from even discerning what the proper nomenclature is.

If it is so problematic for us today, how could Aristotle do this task in an exacting way millennia ago?

Setting aside the power of propaganda that permeates politics everywhere at present, the answer to the aforementioned question is surprisingly simple. All the places where Aristotle lived are circled red in the map below.

Imagine how many city-states Aristotle must have seen through his journeys.

Ancient Greece had long been a loose collection of city-states, each with its own unique government.  The Greeks still had this fluid arrangement when Aristotle was born, and it was still thus throughout most of his life until the rise of his most illustrious pupil, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who as an adolescent accompanied his father Phillip II of Macedon as they conquered the mainland Greek city-states using soldiers on horse's backs to route the famed formations of Greek infantries.  This marked the first end of the city-state arrangement and first rise of an actual Greek Empire.  But expansion beyond mainland Greece had not taken place, and upon Phillip and Alexander's return to Macedonia, a bitter family quarrel over succession took place that led to Alexander and his mother having to flee into exile.  Soon thereafter, while at the wedding of his daughter, Phillip II was assassinated by the captain of his own bodyguards. 

Alexander was proclaimed king, with support from the army and the Macedonian nobility, at the early age of 20.  His subsequent military incursions into Egypt, the Middle East, all the way to Iran (then Persia), stopping at the natural border of the Himalayas Mountains that had always protected the Indian subcontinent from invaders.  This march East is considered one the most culturally significant events in world history, and it also marked the beginning of a Greek Empire, asserting Greek culture as the new dominant force in the known world.  Though the Roman's would later conquer the Greeks, Greek culture nevertheless remained as the clear victor insofar as the cultural realm is concerned.

Prior to Phillip II and Alexander, though large alliances or leagues would form where one city-state such as Athens or Sparta often enjoyed overwhelming influence, each city-state still retained their own particular government.  Since these governments ruled a city and some surrounding farm lands, there was ample margin for the different states to experiment with all sorts of political mechanisms and government configurations.  As a result, the geographically tiny Greek territories arguably enjoyed a larger variety of types of governments than does at present the entire Earth.

Aristotle didn't have to guess, infer, theorize or speculate; he was a witness and observed.  He saw the different types of governments at work.  For further information, he would consult then recent historical documents as testimony for how configurations had shifted and changed - and why. As an avid reader with an analytical mind, this wasn't a particularly daunting or consuming task.  He simply needed to create another taxonomy - a political taxonomy - and he was quite skilled at developing taxonomies; for instance, our current classification system for living beings owes its origins to the taxonomies that he developed.  He wrote most of these and of his great works, including Politics, upon returning to a changed Athens under Alexander's rule, that is, after having traveled Ancient Greece more extensively than most.  He would only move once after that long stay, to his mother's family estate, fleeing an Athenian populace that was hostile to him after Alexander's death not only because of his close ties to the imposed viceroy but also because he was Macedonian himself.  Though he died within the year, he fled the city because he would not accept Socrates' fate, stating - "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy."

 

The Definition of Democracy

The basic typology in Politics divides states along two axis: quantity of political decision-makers and whether the specific configuration was good (i.e., correct or virtuous) or bad (i.e., perverted or vicious).  These two parameters generate the following table.

	Correct	Deviant
One Ruler	Kingship (Monarchy)	Tyranny (Dictatorship)
Few Rulers	Aristocracy (Meritocracy)	Oligarchy (Plutocracy)
Many Rulers	Polity	Democracy

Since Monarchy and Tyranny remain pretty much self-explanatory, a brief observation regarding rule by the few ought to be made before delving into the systems of rule by the many. 

Aristotle argued that, wherever a talented, skilled and virtuous subset of the population exists, the government that yields the best results is Aristocracy, which literally means "rule of the best" qualified citizens.  Currently, such configurations are typically called Meritocracy instead because the concepts aristocrat and noble were erroneously and arrogantly conflated for centuries in Europe.  This mistaken entanglement has been so frequent and constant for so long that it has made it into most English dictionaries as the standard and only definition of the word, thus shamefully disregarding the word's etymology altogether.  Nobles, to be sure, are almost always oligarchs, that is, rich landlords and business owners, with very few among them qualifying as aristocrats in the original sense of being among the best, given that greatness in skill is obtained through relentless practice and hard-work, that excellence cannot be bought or inherited.  Thus, Sparta was a crystal clear Oligarchy even though it was governed by elected noblemen alongside two kings in charge of the military that counterbalanced one another at home and during military campaigns (a trait later replicated, it is worth noting, by the two consul system of the early Roman Republic in a similar though not exact or hereditary manner).

Click to Enlarge.
Main types of governments and their defining

characteristics according to Aristotle's Politics.

Though it is obvious that a benevolent, unselfish, and capable group of highly skilled rulers would be the most likely to articulate and successfully implement policies that would benefit and further the interests of a society as a whole, not being naive Aristotle recognized that these ideal conditions are a rarity in reality and, therefore, considered mixed republics as the most optimal systems regardless of the peculiarities of a specific society.  A mixed republic combining mechanisms of all the types in the table above could presumably be successful anywhere because it could satisfy the interests of all sectors of society.  Today, it is this recommendation that conforms our governmental model, not the creation or preservation of Democracies.

Returning to the topic of the rule by the many, please note that Democracy is placed as the deviant form of the many rulers category because it is the configuration where the majority overpowers the minority.  By etymology, Democracy means "rule of the people".  Most frequently the majority ("the people") consists of poor citizens owning little property or none at all; given the opportunity to decree via majority-rule, these would typically proceed to oppress or dispossess the wealthier classes.  This Aristotelian argument is the very same offered by then would-be President of the United States, James Madison, in the Federalist No. 10, widely considered the most important among The Federalist Papers, a collection of newspaper articles that disseminated arguments in favor of the ratification of the constitution still in place today and was published under the pseudonym Publius, being written mostly by Madison and Alexander Hamilton, with only 5 out of the 85 articles having been penned by John Jay who fell ill soon after the project began.

The 4th President of the United States, widely considered the "Father of the Constitution", made explicit the claim that the proposed system of government would wipe out the democratic tendencies that could take hold in the smaller states by federating them under the regulation of a Republic, thereby vanishing the specter that some -- or all! -- states could eventually reconfigure into democracies. Setting that aside, the question of concern here is whether democracies (or even polities) exist in our contemporary world.

"Democratic", Propaganda, and the Republic

Many of us alive today are bombarded daily with the frequent use of the word "democracy" and its variants, such as democratic society or democratic principles or representative democracy or electoral democracy, ad infinitum.  It isn't just politicians and media repeating these terms endlessly; we even do it to ourselves, and our friends and acquaintances often employ them too.  Unless you tune yourself out completely, it is unlikely that you will not hear some variant of the word "democracy" today, or any other day for that matter.  It's everywhere! 

The following map is an example of how the global stage is prototypically painted to people living in the Occidental (and Occidentalized) world.

Political world map characterized by propaganda displaying countries by government types

in the fashion typically portrayed to people in the Western world.

This map is brimming with the propagandized view disseminated nonstop throughout Western nations, a fact that may be readily appreciated by considering the definition of Anocracy.  Even if the map above strikes you as all-too-familiar, it is very likely that you've never heard that label used before, but this shouldn't faze you one bit.  The word "Anocracy" is so recent and of such infrequent use that it isn't even recognized as a real word by most English dictionaries; in fact, the word was first used in 1946, appearing in a reprinted translation.  Anocracy allegedly refers to a state configuration that blends democratic and autocratic principles in a way that is incoherent and hence ineffective, leading to political instability.

In the map above, both Russia and Venezuela are stated to be closed Anocracies, which one may guess is the worst form of Anocracy.  You may not agree with the policies of Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chávez, and you may also object to the means employed by their governments to enforce such policies.  I feel the same way.  Nonetheless, is this cause enough to label those states "closed anocracies"?  To find that answer, we ought to ask ourselves the questions that relate to the proposed definition of the made-up word considered.

Is Russia politically unstable?  Not at all!  The opposite is true.  In 1999, when President Boris Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin to be Prime Minister, he became the Russian Federation's fifth Prime Minister in 18 months.  Now that is political instability!  Putin actually became president, also in 1999, because Boris Yeltsin was forced to resign, which is another sign of political instability.  Since then, Putin has won 3 presidential elections with such overwhelming support that a second round of voting to achieve a majority has never been necessary.  For his second term, he received an awe-inspiring 71% of the vote. 

Since in the Russian Federation a person can only be president twice in a row, Putin backed Dmitry Medvedev for that office, who received 70.28% of the vote in the first round with his closest opponent garnering only 17.72% support.  Under Medvedev, Putin was nominated and confirmed as Prime Minister, completing a four-year term before running for president again, winning easily once more.  He currently enjoys approval ratings that his Western counterparts can only dream about.  Does this sound like political instability?

What about Venezuela?  The map above is from 2011, that is, before Hugo's cancer-related death in 2013, the first year of his 4th presidential term.  He held the highest executive office for almost 13 years, from 2000 onward.  Though a presidential term in Venezuela now lasts 6 years, Chávez was elected four times because he unseated himself during his first term after only two years in office by creating a new constitution that required new elections to be held.  Autocrats aren't known for giving the populace extra chances to take them out of power, but Chávez did just that and he did so early in his first presidency, way before he could have successfully coerced the population into reluctantly supporting him.

Immediately after becoming president on February 2, 1999, he called for a referendum on whether to create a Constitutional Assembly, referendum that took place on April 25 of that very same year and in which the proposal garnered 88% voter support.  That extremely high percentage evidences that a new constitution was seen as necessary, and that fact ought to give you some idea of the political instability that Venezuela had been suffering up to that point. 

Another referendum to choose delegates for the assembly was held as soon as possible, on July 25; an overwhelming 900 out of the 1,171 nominated candidates did not support Chávez.  Even with this numeric disadvantage, the candidates he supported won 125 seats, that is, 95% of total assembly, including all the seats that were reserved for indigenous groups that have historically been excluded from the political process altogether.  This inclusiveness and support from marginalized group indicates a "closed anocracy", right?  The citizens voted on whether to adopt the resulting constitution in December 1999 with 72% of the voting citizenry casting their ballots in favor of constitutional change.  A mega-election that included all possible offices was held on July, and 60% of the participants cast their ballots for Chávez. 

In 2002, a military coup d'etat took place and Chávez, having himself tried to overthrow the government a decade earlier, agreed to be arrested by the high-ranking officers spearheading the charge.  A pro-business oligarch was immediately sworn in as president, and his first order of business was to decree the new constitution as null and void.  However, just mere days later, popular backlash forced him to step down amid nationwide protests.  Hugo Chávez returned to power in less than a week. Autocrats aren't known for giving themselves up; they usually fight to the bitter end and prolong civil strife as they cling to power, like the autocrat Bashar al-Assad of Syria is doing now, and he is winning thanks to both Russian and "Allied" Western military support. Does any of this sound like "anocracy"? Hugo won the next presidential with an even larger majority and higher voter turnout.

Again, you may not agree with the policies of Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chávez.  There is no shortage of solid reasons from which to raise objections, particularly regarding policy implementation and enforcement.  But is that sufficient ground to classify entire nations as "closed anocracies"?  No, it is not.  Personally, I am highly suspicious of all political personalism because of the immense potential danger involved; I also abhor populism, deeming it one of the worse forms of pandering, since time after time populist agendas have provided little in the way of long-term benefits - at great costs!  Most of the strategies of both Putin and Chávez are counterproductive, and some seem just not right.  (Not to mention that the historical and international law implications of Russia's almost overnight annexation of a piece of European soil scares the bejeezus out of me.)  Nevertheless, propaganda is propaganda and ought to be called out whenever it's spotted.  The fact remains that Putin heads a semi-presidentialist republic (i.e., one that has both a President and a Prime Minister, like France's current Fifth Republic), and Chávez governed a presidentialist republic (i.e., where the highest executive is endowed with both foreign and domestic policy powers, like USA).  Though we may have our qualms with the particular choices of a nation's citizenry, do we really need to unleash disrespect over their entire state?´

[For those interested in the previous line of argument, please note that Ecuador is also listed as a "closed anocracy", and this categorization is entirely due to the developmental economist Rafael Correa having won the presidency in 2007 as an independent candidate without any party support and offering no legislative candidates.  That case, more than those above, illustrates the propaganda. Correa quickly brought political stability to a country that had had 7 presidents in only 10 years, an extremely political unstable situation.  I urge you to research that case.]

In contrast to the typical map above, the one below - from the List of Countries by Government System Wiki - uses more accurate terminology and sheds most of the propaganda (sadly, a footnote was added to let the propaganda back in).  It is worth observing that neither Democracy nor the nonsense term Anocracy is used once in its entire legend, yet Monarchies are listed, as these very well should, despite the fact that these are nowhere to be found on the prior map.

A more accurate political world map.
Countries are depicted by the constitutional form of their current government.

Democracy is by definition a system of government, so why isn't the term employed in the map above?  The short answer is that it would be inaccurate and misleading.  There are no democracies in the world today -  none, zero, zip, nada, not a single one. 

Why are most people told on a daily basis that we live in democracies?  I will not address the propaganda purposes as I am sure that you can figure those out by yourself; however, it is useful to address the common justifications that have led the vast majority of the population to believe that some democracies do exist.  There are two main justifications.

Against Two Justifications of Why Democracies Exist Today

• Justification #1:  Citizens vote to elect their leaders; therefore, everyone is free to participate in determining the fate of their nation, a trait that is obviously democratic.

Aristotle was very clear with regards to the role that elections play in determining which class of government takes hold. The mechanisms of a democracy are lottery and open participation, the latter meaning that any citizen that showed up to the forum could equally take part in the public decision-making process. In the Constitution of 4th century Athens, free participation was the way that the Popular Assembly (Ecclesia) operated, in which every male citizen above the age of 18 could show up to speak, scrutinize, propose, and vote on: 1) law proposals submitted to the Nomothetai, whose members were chosen by lottery, 2) decrees and treaties, and 3) the election of the city's ten Generals and all except the lesser magistrates.  Every other government job was chosen by lot (i.e., allotment / lottery) from among citizens more than 30 years old, with the only exception being the Ancient Tribunal (Aeropagus) whose sole job was to judge murder trails of Athenian citizens and the members of which were retired Archons - 9 seats that were filled by lottery and the function of which was to organize feasts in the city and preside over the Popular Tribunal (Heliaia) only when the case dealt with issues of family and inheritance law. 

Click to Enlarge.
Diagram depicts the institutions of the Democracy in Athens

during the 4th century B.C.E., what these institutions did, 

their makeup, and how the officials in each were selected.

Having explained what the mechanisms of a democracy are, let's return to the topic of voting and elections, which is the principal justification offered nowadays for "representative" democracy.
What is an election?

By definition, an election is a transfer power from the voters to the elected individual or, differently stated, from the many to the few.  Throughout Ancient Greece it was recognized that elections virtually always favor the rich and those with long-standing known family names that were raised in privileged environments.  It is easy to deduce by logic that people with such traits cannot possibly represent the bulk of the citizenry because their life experiences do not resemble even slightly that of the rest.  Given these facts and remembering the Aristotelic table presented earlier, it is clear that elections are the defining mechanism of oligarchies.  Aristotle states -

"That all offices are filled by election and none by lot [lottery] is one of these oligarchical characteristics; that the power of inflicting death or banishment rests with a few persons is another; and there are others. In a well attempted polity there should appear to be both elements [democratic and oligarchical] and yet neither" (Politics, Book IV, Part IX)

In this quote Aristotle opens the door to our being able to consider a polity instead of a democracy, polity being a more mixed and balanced form of government.  Are our current "democracies" in fact examples of polity?  This question is easy to ask now that exact conditions were provided. Three simple questions need to be answered.


1) Are all important public offices filled by elections?

In most contemporary Liberal States, juries are the only exception, but some contemporary "democracies" do not even have juries, such as the Republic of Chile in which judges are not elected but appointed; moreover, in some countries that do have juries, there are also military tribunals that do not use juries or that use juries not chosen via lottery.  It could be further argued that our current systems are even worse, or more oligarchic, because the vast majority of public positions are not elected at all but rather appointed by elected officials or, more problematic still, chosen by civil servants appointed by elected officials, and that chain actually goes on several more degrees in a way that promotes favoritism, clientelism, and even nepotism, a tendency that if taken to extremes straddles the line that demarcates Fascism. And I didn't even mention the mechanism of a Court of Appeals where a judge may overturn a jury's decision without using or even consulting a jury.


2) Is the power of inflicting death in the hands of few people?

Yes, it clearly is.  Even if someone were to make the case that juries have that power in some places (not most) -- conveniently ignoring the power of the police, armed forces, and intelligence agencies to inflict death with impunity -- it perhaps may be sufficient to note that the least amount of people that an Athenian jury may have had was 201 jurors, a number that would climb as high as 1501 jurors on really important cases like those involving murder.  Even the lower number is quite far from the contemporary 12 juror system, and the democratic nature of the larger number becomes clear when we consider that the Athenian Democracy included around 30,000 to 50,000 citizens throughout its history (about 10% of its total population.  And no, that low percentage is a null issue, even if it included slavery.  If you had a country largely populated by immigrants, like Luxemburg, Qatar and United Arab Emirates, would you say that non-citizen immigrants need to be given the right to vote in order for democracy to exist?  No, you would not.  The demarcation issue rests on citizen power and participation, not on who are citizens or the ratio of citizen to residents.).

3) Do contemporary "democracies" appear to have truly democratic alongside oligarchic elements in such a way that these do not appear to be either democracies or oligarchies?

Not only are there no meaningful democratic elements in place, current systems appear thoroughly oligarchic to anyone that studies them to any significant extent.  The oligarchy and current oligarchic policies are out of the open for anyone to see.  Thank you Internet!

• Justification #2: Universal suffrage (i.e., no gender or race conditions on eligibility to vote) and the elimination of property and education requirements for voting and to hold elected offices transformed Liberal States that tended towards oligarchy into de facto democracies.

This is a much more sophisticated justification grounded on historical events such that it is scarcely offered and, when it is, it commonly operates as a recourse after the first justification got shot down.  Though it is more reasonable, it isn't frequently offered as a first resort because it has various pitfalls.  Perhaps most important among these pitfalls is that deploying this argument requires admitting both that most Liberal States today were not democracies to begin with and that there were no democracies until a very short time ago.  New Zealand was the first nation to grant full universal suffrage... in 1893. Switzerland did not implement universal suffrage until 1971! 

Consider the United States of America for example.  USA natives do not say or want to say that their democracy began in 1920, but that is when a constitutional amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.  Yet that may be giving too much credit since it wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that discrimination based on race really began to be enforced.  People there say (and are frequently taught in school) that the Declaration of Independence gave birth to their democracy.  Most USA natives aren't even aware that their current national system is in fact their second one because the original Articles of Confederation failed miserably, being unable to pay the outstanding debt from the Revolutionary War amid a constitutional powerlessness to collect taxes. "Americans" want to believe the foundational myth that their forefathers created a most perfect union from the get-go, a union that will last forever.

That country's elimination of property requirements is a more complex story because prior to the 20th century each state had the right to place their own restrictions on the right to vote as they saw fit.  Creating a federation, not a centralized government, the Constitution of the United States of America did not originally state anything about voting rights, requirements, or qualifications.  Only when faced with the death of their nation via fragmentation did that change, with the Civil War of 1861-1865 triggering a process of federal encroachment on state self-determination that continues its march to this day.

Regardless of the dates, is there a basis to accept the justification?  Did the expansion of the voter base and of those qualified to hold public office bring about the existence of democracy (or polity) in the modern world?  Aristotle writes -

"On the other hand, that some should deliberate about all is oligarchical. This again is a mode which, like the democratical has many forms. When the deliberative class being elected out of those who have a moderate qualification are numerous and they respect and obey the prohibitions of the law without altering it, and anyone who has the required qualification shares in the government, then, just because of this moderation, the oligarchy inclines towards polity. But when only selected individuals and not the whole people share in the deliberations of the state, then, although, as in the former case, they observe the law, the government is a pure oligarchy." (Politics, Book IV, Part XIV)

As can be appreciated from this excerpt, the issue of demarcation is not about the size or breadth of the eligible voter pool but rather about how many elected officials there are in relation to that constituency.  This is a matter of proportions.  It was already explained above that the mechanism of election is prototypically oligarchical.  However, if there are a lot of elected officials in relation to the total quantity of citizens, then the balance tilts in favor of a government of the people.  On the contrary, when the quantity of people in charge of making the decisions that guide a state and its government is small when compared to the overall population of the citizenry, that is an oligarchy.  Do current ratios of voters to elected officials reflect a rule of the many?  No, they clearly do not, even in small countries.  Most people do not feel represented by their elected officials, and the reason they feel this way is... well... because they aren't being represented.

Oh, the Irony! 
What eliminating indirect elections and formal requirements accomplished

Most of us agree as a matter of principle that landownership and amounts of property shouldn't be requisites for elected office.  If a citizen has the will and talents to labor towards the common good, he or she ought to be able to so... possessions or no possessions.  Similarly, that the highest positions steering state policy and action be appointed by career politicians and apparatchiks instead of chosen by the general public is a proposition that many feel uneasy with.  Yet these judgments, as categorical as they may seem, display a gradient structure of degrees.  Should high offices require a minimum age, perhaps to discourage lack of experience and temperamental attitudes?  Should the ability to read and write be required?  Surely, few object to the currently standing literacy constraint or to the age minimums; therefore, the moral qualms do not rest on having conditions beyond citizenship and adulthood, but rather with the content, in particular the property requirements.  Even the Founding Fathers of the United States had their issues with such stipulations, which were rampant in England around that time, so they did not postulate them formally but rather delegated the right to set conditions to each member state for their federal high offices.  Still, does this mean that the Founding Fathers thought that the states would not pass similar requirements to the English?  You'd have to be delusional to think that they were not well aware that strict barriers to entry were going to be erected, and this did surely did not bother them; hopefully, the states would formulate qualifications that were less excessive than the English standard, but even if these chose to be harsher, it wasn't their problem, avoiding political responsibility or blame.  There is a saying for that - it's like having your cake and eating it too.

Even today, a lot of the most powerful roles around the world are assigned through appointment. Setting aside the pivotal higher offices of the European Union, in both parliamentary and semi-presidentialist republics, the Prime Minister in charge of domestic policy is chosen by legislators, not by universal suffrage.  Still, that is a far cry away from, say, the United States in the 19th century, when the eligible, literate, male property owners could not choose not only the President (which voters still don't elect, it is done by delegates that ordinary folk don't even know that they really exist, or who the delegates are, or the fact that there is no law forcing them to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote in their state; see the comic video below), they also couldn't elect their senators, supposed representatives that used to be handpicked by each state's legislature.  Were these mechanisms an encroachment of political power?  Yes, of course they were, but they were also something else.

"Adam Ruins Everything: 
Why the Electoral College Ruins Democracy"
(Mobile user: if the video isn't embedded, follow the link above.)
The video's title is a prime example of how even those 
who criticize current systems  have become just as blinded 
by the frequent repetition as uncritical individuals. 
The title of the video implies that direct elections 
would be a democracy; however, this is nonsense. 
Elections transfer power from the many to the few.

Given the advantages of the rich, powerful, and famous 
in garnering votes, elections ultimately generate 
Oligarchy as the form of government.

The aforementioned mechanisms were - and still are - intended to tilt the balance a little towards Aristocracy by placing conditions on mechanisms that have been known to otherwise ultimately lead to pure Oligarchy.  The success of constraints has been, of course, partial at best and futile at worst, or we wouldn't be in the strange, dire situation we are in today.  Varying conditions from country to country and sometimes from district to district were influenced by what constraints others had implemented and also by many other factors like popular sentiment, civic culture, and in some cases the high ethical values of some influential individuals.  For example, those non-technical factors were key to the early success of the Republic of Chile in the 19th century, a republic that emerged from a reputation as "the land of anarchy" acquired shortly after independence and became the most stable state in Latin America for over a hundred years, a stretch that ended with the election of the Communist Party's Salvador Allende and the subsequent overthrow by - and two-decades long dictatorship of - General Augusto Pinochet.  With different conditions came disimilar levels of success; nevertheless, the oligarchic nature of the mechanism itself will always overpower whatever brakes are placed, and once that is achieved there is no going back short of regime change or rewriting constitutional law.  But these options seem to be futile too considering the historical track record of not having had a democracy in millennia.  Besides, how would current citizens create a democracy if they no longer know what it means?  Prior to the 20th century a vast majority of the people articulating new forms of governments for their countries did indeed know what democracy was, and they still chose against it!

The elimination of many of the constraints set during the 19th century, supposedly in the name of democracy, has translated to a surrender of the keys to power to the oligarchy.  The irony is not lost on me, and I hope it is no longer lost on you.   At least aristocrats are highly skilled people, with intelligence and wisdom, and many care wholeheartedly about the common good.  In contrast, oligarchs, with few notable exceptions, work tirelessly to grow or preserve their own wealth, status, and power, to secure the passing of their privilege to their children, and to repay other oligarchs that supported them during their rise by furthering the specific special interest these deem important inasmuch as politically feasible.

With oligarchs in charge around the world, it is not surprising for mass media outlets to bombard the general public through repetition, turning democracy into a mere public relations spin campaign, or to actively disseminate propaganda labeling any country with a government that disagrees with the precepts of the Liberal State, such as the republics of Russia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, as autocratic, undemocratic, anocracies, as threats to democracy that must be dealt with harshly, and so on.  The very existence of oligarchy necessitates the motto: the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The recent leaders of those "undemocratic" states have taken actions that threaten entrenched interests and sometimes even the very foundations of the Liberal State, and it doesn't matter if they abide by the laws and the constitution in place. 

Chávez wanted to create communal property, a concept adversarial to the private property foundation of the Liberal State.  Putin has arrested billionaires and nationalized their conglomerates, strengthening state power and its role in the economy, contra the 'leave everyone to their own devices' perspective that oligarchs favor.  [Digression: The rise of the so-called Welfare State is a progressive continuation of the Liberal State and, thus, did not change this.  What exists now is more or less a 'leave everyone to their own devices and provide basic support when many fail such that they don't starve, freeze to death, or crowd our lovely streets, mainly because that is bad press and also bad for business.] 

As for Ecuador, one of the first actions of Correa's government was to analyze International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank debt contracts and the conditions under which those negotiations and signings took place, and what was found were many cases of obvious fraud, bribery, coercion, traffic of influences, and numerous violations of the stipulations of the Ecuadorian constitution.  Those contracts were the authorities managed to gather sufficient evidence of wrongdoing were, naturally, declared illegal or sometimes unconstitutional, unchaining the nation from a significant portion of the external debt that had crippled prior administrations into doing the bidding of World Bank and IMF structural reform "recommendations" (though these practices have been going on for around four decades, currently the most salient example of this type of international blackmail is Greece where the "Troika" formulates reforms that the Greek government must make into law or else face default, economic isolation, and have very large segments of its people fall into ruin almost immediately) .  Other countries do this kind of auditing and investigating all the time and we not only do not treat them harshly and neither does the mass media; in fact, we praise them for the courage to undertake these necessary yet politically inconvenient efforts. However, Ecuador is not awarded similar treatment because their president openly admits his disdain for liberalism as a political and socio-economic philosophy and what its framework entails in practice, that is, growing social inequality, the rise of corporativism and clientelism in public service, debt-slavery, and the growing social costs that inevitably result. 

An enormous and respected scientific literature exists within economics and political science that overwhelmingly shows that all of the issues mentioned are real and widespread.  There are even plenty of studies that provide evidence that the framework of liberalism has detrimental effects over the elections processes (an area of research that is mistakenly framed in terms of liberalism being incompatible with democracy).  Correa knows this and has surely read a lot of the related work, having earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the University of Illinois.  Considering Ecuador's political instability and the dire economic conditions of the majority of its citizens at the time he returned to his country of origin, it is not surprising that his road to power had few stepping stones and was as short as they come.  [Note: I have chosen not to link to scientific articles on the aforementioned topics because the existing literature is too large to list even as an approximation and I do not want to give the impression that the linked peer-reviewed papers are more important than other similar works.  Please, do you own research responsibly.]

These leaders we are being asked to hate rule over Liberal States, the same as the leaders we are supposed to like; they have not changed this fact, nor have they changed the systems of their republics into something different or new.  The fact that undemocratic is an insult hurled at any leader whose policies most Occidental leaders do not like is, in itself, evidence of the propaganda role that this term has been made to take on.  By repetition, as soon as the term undemocratic is emitted and repeated, an emotional reaction is triggered in vast swaths of our citizenry that is followed by the categorization of the thing being referred to as an evil that must be neutralized, isolated, crippled, or destroyed outright.  Yes, Operant Conditioning works like a charm, and it is so easy and fast to carry out that it can be done on a society, a set of societies, and even entire civilizations at costs far outweighed by its benefits.

The word Democracy needs saving.  It has been mutilated and made into a mockery of itself.  The meaning of democracy is, I regret to report, basically dead. 

Luckily, unlike organic bodies, words, concepts, and meaning may die but they may also be brought back to life.  The first step is to understand what the term means, what mechanisms lead to its existence, and to visualize what governments like that would look like.  The second step is to share your newfound knowledge with as many people as possible.  Even if you wouldn't like a democracy, you should still share what the term means, at the very least to help those around you be less manipulated.  Democracy is dead, but it can be brought back to life.

Why this discussion matters for your Cognitive Dynamics

Language is the greatest tool human beings have ever developed or will ever develop.  Language massively augments our inborn cognitive capacities.  They allow us to better remember things that we would otherwise forget.  They help us make fine-grained distinctions that allow us to think about things that would otherwise never pass through our heads; more important still, the fine-grained distinctions each of us has managed to accumulate directly affect the way you perceive the world, such that the more accurate concepts you gather, the richer and livelier your surroundings become.  That cognition and perception are separate things is a myth.   To avoid getting technical and give the simplest example possible, Chinese people can distinguish speech sounds that you are simply unable to, and you can distinguish speech sounds that they cannot no matter how hard they try.  If you hadn't learned a language, how many less sounds would you be able to perceive?  A richer lexicon that refers to more concepts and makes slight distinctions inside a concept greatly increases your cognitive abilities and even increases the size of your brain.  Thus, a fully bilingual individual is far less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease later in life, and, were they to develop that condition, the onset would be on average 5 years later than a person that speaks one language.  However, if the bilingual speaker starts mixing both languages, using them in tandem such that code-switching between the two effectively means that they supplant the concepts of one with those of the other, melding both into a single entity, that speaker has effectively wasted his linguistic knowledge and future benefits to health via sheer laziness and convenience, as happens to a lot of Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States.

The shared, public, externalized, and externalizing nature of any language means that we use words as clothe hangers or anchors.  Words become places that connect meaning and particular thoughts and specific emotions and detailed attitudes.  It is through concepts that we are best able to bring all these pieces together, pieces that our brains would find it difficult to associate without words.  Moreover, because words are external and tools for communication, these anchors are crucial throughout our decision-making, planning, and the execution of courses of actions.

Most of us have been taught to believe that intelligence is a natural trait, like height or feet size, and the amount of intelligence you have is a gift or a curse that you received just by being born.  Except in the cases of genetic mutations producing gross mental deficits, the nativist conception taught to us is wrong, and not just a little wrong.  Your intelligence may go up in time and it may go down.  IQ scores can fluctuate wildly if a few years have passed.  The scores of the aptitude tests that you take to get into college can also fluctuate wildly.  Though these scores often do not fluctuate that much, that reflects the fact that your habits and your internal cognitive dynamics probably did not change that much during that amount of time, not that there is something genetic keeping you in your place.  That view is highly convenient to the people selling the tests, and it is also convenient to the people that do not want to change or grow.  But the fact remains that intelligence is not a trait, it is a skill - the ability to discern, to make what happens around and inside you intelligible - and every skill can be vastly improved with practice and proper materials.  What would be proper materials, in this case?

I find it odd that people speak often of others being intelligent, but rarely do people say anymore that someone is wise or unwise.  The fuel for intelligence is accurate knowledge, and that is wisdom.  The better information you have gathered, the wiser you are, the better distinctions you can make, and thus the more accurately you are able to weave the distinctions you have made and the information associated with these.  Intelligence without wisdom is like owning a private jet that has no flaps or landing gear.  Sure, you have this wonderful tool at your disposal, but you can really use it properly, and then the jet just sits there (because you were told throughout life that having the tool is enough) until the gears start to rust and the components begin malfunctioning.  Suddenly, your tool is all but gone because you did not acquire what you needed for it to work properly.  Well, losing your intelligence because you failed to gather variety in your information or because you did not check to make sure that the information acquired was accurate is already bad enough.  But isn't it worse to have a massively important word, denoting a concept with a long, rich history, a word that has been made to have such far-reaching implications that it often means the difference between war and peace, between living or dying for an immense number of people... to have this beautiful word and hear it all the time and have the concept be taught to you incorrectly every single time?  That borders on the criminal.  The result is warped perspectives that actually guide people to making important decisions and take defining stances.  That is democracy today.

If it serves to console you, go ahead and blame the French historian and sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book Democracy in America, published in 1835, began the trend of misrepresentation that now stands as an inherited semantic error that grossly distorts both history and etymology.  Or blame vanity, because if calling United States of America a democracy had not been used to distinguish it from European societies with their strict class system, perhaps people would have not been so flattered and would have seen the description for what it was, a mistake.  Since the United States had basically the same government system as most other emerging republics, it is no wonder that the flattery spread like wildfire.  But this is here nor there; it is irrelevant now.  Save democracy or let it die.

A dead meaning for democracy means that it is unlikely that you, your children, grandchildren, and so on, will ever have the opportunity to see one in action, much less live in one.  If you want to go ahead and keep calling an oligarchy democratic, you are free to do so; the Liberal State grants you that right and no one can take that away from you.  But if you want clarity, a more accurate perspective, more detailed awareness, and you want those around you to discern and partake of that understanding in order to avoid conditioned responses, please, I beg of you, go out and tell anyone willing to listen what the word democracy actually means... go out and tell as many people as you can, as often as you are able to, and do so to the best of your human capacity.  History may thank you one day.