This thought just popped into my mind today.
Perhaps democratic systems condition the populace to wage its battles at the battle box rather than in the streets by...
1. providing a mechanism for grievances (throw the bums out)
2. providing the belief that something as drastic and risky as overthrow/secession is unnecessary
3. creating a climate where discourse and airing out grievances publicly is encouraged, preventing the need to go underground. Removing the need to go underground ensures that grievances are not only aired - which gives some therapeutic effect, but also invites rebuttal, which deters others from joining and helps to prevent the aggrieved from becoming too removed from reality.
In other words, provide an alternative, raise the risk-reward ratio, and counterattack while the threat is emerging, rather than after it arrives.
This might also be a "chicken or the egg" case. Democracy is more than just casting ballots. The process must be fair, the choices must be real, the debate must be unrestrained, and there must be no fear involved. Otherwise, it is only a democracy in name, not in substance. How many countries achieve that highly sophisticated state of social order and stability? Once a country achieves that, it seems that the society should also be smart enough to figure out how to sort out its differences before they devolve into fisticuffs, tomfoolery, assassinations, and urban sniping.
Likewise for the bad guys. If they have somehow arrived at the conclusion that things are so bad/backwards/intolerable that armed action is the only solution, then they are probably hopelessly disenfranchised. Why? There are always a few outcasts in society. But when enough of them exist to form a viable counter-movement, then that means that something is wrong.
This may lead back to one of the conclusions that many of us so often find ourselves revisiting: the way to defeat an insurgency is to prevent it.
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