Democracy as Managed Dependency

The most persistent misconception about modern democracy is not that it is failing,

but that it still actually governs. We continue to speak as if elections meaningfully constrain

power or as if rights are default settings rather than conditional privileges. But recent years

suggest otherwise. What we are witnessing is not a temporary glitch or backsliding, but a structural

transition. Governance is being reorganized around enforcement, discretion,

and managed dependency, while the democratic aesthetic remains largely intact. This shift is hard

to identify because it doesn't announce itself as authoritarianism. It preserves the courts,

the voting booths, and the language of rights. It insists on decorum. Yet beneath this