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Politics & Power Quote by Jose Eduardo Dos Santos

"The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities"

About this Quote

A neat little civics lesson, delivered with the polished confidence of someone who spent decades testing how elastic the word "democratic" can be. Jose Eduardo dos Santos frames democracy not as institutions or limits on power, but as an ongoing personal posture: a "continual willingness" to talk, to swap perspectives, to compete. The phrasing shifts responsibility downward. If democracy falters, the implication is that citizens (or rivals) lacked the right temperament, not that the rules were bent, the press constrained, or opposition narrowed.

"Exchange views" is the soft power centerpiece here. It’s dialogue as virtue, conversation as proof of legitimacy. In practice, leaders who invoke dialogue often mean controlled pluralism: debate that is permitted as long as it doesn’t threaten the center. It’s a familiar rhetorical move in post-colonial states where stability is marketed as the precondition for freedom, and where the state’s version of openness is measured by the fact that it could be harsher.

Then comes the second clause: "compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities". It’s meritocracy language, appealing and modern, but also strategically depoliticizing. If success is about personal capacity, structural advantages, patronage networks, and state capture vanish from view. Political inequality becomes a story of individual shortfall.

Context sharpens the edge. Dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years, a period marked by civil war’s long shadow, immense oil wealth, and enduring allegations of corruption and constrained political competition. Read that way, the quote functions less as a description than as a credential: an attempt to claim democratic virtue in the register of process and character, while sidestepping the harder question of whether power can actually change hands.

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TopicFreedom
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Santos, Jose Eduardo Dos. (n.d.). The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-merit-of-a-democratic-regime-rests-on-ones-169511/

Chicago Style
Santos, Jose Eduardo Dos. "The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-merit-of-a-democratic-regime-rests-on-ones-169511/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-merit-of-a-democratic-regime-rests-on-ones-169511/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Jose Eduardo Dos Santos (August 28, 1942 - July 8, 2022) was a Statesman.

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