Critics of democracy have often tried to highlight democracy's inconsistencies, paradoxes, and limits by contrasting it with other forms of governments such as epistocracy, plural voting, or lottocrative alternatives. They have characterized most modern democracies as democratic polyarchies and democratic aristocracies; they have identified fascist moments in modern democracies; they have termed the societies produced by modern democracies as neo-feudal;Thom Hartmann, "Time to Remove the Bananas...and Return Our Republic to Democracy", CommonDreams.org, 6 November 2002 while yet others have contrasted democracy with fascism, anarcho-capitalism, theocracy, and absolute monarchy. The most widely known critics of democracy include Plato and the authors of the Federalist Papers, who were interested in establishing a representative democracy in the early United States instead of a direct democracy. The authors of the Federalist papers explained why the Constitution was based on a certain type of democracy, also called an American republic or liberal democracy.
