How to translate “original democracy” (= democraţie originală) (pejorative)?

Question

Some of the (political) analysts have been argued for years about the "originality" of democracy when speaking about the transition period after the communist period (1990+). The literal expression in Romanian is "democraţie originală" which can be translated to "original democracy" and is used pejoratively to describe a strange and convoluted way of implementing democracy.

However, Google suggests that "original democracy" is connected to the first(?) democracy, the Athenian one.

Indeed, the English word original has two meanings:

• present or existing from the beginning; first or earliest.
• created personally by a particular artist, writer, musician, etc.; not a copy.

In Romanian there is no such ambiguity since there are two different words for these two concepts (originar vs. original).

Question: How to translate "original democracy" (= democraţie originală) to avoid ambiguity and keep the pejorative meaning?

Something that crosses my mind is "creative democracy", but this sounds quite positive to me.

Answer 1

I thought of creative as well, through the parallel of "creative accounting". But you need a lot of context to get the joke, and originality/creativity is not as obviously a failing in politics as it is in accounting.

In fact, original can be used derogatorily in English ("that's... original"). And again, next to democracy, it just won't be obvious enough. That's the problem with translating irony: it's fragile.

If you have to go more literal, perhaps "Rube Goldberg democracy"? Or "make-it-up-as-you-go-along democracy"?