What the word democracy means

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos ‘people’ and kratos ‘rule’^[1]) is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation («direct democracy»), or to choose governing officials to do so («representative democracy»). Who is considered part of «the people» and how authority is shared among or delegated by the people has changed over time and at different rates in different countries. Features of democracy often include freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, inclusiveness and equality, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.

The notion of democracy has evolved over time considerably. Throughout history, one can find evidence of direct democracy, in which communities make decisions through popular assembly. Today, the dominant form of democracy is representative democracy, where citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy.^[2]

Prevalent day-to-day decision making of democracies is the majority rule,^[3][4] though other decision making approaches like supermajority and consensus have also been integral to democracies. They serve the crucial purpose of inclusiveness and broader legitimacy on sensitive issues—counterbalancing majoritarianism—and therefore mostly take precedence on a constitutional level. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution and a supreme court limit the majority and protect the minority—usually through securing the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, e.g. freedom of speech or freedom of association.^[5][6]

The term appeared in the 5th century BC in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean «rule of the people», in contrast to aristocracy (ἀριστοκρατία, aristokratía), meaning «rule of an elite».^[7] Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in antiquity, is generally considered to have originated in city-states such as those in Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed before the form disappeared in the West at the beginning of late antiquity. In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship was initially restricted to an elite class, which was later extended to all adult citizens. In most modern democracies, this was achieved through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is either held by an individual, as in autocratic systems like absolute monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy—oppositions inherited from ancient Greek philosophy.^[8] Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, focusing on opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to oust them without the need for a revolution.^[9] World public opinion strongly favors democratic systems of government.^[10] According to the V-Dem Institute and Economist Intelligence Unit democracy indices, less than half the world’s population lives in a democracy as of 2021.^[11][12] Democratic backsliding with a rise in hybrid regimes has exceeded democratization since the early to mid 2010s.^[11]

Characteristics[edit]

Although democracy is generally understood to be defined by voting,^[1][6] no consensus exists on a precise definition of democracy.^[13] Karl Popper says that the «classical» view of democracy is simply,^[14] «in brief, the theory that democracy is the rule of the people, and that the people have a right to rule.» Kofi Annan states that «there are as many different forms of democracy as there are democratic nations in the world.»^[15] One study identified 2,234 adjectives used to describe democracy in the English language.^[16]

Democratic principles are reflected in all eligible citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to legislative processes.^[17] For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight, no unreasonable restrictions can apply to anyone seeking to become a representative,^{[according to whom?]} and the freedom of its eligible citizens is secured by legitimised rights and liberties which are typically protected by a constitution.^[18][19] Other uses of «democracy» include that of direct democracy, in which issues are directly voted on by the constituents.

One theory holds that democracy requires three fundamental principles: upward control (sovereignty residing at the lowest levels of authority), political equality, and social norms by which individuals and institutions only consider acceptable acts that reflect the first two principles of upward control and political equality.^[20] Legal equality, political freedom and rule of law^[21] are often identified as foundational characteristics for a well-functioning democracy.^[13]

The term «democracy» is sometimes used as shorthand for liberal democracy, which is a variant of representative democracy that may include elements such as political pluralism; equality before the law; the right to petition elected officials for redress of grievances; due process; civil liberties; human rights; and elements of civil society outside the government.^{[citation needed]} Roger Scruton argued that democracy alone cannot provide personal and political freedom unless the institutions of civil society are also present.^[22]

In some countries, notably in the United Kingdom which originated the Westminster system, the dominant principle is that of parliamentary sovereignty, while maintaining judicial independence.^[23][24] In India, parliamentary sovereignty is subject to the Constitution of India which includes judicial review.^[25] Though the term «democracy» is typically used in the context of a political state, the principles also are applicable to private organisations.

There are many decision-making methods used in democracies, but majority rule is the dominant form. Without compensation, like legal protections of individual or group rights, political minorities can be oppressed by the «tyranny of the majority». Majority rule is a competitive approach, opposed to consensus democracy, creating the need that elections, and generally deliberation, are substantively and procedurally «fair,» i.e. just and equitable. In some countries, freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and internet democracy are considered important to ensure that voters are well informed, enabling them to vote according to their own interests.^[26][27]

It has also been suggested that a basic feature of democracy is the capacity of all voters to participate freely and fully in the life of their society.^[28] With its emphasis on notions of social contract and the collective will of all the voters, democracy can also be characterised as a form of political collectivism because it is defined as a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in lawmaking.^[29]

Republics, though often associated with democracy because of the shared principle of rule by consent of the governed, are not necessarily democracies, as republicanism does not specify how the people are to rule.^[30]
Classically the term «republic» encompassed both democracies and aristocracies.^[31][32] In a modern sense the republican form of government is a form of government without monarch. Because of this democracies can be republics or constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom.

History[edit]

Democratic assemblies are as old as the human species and are found throughout human history,^[34] but up until the nineteenth century, major political figures have largely opposed democracy.^[35] Republican theorists linked democracy to small size: as political units grew in size, the likelihood increased that the government would turn despotic.^[36][37] At the same time, small political units were vulnerable to conquest.^[36] Montesquieu wrote, «If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.»^[38] According to Johns Hopkins University political scientist Daniel Deudney, the creation of the United States, with its large size and its system of checks and balances, was a solution to the dual problems of size.^{[36][pages needed]}

Retrospectively different polities, outside of declared democracies, have been described as proto-democratic.

Origins[edit]

The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity.^[39][40] The word comes from dêmos ‘(common) people’ and krátos ‘force/might’.^[41] Under Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the first example of a type of democracy in 508–507 BC was established in Athens. Cleisthenes is referred to as «the father of Athenian democracy».^[42] The first attested use of the word democracy is found in prose works of the 430s BC, such as Herodotus’ Histories, but its usage was older by several decades, as two Athenians born in the 470s were named Democrates, a new political name—likely in support of democracy—given at a time of debates over constitutional issues in Athens. Aeschylus also strongly alludes to the word in his play The Suppliants, staged in c.463 BC, where he mentions «the demos’s ruling hand» [demou kratousa cheir]. Before that time, the word used to define the new political system of Cleisthenes was probably isonomia, meaning political equality.^[43]

Athenian democracy took the form of a direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices,^[44] and a legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens.^[45] All eligible citizens were allowed to speak and vote in the assembly, which set the laws of the city state. However, Athenian citizenship excluded women, slaves, foreigners (μέτοικοι / métoikoi), and youths below the age of military service.^{[46][47][contradictory]} Effectively, only 1 in 4 residents in Athens qualified as citizens. Owning land was not a requirement for citizenship.^[48] The exclusion of large parts of the population from the citizen body is closely related to the ancient understanding of citizenship. In most of antiquity the benefit of citizenship was tied to the obligation to fight war campaigns.^[49]

Athenian democracy was not only direct in the sense that decisions were made by the assembled people, but also the most direct in the sense that the people through the assembly, boule and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business.^[50] Even though the rights of the individual were not secured by the Athenian constitution in the modern sense (the ancient Greeks had no word for «rights»^[51]), those who were citizens of Athens enjoyed their liberties not in opposition to the government but by living in a city that was not subject to another power and by not being subjects themselves to the rule of another person.^[52]

Range voting appeared in Sparta as early as 700 BC. The Spartan ecclesia was an assembly of the people, held once a month, in which every male citizen of at least 20 years of age could participate. In the assembly, Spartans elected leaders and cast votes by range voting and shouting (the vote is then decided on how loudly the crowd shouts). Aristotle called this «childish», as compared with the stone voting ballots used by the Athenian citizenry. Sparta adopted it because of its simplicity, and to prevent any biased voting, buying, or cheating that was predominant in the early democratic elections.^[53][54]

Even though the Roman Republic contributed significantly to many aspects of democracy, only a minority of Romans were citizens with votes in elections for representatives. The votes of the powerful were given more weight through a system of weighted voting, so most high officials, including members of the Senate, came from a few wealthy and noble families.^[55] In addition, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom was the first case in the Western world of a polity being formed with the explicit purpose of being a republic, although it didn’t have much of a democracy. The Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries,^[56] and today’s modern representative democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek models because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader.^{[citation needed]}

Vaishali, capital city of the Vajjika League (Vrijji mahajanapada) of India, was also considered one of the first examples of a republic around the 6th century BC.^[57][58][59]

Other cultures, such as the Iroquois Nation in the Americas also developed a form of democratic society between 1450 and 1660 (and possibly in 1142^[60]), well before contact with the Europeans. This democracy continues to the present day and is the world’s oldest standing representative democracy.^[61][62] This indicates that forms of democracy may have been invented in other societies around the world.^[63]

Middle Ages[edit]

While most regions in Europe during the Middle Ages were ruled by clergy or feudal lords, there existed various systems involving elections or assemblies, although often only involving a small part of the population. In Scandinavia, bodies known as things consisted of freemen presided by a lawspeaker. These deliberative bodies were responsible for settling political questions, and variants included the Althing in Iceland and the Løgting in the Faeroe Islands.^[64][65] The veche, found in Eastern Europe, was a similar body to the Scandinavian thing. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope has been elected by a papal conclave composed of cardinals since 1059. The first documented parliamentary body in Europe was the Cortes of León. Established by Alfonso IX in 1188, the Cortes had authority over setting taxation, foreign affairs and legislating, though the exact nature of its role remains disputed.^[66] The Republic of Ragusa, established in 1358 and centered around the city of Dubrovnik, provided representation and voting rights to its male aristocracy only. Various Italian city-states and polities had republic forms of government. For instance, the Republic of Florence, established in 1115, was led by the Signoria whose members were chosen by sortition. In 10th–15th century Frisia, a distinctly non-feudal society, the right to vote on local matters and on county officials was based on land size. The Kouroukan Fouga divided the Mali Empire into ruling clans (lineages) that were represented at a great assembly called the Gbara. However, the charter made Mali more similar to a constitutional monarchy than a democratic republic.

The Parliament of England had its roots in the restrictions on the power of kings written into Magna Carta (1215), which explicitly protected certain rights of the King’s subjects and implicitly supported what became the English writ of habeas corpus, safeguarding individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with right to appeal.^[67][68] The first representative national assembly in England was Simon de Montfort’s Parliament in 1265.^[69][70] The emergence of petitioning is some of the earliest evidence of parliament being used as a forum to address the general grievances of ordinary people. However, the power to call parliament remained at the pleasure of the monarch.^[71]

Studies have linked the emergence of parliamentary institutions in Europe during the medieval period to urban agglomeration and the creation of new classes, such as artisans,^[72] as well as the presence of nobility and religious elites.^[73] Scholars have also linked the emergence of representative government to Europe’s relative political fragmentation.^[74] Political scientist David Stasavage links the fragmentation of Europe, and its subsequent democratization, to the manner in which the Roman Empire collapsed: Roman territory was conquered by small fragmented groups of Germanic tribes, thus leading to the creation of small political units where rulers were relatively weak and needed the consent of the governed to ward off foreign threats.^[75]

In Poland, noble democracy was characterized by an increase in the activity of the middle nobility, which wanted to increase their share in exercising power at the expense of the magnates. Magnates dominated the most important offices in the state (secular and ecclesiastical) and sat on the royal council, later the senate. The growing importance of the middle nobility had an impact on the establishment of the institution of the land sejmik (local assembly), which subsequently obtained more rights. During the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, sejmiks received more and more powers and became the most important institutions of local power. In 1454, Casimir IV Jagiellon granted the sejmiks the right to decide on taxes and to convene a mass mobilization in the Nieszawa Statutes. He also pledged not to create new laws without their consent.^[76]

Modern era[edit]

Early modern period[edit]

In 17th century England, there was renewed interest in Magna Carta.^[77] The Parliament of England passed the Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament,^[78][79] during which the idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political representation during the Putney Debates of 1647.^[80] Subsequently, the Protectorate (1653–59) and the English Restoration (1660) restored more autocratic rule, although Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689 which codified certain rights and liberties and is still in effect. The Bill set out the requirement for regular elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike much of Europe at the time, royal absolutism would not prevail.^[81][82] Economic historians Douglass North and Barry Weingast have characterized the institutions implemented in the Glorious Revolution as a resounding success in terms of restraining the government and ensuring protection for property rights.^[83]

Renewed interest in the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century prompted the growth of political philosophy on the British Isles. Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory. Writing in Leviathan (1651), Hobbes theorized that individuals living in the state of nature led lives that were «solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short» and constantly waged a war of all against all. In order to prevent the occurrence of an anarchic state of nature, Hobbes reasoned that individuals ceded their rights to a strong, authoritarian government. Later, philosopher and physician John Locke would posit a different interpretation of social contract theory. Writing in his Two Treatises of Government (1689), Locke posited that all individuals possessed the inalienable rights to life, liberty and estate (property).^[84] According to Locke, individuals would voluntarily come together to form a state for the purposes of defending their rights. Particularly important for Locke were property rights, whose protection Locke deemed to be a government’s primary purpose.^[85] Furthermore, Locke asserted that governments were legitimate only if they held the consent of the governed. For Locke, citizens had the right to revolt against a government that acted against their interest or became tyrannical. Although they were not widely read during his lifetime, Locke’s works are considered the founding documents of liberal thought and profoundly influenced the leaders of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution.^[86] His liberal democratic framework of governance remains the preeminent form of democracy in the world.

In the Cossack republics of Ukraine in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Cossack Hetmanate and Zaporizhian Sich, the holder of the highest post of Hetman was elected by the representatives from the country’s districts.

In North America, representative government began in Jamestown, Virginia, with the election of the House of Burgesses (forerunner of the Virginia General Assembly) in 1619. English Puritans who migrated from 1620 established colonies in New England whose local governance was democratic;^[87] although these local assemblies had some small amounts of devolved power, the ultimate authority was held by the Crown and the English Parliament. The Puritans (Pilgrim Fathers), Baptists, and Quakers who founded these colonies applied the democratic organisation of their congregations also to the administration of their communities in worldly matters.^[88][89][90]

18th and 19th centuries[edit]

The first Parliament of Great Britain was established in 1707, after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland under the Acts of Union. Although the monarch increasingly became a figurehead,^[92] Parliament was only elected by male property owners, which amounted to 3% of the population in 1780.^[93] The first known British person of African heritage to vote in a general election, Ignatius Sancho, voted in 1774 and 1780.^[94] During the Age of Liberty in Sweden (1718–1772), civil rights were expanded and power shifted from the monarch to parliament. The taxed peasantry was represented in parliament, although with little influence, but commoners without taxed property had no suffrage.

The creation of the short-lived Corsican Republic in 1755 was an early attempt to adopt a democratic constitution (all men and women above age of 25 could vote).^[95] This Corsican Constitution was the first based on Enlightenment principles and included female suffrage, something that was not included in most other democracies until the 20th century.

In the American colonial period before 1776, and for some time after, often only adult white male property owners could vote; enslaved Africans, most free black people and most women were not extended the franchise. This changed state by state, beginning with the republican State of New Connecticut, soon after called Vermont, which, on declaring independence of Great Britain in 1777, adopted a constitution modelled on Pennsylvania’s with citizenship and democratic suffrage for males with or without property, and went on to abolish slavery.^[96][97] The American Revolution led to the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787, the oldest surviving, still active, governmental codified constitution. The Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties for some, but did not end slavery nor extend voting rights in the United States, instead leaving the issue of suffrage to the individual states.^[98] Generally, states limited suffrage to white male property owners and taxpayers.^[99] At the time of the first Presidential election in 1789, about 6% of the population was eligible to vote.^[100] The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.^[101] The Bill of Rights in 1791 set limits on government power to protect personal freedoms but had little impact on judgements by the courts for the first 130 years after ratification.^[102]

In 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all men in 1792.^[103] The Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of 3 May 1791 sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. In force for less than 19 months, it was declared null and void by the Grodno Sejm that met in 1793.^[104][105] Nonetheless, the 1791 Constitution helped keep alive Polish aspirations for the eventual restoration of the country’s sovereignty over a century later.

However, in the early 19th century, little of democracy—as theory, practice, or even as word—remained in the North Atlantic world.^[106] During this period, slavery remained a social and economic institution in places around the world. This was particularly the case in the United States, where eight serving presidents had owned slaves, and the last fifteen slave states kept slavery legal in the American South until the Civil War.^[107] Advocating the movement of black people from the US to locations where they would enjoy greater freedom and equality, in the 1820s the abolitionist members of the ACS established the settlement of Liberia.^[108] The United Kingdom’s Slave Trade Act 1807 banned the trade across the British Empire, which was enforced internationally by the Royal Navy under treaties Britain negotiated with other states.^[109] In 1833, the UK passed the Slavery Abolition Act which took effect across the British Empire, although slavery was legally allowed to continue in areas controlled by the East India Company, in Ceylon, and in Saint Helena for an additional ten years.^[110]

In the United States, the 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states. Voter turnout soared during the 1830s, reaching about 80% of the adult white male population in the 1840 presidential election.^[111] North Carolina was the last state to abolish property qualification in 1856 resulting in a close approximation to universal white male suffrage (however tax-paying requirements remained in five states in 1860 and survived in two states until the 20th century).^{[112][113][114][nb 1]} In the 1860 United States Census, the slave population had grown to four million,^[115] and in Reconstruction after the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed: the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males a nominal right to vote.^[116][117] Full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the civil rights movement gained passage by the US Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.^[118][119]

The voting franchise in the United Kingdom was expanded and made more uniform in a series of reforms that began with the Reform Act 1832 and continued into the 20th century, notably with the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Equal Franchise Act 1928. Universal male suffrage was established in France in March 1848 in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848.^[120] During that year, several revolutions broke out in Europe as rulers were confronted with popular demands for liberal constitutions and more democratic government.^[121]

In 1876 the Ottoman Empire transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, and held two elections the next year to elect members to her newly formed parliament.^[122] Provisional Electoral Regulations were issued, stating that the elected members of the Provincial Administrative Councils would elect members to the first Parliament. Later that year, a new constitution was promulgated, which provided for a bicameral Parliament with a Senate appointed by the Sultan and a popularly elected Chamber of Deputies. Only men above the age of 30 who were competent in Turkish and had full civil rights were allowed to stand for election. Reasons for disqualification included holding dual citizenship, being employed by a foreign government, being bankrupt, employed as a servant, or having «notoriety for ill deeds». Full universal suffrage was achieved in 1934.^[123]

In 1893 the self-governing colony New Zealand became the first country in the world (except for the short-lived 18th-century Corsican Republic) to establish active universal suffrage by recognizing women as having the right to vote.^[124]

20th and 21st centuries[edit]

20th-century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive «waves of democracy», variously resulting from wars, revolutions, decolonisation, and religious and economic circumstances.^[125] Global waves of «democratic regression» reversing democratization, have also occurred in the 1920s and 30s, in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the 2010s.^[126][127]

World War I and the dissolution of the autocratic Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states in Europe, most of them at least nominally democratic. In the 1920s democratic movements flourished and women’s suffrage advanced, but the Great Depression brought disenchantment and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America, and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships. Fascism and dictatorships flourished in Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as non-democratic governments in the Baltics, the Balkans, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Japan, among others.^[128]

World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in western Europe. The democratisation of the American, British, and French sectors of occupied Germany (disputed^[129]), Austria, Italy, and the occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of government change. However, most of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet sector of Germany fell into the non-democratic Soviet-dominated bloc.

The war was followed by decolonisation, and again most of the new independent states had nominally democratic constitutions. India emerged as the world’s largest democracy and continues to be so.^[130] Countries that were once part of the British Empire often adopted the British Westminster system.^[131][132] By 1960, the vast majority of country-states were nominally democracies, although most of the world’s populations lived in nominal democracies that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge (particularly in «Communist» states and the former colonies.)

A subsequent wave of democratisation brought substantial gains toward true liberal democracy for many states, dubbed «third wave of democracy.» Portugal, Spain, and several of the military dictatorships in South America returned to civilian rule in the 1970s and 1980s.^{[nb 2]} This was followed by countries in East and South Asia by the mid-to-late 1980s. Economic malaise in the 1980s, along with resentment of Soviet oppression, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the associated end of the Cold War, and the democratisation and liberalisation of the former Eastern bloc countries. The most successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally closest to western Europe, and they are now either part of the European Union or candidate states. In 1986, after the toppling of the most prominent Asian dictatorship, the only democratic state of its kind at the time emerged in the Philippines with the rise of Corazon Aquino, who would later be known as the Mother of Asian Democracy.

The liberal trend spread to some states in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples of attempts of liberalisation include the Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.

According to Freedom House, in 2007 there were 123 electoral democracies (up from 40 in 1972).^[134] According to World Forum on Democracy, electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 58.2 percent of the world’s population. At the same time liberal democracies i.e. countries Freedom House regards as free and respectful of basic human rights and the rule of law are 85 in number and represent 38 percent of the global population.^[135] Also in 2007 the United Nations declared 15 September the International Day of Democracy.^[136]

Many countries reduced their voting age to 18 years; the major democracies began to do so in the 1970s starting in Western Europe and North America.^{[137][failed verification][138][139]} Most electoral democracies continue to exclude those younger than 18 from voting.^[140] The voting age has been lowered to 16 for national elections in a number of countries, including Brazil, Austria, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In California, a 2004 proposal to permit a quarter vote at 14 and a half vote at 16 was ultimately defeated. In 2008, the German parliament proposed but shelved a bill that would grant the vote to each citizen at birth, to be used by a parent until the child claims it for themselves.

According to Freedom House, starting in 2005, there have been eleven consecutive years in which declines in political rights and civil liberties throughout the world have outnumbered improvements,^[141] as populist and nationalist political forces have gained ground everywhere from Poland (under the Law and Justice Party) to the Philippines (under Rodrigo Duterte).^[141][126] In a Freedom House report released in 2018, Democracy Scores for most countries declined for the 12th consecutive year.^[142] The Christian Science Monitor reported that nationalist and populist political ideologies were gaining ground, at the expense of rule of law, in countries like Poland, Turkey and Hungary. For example, in Poland, the President appointed 27 new Supreme Court judges over legal objections from the European Commission. In Turkey, thousands of judges were removed from their positions following a failed coup attempt during a government crackdown .^[143]

«Democratic backsliding» in the 2010s were attributed to economic inequality and social discontent,^[145] personalism,^[146] poor management of the COVID-19 pandemic,^[147][148] as well as other factors such as government manipulation of civil society, «toxic polarization,» foreign disinformation campaigns,^[149] racism and nativism, excessive executive power,^{[150][151][152]} and decreased power of the opposition.^[153] Within English-speaking Western democracies, «protection-based» attitudes combining cultural conservatism and leftist economic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for authoritarian modes of governance.^[154]

Theory[edit]

Early theory[edit]

Aristotle contrasted rule by the many (democracy/timocracy), with rule by the few (oligarchy/aristocracy), and with rule by a single person (tyranny or today autocracy/absolute monarchy). He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system (he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to timocracy).^[155][156]

A common view among early and renaissance Republican theorists was that democracy could only survive in small political communities.^[157] Heeding the lessons of the Roman Republic’s shift to monarchism as it grew larger or smaller, these Republican theorists held that the expansion of territory and population inevitably led to tyranny.^[157] Democracy was therefore highly fragile and rare historically, as it could only survive in small political units, which due to their size were vulnerable to conquest by larger political units.^[157] Montesquieu famously said, «if a republic is small, it is destroyed by an outside force; if it is large, it is destroyed by an internal vice.»^[157] Rousseau asserted, «It is, therefore the natural property of small states to be governed as a republic, of middling ones to be subject to a monarch, and of large empires to be swayed by a despotic prince.»^[157]

Contemporary theory[edit]

Among modern political theorists, there are three contending conceptions of democracy: aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy, and radical democracy.^[158]

Aggregative[edit]

The theory of aggregative democracy claims that the aim of the democratic processes is to solicit citizens’ preferences and aggregate them together to determine what social policies society should adopt. Therefore, proponents of this view hold that democratic participation should primarily focus on voting, where the policy with the most votes gets implemented.

Different variants of aggregative democracy exist. Under minimalism, democracy is a system of government in which citizens have given teams of political leaders the right to rule in periodic elections. According to this minimalist conception, citizens cannot and should not «rule» because, for example, on most issues, most of the time, they have no clear views or their views are not well-founded. Joseph Schumpeter articulated this view most famously in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.^[159] Contemporary proponents of minimalism include William H. Riker, Adam Przeworski, Richard Posner.

According to the theory of direct democracy, on the other hand, citizens should vote directly, not through their representatives, on legislative proposals. Proponents of direct democracy offer varied reasons to support this view. Political activity can be valuable in itself, it socialises and educates citizens, and popular participation can check powerful elites. Most importantly, citizens do not rule themselves unless they directly decide laws and policies.

Governments will tend to produce laws and policies that are close to the views of the median voter—with half to their left and the other half to their right. This is not a desirable outcome as it represents the action of self-interested and somewhat unaccountable political elites competing for votes. Anthony Downs suggests that ideological political parties are necessary to act as a mediating broker between individual and governments. Downs laid out this view in his 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy.^[160]

Robert A. Dahl argues that the fundamental democratic principle is that, when it comes to binding collective decisions, each person in a political community is entitled to have his/her interests be given equal consideration (not necessarily that all people are equally satisfied by the collective decision). He uses the term polyarchy to refer to societies in which there exists a certain set of institutions and procedures which are perceived as leading to such democracy. First and foremost among these institutions is the regular occurrence of free and open elections which are used to select representatives who then manage all or most of the public policy of the society. However, these polyarchic procedures may not create a full democracy if, for example, poverty prevents political participation.^[161] Similarly, Ronald Dworkin argues that «democracy is a substantive, not a merely procedural, ideal.»^[162]

Deliberative[edit]

Deliberative democracy is based on the notion that democracy is government by deliberation. Unlike aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups.^{[163][164][165]} If the decision-makers cannot reach consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule. Citizens assemblies are considered by many scholars as practical examples of deliberative democracy,^{[166][167][168]} with a recent OECD report identifying citizens assemblies as an increasingly popular mechanism to involve citizens in governmental decision-making.^[169]

Radical[edit]

Radical democracy is based on the idea that there are hierarchical and oppressive power relations that exist in society. Democracy’s role is to make visible and challenge those relations by allowing for difference, dissent and antagonisms in decision-making processes.

Measurement of democracy[edit]

Indices ranking degree of democracy[edit]

Ranking of the degree of democracy are published by several organisations according to their own various definitions of the term and relying on different types of data:^[170][171]

Difficulties in measuring democracy[edit]

Because democracy is an overarching concept that includes the functioning of diverse institutions which are not easy to measure, strong limitations exist in quantifying and econometrically measuring the potential effects of democracy or its relationship with other phenomena—whether inequality, poverty, education etc.^[177] Given the constraints in acquiring reliable data with within-country variation on aspects of democracy, academics have largely studied cross-country variations. Yet variations between democratic institutions are very large across countries which constrains meaningful comparisons using statistical approaches. Since democracy is typically measured aggregately as a macro variable using a single observation for each country and each year, studying democracy faces a range of econometric constraints and is limited to basic correlations. Cross-country comparison of a composite, comprehensive and qualitative concept like democracy may thus not always be, for many purposes, methodologically rigorous or useful.^[177]

Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller suggest that, in order to truly measure the quality of democracy, objective measurements need to be complemented by «subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens».^[178] Similarly, Quinton Mayne and Brigitte Geißel also defend that the quality of democracy does not depend exclusively on the performance of institutions, but also on the citizens’ own dispositions and commitment.^[179]

Another way of conceiving of the difficulties in measuring democracy is through the debate between minimalist versus maximalist definitions of democracy. As defended by Adam Przeworski, a minimalist conception of democracy defines democracy by primarily considering the structure of electoral procedures; such procedures, minimalists argue, are the essence of democracy.^[180] A minimalist’s focus on structure may help to avoid the erroneous incorporation of noninherent outcomes, such as economic or administrative efficiency, into measures of democracy.^[181]

Mainstream measures of democracy, notably Freedom House and Polity IV, deploy a maximalist understanding of democracy by analyzing indictors that go beyond electoral procedure.^[182] These measures attempt to gauge contestation and inclusion; two features Robert Dahl argued are essential in democracies that successfully promote accountable governments.^[183][184] The democratic rating given by these mainstream measures can vary greatly depending on the indicators and evidence they deploy.^[185] The richness of the definition of democracy utilized by these measures is important because of the discouraging and alienating power such ratings can have, particularly when determined by indicators which are biased towards Western democracies.^[186]

Types of governmental democracies[edit]

Democracy has taken a number of forms, both in theory and practice. Some varieties of democracy provide better representation and more freedom for their citizens than others.^[187][188] However, if any democracy is not structured to prohibit the government from excluding the people from the legislative process, or any branch of government from altering the separation of powers in its favour, then a branch of the system can accumulate too much power and destroy the democracy.^{[189][190][191]}

The following kinds of democracy are not exclusive of one another: many specify details of aspects that are independent of one another and can co-exist in a single system.

Basic forms[edit]

Several variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both of which concern how the whole body of all eligible citizens executes its will. One form of democracy is direct democracy, in which all eligible citizens have active participation in the political decision making, for example voting on policy initiatives directly.^[192] In most modern democracies, the whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called a representative democracy.

Direct[edit]

Direct democracy is a political system where the citizens participate in the decision-making personally, contrary to relying on intermediaries or representatives. A direct democracy gives the voting population the power to:

1. Change constitutional laws,
2. Put forth initiatives, referendums and suggestions for laws,
3. Give binding orders to elective officials, such as revoking them before the end of their elected term or initiating a lawsuit for breaking a campaign promise.^{[citation needed]}

Within modern-day representative governments, certain electoral tools like referendums, citizens’ initiatives and recall elections are referred to as forms of direct democracy.^[193] However, some advocates of direct democracy argue for local assemblies of face-to-face discussion. Direct democracy as a government system currently exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus,^[194] the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities,^[195] communities affiliated with the CIPO-RFM,^[196] the Bolivian city councils of FEJUVE,^[197] and Kurdish cantons of Rojava.^[198]

Lot system[edit]

The use of a lot system, a characteristic of Athenian democracy, is a feature of some versions of direct democracies. In this system, important governmental and administrative tasks are performed by citizens picked from a lottery.^[199]

Representative[edit]

Representative democracy involves the election of government officials by the people being represented. If the head of state is also democratically elected then it is called a democratic republic.^[200] The most common mechanisms involve election of the candidate with a majority or a plurality of the votes. Most western countries have representative systems.^[194]

Representatives may be elected or become diplomatic representatives by a particular district (or constituency), or represent the entire electorate through proportional systems, with some using a combination of the two. Some representative democracies also incorporate elements of direct democracy, such as referendums. A characteristic of representative democracy is that while the representatives are elected by the people to act in the people’s interest, they retain the freedom to exercise their own judgement as how best to do so. Such reasons have driven criticism upon representative democracy,^[201][202] pointing out the contradictions of representation mechanisms with democracy^[203][204]

Parliamentary[edit]

Parliamentary democracy is a representative democracy where government is appointed by or can be dismissed by, representatives as opposed to a «presidential rule» wherein the president is both head of state and the head of government and is elected by the voters. Under a parliamentary democracy, government is exercised by delegation to an executive ministry and subject to ongoing review, checks and balances by the legislative parliament elected by the people.^{[205][206][207][208]}

In a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister may be dismissed by the legislature at any point in time for not meeting the expectations of the legislature. This is done through a Vote of No Confidence where the legislature decides whether or not to remove the Prime Minister from office with majority support for dismissal.^[209] In some countries, the Prime Minister can also call an election at any point in time, typically when the Prime Minister believes that they are in good favour with the public as to get re-elected. In other parliamentary democracies, extra elections are virtually never held, a minority government being preferred until the next ordinary elections. An important feature of the parliamentary democracy is the concept of the «loyal opposition». The essence of the concept is that the second largest political party (or opposition) opposes the governing party (or coalition), while still remaining loyal to the state and its democratic principles.

Presidential[edit]

Presidential Democracy is a system where the public elects the president through an election. The president serves as both the head of state and head of government controlling most of the executive powers. The president serves for a specific term and cannot exceed that amount of time. The legislature often has limited ability to remove a president from office. Elections typically have a fixed date and aren’t easily changed. The president has direct control over the cabinet, specifically appointing the cabinet members.^[209]

The executive usually has the responsibility to execute or implement legislation and may have the limited legislative powers, such as a veto. However, a legislative branch passes legislation and budgets. This provides some measure of separation of powers. In consequence, however, the president and the legislature may end up in the control of separate parties, allowing one to block the other and thereby interfere with the orderly operation of the state. This may be the reason why presidential democracy is not very common outside the Americas, Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia.^[209]

A semi-presidential system is a system of democracy in which the government includes both a prime minister and a president. The particular powers held by the prime minister and president vary by country.^[209]

Hybrid or semi-direct[edit]

Some modern democracies that are predominantly representative in nature also heavily rely upon forms of political action that are directly democratic. These democracies, which combine elements of representative democracy and direct democracy, are termed hybrid democracies,^[210] semi-direct democracies or participatory democracies. Examples include Switzerland and some U.S. states, where frequent use is made of referendums and initiatives.

The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy.^[194] At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament.^[194] Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, to answer 103 questions (during the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums).^[194] Although in the past 120 years less than 250 initiatives have been put to referendum.^[211]

Examples include the extensive use of referendums in the US state of California, which is a state that has more than 20 million voters.^[212]

In New England, town meetings are often used, especially in rural areas, to manage local government. This creates a hybrid form of government, with a local direct democracy and a representative state government. For example, most Vermont towns hold annual town meetings in March in which town officers are elected, budgets for the town and schools are voted on, and citizens have the opportunity to speak and be heard on political matters.^[213]

Democratic backsliding[edit]

Democratization[edit]

Variants[edit]

Constitutional monarchy[edit]

Many countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavian countries, Thailand, Japan and Bhutan turned powerful monarchs into constitutional monarchs (often gradually) with limited or symbolic roles. For example, in the predecessor states to the United Kingdom, constitutional monarchy began to emerge and has continued uninterrupted since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and passage of the Bill of Rights 1689.^[23][81] Strongly limited constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom, have been referred to as crowned republics by writers such as H. G. Wells.^[228]

In other countries, the monarchy was abolished along with the aristocratic system (as in France, China, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Egypt). An elected person, with or without significant powers, became the head of state in these countries.

Elite upper houses of legislatures, which often had lifetime or hereditary tenure, were common in many states. Over time, these either had their powers limited (as with the British House of Lords) or else became elective and remained powerful (as with the Australian Senate).

Republic[edit]

The term republic has many different meanings, but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister.^[229]

The Founding Fathers of the United States often criticised direct democracy, which in their view often came without the protection of a constitution enshrining inalienable rights; James Madison argued, especially in The Federalist No. 10, that what distinguished a direct democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combats faction by its very structure.^[230]

Professors Richard Ellis of Willamette University and Michael Nelson of Rhodes College argue that much constitutional thought, from Madison to Lincoln and beyond, has focused on «the problem of majority tyranny.» They conclude, «The principles of republican government embedded in the Constitution represent an effort by the framers to ensure that the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would not be trampled by majorities.»^[231] What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted,^[232] was that the government be «bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.» As Benjamin Franklin was exiting after writing the U.S. constitution, Elizabeth Willing Powel^[233] asked him «Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?». He replied «A republic—if you can keep it.»^[234]

Liberal democracy[edit]

A liberal democracy is a representative democracy in which the ability of the elected representatives to exercise decision-making power is subject to the rule of law, and moderated by a constitution or laws that emphasise the protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals, and which places constraints on the leaders and on the extent to which the will of the majority can be exercised against the rights of minorities (see civil liberties).

In a liberal democracy, it is possible for some large-scale decisions to emerge from the many individual decisions that citizens are free to make. In other words, citizens can «vote with their feet» or «vote with their dollars», resulting in significant informal government-by-the-masses that exercises many «powers» associated with formal government elsewhere.

[edit]

Socialist thought has several different views on democracy. Social democracy, democratic socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat (usually exercised through Soviet democracy) are some examples. Many democratic socialists and social democrats believe in a form of participatory, industrial, economic and/or workplace democracy combined with a representative democracy.

Within Marxist orthodoxy there is a hostility to what is commonly called «liberal democracy», which is referred to as parliamentary democracy because of its centralised nature. Because of orthodox Marxists’ desire to eliminate the political elitism they see in capitalism, Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyists believe in direct democracy implemented through a system of communes (which are sometimes called soviets). This system ultimately manifests itself as council democracy and begins with workplace democracy.

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.

Anarchist[edit]

Anarchists are split in this domain, depending on whether they believe that a majority-rule is tyrannic or not. To many anarchists, the only form of democracy considered acceptable is direct democracy. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that the only acceptable form of direct democracy is one in which it is recognised that majority decisions are not binding on the minority, even when unanimous.^[236] However, anarcho-communist Murray Bookchin criticised individualist anarchists for opposing democracy,^[237] and says «majority rule» is consistent with anarchism.^[238]

Some anarcho-communists oppose the majoritarian nature of direct democracy, feeling that it can impede individual liberty and opt-in favour of a non-majoritarian form of consensus democracy, similar to Proudhon’s position on direct democracy.^[239] Henry David Thoreau, who did not self-identify as an anarchist but argued for «a better government»^[240] and is cited as an inspiration by some anarchists, argued that people should not be in the position of ruling others or being ruled when there is no consent.

Sortition[edit]

Sometimes called «democracy without elections», sortition chooses decision makers via a random process. The intention is that those chosen will be representative of the opinions and interests of the people at large, and be more fair and impartial than an elected official. The technique was in widespread use in Athenian Democracy and Renaissance Florence^[241] and is still used in modern jury selection.

Consociational[edit]

Consociational democracy was first conceptualized in the 1960s by Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart. Consociational democracy, also called consociationalism, can be defined as a form of democracy based on power-sharing formula between elites representing the social groups in the society. According to the founder of the theory of consociational democracy, Arendt Lijphart, «Consociational democracy means government by elite cartel designed to turn a democracy with a fragmented political culture into a stable democracy».^[242]

A consociational democracy allows for simultaneous majority votes in two or more ethno-religious constituencies, and policies are enacted only if they gain majority support from both or all of them.

Consensus democracy[edit]

A consensus democracy, in contrast, would not be dichotomous. Instead, decisions would be based on a multi-option approach, and policies would be enacted if they gained sufficient support, either in a purely verbal agreement or via a consensus vote—a multi-option preference vote. If the threshold of support were at a sufficiently high level, minorities would be as it were protected automatically. Furthermore, any voting would be ethno-colour blind.

Supranational[edit]

Qualified majority voting is designed by the Treaty of Rome to be the principal method of reaching decisions in the European Council of Ministers. This system allocates votes to member states in part according to their population, but heavily weighted in favour of the smaller states. This might be seen as a form of representative democracy, but representatives to the Council might be appointed rather than directly elected.

Inclusive[edit]

Inclusive democracy is a political theory and political project that aims for direct democracy in all fields of social life: political democracy in the form of face-to-face assemblies which are confederated, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, democracy in the social realm, i.e. self-management in places of work and education, and ecological democracy which aims to reintegrate society and nature. The theoretical project of inclusive democracy emerged from the work of political philosopher Takis Fotopoulos in «Towards An Inclusive Democracy» and was further developed in the journal Democracy & Nature and its successor The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy.

The basic unit of decision making in an inclusive democracy is the demotic assembly, i.e. the assembly of demos, the citizen body in a given geographical area which may encompass a town and the surrounding villages, or even neighbourhoods of large cities. An inclusive democracy today can only take the form of a confederal democracy that is based on a network of administrative councils whose members or delegates are elected from popular face-to-face democratic assemblies in the various demoi. Thus, their role is purely administrative and practical, not one of policy-making like that of representatives in representative democracy.

The citizen body is advised by experts but it is the citizen body which functions as the ultimate decision-taker. Authority can be delegated to a segment of the citizen body to carry out specific duties, for example, to serve as members of popular courts, or of regional and confederal councils. Such delegation is made, in principle, by lot, on a rotation basis, and is always recallable by the citizen body. Delegates to regional and confederal bodies should have specific mandates.

Participatory politics[edit]

A Parpolity or Participatory Polity is a theoretical form of democracy that is ruled by a Nested Council structure. The guiding philosophy is that people should have decision-making power in proportion to how much they are affected by the decision. Local councils of 25–50 people are completely autonomous on issues that affect only them, and these councils send delegates to higher level councils who are again autonomous regarding issues that affect only the population affected by that council.

A council court of randomly chosen citizens serves as a check on the tyranny of the majority, and rules on which body gets to vote on which issue. Delegates may vote differently from how their sending council might wish but are mandated to communicate the wishes of their sending council. Delegates are recallable at any time. Referendums are possible at any time via votes of most lower-level councils, however, not everything is a referendum as this is most likely a waste of time. A parpolity is meant to work in tandem with a participatory economy.

Cosmopolitan[edit]

Cosmopolitan democracy, also known as Global democracy or World Federalism, is a political system in which democracy is implemented on a global scale, either directly or through representatives. An important justification for this kind of system is that the decisions made in national or regional democracies often affect people outside the constituency who, by definition, cannot vote. By contrast, in a cosmopolitan democracy, the people who are affected by decisions also have a say in them.^[243]

According to its supporters, any attempt to solve global problems is undemocratic without some form of cosmopolitan democracy. The general principle of cosmopolitan democracy is to expand some or all of the values and norms of democracy, including the rule of law; the non-violent resolution of conflicts; and equality among citizens, beyond the limits of the state. To be fully implemented, this would require reforming existing international organisations, e.g. the United Nations, as well as the creation of new institutions such as a World Parliament, which ideally would enhance public control over, and accountability in, international politics.

Cosmopolitan Democracy has been promoted, among others, by physicist Albert Einstein,^[244] writer Kurt Vonnegut, columnist George Monbiot, and professors David Held and Daniele Archibugi.^[245] The creation of the International Criminal Court in 2003 was seen as a major step forward by many supporters of this type of cosmopolitan democracy.

Creative democracy[edit]

Creative Democracy is advocated by American philosopher John Dewey. The main idea about Creative Democracy is that democracy encourages individual capacity building and the interaction among the society. Dewey argues that democracy is a way of life in his work of «Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us»^[246] and an experience built on faith in human nature, faith in human beings, and faith in working with others. Democracy, in Dewey’s view, is a moral ideal requiring actual effort and work by people; it is not an institutional concept that exists outside of ourselves. «The task of democracy», Dewey concludes, «is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute».

Guided democracy[edit]

Guided democracy is a form of democracy that incorporates regular popular elections, but which often carefully «guides» the choices offered to the electorate in a manner that may reduce the ability of the electorate to truly determine the type of government exercised over them. Such democracies typically have only one central authority which is often not subject to meaningful public review by any other governmental authority. Russian-style democracy has often been referred to as a «Guided democracy.»^[247] Russian politicians have referred to their government as having only one center of power/ authority, as opposed to most other forms of democracy which usually attempt to incorporate two or more naturally competing sources of authority within the same government.^[248]

Non-governmental democracy[edit]

Aside from the public sphere, similar democratic principles and mechanisms of voting and representation have been used to govern other kinds of groups. Many non-governmental organisations decide policy and leadership by voting. Most trade unions and cooperatives are governed by democratic elections. Corporations are ultimately governed by their shareholders through shareholder democracy. Corporations may also employ systems such as workplace democracy to handle internal governance. Amitai Etzioni has postulated a system that fuses elements of democracy with sharia law, termed Islamocracy.^[249] There is also a growing number of Democratic educational institutions such as Sudbury schools that are co-governed by students and staff.

Shareholder democracy[edit]

Shareholder democracy is a concept relating to the governance of corporations by their shareholders. In the United States, shareholders are typically granted voting rights according to the one share, one vote principle. Shareholders may vote annually to elect the company’s board of directors, who themselves may choose the company’s executives. The shareholder democracy framework may be inaccurate for companies which have different classes of stock that further alter the distribution of voting rights.

Justification[edit]

Several justifications for democracy have been postulated.

Legitimacy[edit]

Social contract theory argues that the legitimacy of government is based on consent of the governed, i.e. an election, and that political decisions must reflect the general will. Some proponents of the theory like Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocate for a direct democracy on this basis.^[250]

Better decision-making[edit]

Condorcet’s jury theorem is logical proof that if each decision-maker has a better than chance probability of making the right decision, then having the largest number of decision-makers, i.e. a democracy, will result in the best decisions. This has also been argued by theories of the wisdom of the crowd.

Economic success[edit]

In Why Nations Fail, economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that democracies are more economically successful because undemocratic political systems tend to limit markets and favor monopolies at the expense of the creative destruction which is necessary for sustained economic growth.

A 2019 study by Acemoglu and others estimated that countries switching to democratic from authoritarian rule had on average a 20% higher GDP after 25 years than if they had remained authoritarian. The study examined 122 transitions to democracy and 71 transitions to authoritarian rule, occurring from 1960 to 2010.^[251] Acemoglu said this was because democracies tended to invest more in health care and human capital, and reduce special treatment of regime allies.^[252]

Criticism[edit]

Arrow’s theorem[edit]

Arrow’s impossibility theorem suggests that democracy is logically incoherent. This is based on a certain set of criteria for democratic decision-making being inherently conflicting, i.e. these three «fairness» criteria:

• If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.
• If every voter’s preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group’s preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters’ preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change).
• There is no «dictator»: no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group’s preference.

Kenneth Arrow summarised the implications of the theorem in a non-mathematical form, stating that «no voting method is fair», «every ranked voting method is flawed», and «the only voting method that isn’t flawed is a dictatorship».^[253]

However, Arrow’s formal premises can be considered overly strict, and with their reasonable weakening, the logical incoherence of democracy looks much less critical.^[2]

Inefficiencies[edit]

Some economists have criticized the efficiency of democracy, citing the premise of the irrational voter, or a voter who makes decisions without all of the facts or necessary information in order to make a truly informed decision. Another argument is that democracy slows down processes because of the amount of input and participation needed in order to go forward with a decision. A common example often quoted to substantiate this point is the high economic development achieved by China (a non-democratic one-party ruling communist state) as compared to India (a democratic multi-party state). According to economists, the lack of democratic participation in countries like China allows for unfettered economic growth.^[254]

On the other hand, Socrates believed that democracy without educated masses (educated in the broader sense of being knowledgeable and responsible) would only lead to populism being the criteria to become an elected leader and not competence. This would ultimately lead to a societal demise. This was quoted by Plato in book 10 of The Republic, in Socrates’ conversation with Adimantus.^[255] Socrates was of the opinion that the right to vote must not be an indiscriminate right (for example by birth or citizenship), but must be given only to people who thought sufficiently of their choice.

Plato’s The Republic presents a critical view of democracy through the narration of Socrates: «Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike.»^[256] In his work, Plato lists 5 forms of government from best to worst, and lists democracy as the second worst, behind only tyranny, which he implies to be the natural outcome of democracy, arguing that in a democracy everyone puts their own selfish interests ahead of the common good until a tyrant emerges who is strong enough to impose his interest on everyone else. Assuming that the Republic was intended to be a serious critique of the political thought in Athens, Plato argues that only Kallipolis, an aristocracy led by the unwilling philosopher-kings (the wisest men), is a just form of government.^[257]

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, warned Joe Biden, U.S. president, via a phone call that democracy was dying. «Democracies require consensus, and it takes time, and you don’t have the time,» Xi Jinping added.^[258]

Popular rule as a façade[edit]

The 20th-century Italian thinkers Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca (independently) argued that democracy was illusory, and served only to mask the reality of elite rule. Indeed, they argued that elite oligarchy is the unbendable law of human nature, due largely to the apathy and division of the masses (as opposed to the drive, initiative and unity of the elites), and that democratic institutions would do no more than shift the exercise of power from oppression to manipulation.^[259] As Louis Brandeis once professed, «We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.»^{[clarification needed]}.^[260]
A study led by Princeton professor Martin Gilens of 1,779 U.S. government decisions concluded that
«elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.»^[261]

Mob rule[edit]

James Madison critiqued democracy in Federalist No. 10, arguing that a republic is a preferable form of government, saying: «… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.» Madison offered that republics were superior to democracies because republics safeguarded against tyranny of the majority, stating in Federalist No. 10: «the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic».^[230] Thomas Jefferson warned that «an elective despotism is not the government we fought for.»^[262]

Political instability[edit]

More recently, democracy is criticised for not offering enough political stability. As governments are frequently elected on and off there tends to be frequent changes in the policies of democratic countries both domestically and internationally. Even if a political party maintains power, vociferous, headline-grabbing protests and harsh criticism from the popular media are often enough to force sudden, unexpected political change. Frequent policy changes with regard to business and immigration are likely to deter investment and so hinder economic growth. For this reason, many people have put forward the idea that democracy is undesirable for a developing country in which economic growth and the reduction of poverty are top priorities.^[263]

This opportunist alliance not only has the handicap of having to cater to too many ideologically opposing factions, but it is usually short-lived since any perceived or actual imbalance in the treatment of coalition partners, or changes to leadership in the coalition partners themselves, can very easily result in the coalition partner withdrawing its support from the government.

Biased media has been accused of causing political instability, resulting in the obstruction of democracy, rather than its promotion.^[264]

Opposition[edit]

Democracy in modern times has almost always faced opposition from the previously existing government, and many times it has faced opposition from social elites. The implementation of a democratic government within a non-democratic state is typically brought about by democratic revolution.

Democratization[edit]

Several philosophers and researchers have outlined historical and social factors seen as supporting the evolution of democracy.

Other commentators have mentioned the influence of economic development.^[265] In a related theory, Ronald Inglehart suggests that improved living-standards in modern developed countries can convince people that they can take their basic survival for granted, leading to increased emphasis on self-expression values, which correlates closely with democracy.^[266][267]

Douglas M. Gibler and Andrew Owsiak in their study argued about the importance of peace and stable borders for the development of democracy. It has often been assumed that democracy causes peace, but this study shows that, historically, peace has almost always predated the establishment of democracy.^[268]

Carroll Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy:^[269][270] Democracy—this scenario—tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to obtain and use.^[271] By the 1800s, guns were the best personal weapons available, and in the United States of America (already nominally democratic), almost everyone could afford to buy a gun, and could learn how to use it fairly easily. Governments couldn’t do any better: it became the age of mass armies of citizen soldiers with guns.^[271] Similarly, Periclean Greece was an age of the citizen soldier and democracy.^[272]

Other theories stressed the relevance of education and of human capital—and within them of cognitive ability to increasing tolerance, rationality, political literacy and participation. Two effects of education and cognitive ability are distinguished:^{[273][need quotation to verify][274][275]}

• a cognitive effect (competence to make rational choices, better information-processing)
• an ethical effect (support of democratic values, freedom, human rights etc.), which itself depends on intelligence.

Evidence consistent with conventional theories of why democracy emerges and is sustained has been hard to come by. Statistical analyses have challenged modernisation theory by demonstrating that there is no reliable evidence for the claim that democracy is more likely to emerge when countries become wealthier, more educated, or less unequal.^[276] In fact, empirical evidence shows that economic growth and education may not lead to increased demand for democratization as modernization theory suggests: historically, most countries attained high levels of access to primary education well before transitioning to democracy.^[277] Rather than acting as a catalyst for democratization, in some situations education provision may instead be used by non-democratic regimes to indoctrinate their subjects and strengthen their power.^[277]

The assumed link between education and economic growth is called into question when analyzing empirical evidence. Across different countries, the correlation between education attainment and math test scores is very weak (.07). A similarly weak relationship exists between per-pupil expenditures and math competency (.26). Additionally, historical evidence suggests that average human capital (measured using literacy rates) of the masses does not explain the onset of industrialization in France from 1750 to 1850 despite arguments to the contrary.^[278] Together, these findings show that education does not always promote human capital and economic growth as is generally argued to be the case. Instead, the evidence implies that education provision often falls short of its expressed goals, or, alternatively, that political actors use education to promote goals other than economic growth and development.

Some scholars have searched for the «deep» determinants of contemporary political institutions, be they geographical or demographic.^[279][280] More inclusive institutions lead to democracy because as people gain more power, they are able to demand more from the elites, who in turn have to concede more things to keep their position.^{[citation needed]} This virtuous circle may end up in democracy.

An example of this is the disease environment. Places with different mortality rates had different populations and productivity levels around the world. For example, in Africa, the tsetse fly—which afflicts humans and livestock—reduced the ability of Africans to plow the land. This made Africa less settled. As a consequence, political power was less concentrated.^[281] This also affected the colonial institutions European countries established in Africa.^[282] Whether colonial settlers could live or not in a place made them develop different institutions which led to different economic and social paths. This also affected the distribution of power and the collective actions people could take. As a result, some African countries ended up having democracies and others autocracies.

An example of geographical determinants for democracy is having access to coastal areas and rivers. This natural endowment has a positive relation with economic development thanks to the benefits of trade.^[283] Trade brought economic development, which in turn, broadened power. Rulers wanting to increase revenues had to protect property-rights to create incentives for people to invest. As more people had more power, more concessions had to be made by the ruler and in many^[quantify] places this process lead to democracy. These determinants defined the structure of the society moving the balance of political power.^[284]

Robert Michels asserts that although democracy can never be fully realised, democracy may be developed automatically in the act of striving for democracy:

The peasant in the fable, when on his deathbed, tells his sons that a treasure is buried in the field. After the old man’s death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being. The treasure in the fable may well symbolise democracy.^[285]

Disruption[edit]

Some democratic governments have experienced sudden state collapse and regime change to an undemocratic form of government. Domestic military coups or rebellions are the most common means by which democratic governments have been overthrown.^[286] (See List of coups and coup attempts by country and List of civil wars.) Examples include the Spanish Civil War, the Coup of 18 Brumaire that ended the First French Republic, and the 28 May 1926 coup d’état which ended the First Portuguese Republic. Some military coups are supported by foreign governments, such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état and the 1953 Iranian coup d’état. Other types of a sudden end to democracy include:

• Invasion, for example the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the fall of South Vietnam.
• Self-coup, in which the leader of the government extra-legally seizes all power or unlawfully extends the term in office. This can be done through:
  • Suspension of the constitution by decree, such as with the 1992 Peruvian coup d’état
  • An «electoral self-coup» using election fraud to obtain re-election of a previously fairly elected official or political party. For example, in the 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, 2003 Russian legislative election, and 2004 Russian presidential election.^[286]
• Royal coup, in which a monarch not normally involved in government seizes all power. For example, the 6 January Dictatorship, begun in 1929 when King Alexander I of Yugoslavia dismissed parliament and started ruling by decree.

Democratic backsliding can end democracy in a gradual manner, by increasing emphasis on national security and eroding free and fair elections, freedom of expression, independence of the judiciary, rule of law. A famous example is the Enabling Act of 1933, which lawfully ended democracy in Weimar Germany and marked the transition to Nazi Germany.

Temporary or long-term political violence and government interference can prevent free and fair elections, which erode the democratic nature of governments. This has happened on a local level even in well-established democracies like the United States; for example, the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 and African-American disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era.

Importance of mass media[edit]

Further information on the role of the mass media in the democratic process: Mediatization (media)

The theory of democracy relies on the implicit assumption that voters are well informed about social issues, policies, and candidates so that they can make a truly informed decision. Since the late 20’th century there has been a growing concern that voters may be poorly informed because the news media are focusing more on entertainment and gossip and less on serious journalistic research on political issues.^[287][288]

The media professors Michael Gurevitch and Jay Blumler have proposed a number of functions that the mass media are expected to fulfill in a democracy:^[289]

• Surveillance of the sociopolitical environment
• Meaningful agenda setting
• Platforms for an intelligible and illuminating advocacy
• Dialogue across a diverse range of views
• Mechanisms for holding officials to account for how they have exercised power
• Incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved
• A principled resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity, and ability to serve the audience
• A sense of respect for the audience member, as potentially concerned and able to make sense of his or her political environment

This proposal has inspired a lot of discussions over whether the news media are actually fulfilling the requirements that a well functioning democracy requires.^[290]
Commercial mass media are generally not accountable to anybody but their owners, and they have no obligation to serve a democratic function.^[290][291]
They are controlled mainly by economic market forces. Fierce economic competition may force the mass media to divert themselves from any democratic ideals and focus entirely on how to survive the competition.^[292][293]

The tabloidization and popularization of the news media is seen in an increasing focus on human examples rather than statistics and principles.
There is more focus on politicians as personalities and less focus on political issues in the popular media. Election campaigns are covered more as horse races and less as debates about ideologies and issues. The dominating media focus on spin, conflict, and competitive strategies has made voters perceive the politicians as egoists rather than idealists. This fosters mistrust and a cynical attitude to politics, less civic engagement, and less interest in voting.^{[294][295][296]}
The ability to find effective political solutions to social problems is hampered when problems tend to be blamed on individuals rather than on structural causes.^[295]
This person-centered focus may have far-reaching consequences not only for domestic problems but also for foreign policy when international conflicts are blamed on foreign heads of state rather than on political and economic structures.^[297][298]
A strong media focus on fear and terrorism has allowed military logic to penetrate public institutions, leading to increased surveillance and the erosion of civil rights.^[299]

The responsiveness and accountability of the democratic system is compromised when lack of access to substantive, diverse, and undistorted information is handicapping the citizens’ capability of evaluating the political process.^[291][296]
The fast pace and trivialization in the competitive news media is dumbing down the political debate. Thorough and balanced investigation of complex political issues does not fit into this format. The political communication is characterized by short time horizons, short slogans, simple explanations, and simple solutions. This is conducive to political populism rather than serious deliberation.^[291][299]

Commercial mass media are often differentiated along the political spectrum so that people can hear mainly opinions that they already agree with. Too much controversy and diverse opinions are not always profitable for the commercial news media.^[300]
Political polarization is emerging when different people read different news and watch different TV channels. This polarization has been worsened by the emergence of the social media that allow people to communicate mainly with groups of like-minded people, the so-called echo chambers.^[301]
Extreme political polarization may undermine the trust in democratic institutions, leading to erosion of civil rights and free speech and in some cases even reversion to autocracy.^[302]

Many media scholars have discussed non-commercial news media with public service obligations as a means to improve the democratic process by providing the kind of political contents that a free market does not
provide.^[303][304]
The World Bank has recommended public service broadcasting in order to strengthen democracy in developing countries. These broadcasting services should be accountable to an independent regulatory body that is adequately protected from interference from political and economic interests.^[305]
Public service media have an obligation to provide reliable information to voters. Many countries have publicly funded radio and television stations with public service obligations, especially in Europe and Japan,^[306] while such media are weak or non-existent in other countries including the
USA.^[307]
Several studies have shown that the stronger the dominance of commercial broadcast media over public service media, the less the amount of policy-relevant information in the media and the more focus on horse race journalism, personalities, and the pecadillos of politicians. Public service broadcasters are characterized by more policy-relevant information and more respect for journalistic norms and impartiality than the commercial media. However, the trend of deregulation has put the public service model under increased pressure from competition with commercial
media.^{[306][308][309]}

The emergence of the internet and the social media has profoundly altered the conditions for political communication. The social media have given ordinary citizens easy access to voice their opinion and share information while bypassing the filters of the large news media. This is often seen as an advantage for democracy.^[310]
The new possibilities for communication have fundamentally changed the way social movements and protest movements operate and organize. The internet and social media have provided powerful new tools for democracy movements in developing countries and emerging democracies, enabling them to bypass censorship, voice their opinions, and organize protests.^[311][312]

A serious problem with the social media is that they have no truth filters. The established news media have to guard their reputation as trustworthy, while ordinary citizens may post unreliable information.^[311] In fact, studies show that false stories are going more viral than true stories.^[313][314]
The proliferation of false stories and conspiracy theories may undermine public trust in the political system and public officials.^[314][302]

Reliable information sources are essential for the democratic process. Less democratic governments rely heavily on censorship, propaganda, and misinformation in order to stay in power, while independent sources of information are able to undermine their legitimacy.^[315]

See also[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

References[edit]

Works cited[edit]

• Clarke, P.; Foweraker, J. (2001). Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-19396-6.
• Graeber, David (2013). The Democracy Project : a history, a crisis, a movement. New York. ISBN 978-0-8129-9356-1. OCLC 769425385.
• Livy; De Sélincourt, A.; Ogilvie, R. M.; Oakley, S. P. (2002). The early history of Rome: books I-V of The history of Rome from its foundations. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044809-8.
• Mann, Barbara A.; Fields, Jerry L. (1997). «A Sign in the Sky: Dating the League of the Haudenosaunee». American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 21 (2): 105–163. doi:10.17953/aicr.21.2.k36m1485r3062510.
• Ober, J.; Hedrick, C.W. (1996). Dēmokratia: a conversation on democracies, ancient and modern. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01108-0.
• Raaflaub, Kurt A.; Ober, Josiah; Wallace, Robert W (2007). Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24562-4.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

• Democracy at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Democracy
• Index 2008.pdf The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index of democracy^{[dead link]}
• Alexis de of data sources on political regimes on Our World in Data, by Max Roser.
• «Democracy», BBC Radio 4 discussion on the origins of Democracy (In Our Time, 18 October 2001)
• Democracy Countries 2022 interactive map of countries at World Population Review

A democracy is a form of government that empowers the people to exercise political control, limits the power of the head of state, provides for the separation of powers between governmental entities, and ensures the protection of natural rights and civil liberties. In practice, democracy takes many different forms. Along with the two most common types of democracies—direct and representative—variants such as participatory, liberal, parliamentary, pluralist, constitutional, and socialist democracies can be found in use today.

Despite the prominence in the headlines of non-democratic, authoritarian states like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, democracy remains the world’s most commonly practiced form of government. In 2018, for example, a total of 96 out of 167 countries (57%) with populations of at least 500,000 were democracies of some type. Statics show that the percentage of democracies among the world’s governments has been increasing since the mid-1970s, currently standing just short of its post-World War II high of 58% in 2016.

Democracy Definition

Meaning “rule by the people,” democracy is a system of government that not only allows but requires the participation of the people in the political process to function properly. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in his famed 1863 Gettysburg Address may have best-defined democracy as a “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

Semantically, the term democracy comes from the Greek words for “people” (dēmos) and “rule” (karatos). However, achieving and preserving a government by the people—a “popular” government—is far more complicated than the concept’s semantic simplicity might imply. In creating the legal framework under which the democracy will function, typically a constitution, several crucial political and practical questions must be answered.

Is “rule by the people” even appropriate for the given state? Do the inherent freedoms of a democracy justify dealing with its complex bureaucracy and electoral processes, or would the streamlined predictability of a monarchy, for example, be preferable?

Assuming a preference for democracy, which residents of the country, state, or town should enjoy the political status of full citizenship? Simply stated, who are the “people” in the “government by the people” equation? In the United States, for example, the constitutionally established doctrine of birthright citizenship provides that any person born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a U.S. citizen. Other democracies are more restrictive in bestowing full citizenship.

Which people within the democracy should be empowered to participate in it? Assuming that only adults are allowed to fully participate in the political process, should all adults be included? For example, until the enactment of the 19th Amendment in 1920, women in the United States were not allowed to vote in national elections. A democracy that excludes too many of the governed from taking part in what is supposed to be their government runs the risk of becoming an aristocracy—government by a small, privileged ruling class—or an oligarchy—government by an elite, typically wealthy, few.

If, as one of the foundational principles of democracy holds, the majority rules, what will a “proper” majority be? A majority of all citizens or a majority of citizens who vote only? When issues, as they inevitably will, divide the people, should the wishes of the majority always prevail, or should, as in the case of the American Civil Rights Movement, minorities be empowered to overcome majority rule? Most importantly, what legal or legislative mechanisms should be created to prevent the democracy from becoming a victim of what one of America’s Founding Fathers, James Madison, called “the tyranny of the majority?”

Finally, how likely is it that a majority of the people will continue to believe that democracy is the best form of government for them? For a democracy to survive it must retain the substantial support of both the people and the leaders they choose. History has shown that democracy is a particularly fragile institution. In fact, of the 120 new democracies that have emerged around the world since 1960, nearly half have resulted in failed states or have been replaced by other, typically more authoritarian forms of government. It is therefore essential that democracies be designed to respond quickly and appropriately to the internal and external factors that will inevitably threaten them.

Democratic Principles

While their opinions vary, a consensus of political scientists agree that most democracies are based on six foundational elements:

• Popular sovereignty: The principle that the government is created and maintained by the consent of the people through their elected representatives.
• An Electoral System: Since according to the principle of popular sovereignty, the people are the source of all political power, a clearly defined system of conducting free and fair elections is essential.
• Public Participation: Democracies rarely survive without the active participation of the people. Health democracies enable and encourage the people to take part in their political and civic processes. 
• Separation of Powers: Based on a suspicion of power concentrated in a single individual—like a king—or group, the constitutions of most democracies provide that political powers be separated and shared among the various governmental entities.
• Human Rights: Along with their constitutionally enumerated rights freedoms, democracies protect the human rights of all citizens. In this context, human rights are those rights considered inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other considerations.
• A Rule of Law: Also called due process of law, the rule of law is the principle that all citizens are accountable to laws that are publicly created and equitably enforced in a manner consistent with human rights by an independent judicial system.

Types of Democracy

Throughout history, more types of democracy have been identified than there are countries in the world. According to social and political philosopher Jean-Paul Gagnon, more than 2,234 adjectives have been used to describe democracy. While many scholars refer to direct and representative as the most common of these, several other types of democracies can be found around the world today. While direct democracy is unique, most other recognized types of democracy are variants of representative democracy. These various types of democracy are generally descriptive of the particular values emphasized by the representative democracies that employ them.

Direct

Originated in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE, direct democracy, sometimes called “pure democracy,” is considered the oldest non-authoritarian form of government. In a direct democracy, all laws and public policy decisions are made directly by a majority vote of the people, rather than by the votes of their elected representatives.

Functionally possible only in small states, Switzerland is the only example of a direct democracy applied on a national level today. While Switzerland is no longer a true direct democracy, any law passed by the popularly elected national parliament can be vetoed by a direct vote of the public. Citizens can also change the constitution through direct votes on amendments. In the United States, examples of direct democracy can be found in state-level recall elections and lawmaking ballot initiatives.

Representative

Also called indirect democracy, representative democracy is a system of government in which all eligible citizens elect officials to pass laws and formulate public policy on their behalf. These elected officials are expected to represent the needs and viewpoints of the people in deciding the best course of action for the nation, state, or other jurisdiction as a whole.

As the most commonly found type of democracy in use today, almost 60% of all countries employ some form of representative democracy including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

Participatory

In a participatory democracy, the people vote directly on policy while their elected representatives are responsible for implementing those policies. Participatory democracies rely on the citizens in setting the direction of the state and the operation of its political systems. While the two forms of government share similar ideals, participatory democracies tend to encourage a higher, more direct form of citizen participation than traditional representative democracies.

While there are no countries specifically classified as participatory democracies, most representative democracies employ citizen participation as a tool for social and political reform. In the United States, for example, so-called “grassroots” citizen participation causes such as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s have led elected officials to enact laws implementing sweeping social, legal, and political policy changes.

Liberal

Liberal democracy is loosely defined as a form of representative democracy that emphasizes the principles of classical liberalism—an ideology advocating the protection of individual civil liberties and economic freedom by limiting the power of the government. Liberal democracies employ a constitution, either statutorily codified, as in the United States or uncodified, as in the United Kingdom, to define the powers of the government, provide for a separation of those powers, and enshrine the social contract.

Liberal democracies may take the form of a constitutional republic, like the United States, or a constitutional monarchy, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Parliamentary

In a parliamentary democracy, the people directly elect representatives to a legislative parliament. Similar to the U.S. Congress, the parliament directly represents the people in making necessary laws and policy decisions for the country.

In parliamentary democracies such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, the head of government is a prime minister, who is first elected to parliament by the people, then elected prime minister by a vote of the parliament. However, the prime minister remains a member of the parliament and thus plays an active role in the legislative process of creating and passing laws. Parliamentary democracies are typically a feature of a constitutional monarch, a system of government in which the head of state is a queen or king whose power is limited by a constitution.

Pluralist

In a pluralist democracy, no single group dominates politics. Instead, organized groups within the people compete to influence public policy. In political science, the term pluralism expresses the ideology that influence should be spread among different interest groups, rather than held by a single elite group as in an aristocracy. Compared to participatory democracies, in which individuals take part in influencing political decisions, in a pluralist democracy, individuals work through groups formed around common causes hoping to win the support of elected leaders.

In this context, the pluralist democracy assumes that the government and the society as a whole benefit from a diversity of viewpoints. Examples of pluralist democracy can be seen in the impact special interest groups, such as the National Organization for Women, have had on American politics.

Constitutional

While the exact definition continues to be debated by political scientists, constitutional democracy is generally defined as a system of government based on popular sovereignty and a rule of law in which the structures, powers, and limits of government are established by a constitution. Constitutions are intended to restrict the power of the government, typically by separating those powers between the various branches of government, as in the United States’ constitution’s system of federalism. In a constitutional democracy, the constitution is considered to be the “supreme law of the land.”

Socialist

Democratic socialism is broadly defined as a system of government based on a socialist economy, in which most property and means of production are collectively, rather than individually, controlled by a constitutionally established political hierarchy—the government. Social democracy embraces government regulation of business and industry as a means of furthering economic growth while preventing income inequality.

While there are no purely socialist governments in the world today, elements of democratic socialism can be seen in Sweden’s provision of free universal health care, education, and sweeping social welfare programs. 

Is America a Democracy

While the word “democracy” does not appear in the United States Constitution, the document provides the basic elements of representative democracy: an electoral system based on majority rule, separation of powers, and a dependence on a rule of law. Also, America’s Founding Fathers used the word often when debating the form and function of the Constitution.  

However, a long-running debate over whether the United States is a democracy or a republic continues today. According to a growing number of political scientists and constitutional scholars, it is both—a “democratic republic.”

Similar to democracy, a republic is a form of government in which the country is governed by the elected representatives of the people. However, since the people do not govern the state themselves, but do so through their representatives, a republic is distinguished from direct democracy.

Professor Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law argues that the governments of democratic republics embrace the principles shared by both republics and democracies. To illustrate his point, Volokh notes that in the United States, many decisions on local and state levels are made by the people through the process of direct democracy, while as in a republic, most decisions at the national level are made by democratically elected representatives.

Brief History

Archeological evidence suggests that disorganized practices at least resembling democracy existed in some parts of the world during prehistoric times, However, the concept of democracy as a form of populist civic engagement emerged during the 5th century BCE in the form of the political system used in some of the city-states of Ancient Greece, most notably Athens. At that time, and for the next several centuries, tribes or city-states remained small enough that if democracy was practiced at all, it took the form of direct democracy. As city-states grew into larger, more heavily populated sovereign nation-states or countries, direct democracy became unwieldy and slowly gave way to representative democracy. This massive change necessitated an entirely new set of political institutions such as legislatures, parliaments, and political parties all designed according to the size and cultural character of the city or country to be governed.

Until the 17th century, most legislatures consisted only of the entire body of citizens, as in Greece, or representatives selected from among a tiny oligarchy or an elite hereditary aristocracy. This began to change during the English Civil Wars from 1642 to 1651 when members of the radical Puritan reformation movement demanded expanded representation in Parliament and the universal right to vote for all male citizens. By the middle 1700s, as the power of the British Parliament grew, the first political parties—the Whigs and Tories—emerged. It soon became obvious that laws could not be passed or taxes levied without the support of the Whig or Tory party representatives in Parliament.

While the developments in the British Parliament showed the feasibility of a representative form of government, the first truly representative democracies emerged during the 1780s in the British colonies of North America and took its modern form with the formal adoption of the Constitution of the United States of America on March 4, 1789.

Sources and Further Reference

• Desilver, Drew. “Despite global concerns about democracy, more than half of countries are democratic.” Pew Research Center, May 14, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/14/more-than-half-of-countries-are-democratic/.
• Kapstein, Ethan B., and Converse, Nathan. “The Fate of Young Democracies.” Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 9780511817809.
• Diamond, Larry. “Democracy in Decline?” Johns Hopkins University Press, October 1, 2015, ISBN-10 1421418185.
• Gagnon, Jean-Paul. “2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy’s Ontological Pluralism.” Democratic Theory, vol. 5, no. 1, 2018.
• Volokh, Eugene. “Is the United States of America a republic or a democracy?” The Washington Post, May 13, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/13/is-the-united-states-of-america-a-republic-or-a-democracy/. 

Do you live in a democracy? Do you know what sort of governmental system your country uses? This article will teach you what the word democracy means and then provide supplemental information on the word democracy. So, if you want to know all there is to know about the word democracy, keep reading!

What Does Democracy Mean?

According to Britannica and Dictionary, a democracy is a form of government or a political system in which elected representatives make decisions on behalf of the people, who retain the supreme power. There are many forms of democracies, including direct democracy, liberal democracy, representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, social democracy, and more.

If you study political science or political theory, you will probably hear the word democracy pop up frequently. Several countries around the world operate as democracies or democratic republics. There are many different government systems in the world, and none are one hundred percent right or wrong.  

How Can We Use Democracy in a Sentence?

If you discuss politics and political systems, you might hear the word democracy. One of the best ways to memorize a word’s definition is to practice using it in a sentence. First, study the below example sentences, which contain the word democracy. Then, try coming up with your own example sentences for the word democracy!

Example #1: A True Democracy

Even though we live in Western democracies, it feels as though we are under a dictatorial rule of law where our human rights and social equality are constantly in jeopardy.

Example #2: Going Against a Democracy

The common people believed that the New York electorate went against democracy and voters’ wishes due to their involvement with interest groups.

Example #3: Democratic Elections

While we have free elections under our democracy, it can feel like political power is still in the hands of the political systems themselves.  

Example #4: A Modern Democracy

Democracy today is very different than it was in city-states like Athens in Ancient Greece.

What Is the Etymology of Democracy?

The word democracy comes from the Ancient Greek dēmokratia. This Greek term combines demos, which means people, and kratos or kratia, which means a rule. These Greek terms led to the Late Latin dēmocratia and Middle French démocratie, and the word democracy entered the English language between 1525 and 1535.

What Are Translations of Democracy?

Democracies exist all around the world. If you are studying global politics or are interested in how different systems of government work around the world, you can study this list of translations from Nice Translator. 

You might notice that several of these words look and sound similar to the word democracy. This often happens when two worlds in different languages have the same language of origin. 

• Hungarian: demokrácia
• Serbian: демократија
• Filipino: Demokrasya
• Greek: Δημοκρατία
• Vietnamese: nền dân chủ
• Bulgarian: демокрация
• French: la démocratie
• Amharic: ዴሞክራሲ
• Gujarati: લોકશાહી
• Polish: demokracja
• Turkish: demokrasi
• Basque: demokrazia
• Catalan: democràcia
• Chinese (PRC): 民主
• Korean: 민주주의
• Tamil: ஜனநாயகம்
• Russian: демократия
• Spanish: democracia
• Croatian: demokracija
• Hebrew: דֵמוֹקרָטִיָה
• Estonian: demokraatia
• Telugu: ప్రజాస్వామ్యం
• Italian: democrazia
• Thai: ประชาธิปไตย
• Welsh: democratiaeth
• Lithuanian: Demokratija
• Japanese: 民主主義
• Arabic: ديمقراطية
• Malayalam: ജനാധിപത്യം
• Swedish: demokrati
• Indonesian: demokrasi
• Danish: demokrati
• Ukrainian: демократія
• Portuguese (Brazil): democracia
• Slovenian: demokracija
• Dutch: democratie
• Hindi: लोकतंत्र
• Icelandic: lýðræði
• Portuguese (Portugal): democracia
• Latvian: demokrātija
• Czech: demokracie
• Chinese (Taiwan): 民主
• Urdu: جمہوریت
• Swahili: demokrasia
• Slovak: demokracia
• Kannada: ಪ್ರಜಾಪ್ರಭುತ್ವ
• Norwegian: demokrati
• Finnish: demokratia
• Bengali: গণতন্ত্র
• Marathi: लोकशाही
• Romanian: democraţie
• German: Demokratie
• Malay: demokrasi

What Are Synonyms of Democracy?

Power Thesaurus lists several words and phrases with the same or a similar meaning as the word democracy. Several of these words can be used in place of the term democracy, while others refer to similar systems of government. 

If you feel that you have overused the word democracy, you can opt to use one of these synonyms of democracy in its place. How many of these synonyms of democracy do you already know?

• autonomy
• civil government
• commonwealth
• constitutional government
• democracies
• democratic governance
• democratic organization
• democratic rule
• democratic society
• democratic state
• democratic system
• democratism
• egalitarianism
• elective government
• emancipation
• freedom
• government by the people
• home rule
• majority rule
• people power
• polity
• popular government
• popular rule
• popular sovereignty
• representative government
• republic
• self-determination
• self-government
• self-rule
• sovereignty
• sovereignty of the people
• suffrage

What Are Antonyms of Democracy?

If someone doesn’t live in a democracy, the governmental power doesn’t lie with the people. The opposite of a democracy is likely a type of authoritarian regime. To learn all about systems of government that are the opposite of democracy, study this list of democracy antonyms from Power Thesaurus. 

Do you know the difference between these authoritarian systems of government? For example, what is the difference between fascism, a dictatorship, or a religious oligarchy? You can research all of these different types of government to learn more. 

• absolutism
• arbitrariness
• arbitrary rule
• ascendancy
• autarchy
• authoritarianism
• autocracy
• blood and iron
• coercion
• collectivism
• communalism
• communism
• compulsion
• constraint
• despotism
• dictate
• dictatorship
• domination
• fascism
• force
• garrison state
• human rights abuse
• imperiousness
• inequality
• junta
• military rule
• monarchy
• monocracy
• oligarchy
• one-man government
• oppression
• plutocracy
• policy of militarism
• rod
• socialism
• stratocracy
• totalism
• totalitarian government
• totalitarianism
• tyrannical rule
• tyranny

Conclusion

The definition of democracy is an electoral system of government in which the power rests with the people. People who live in a democracy often elect officials who represent their beliefs and vote on decisions by majority rule. Of course, governmental systems are much more complicated than this, but that is the general premise of a democracy. 

Sources:

1. Democracy synonyms – 115 Words and Phrases for Democracy | Power Thesaurus 
2. Democracy antonyms – 138 Opposites of Democracy | Power Thesaurus 
3. Democracy | Nice Translator 
4. Democracy Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
5. democracy | Definition, History, Meaning, Types, Examples, & Facts | Britannica  

No one is born a good citizen, no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth.
Kofi Annan

What is Democracy?

The word democracy comes from the Greek words «demos», meaning people, and «kratos» meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as «power of the people»: a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.

There are so many different models of democratic government around the world that it is sometimes easier to understand the idea of democracy in terms of what it definitely is not. Democracy, then, is not autocracy or dictatorship, where one person rules; and it is not oligarchy, where a small segment of society rules. Properly understood, democracy should not even be «rule of the majority», if that means that minorities’ interests are ignored completely. A democracy, at least in theory, is government on behalf of all the people, according to their «will».

Question: If democracy is government by the people, are there any real democracies in the world?

Why democracy?

The idea of democracy derives its moral strength – and popular appeal – from two key principles:
1. Individual autonomy: The idea that no-one should be subject to rules which have been imposed by others. People should be able to control their own lives (within reason).
2. Equality: The idea that everyone should have the same opportunity to influence the decisions that affect people in society.

These principles are intuitively appealing, and they help to explain why democracy is so popular. Of course we feel it is fair that we should have as much chance as anyone else to decide on common rules!

The problems arise when we consider how the principles can be put into practice, because we need a mechanism for deciding how to address conflicting views. Because it offers a simple mechanism, democracy tends to be «rule of the majority»; but rule of the majority can mean that some people’s interests are never represented. A more genuine way of representing everyone’s interests is to use decision making by consensus, where the aim is to find common points of interest.

Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of making decisions by consensus, compared to using majority rule? How are decisions made in your youth group?

The development of democracy

Ancient history

The ancient Greeks are credited with creating the very first democracy, although there were almost certainly earlier examples of primitive democracy in other parts of the world. The Greek model was established in the 5th century BC, in the city of Athens. Among a sea of autocracies and oligarchies – which were the normal forms of government at the time – Athenian democracy stood out.
However, compared to how we understand democracy today, the Athenian model had two important differences:

1. Theirs was a form of direct democracy – in other words, instead of electing representatives to govern on the people’s behalf, «the people» themselves met, discussed questions of government, and then implemented policy.

2. Such a system was possible partly because «the people» was a very limited category. Those who could participate directly were a small part of the population, since women, slaves, aliens – and of course, children – were excluded. The numbers who participated were still far more than in a modern democracy: perhaps 50,000 males engaged directly in politics, out of a population of around 300,000 people.

Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of direct democracy?

Democracy in the modern world

Today there are as many different forms of democracy as there are democratic nations in the world. No two systems are exactly the same and no one system can be taken as a «model». There are presidential and parliamentary democracies, democracies that are federal or unitary, democracies that use a proportional voting system, and ones that use a majoritarian system, democracies which are also monarchies, and so on.

One thing that unites modern systems of democracy, and which also distinguishes them from the ancient model, is the use of representatives of the people. Instead of taking part directly in law making, modern democracies use elections to select representatives who are sent by the people to govern on their behalf. Such a system is known as representative democracy. It can lay some claim to being «democratic» because it is, at least to some degree, based on the two principles above: equality of all (one person – one vote), and the right of every individual to some degree of personal autonomy.

Question: What should an elected official do to make sure he or she is representing properly those who elected him or her?

Improving democracy

People often talk about countries «becoming» democracies, once they start to have relatively free and open elections. But democracy includes far more than just elections, and it really makes more sense to think about the will of the people idea, rather than about institutional or voting structures, when we are trying to assess how democratic a country is. Democracy is better understood as something that we can always have more – or less – of, rather than something that either is, or is not.

Democratic systems can nearly always be made more inclusive, more reflective of more people’s wishes, and more responsive to their influence. In other words, there is room to improve the «people» part of democracy, by including more people in decision making; there is also room to improve the «power» or «will» part of democracy, by giving the people more real power. Struggles for democracy throughout history have normally concentrated on one or the other of these elements.

Today, in most countries of the world, women do have the vote but the struggle has been won only relatively recently. New Zealand is said to be the first country in the world to have introduced universal suffrage, in 1893, although even here, women were only granted the right to stand for parliament in 1919. Many countries have granted women the right to vote first of all, and only several years later, have allowed them to stand for elected office. Saudi Arabia has only  granted women the power to vote in elections in 2011.  
Today even in established democracies, there are other sections of society, which commonly include immigrants, migrant workers, prisoners and children, who are not given the right to vote, even though many of them might pay taxes and all are obliged to obey the laws of the land.

Question: Can excluding certain sectors of society from the democratic process ever be justified?

Democracy and participation

The most obvious ways to participate in government are to vote, or to stand for office and become a representative of the people. Democracy, however, is about far more than just voting, and there are numerous other ways of engaging with politics and government. The effective functioning of democracy, in fact, depends on ordinary people using these other means as much as possible. If people only vote once every 4 or 5 years – or do not vote at all – and if they do nothing else in the interim, then government really cannot be said to be «by the people». It is hard to say that such a system is a democracy.
You can read in more detail about ways of participating in the section on Citizenship and Participation. Here are a few ideas – perhaps the minimum that might be needed for members of parliament to be able to act democratically, on your behalf:
Stay informed about what is happening, what is being decided «in the name of the people», and in particular, about the decisions and actions being taken by your own representative.
Make your opinions known – either to your representatives in parliament, or to the media, or to groups working on particular issues. Without feedback from «the people», leaders can only lead according to their own will and priorities.
Where decisions appear to be undemocratic, or against human rights, or even when you just feel strongly about them, make efforts to get your voice heard, so that the policies may be reconsidered. The most effective way of doing this is probably by joining with other people so that your voice is louder.
Vote, when the possibility arises. If people do not vote, then members are effectively unaccountable.

Question: Have you ever participated in any of these ways (or others)?

Democracy and Human Rights

The connection between human rights and democracy is deep, and goes both ways: each is in some way dependent on the other, and incomplete without the other.

First of all, the values of equality and autonomy are also human rights values, and the right to take part in government is itself a human right. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) tells us that «The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government»: so democracy is in fact the only form of government which is consistent with human rights.

However, a «democracy» is also incomplete without a thorough-going respect for human rights. Taking part in government, in a genuine way, is almost impossible to do without people having other basic rights respected. Consider the following, as examples:
1. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion (UDHR, Article 18). This is one of the first rights which are essential in a democracy: people need to be able to think freely, to hold whatever beliefs are important to them, without being punished for doing so. Governments throughout history have tried to limit this right because they are afraid that if people think about other forms of government, this will endanger the current system. So they have locked people away simply for thinking the «wrong» thoughts. (Such people are known as prisoners of conscience.) However, a society without a pluralism of views is not just intolerant; it also limits its own possibilities to develop in new and possibly improved directions.

2. Freedom of Expression (UDHR, Article 19). It is important not just to be able to think what you want, but also to be able to express that opinion out loud, whatever that opinion may be. If people are prevented from discussing their views with other people, or presenting them in the media, how can they «take part» in government? Their opinion has essentially been discounted from the possible alternatives under consideration.

3. Freedom of peaceful assembly and association (UDHR Article 20). This right allows you to discuss ideas with others who want to do so, to form interest groups or lobbying groups, or to gather together for the purposes of protest against decisions you disagree with. Perhaps such an activity is sometimes inconvenient for governments; however it is essential if different views are to be made known and taken into account. And that is part of what democracy is all about.

These are just three human rights which are intrinsically bound up with the idea of democracy, but any infringement of other human rights will also affect the extent to which different people are able to take part in government. Poverty, poor health, or the lack of a home, can all make it more difficult for someone to have their voice heard, and diminish the impact of their choice, compared with others. Such infringements of rights almost certainly make it impossible for the person concerned to be elected to government office.

Question: How well are the three «democratic» rights (listed above) respected in your country?

Problems with democracy

Voter apathy

For a number of years, there has been concern about the status of democracy, perhaps particularly in the more established democracies. Much of this is based on the decreasing levels of citizen participation at elections, which appear to indicate a lack of interest and involvement on the part of citizens. A low voter turnout calls into question the legitimacy of so-called democratically elected governments, which are, in some countries, actually elected by a minority of the total electorate.

Question: What proportion of the electorate voted in your country’s most recent elections?

Although it is undoubtedly a problem that people are increasingly failing to vote in elections, there are some studies which indicate that participation in different forms may actually be on the increase, for example, pressure groups, civic initiatives, consultative organs, and so on. These forms of participation are just as important to the effective functioning of democracy as voter turnout at elections, if not more so.

Rule of the Majority

There are two problems that are more intricately connected to the notion of representative democracy, and these concern minority interests. The first problem is that minority interests are often not represented through the electoral system: this may happen if their numbers are too few to reach the minimum level necessary for any representation. The second problem is that even if their numbers are represented in the legislative body, they will have a minority of representatives and these may not therefore be able to summon up the necessary votes to defeat the majority representatives. For these reasons, democracy is often referred to as «rule of the majority».

Majority rule, if not backed up by a guarantee of human rights for all, can lead to decisions which are harmful to minorities, and the fact that these decisions are the «will of the people» can provide no justification. The basic interests of minorities as well as majorities need to be safeguarded in any democratic system by adherence to human rights principles, reinforced by an effective legal mechanism, whatever the will of the majority may be.

Question: If the majority of the population is in favour of depriving certain people their human rights, do you think «the people should decide»?

The rise of nationalism

A related problem is the worrying trends across Europe towards support for extreme right parties. These parties have often played on nationalist feelings, and have targeted «non-indigenous» members of the population, particularly asylum seekers, refugees, and members of religious minorities, and sometimes in violent ways. As a defence, such parties often appeal to their support among the population, and the democratic principle that they represent the opinions of a large number of people. However, where a party advocates violence in any form, and where it fails to respect the human rights of every member of the population, it has little right to appeal to democratic principles.

Depending on the extent of the problem, and the particular cultural context, it may be necessary to limit the right to freedom of expression of certain groups, despite the importance of this right to the democratic process. Most countries, for example, have laws against inciting racial hatred. This is regarded by the European Court as an acceptable limitation of freedom of expression, justified by the need to protect the rights of other members of society, or the structure of society itself.

Question: Is nationalism any different from racism?

Young People and Democracy

Young people often do not even have the vote, so how can they be a part of the democratic process?
Many people would answer this question by saying that young people are not ready to be part of the process, and that only when they are 18 (or at whatever age their country gives them the vote) will they be able to participate.

In fact, many young people are politically very active long before they get the vote, and in some ways, the impact of such activity can be stronger than the single vote they receive later on – and may or may not decide to use – once every 4 or 5 years. Politicians are often anxious to appeal to the youth vote, so they may be more likely to listen to the concerns of young people.

Many young people are engaged in environmental groups, or in other protest groups campaigning against war, against corporate exploitation, or against child labour. Perhaps one of the most important ways that young people can begin to be engaged in community life and political activity is at a local level: here they will be more aware of the particular issues that are of concern to them and those with whom they come into contact, and they will be better able to have a direct impact. Democracy does not only deal with national or international issues: it needs to begin in our own neighbourhoods!
Youth organisations are one of the ways through which young people experience and practise democracy and, therefore, have an important role in democracy, provided, of course, that they are independent and democratic in the way they function!

Question: If a 16-year-old is considered mature enough to marry and get a job, should he or she not be able to vote?

Work of the Council of Europe

Democracy is one of the core values of the Council of Europe, together with human rights and the rule of law. The Council of Europe has a number of programmes and publications looking at the improvement and future of democracy. In 2005, the Forum for the Future of Democracy was established by the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe. The aim of the Forum is to «strengthen democracy, political freedoms and citizens’ participation through the exchange of ideas, information and examples of best practices». A meeting of the Forum takes place every year, and brings together about 400 participants from the 47 Council of Europe member States and observer States.

Support for development and implementation of standards for democracy is carried by the European Commission for Democracy through Law – also known as the Venice Commission – which is the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters.  The commission has been particularly active in assisting in the drafting of new constitutions or laws on constitutional courts, electoral codes, minority rights and the legal framework relating to democratic institutions.

In addition to this standard-setting work, the Council of Europe promotes democracy and its values by programmes on democratic participation, education for democratic citizenship and youth participation, because democracy is much more than voting in elections!

Asked by: Odessa Bogan I

Score: 5/5
(32 votes)

Democracy is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation, or to choose governing officials to do so.

What does democracy literally mean?

The word ‘democracy’ has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: ‘demos’ meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and ‘kratos’ meaning power or rule.

What is democracy short answer?

A democracy means rule by the people. The name is used for different forms of government, where the people can take part in the decisions that affect the way their community is run. … This is commonly called representative democracy.

How do you explain democracy?

Democracy is government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all adult citi- zens, directly, or through their freely elected rep- resentatives. Democracy rests upon the principles of majority rule and individual rights.

What does democracy mean example?

The definition of democracy is a form of government in which the common people hold political power and can rule either directly or through elected representatives. An example of democracy at work is in the United States, where people have political freedom and equality.

25 related questions found

A democracy is a form of government in which the leaders are chosen by the citizens’ votes, and in which the people have a say in decisions about the state’s affairs. The primary characteristics of democracy include political freedom, rule of law, and legal equality. In order for these principles to be authentic, every eligible citizen must have equal access to the legislative process, and the legal system. To explore this concept, consider the following democracy definition.

Definition of Democracy

Noun

1. A form of government in which the power is held by the people, often administered by agents elected in a free election system.
2. A form of government in which the people choose leaders by voting.

Origin

1525-1535       Middle French démocratie

What is Democracy

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” A democratic government contrasts with forms of government in which the power is wielded by a single individual, or a small number of privileged individuals, such as a monarchy, oligarchy, or dictatorship.

In modern times, the concept of democracy is often misunderstood. The terms freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing at all. While democracy is a set of fundamental beliefs and principles of freedom, it differentiates from freedom, in that it involves the implementation of procedures and practices to ensure freedom. Most governments in today’s world are a mixture of governmental methods.

Democracy in the United States

While most Americans consider their nation to be ruled by a democratic government, the truth is, the U.S. operates as a Constitutional Federal Republic. This means that, while Americans embrace democracy, the actual operating of the country is complex. Because individual states retain a great deal of autonomy, a written constitution is necessary to define the authority, responsibilities, and limitations of the federal government, and its relationship with the states.

In the U.S., the power remains with the people, both on the state and federal levels, as they elect representatives through the voting process. While this is commonly thought of as a true democracy, that would require the people to have direct control over legislation. Instead, U.S. citizens participate in the legislative process only through their elected representatives. This is where the term representative democracy originates.

Direct Democracy Examples

A direct democracy is a form of government in which all laws are created or abolished by a direct vote of the citizens. This would mean that everything from a change in speed limit on the state highways, to the guilt or innocence of someone being tried for a crime, would be put to a direct vote by the people, rather than their representatives.

Many Americans don’t give a lot of thought to the large number of representatives at various levels of government who make decisions on their behalf every single day. From state and federal senators and representatives, who make laws for their constituents, to elected judges and other government officials, the great wheel of the nation runs by the actions of these representatives.

Imagine what today’s society would look like if the United States operated as a true democracy, requiring the people to take time out on a regular basis to vote on every important decision to be made. It is likely that today’s complex society could never have evolved had this time commitment be required of the nation’s citizens.

Direct Democracy in History

In ancient Athens (about 508-322 B.C.), all citizens voted on all major issues. Athenian citizens were actively involved in all aspects of political life, from voting on the operation of the city, to the trying of all crimes. In fact, in every court case, the assembled citizens voted to determine the outcome. In such examples of democracy, it may be true that a direct democracy breeds more political participation. However, the reality of the commitment involved in such an undertaking may deter a great many people in modern times.

Direct Democracy Now

“Direct Democracy Now!” is not a reference to democracy in today’s world, but a grass roots organization of ordinary Greek citizens who were actively involved in Greek protests over the organization of their government, in 2011. Direct Democracy Now! Found they could no longer support any of Greece’s traditional political parties. The movement is not a political party, but operates as a forum for members to exchange ideas on the political situation in Greece.

Representative Democracy

A system that works for many nations is the representative democracy, which allows the nation’s citizens to be involved in the workings of government, without the heavy burden of needing to make daily decisions in its operations. In a representative democracy, all eligible citizens of the nation elect representatives to enact laws, create legislation, and judge legal complaints.

Also known as “indirect democracy,” or “representative republic,” many consider the representative democracy to have been born of the French and American revolutions, in the 18th century. As chaos and brutality flowed from the lack of a central government in medieval times, the people sought refuge from pervasive death and destruction. The stronger people provided such protection for the weaker people, in exchange for their labor and allegiance. This was the rise of the kings.

As time went by, the people began to feel oppressed, as many were kept in squalor, with little food or other necessities of life. Poor housing and filthy conditions bred disease and death. The people questioned the king’s right to rule them, especially in such a manner. In the 18th century, English philosopher John Locke held that a king’s right to rule came only from the “consent of the governed.”

French political philosopher Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron Montesquieu, commonly known simply as “Montesquieu,” was the first to describe a system in which three separate branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial – kept one another in check. In his example of democracy and freedom, Montesquieu wrote:

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty … Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor. There would be an end to every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals …”

By this notion, both communities and nations would be most honorably governed by the majority will of the people. This advanced the idea that, while rule of law is imperative to a peaceful and harmonious society, individual freedoms should not be sacrificed to a monarch.

Parliamentary Democracy

A parliamentary democracy is a form of government in which citizens elect the ruling body, referred as a “parliament,” by popular vote in a democratic election. The members of parliament then appoint a leader, known as a “prime minister,” who then chooses members of parliament for his cabinet. Parliament, and the prime minister, remain answerable to the people.

Because the prime minister remains a member of parliament, even while he serves in this elevated role, he is able to draft legislation himself, submitting it to parliament for approval. This further differentiates parliamentary democracy from the representative democracy used in the U.S., as the President is no longer part of the legislative body, but is set apart in the executive branch of government. Parliamentary democracy has its origins in Britain, where it is still in effect today. Many of Britain’s former colonies have adopted some form of parliamentary democracy.

Slap in the Face of Democracy Example in the Polling Place

In May, 2016, Arizona voters approved Proposition 123, by the skin of their teeth. With 51 percent voting “yes,” and 49 percent voting “no,” the state was set to infuse an additional $3.5 billion into Arizona’s K-12 public schools over the next 10 years. Opponents of Prop 123 didn’t give up when the people exercised their democratic right to have the final say on issues put up for popular vote.

Raising concerns over the source of the additional funding for the school systems, the state’s land trust fund, Arizona resident Michael Pierce filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that the funding plan violates the state’s Enabling Act. Pierce claims that the state needs congressional approval in order to increase the amount of monies paid out of the land trust.

Many citizens of the state are concerned about the legitimacy of the lawsuit, pointing out that having the people vote on an issue is supposed to be giving them the final say. In this democracy example, to ask the courts to intervene when one is unhappy with the outcome of any election is seen by many to be a slap in the face of democracy.

Related Legal Terms and Issues

• Dictatorship – A form of government in which a single person has absolute power.
• Monarchy – A system of government in which a single person – usually a member of the royal family – reigns.
• Oligarchy – A form of government in which all power is vested in a small group of people, usually a dominant class.

Democracy (“rule by the people” when translated from its Greek meaning) is seen as one of the ultimate ideals that modern civilizations strive to create, or preserve. Democracy as a system of governance is supposed to allow extensive representation and inclusiveness of as many people and views as possible to feed into the functioning of a fair and just society. Democratic principles run in line with the ideals of universal freedoms such as the right to free speech.

Importantly, democracy supposedly serves to check unaccountable power and manipulation by the few at the expense of the many, because fundamentally democracy is seen as a form of governance by the people, for the people. This is often implemented through elected representatives, which therefore requires free, transparent, and fair elections, in order to achieve legitimacy.

The ideals of democracy are so appealing to citizens around the world, that many have sacrificed their livelihoods, even their lives, to fight for it. Indeed, our era of “civilization” is characterized as much by war and conflict as it is by peace and democracy. The twentieth century alone has often been called “the century of war.”

In a way, the amount of propaganda and repression some non-democratic states set up against their own people is a testament to the people’s desire for more open and democratic forms of government. That is, the more people are perceived to want it, the more extreme a non-democratic state apparatus has to be to hold on to power.

However, even in established democracies, there are pressures that threaten various democratic foundations. A democratic system’s openness also allows it to attract those with vested interests to use the democratic process as a means to attain power and influence, even if they do not hold democratic principles dear. This may also signal a weakness in the way some democracies are set up. In principle, there may be various ways to address this, but in reality once power is attained by those who are not genuinely support democracy, rarely is it easily given up.

On this page:

1. Introduction
   1. Definition
   2. Democracy past and present
   3. Is Democracy a Western or Universal Value?
   4. State of democracy around the world today
2. Pillars of a functioning democracy
3. Challenges of democracy
   1. Low voter turnouts
   2. Does an “elected” official represent the people if turnout is too low?
   3. Why a low voter turnout?
4. Paradoxes of Democracy
   1. Voting in non-democratic forces
   2. Minorities losing out to majorities
   3. The fear of the public and disdain of democracy from elites (while publicly claiming to supporting it)
   4. Democracy requires more propaganda to convince masses
   5. Limited time in power means going for short term policies
   6. Anti-democratic forces undermine democracy using democratic means
   7. Those with money are more likely to be candidates
   8. Confusing political ideology with economic Ideology
   9. Democracies may create a more effective military
5. Democracy, extremism and War on Terror; people losing rights
   1. Fear, scare stories and political opportunism
   2. Weak democracies and hostile oppositions
   3. Lack of inclusiveness undermines democracy, strengthens extremism
6. Democratic choice: parties or issues?
   1. Representative and Direct Democracy
   2. Voting
   3. What makes voting meaningful?
   4. Evaluative democracy
7. Election challenges
   1. Campaign financing
   2. Electronic voting: efficiency or easier for corruption?
   3. Media manipulation and ownership
   4. Media Reporting
   5. Campaigning on personalities and sound-bites
   6. Threats of violence and intimidation
   7. Disenfranchisement of voters
8. Democratic governments and the military
9. Powerful countries: democratic at home; using power, influence and manipulation abroad
   1. Election corruption
   2. Can democracy be forced upon a country through military means?
10. Democracy of Nation States in the age of Globalization
    1. International institutions: democratic or representing those with the most power?
    2. Reality of foreign policy
11. The dangers of apathy in a democracy
12. How can democracy be safe-guarded?

Introduction

Definition

The word “democracy” literally means “rule by the people”, taken from the Greek terms, demos (meaning “people”), and kratos (meaning “rule”). It is a political concept and form of government, where all people are supposed to have equal voices in shaping policy (typically expressed through a vote for representatives).

Democracy past and present

The Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, the student of Plato and teacher to Alexander the Great, is considered one of the most important founders of what is now described as Western philosophy. In his work, Politics, he offered some comparisons with other forms of government and rule, but also included some warnings,

It is often supposed that there is only one kind of democracy and one of oligarchy. But this is a mistake.

…

We should … say that democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few…. And yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently distinguished merely by these two characteristics of wealth and freedom. Both of them contain many other elements … the government is not a democracy in which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the many who are not free … Neither is it a democracy when the rich have the government because they exceed in number…. But the form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

The following table offers only the briefest overview of democracy throughout the years. Of course, the earlier forms of democracy were not close to what we consider as democracy today, but were often important precursors or “proto-democracies” that laid down important foundations and principles. The examples shown here are also not complete—each and every instance is not mentioned or detailed, but a sampling of the more common or interesting ones to get an idea:

Period	Date	Region/state	Notes
Ancient	600-5 B.C	Ancient Greece	Various forms of rule, ultimately resulting in Athenian Democracy, a form of “direct democracy,” as opposed to representative democracy. An exclusive club, however, as only adult male Athenian citizens that had completed military training could vote. Women, slaves, and foreigners could not.
500 B.C – 27 B.C	Ancient Roman Republic	Planted the seeds of “representative democracy.” Like other systems of the same period, it was exclusive, and not like democracies we consider today. After this time, Rome had an emperor characterized by dictatorial rule, and eventual decline.
600 B.C – 400 A.D	Ancient India	Early forms of democracy, republics and popular assemblies, especially where Buddhism and Jainism was more prevalent. (Today, Hinduism is the main religion in India, but in ancient times, Brahmanism, as it has also been referred to, co-existed with Buddhism and Jainism. While Brahmanism was also the main religion then, Buddhism and Jainism were far more widespread.) The caste system, though not as rigid then as it would later become, nonetheless meant it was not a type of democracy we think of today, just like Athenian democracy and the Roman republic systems would not be. (See Democracy in Ancient India by Steve Muhlberger, Associate Professor of History, Nipissing University, for more details).
Middle Ages	5th Century to 16th Century	Throughout Europe	Small examples of elections and assemblies
1265 –	England	Parliamentary system. The Magna Carta restricted the rights of kings. Election was very limited to a small minority. The monarchy’s influence over Parliament would eventually wane.
1688	England	Revolution of 1688 saw the overthrow of King James II, paving way for a stronger parliamentary democracy, strengthened by the 1689 English Bill of Rights
18th Century to Present	1788	United States of America	Adoption of the Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties. Considered the first liberal democracy, but started off with limitations: voting by adult white males only (before 1788, propertied white males only). Women and slaves (predominantly African) would have to wait a long time still.
1789	France	French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a precursor to international human rights conventions, for it was universal in nature (but still only applied to men, not women or slaves). This and the American Constitution are considered influential for many liberal democracies to come after.
1917	Russia	The Bolshevik Revolution saw the autocratic Tsar replaced. Led by a Marxist-Lenin ideology, a form of democracy known as Soviet Democracy was initially supported where workers elected representative councils (soviets). This was a form of “direct democracy.” However, the Russian Civil War and other various other factors led this to be replaced by a more bureaucratic and top-down rule, ultimately resulting in Stalin’s authoritarian rule and any remaining democracy appeared only on paper, not practice. In other words, democratic rule combined with Communist economic ideology quickly gave way to paranoia and authoritarian rule combined with Communist economic ideology.
World War II	Europe	Democracies give way to fascists in an attempt to retain or increase power. Allied forces also become more militarized to counter Hitler. With the help of the US, all eventually become democracies after the War.
Post World War II	Colonized “Third” World	Colonial breaks for freedom as Europe weakened itself during World War II. Many breaks for freedom saw fledgling democracies overthrown by Western Democracies who favored dictatorships to retain key geostrategic control. Some new democracies were claimed to be under Soviet influence. In some cases this may have been true, in many others, it was just an excuse. (See this site’s Control of Resources section for more detail.)
Post World War II	Africa	Initially characterized by corrupt dictatorships, now has over 40 countries that have moved towards participatory elections and democratic tendencies though many challenges still remain. Some are democracies on paper, while others flaunt it as and when it suits (a recent example seems to be Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe).
1947	India	Gains independence from British rule, splitting into India, Pakistan, and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). India becomes the world’s largest democracy, while the other two struggle with both dictatorships and democracy.
Post World War II	Latin America	Initially characterized by numerous dictatorships, often supported into power by the US. Almost all are now democracies now struggling more with economic ideology issues.
Post World War II	Asia	Some countries remain dictatorships. Many transition eventually into democracies.

Is Democracy a Western or Universal Value?

Democracy is often described as one of the greatest gifts the West has given to the world. It certainly is one of the greatest gifts to humanity. But is it Western or more universal a principle? The previous table suggests there is some universality.

A common Euro-centric view of world history describes ancient Greek democracy as Western democracy, with ancient Greece as part of that Western/European identity.

Yet, as John Hobson writes in his anti Euro-centric book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), ancient Greece and Rome were not considered as part the West until much later; that is, Greece and Rome were part of a whole Middle East center of civilization, in some ways on the edge of it, as more was happening further Eastward.

Western Europe adopted or appropriated ancient Greek achievements in democracy as its own much later when it needed to form a cohesive ideology and identity to battle the then rising Islam and to counter its defeats during the Crusades.

And, as also noted much further below, it was the Middle East in the 9th – 12th centuries that preserved a lot of Ancient Greek and Roman achievements after Rome collapsed (which Europe then thankfully also preserved when the Middle East faced its own invasion and collapse — by the Mongols.

The point here is that democracy is perhaps more universal than acknowledged and that there is a lot of propaganda in how history is told, sometimes highlighting differences amongst people more than the similarities and cross-fertilization of ideas that also features prominently in history. After all, great battles throughout the ages are often celebrated far more than cross cultural fertilization of ideas which require more study and thought and doesn’t make for epic tales!

As discussed further below, there are elements within both Western and non-Western societies that are hostile to democracy for various reasons.

State of democracy around the world today

Wikipedia’s Democracy article collates interesting images from organizations that research democracy issues. Some of these images show what countries claim to be democracies, and to what degree they really are (or not) democratic:

As George Orwell noted, the word democracy can often be overloaded:

In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

While most countries claim themselves to be democratic, the degree to which they are varies, according to Freedom House, which surveys political and human rights developments, along with ratings of political rights and civil liberties:

Perhaps it is no wonder Churchill once said,

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.

On the one hand then, there has never been as much democracy as present. And yet, many countries suffer from poor representations, election anomalies and corruption, “pseudo democracy”, etc. While these issues will be explored further below, first a look at some of the fundamentals of a democratic system.

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Pillars of a functioning democracy

In a democratic government key principles include free and open elections, the rule of law, and a separation of powers, typically into the following:

• Legislature (law-making)
• Executive (actually governing within those laws)
• Judiciary (system of courts to administer justice)

It is felt that separating these powers will prevent tyrannical rule (authoritarianism, etc). Critics of this may argue that this leads to extra bureaucracy and thus inefficient execution of policy.

Not all countries have or need such a complete separation and many have some level of overlap. Some governments such as the US have a clear separation of powers while in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, a parliamentary system somewhat merges the legislature and executive.

An edition of a Wikipedia article looking at the separation of powers noted that “Sometimes systems with strong separation of powers are pointed out as difficult to understand for the average person, when the political process is often somewhat fuzzy. Then a parliamentarian system often provides a clearer view and it is easier to understand how ‘politics are made’. This is sometimes important when it comes to engaging the people in the political debate and increase the citizen [participation].”

This suggests that education of politics is also important. The US for example, attempts to teach children about their system of governance. In the UK, for example (also writing from personal experience) this is not typically done to the same extent (if at all). This may also be a factor as to why further separation of powers in the US has been reasonably successful.

Some people talk of the difference between a minimalist government and direct democracy, whereby a smaller government run by experts in their field may be better than involving all people in all issues at all time. In a sense this may be true, but the risk with this approach is if it is seen to exclude people, then such governments may lose legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate. Direct democracy, on the other hand, may encourage activism and participation, but the concern is if this can be sustained for a long period of time, or not. (There are many other variations, which all have similar or related problems; how to handle efficiency, participation, informed decision making and accountability, etc. Different people use different terms such as deliberative democracy, radical democracy, etc.)

The historical context for some countries may also be a factor. Many examples of successful democracies include nations that have had time to form a national identity, such as various European or North American countries.

Other nations, often made up of many diverse ethnic groups, may find themselves forced to live together. A major example would be most African countries, whose artificial borders resulted from the 1885 Berlin Conference where European colonial and imperial powers, (not Africans) carved up Africa (for the colonial ruler’s own benefit, not for Africans).

Such nations may find themselves in a dilemma: an intertwined set of branches of government may allow democratic institutions to be strengthened, but it may also lead to corruption and favoritism of some groups over others. Furthermore, many such countries have been emerging from the ravages of colonialism in the past only to be followed by dictatorships and in some cases social and ethnic tensions that are freed from the restraints of authoritarian rule. As such, many poor nations in such a situation do not have the experience, manpower or resources in place to put in an effective democracy, immediately.

It is therefore unclear if what is determined as best practice for an established democracy is necessarily, or automatically, the recipe for a newly emerged democracy. For example, a country coming out of dictatorship may require a strong leadership to guide a country towards further democracy if there are still elements in the society that want the old ways to come back. This might mean more integration of powers, to prevent instability or the old rulers attempting to manipulate different branches of government, for example. However, in this scenario, there is of course a greater threat that that strong leadership would become susceptible to being consumed by that power, and it may become harder to give it up later.

Getting this one aspect of governance right, let alone all the other issues, is therefore incredibly challenging in a short time. As such, an effective democracy may not be easy to achieve for some countries, even if there is overwhelming desire for it.

In addition to those formal aspects of a functioning democracy, there are other key pillars, for example,

• Civilian control of the military
• Accountability
• Transparency.

Civilian control over the military is paramount. Not only must the military be held to account by the government (and, be extension, the people), but the military leadership must fully believe in a democratic system if instability through military coups and dictatorships are to be avoided. (This is discussed further below.) Indeed, some nations do not have full-time professional armies for the reason that coups and military take-over is less likely. Others, notably the more established powers, typically do have it, because they have had a recent history of war and their place in the world stage may make it seem a necessary requirement.

To achieve the openness that transparency and accountability gives, there is an important need for a free press, independent from government. Such a media often represents the principle of the universal right to free speech. This combination is supposed to allow people to make informed choices and decisions thereby contributing to political debate, productively.

Transparency and accountability also requires more bureaucracy as decisions and processes need to be recorded and made available for the general public to access, debate and discuss, if necessary. This seems easy to forget and so it is common to hear concerns raised about the inefficiency of some governmental department.

Efficiency, however, should not necessarily be measured in terms of how quickly a specific action is completed or even how much it costs (though these can be important too). The long-term impact is often important and the need to be open/transparent may require these extra steps.

A simple comparison on procuring a service may help highlight this:

• A responsible government may request a tender for contract. An open process to document these and how/why a final choice was made is important so that there is openness, understanding, and accountability to the people. For example, the media, and citizenry can use this to determine whether or not decisions have been made with the best interests in mind. Some of the higher profile issue may require sustained public discourse and expensive media coverage, too.
• With a private company, the same process could be followed, but all workers (especially in a large company) and shareholders are not equal, and the company’s board is usually entrusted to make many decisions quickly. They do not have to record every single detail or even request an open tender for contract if they don’t want to. The “market” and the shareholders will presumably hold the company to account.

Even when companies are subject to these same requirements of openness (to shareholders, to whom public companies are accountable), governments may have requirements that companies do not have, such as providing universal access to a service such as health care. Companies, however, can chose what market segments they wish to go for.

A government may therefore incur costs and expenditures that are not needed by a private company. This raises legitimate concerns about excessive drives for privatization being led by misguided principles, or the wrong type of efficiency. Conversely, one could hide behind the excuse of democratic accountability if accused of not acting quickly and decisively enough. Openness, transparency, independent media, etc. are therefore key to assuring such processes are not abused in either direction.

[Side note: To avoid claims of inefficient government being just based on ideology, perhaps the cost of being open and transparent in all decision making could be more thoroughly factored into these economic calculations. This is something not typically required in private companies and organizations, for example, which can then appear more efficient. There is also the counter point that some things cannot be efficiently done or developed by committee, but instead by specialized groups that get to focus on the task at hand.

There are, of course, many legitimate concerns and examples of unnecessary/wasteful bureaucratic processes in government, as well as in the private sector which do require addressing. A look at works by William Easterly’s White Man’s Burden, or J.W. Smith’s World’s Wasted Wealth II would give many detailed examples of this.]

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Challenges of democracy

Low voter turnouts

There have been numerous cases where democracies have seen leaders elected on low voter turnouts. In the US for example, in recent elections, the President has been elected with roughly 25% (one quarter) of the possible votes because a full 50% did not vote, and the “close” election race saw the remaining 50% of the votes split almost equally between the final Democrat and Republican candidates. Other countries, such as the UK has also seen such phenomenons.

Does an “elected” official represent the people if turnout is too low?

What does it mean for the health of a democracy if 75% of the electorate, for whatever reason, did not actually vote for the “winner”?

Such a low voter turnout however, represents a concern for a genuine democracy as a sufficient percentage of the electorate has either chosen not to vote, or not been able to vote (or had their votes rejected).

Some countries mandate voting into law, for example, Belgium. Others require a clear percentage of votes to be declared a winner which may result in the formation of coalitions (oftentimes fragile) to get enough votes in total.

As far as I can find, there are no countries that entertain the thought of negative votes, or voting for a list of candidates in order of preference that may help provide some further indications as to which parties are really the popular ones.

For example, many accused Ralph Nader for Al Gore’s loss to George Bush in the infamous 2000 US elections—ignoring for the moment accusations that Bush never won in the first place. If there had been the ability to list your preferred candidates in order of preference, would many of Nader’s supporters put Gore as their second option. Many right-wing alternatives may have put George Bush as their alternatives too, but perhaps this would have encouraged those who do not normally vote—such as those believed that their vote for a third candidate would have been pointless—to vote?

Why a low voter turnout?

There are numerous reasons for low voter turnout, including

• Voter apathy
• Disenfranchisement
• Parties not representing people
• Voter intimidation

The common criticism leveled at those who do not vote seems to be to blame them for being apathetic and irresponsible, noting that “with rights come responsibilities.” There is often some truth to this, but not only are those other reasons for not voting lost in this blanket assumption of apathy, but voting itself isn’t the only important task for an electorate.

Being able to make informed decisions is also important. In many nations, including prominent countries, there is often a view that the leading parties are not that different from each other and they do not offer much to the said voter. Is choosing not to vote then apathy or is it an informed decision? In other cases, the media may not help much, or may be partisan making choices harder to make.

In some countries voter intimidation can take on violent forms and discourage people to vote for anyone other than a militia’s favored group. (A recent example is that of Zimbabwe where the leading opposition felt they had to withdraw from the election process as voter intimidation by militias supporting Robert Mugabe was getting too violent. Mugabe’s government decided to carry on with the elections anyway, which seemed pointless to most but not to him; as he obviously would—and did—win.)

These concerns will be explored further later on.

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Paradoxes of Democracy

Democracy, with all its problems, also has its paradoxes. For example,

• People may vote in non-democratic forces
• Democracies may discriminate the minority in favor of the majority
• Those with non-democratic political ambitions may use the ideals of democracy to attain power and influence
• More propaganda may be needed in democracies than some totalitarian regimes, in order to gain/maintain support for some aggressive actions and policies (such as waging war, rolling back hard-won rights, etc.)
• Regular elections lead to short government life-time. This seems to result in more emphasis on short term goals and safer issues that appeal to populist issues. It also diverts precious time toward re-election campaigns
• Anti-democratic forces may use the democratic process to get voted in or get policies enacted in their favor. (For example, some policies may be voted for or palatable because of immense lobbying and media savvy campaigning by those who have money (individuals and companies) even if some policies in reality may undermine some aspects of democracy; a simple example is how the free speech of extremist/racist groups may be used as an excuse to undermine a democratic regime)
• Those with money are more able to advertise and campaign for elections thus favoring elitism and oligarchy instead of real democracy
• Deliberate confusion of concepts such as economic preferences and political preferences (e.g. Free Markets vs. Communism economic preferences, and liberal vs authoritarian political preferences) may allow for non-democratic policies under the guise of democracy
• Democracies may, ironically perhaps, create a more effective military as people chose to willingly support their democratic ideals and are not forced to fight.

Some of these are discussed further, here:

Voting in non-democratic forces

Two examples of this paradox are the following:

Hitler and his party were voted in. He then got rid of democracy and started his gross human rights violations and genocidal campaigns as a dictator.

Hamas was also recently voted in by Palestinians. The “International community” (really the Western countries) withheld funds and aid because Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization (though most Palestinians would seem to disagree). The lack of aid, upon which the Palestinians have been quite dependent contributed to friction amongst Palestinians who support Hamas and those that do not and this has been amplified by the worsening economic situation there. The Israel/Lebanon conflict also affected the Gaza Strip contributing to the in-fighting between various Palestinian factions.

The Hitler example highlights the importance media and propaganda play and the need for continued open self-criticism to guard against these tendencies.

The Hamas example is complicated by the general Middle East situation and the view on the one hand that American/Israeli power and influence in Palestine is undermining peace between Israel and Palestine, while on the other hand, the terrorist activities of Hamas and other organizations push American and Israel to even more authoritarian reactions.

That the majority of Palestinian people would vote in Hamas suggests that they have not seen the fruit of any recent attempts at a peace process (which has long been regarded by the “international community” – minus the US and Israel – as one-sided) and this has driven people to vote for a more hard line view.

Minorities losing out to majorities

Another criticism of democracy is that sometimes what the majority votes for or prefers, may not necessarily be good for everyone. A common example plaguing many countries which have diversity in race and religion is that a dominant group may prefer policies that undermine others.

Some quick examples include Nigeria which has large Christian and Muslim populations; some Muslims there, and in other countries, want Sharia Law, which not all Muslim necessarily want, let alone people of other faiths. If only a very slight majority can override a very large minority on such an important issue as how one should live, then there is a real chance for tension and conflict.

Another example is India, often help us an example of pluralism throughput the ages, despite all manner of challenges. Yet, unfortunately an Indian government report finds that its claims to religious integration and harmony are on far shakier grounds than previously believed. Muslims in India, for example, a large minority, are also under-represented and seem to be seen as India’s new ‘underclass.’

Wealthier countries also have similar problems, ranging from France with its challenge to integrate/assimilate a large foreign population, to Spain which struggles with a large Basque population wanting independence, to the US where large immigrant populations are struggling to integrate.

To address such potential issues requires more tolerance, understanding, and openness of society, such that people are not insecure due to the presence of others (and so that they do not, as a result, turn to more extreme/fundamental aspects of their own beliefs). This can come through various outlets, including, a diverse mainstream media, institutions such as religious and legal ones, schooling, family upbringings, etc

Equally important are the underlying economic conditions and situations of a country. Generally, it seems, where economically people are generally doing well, where the inequality gap is not excessive, people have less of a reason to opt for more defensive, reactionary or aggressive policies that undermine others.

At the same time, concerns of undesirable social engineering would also need to be addressed, and it is likely that in different countries there will be different “formulas” for this to be successful, for the historical context within which people live, the specific circumstances of the day and various other factors will differ amongst and within nations.

The fear of the public and disdain of democracy from elites (while publicly claiming to supporting it)

People often see democracy as an equalizing factor that should not allow the elite or wealthy in a society to rule in an autocratic, despotic, unaccountable manner. Instead they have to respond to the will of the people, and ultimately be accountable to them. Furthermore and ideally, it should not only be the wealthy or elite that hold the power. There should be some form of equality when representing the nation.

However, this has also meant at least two accompanying phenomena:

• Democracy is seen as a threat to those in power, who worry about the masses, referring to them as a “mob”, or some other derogatory phrase (“tyranny of the majority” is another), and
• To get votes, parties may appeal to populist issues which are often sensational or aim for short-term goals of elections.

Interestingly, leading up to the 2006 US mid-term elections, amidst all sorts of allegations of corruption coming to light, in an interview by Democracy Now!, writer James Moore, provided a classic example of political utility: Karl Rove, the influential, but controversial, advisor and strategist for President George W. Bush, despite actively campaigning to get the “Religious Right” to support Bush was not religious at all (and possibly despised the evangelical Christian extremists that he actively worked to get the votes of) and Bush himself apparently called them “wackos” years earlier:

James Moore: What people do not realize about [Karl Rove] is that everything about him is political utility. When he looked at what was going on with the megachurches … Karl decided he was going to take these gigantic churches on the Christian right and to turn them into a gigantic vote delivery system. And that’s precisely what he has done. This is not a man who has deeply held religious faith. It’s a man who believes that faith can be used to drive voters to the polls. In fact, his own president, in an interview with—or an offhand unguarded moment aboard the press plane with my co-author, Wayne Slater, had referred to the Christian right and the fundamentalists north of Austin as “whackos.” They hold these people in more disdain than these individuals are aware of.

This is just one example, where parties have simply targeted people to get votes for power. And yet, many in the religious right believe that Bush represents them and some even see him as an instrument of God, showing just how effective political utility and manipulation has been.

Noting that different people refer to, and think of democracy in different ways, (even some despots have called themselves democratic!), Bernard Crick concedes that,

We must not leap to the conclusion that there is a “true democracy” which is a natural amalgam of good government as representative government, political justice, equality, liberty, and human rights. For such volatile ingredients can at times be unstable unless in carefully measured and monitored combinations. Is “good government” or “social justice” unequivocally democratic, even in the nicest liberal senses? Probably not. Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s of the inevitability of democracy, but warned against “the dangers of a tyranny of the majority.” Well, perhaps he cared less for democracy than he did for liberty. But even Thomas Jefferson remarked in the old age that “an elective despotism was not what we fought for”; … John Stuart Mill whose Essay on Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government are two of the great books of the modern world, came to believe that every adult (yes, women too) should have the vote, but only after compulsory secondary education had been instituted and had time to take effect.

Democracy requires more propaganda to convince masses

In a democracy, people are generally accustomed to questioning their government, and should be empowered—and encouraged—to do so.

In some countries, healthy cynicism has given way to outright contempt or excessive cynicism at anything a government official promises!

What this does mean, however, is that those with ambitions of power and ulterior agendas have to therefore resort to even more propaganda and media savvy manipulation, as Crick notes:

“Totalitarian” … was a concept unknown and unimaginable in a pre-industrial age and one that would have been impossible but for the invention and spread of democracy as majority power. For both autocrats and despots depend in the main on a passive population; they had no need to mobilize en masse…. Napoleon was to say: “the politics of the future will be the art of mobilizing the masses.” Only industrialization and modern nationalism created such imperatives and possibilities.

Media co-opting is one strategy that may be employed as a result, as Australian journalist, John Pilger notes:

Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. “In our country,” said one of them, “to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What’s the secret?”

(This site’s sections on the mainstream media and propaganda looks at these issues in more depth. The buildup to the Iraq invasion is also an example of the lengths that governments of two democracies, the US and UK, would go to to gain support for their cause.)

Limited time in power means going for short term policies

Many democracies have rules that elections must be held regularly, say every 4 or 5 years. The short life span of governments is there for an important reason: it prevents a party becoming entrenched, dictatorial, stagnant or less caring of the population over time. Competition in elections encourages people to stay on their toes; governments knowing they must deliver, and potential candidates/parties knowing they can participate with a chance.

Yet, at the same time, the short-termism that results has its problems too. As Crick also notes, in two of the world’s most prominent countries, democracy has almost become a mockery of what it is meant to be:

Today, the politics of the United States and Great Britain become more and more populist: appeals to public opinion rather than to reasoned concepts of coherent policy. Political leaders can cry ‘education, education, education’, but with their manipulation of the media, sound-bites, and emotive slogans rather than reasoned public debate, [John Stuart] Mill might have had difficulty recognizing them as products of an educated democracy. And our media now muddle or mendaciously confuse what the public happens to be interested in with older concepts of “the public interest.”

[Side note: Noam Chomsky also details many times how the “national interests” have been used as a euphemism for the interests of only certain groups, such as some industry group, the government, a military industrial complex, or some other elitist/influential/powerful group.]

Anti-democratic forces undermine democracy using democratic means

In a number of countries, governments may find themselves facing hostile opposition (verbal and/or physical/military). Some governments find this opposition has foreign support, or, because of their own failures has created a vacuum (either a power vacuum, participation vacuum or some other failure that has allowed people to consider alternatives seriously). When a legitimate government is then deliberating, or taking, stronger actions, that government can easily be criticized for rolling back democracy, acting dictatorially or in some way undermining the rights of their people. This can then strengthen the non-democratic opposition further.

There are unfortunately countless examples of such foreign and domestic interference with potential and actual democracies to be listed here. It is common for example, to hear of say the former Soviet Union doing this. Unfortunately, while less common to hear about it in the mainstream, western governments have also been complicit in overthrowing and undermining democracies in other parts of the world in favor of puppet regimes, be they dictatorships or pseudo democracies. Two useful resources to read more about these include J.W. Smith’s Institute for Economic Democracy and the Noam Chomsky archives.

One recent example worth highlighting here is Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez managed to reverse a coup against him. This coup was aggressively supported by many in the Venezuelan elite media and also by the US. After the coup, news channels that actively supported the coup in 2002 to oust Chavez, were still allowed to remain in operation (which many democracies would not usually tolerate).

The main media outlet, RCTV, aggressively anti Chavez, was denied a renewal license in 2007, not because it was critical of Chavez policies, but because a pre-Chavez government law did not look too kindly on broadcasters encouraging coups (after all, what government would!). RCTV and their supporters tried to insist otherwise; that this was an issue of free speech. The US mainstream media has generally been hostile to Chavez (as has been the Bush administration itself), and this was therefore added to the other mis-characterizations often presented, lending credence to the view that Chavez is a dictator. In essence a law enacted during the previous dictatorial regime (backed by the US and others) is now being turned around and used against Chavez as another example of power-grabbing.

If and when nations such as the US want to further undermine the democratic processes in Venezuela, such incidents will be brought back into the mainstream, without these caveats, and a more favorable/puppet regime may likely be the aim.

Chavez is not helping his own cause by his often vocal and inflammatory antics, but it should not be forgotten how much foreign influence may be contributing to the undermining of democracy tendencies. Venezuela has been through a succession of dictatorships and many supporters of the previous regimes are in the anti-Chavez groups. Regardless of whether one is pro- or anti- Chavez, it certainly seems that democratic participation has increased during his tenure, given all the increased political activity, both pro- and anti-Chavez.

In another example, for a number of years now, in the US, a number of Christian groups in various Southern states have been campaigning hard to get schools to either reject teaching subjects such as the theory of evolution in science classes, or to “balance” them off with things like Creationism stories from the Bible or Intelligent Design ideas, in the name of free speech and academic freedom. In mid 2008, Louisiana became one of the first states to pass a religiously motivated anti-evolution “academic freedom” law that was described by Ars Technica as being remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

(On this particular issue, the point is not to ban stories on Creationism; they are better taught in religious classes, not science classes. Instead, religious views of the world have been pushed forward arguing that scientific theories are just that, ideas without proof, and so religious-based ones should compete on a level field allowing people to make more “informed” decisions. Yet, often missed from that is that scientific theories are usually based on a well-substantiated explanation that gets tested whenever possible, whereas religious ideas usually are required to be accepted on faith. More generally in the United States, there is however, a growing concern at the rise in an extreme religious right that wants to replace the democratic system with a Christian State.)

Although we are accustomed to hear about Muslim extremists pushing for relgious-based states in various Middle East countries, this example is one in a democracy where despite the principle of a separation of Church and State, Christian religious extremists push forward with their agenda, anyway.)

Those with money are more likely to be candidates

It is a common concern in many democratic countries that those with sufficient funds, or fund-raising capability are the ones who will become the final candidates that voters choose from. Some criticize candidates for “selling out” to mega donor, who then expect favors in return.

Others, who may be more democratic, but are either poor, or lack the finances of the leading contenders, or will not likely support policies that influential mega donors support, will often lose out.

In the US for example, “campaign finance reform” has long been a concern. It has been common to hear leading candidates only wanting themselves to appear on television election “debates” because of concerns about technicalities such as the time needed to accommodate other candidates with no realistic chance of winning. Yet, one would think in a democracy, time should be afforded to make all popular voices hear, not just the leading four from the two main parties, as that just results in the leading four becoming unfairly popular at the expense of the rest, and makes the concern they raise into a self-serving argument.

Understandably, finding time for all candidates might not be practical if there are many, but always limiting it to the four from the two leading parties results in the same choices people have to chose from each time, limiting diversity (especially when many feel the two leading parties are quite similar on many issues).

Attempts to suggest caps on finances of any sort to address this undue influence are met with support from those who have little, but ferocious resistance from those who stand to lose out.

Newspapers and other media outlets are often less than impartial in election campaigns. The high concentrated ownership of major media outlets does not always bode well for democracies as it puts a lot of influence into a handful of owners. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of the Sun tabloid in the UK and the paper’s switch from being a long time Conservative supporter to Labour supporter was described by many as a key reason that Tony Blair first came into power in 1997.

In the US, it can be argued that the differences between some Democrats and Republicans are quite small in the larger context, and the media owners come from the same elite pool, thus reinforcing the impression of vast differences and debate on major issues. The result is that many get put off and the remaining who do want to vote have access to just a few voices from which to make any notion of informed decisions.

Confusing political ideology with economic Ideology

As discussed on this site’s neoliberalism section, and explored in more depth at the Political Compass web site, the mainstream often mixes concepts such as democracy, authoritarian/totalitarian regimes, with free markets and communist economic ideologies. The terms of “left” and “right” wing politics is a gross oversimplification:

See the neoliberalism section for various other graphs that show how most major political parties and leaders of major countries are more neoliberal/right wing, even if they may be considered left (e.g. the Labour Party in UK).

In summary, democracy does not automatically require free markets and free markets does not automatically require democracy. Many western governments supported dictatorships during the Cold War that practiced free market economics in a dictatorial/fascist manner, for example.

Leading up to World War II, a number of European nations saw their power determined by fascists, often via a democratic process. Today, many European democracies attempt a social model of economic development ranging from socialist to somewhat managed markets.

To the alarm of the US which considers the area its area of political influence, Latin America has been flirting with various socialist/left wing economic policies and direct/radical democracy.

In the Indian state of Kerala, for example, a party was voted in that has put communist practices in place with some reasonable success. Of course, many communist regimes in reality have also been accompanied by dictatorships and despots in an attempt to enforce that economic ideology.

And during the beginnings of free markets, the major European powers promoting it were themselves hardly democratic. Instead they were dominated by imperialist, racist, colonialist and aristocratic views and systems.

The point here is that by not making this distinction, policies can often be highlighted that appear democratic, or even could undermine democracy (depending on how it is carried out) as many African countries have experienced, for example. As a recent example, as South Africa came out of apartheid, it was praised for its move to democracy, its truth and reconciliation approach and other political moves. Less discussed however, were the economic policies and conditions that followed.

A report describing a conference celebrating 10 years of South African independence from Apartheid noted how difficult a democratic system is to establish when combined with factors like regional and international economics (i.e. globalization) which were identified as being “responsible for some of the problems” in the region:

In the conditions of a unipolar world and the development of multinationals, which are highly technologically advanced, it is hard for Africa to find an entry point into this ‘globalised’ context…. The conference examined the implications of the globalisation context for the prosperity of the region’s economic structure and the implications for the consolidation of democracy. The question of how the international world relates to and indeed is responsible for some of the problems was also deliberated at the conference. While the consensus was on Africans … taking responsibility for their own welfare and problems, the conference acknowledged the interconnectivity among local, regional, continental and international economies. Indeed, some of the economic problems of the countries in the region can be traced back to their relationships with former colonial masters. More recently, the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s continue to affect the economic stability of SADC countries…. provisional relief of debt has been linked to certain conditions, including political conditionality, which is basically a commitment to a narrow form of democracy, and economic policies, which have created deeper disempowerment. Some African scholars have dubbed this phenomenon ‘choiceless democracies’.

The link between globalisation and democratisation was further debated in the economic session of the conference. Suffice to say, democracy is threatened when a state cannot determine its own budget. The conditionality cripples the development of a socially transformative democracy. A number of the debt rescheduling agreements have fostered cutbacks on social spending, and have created conditions of further economic marginalisation and social exclusion of the poor. In the long term, the consolidation of democracy is threatened because the conditions have the effect of fostering social unrest.

One irony noted by John Bunzl of the Simultaneous Policy Organization (Simpol) is that the world’s leading democracies have, through the lobbying by corporate-friendly think-tanks, governments and companies, unleashed a corporate-friendly form of globalization that even they can’t fully control. As a result, even these countries are finding pressures on their democratic systems, resulting in unpopular austerity measures and cutbacks in cherished services and rights, such as health and education (though nowhere near to the level that has happened in the developing world, under the benign phrase “Structural Adjustment”).

How this has happened is detailed by many people. One detailed source to go to might be the Institute for Economic Democracy and the work of J.W. Smith.

Democracies may create a more effective military

It may seem ironic to many, considering that one principle underlying democracy is the desire for freedom, but democracies may create a more effective military.

Unlike a totalitarian regime, or, in the past, systems that used slaves, democracies that do not have forced military service, might create a more effective military because people have to willingly chose to participate in military institutions, and may have sufficient pride in protecting their democracy.

Of course, in reality it is more complex than that and democracy may be one ingredient of many, but potentially an important one that is hard to fully measure quantitatively. For example, sufficient funding, technology, skills and so on, are all required too, to transform an eager and enthusiastic military to an effective one.

Crick, quoted above, noted Plato’s observation that often a democratic system of rule would need to allow the few to govern on behalf of the many. This is what modern democracies typically are. But, as Crick notes, this has historically meant “rule by the few always needed to placate the many, especially for the defense of the state and the conduct of war.” (Democracy, p.17) In other words, propaganda is needed. This occurs today, too, as discussed earlier.

In some countries, the military will offer lots of incentives to join (good salary, subsidized education, etc.) which may appeal to poorer segments of society, so “defending” one’s democracy may not be the prime reason for joining the military; it may be an important way for someone in poverty to overcome their immediate predicament.

People may also be free to chose not to participate in a military, and/or reduce the money spent on it. Hence, a lot of fear politics and propaganda may be employed to gain support for excessive military spending, or to wage war, as the build-up to war against Iraq by some of the world’s most prominent democracies exemplified.

Many political commentators have noted, for example, that since the end of the Cold War, the US has struggled to fully demilitarize and transform its enormous military capacity into private, industrial capacity, and still spends close to Cold War levels. (This has been observed way before the so-called War on Terror.) Many regard the US as a more militarized state than most other industrialized countries.

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Democracy, extremism and War on Terror; people losing rights

Fear, scare stories and political opportunism

The use of fear in a democratic society is a well known tactic that undermines democracy.

For example, the US has also been widely criticized for using the War on Terror to cut back on various freedoms in the US, and often undermining democracy and related principles. By raising fears of another terrorist attack it has been easy to pass through harsher policies ranging from more stringent borders, to snooping on citizens in various ways.

Another example is the US military commissions act in 2006 which has increased already formidable presidential powers further, rolling back some key principles of justice such as habeas corpus (the traditional right of detainees to challenge their detention), allowing the President to detain anyone indefinitely while giving US officials immunity from prosecution for torturing detainees that were captured before the end of 2005 by US military and CIA. (It is also an example of how a seemingly non-democratic bill is passed in through a democratic system. The previous link goes into this in a lot more detail.)

Fear, scare stories and political opportunism have also been a useful propaganda tools during election time. For example, A November 6 Democracy Now! interview noted that the US government had long ago predetermined when the sentencing of Saddam Hussein would take place: conveniently just before the 2006 mid-term elections so as to try and get extra votes through the appearance of a successful action coming to a close.

Another example comes from the Iranian hostage crisis where Iranian students held some American hostages for over a year: A documentary that aired on a British cable channel (cannot recall details unfortunately) explained how Reagan, challenging Carter in the US presidential race, used a propaganda stunt that also helped him achieve popular support: Reagan and George H. W. Bush had struck a deal with the Iranian mullahs to provide weapons if they released the hostages the day after he was sworn in as President, rather than before, during Carter’s term.

This would allow Reagan to be sworn in with a very positive and triumphant view, and provide an image of him that could be used again and again in the future to help bolster him and his party, even though, as Robert Parry commented, The American people must never be allowed to think that the Reagan-Bush era began with collusion between Republican operatives and Islamic terrorists, an act that many might view as treason. [Robert Parry, The Bushes & the Truth About Iran, Consortium News, September 21, 2006]

Cynics will note (rightly) that such tactics are not new and they happen all the time. The problem is that many people (often cynics themselves) believe it, or importantly, believe it at that time. Because these things have happened throughout history does not automatically mean it should also happen in the future too.

Supposedly, society becomes more sophisticated and improves its knowledge of how these aspects work. We are supposed to be able to learn from past experiences, and if that were true, knowing that such things can happen, and yet they continue to do so all the time also signals a weakness or problem in the democratic institutions if such actions are not held accountable for they deceive the public into mis-informed decisions.

This is an overly complex situation as it goes to the heart of society and questions whether a society suffering this problem is truly democratic if systemically the mainstream media fails to hold those in power to account, either through fear of criticism that they are not being patriotic or through being part of the same elite establishment that reinforces each others views and perspectives, etc. The point is, perhaps regardless of whether this is easy to address or not, there may be a fundamental problem: not enough democracy, openness, transparency and accountability, thus letting these things happen, repeatedly.

Weak democracies and hostile oppositions

It seems that where democracies are weak (e.g. through government corruption, favoritism, or incompetence, or just because a nation is newly emerging, or only recently moving out of dictatorship and towards democracy) there is a greater risk in the rise of hostile opposition.

Sundeep Waslekar is president of the Strategic Foresight Group, a respectable think tank from India. He captures these concerns describing how this can pave the way for extremism:

Bangladesh has terrorist groups belonging to Islamist as well as leftist ideologies. They gathered strength in the late 1990s in a political vacuum created by constant infighting between the principal leaders of the democratic politics. The situation in Bangladesh is similar to that in Nepal, which had autocratic rule in one form or another until 1991. With the induction of democracy in 1991, it was hoped that the voiceless would now have a space to press for their priorities. However, those in power, in partnership with their capitalist cronies, concentrated on the development of the capital region. They also engaged in such a bitter fight with one another that democracy was discredited as a reliable institution, creating a void that was quickly filled by extremists. In the case of Nepal, the Maoists stepped in. In the case of Bangladesh, it was the extremists of the left and the religious right. Having tested popular support, they have developed a vested interest in their own perpetuation. The result is that the Nepali political parties have had to accept an arrangement with the Maoists while the Bangladeshi political parties are courting Islamic extremists.

As Waslekar also argues, the forces of extremism can be more dangerous than the forces of terrorism:

Terrorism involves committing acts of [criminal] violence…. As they tend to be illegal, it is conceivable for the state machinery to deal with them. Extremism may not involve any illegal acts. In fact, extremism may surface using democratic means.

Waslekar notes that extremism often takes a religious face, and is not just in parts of the Middle East and other Islamic countries (Islamic extremism), but growing in countries and regions such as the United States (Christian extremism), Europe (racism and xenophobia of a small minority of White Europeans, and Islamic extremism by a small minority of Muslim immigrants), India (Hindu extremism), Israel (Jewish extremism), Sri Lanka (Buddhist extremism), Nepal (Maoists), Uganda (Christian extremism) and elsewhere.

Furthermore Waslekar finds that “a closer look at the patterns of terrorism and extremism around the world reveals that there are some common drivers—grievances and greed leading to supply and demand.” There is “clear evidence that young people are drawn to the terrorist or extremist mindset because they feel excluded by the society around them or by the policy framework of the state.”

And it is not necessarily absolute poverty that has the potential to breed new recruits for terrorist organizations, but more likely inequality and relative poverty. People suffering absolute poverty are generally struggling for their daily lives, and less likely to have the leisure to think about their grievances and injustices.

Another issue that Waslekar summarizes well is how terrorism is understood and reported:

Whether it is the mainstream media or the blogs, the analysis of the global security environment revolves around the mutual love-hate relationship between Western and Islamic countries. The fact that there are more serious patterns of terrorism elsewhere in the world is ignored by both sides. The fact that there are issues bigger than the growing mutual hatred between Western and Islamic countries is forgotten. In the eyes of the Western elite and its media, the death of 5000 odd people in terrorist attacks launched by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the last five years is the ultimate threat to global security. In the eyes of Arab public opinion, the death of 50,000 to 500,000 innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestine is the real tragedy. Both sides forget that their woes are serious but that some 50 million children lost their lives in the last five years since 9/11 due to policy neglect by a world that is overly obsessed with one issue.

What do these issues have to do with democracy? A functioning, democratic society is ideally one that is able to take inputs from different segments of society and attempt to address them. Issues such as inequality and social/political differences may have a better chance of being resolved without resort to violence in a process that actually is (and is also seen to be) open, accountable and inclusive.

Lack of inclusiveness undermines democracy, strengthens extremism

Democracy by it self is no panacea as the various issues here have shown, but is a crucial part of the overall process. A functioning mainstream media has a democratic duty to inform citizens, but around the world the media repeatedly fails to do so, and often reflects its regional biases or perspectives of an established elite few. If concerns and grievances are not addressed, or if they addressed through violence, Waslekar warns of “an age of competitive fundamentalism” and is worth quoting again, this time at length:

The project of collaborative development of human knowledge and culture that began under the sponsorship of Arab and Islamic rulers a thousand years ago eventually became subject to the West. The Palestinian issue has been a symbol of the continuation of the Western monopoly on power … Iraq has been added as another symbol not only of this Western power and arrogance, but also of Western callousness. The rhetoric about Syria and Iran pose the risk of more such symbols arising.

As the Arab elite have failed to provide an effective response to the Western stratagem, Islamic preachers have come up with an alternative vision … not in harmony with Islam’s core message of peace, learning, and coexistence. On the contrary, it presents an absolutist idea of the society. On the other hand, the Christian Evangelical preachers and European xenophobic politicians present visions of a closed society to their followers. It seems that the world is entering an age of competitive fundamentalism.

While the West is obsessed with the Middle East, forces of extremism and nationalism in Asia and Latin America pose the real challenge to its monopoly and arrogance. Western discourse on terrorism and extremism is focused on the Arab region at its own peril…. The conditions for relative deprivation prevail all over the world, from Muslim migrants in Western Europe, the poor in the American mid-west to farmers in Colombia and the Philippines. The intellectual project to define terrorism only in relation to the groups in the Middle East turns a blind eye to the growth of terrorism and extremism not only outside the Middle East, in Asia and Latin America, but also in the American and European homelands.

In the age of competitive fundamentalisms, human rights and liberties are compromised. The states … may indulge in human rights violations. And at times they may use terrorism as an excuse to punish legitimate opposition. Several people are more afraid of anti terrorist measures than acts of terror. Thus, terrorism abets authoritarianism and undermines freedom. Since many of the states today engaged in counter terrorism campaigns claim to be champions of freedom, terrorist groups defeat them philosophically by forcing them to undermine the freedom of innocent civilians. Terrorism wins when powerful security agencies forbid mothers from freely carrying milk and medicine for their infants on aeroplanes. Terrorism wins when democratically elected representatives cannot allow their constituents to move about freely around them. Terrorism wins when states use it as an excuse to kill their enemies, giving birth to a thousand suicide bombers.

Competitive fundamentalism threatens trust between individuals and societies.

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Democratic choice: parties or issues?

Democracies seem easy to manipulate in some circumstances. It may be during election campaigns when issues are oversimplified into simple slogans (e.g. education, education, education), and emotive issues (which may be hyped and exaggerated, such as immigration). Or it may be during fund raising for political parties (often from influential contributors with their own agendas), or it may be when running government where corruption, lack of transparency and unaccountability affects even the wealthiest of nations who are proud to be democratic.

The free press should act as a natural check against these issues in a functioning democracy, yet intertwined interests and agendas result in them often being mouthpieces of parties or just a press-release machine that unwittingly follows an agenda set by others resulting in limited analysis outside those boundaries.

Perhaps the way parties are voted into power is an issue?

Representative and Direct Democracy

Most democracies are representative democracies, whereby votes are usually for parties who propose candidates for various government positions. By their nature, representative democracies these days require lots of funding to get heard, which opens itself up to corruption. There are usually constitutions to check the power of representatives, but even this can be open to abuse.

One alternative is known as direct democracy where instead of voting for intermediaries, votes should be cast on issues themselves. Direct democracy may help prevent the perversion of democracy by those with power interests through the financing of parties and their various machines to garner votes. On the other hand, a possible risk with direct democracy may be that there is much more emphasis on voting for issues, which may mean minority groups do not get represented fairly, depending on the issues.

There is also the challenge of scale. Direct democracy may be ideal for small organizations and communities, including thousands of participants. But what about tens of millions? Referendums in various countries on all sorts of issues have shown that direct democracy is possible, but how can this be applied to a more “daily” routine on more routine and complex issues? Is it even possible, and how would issues come to the fore? The risk of demagogy is therefore a concern.

For more details, benefits and challenges of each, see for example, the overviews from Wikipedia on representative democracy and direct democracy.

In either case, informed opinion would be paramount, which places importance on news media outlets to be truly impartial and broad in its diversity of issues covered. With globalization today, and the accompanying concentration of media in many countries, often owned by large global companies, the diversity and variety of views are suffering.

Voting

An interesting aside is an Internet-based project called the global vote, to allow direct voting on global issues, which go beyond national boundaries, or allow people to vote on aspects of policies in the countries of others.

This is interesting in a few ways. For example, voting beyond the nation state is something new, ironically perhaps afforded by globalization which some see as undermining democracy. It is also enabled by modern technology (the Internet in this case).

On the issue of technology, attempts to introduce other types of technology into voting, such as e-voting machines have been plagued with problems of insecurity, difficult usability for some people, lack of open access to the underlying source code, and even incorrect recording of votes, or possible manipulation. This is discussed further, below.

What makes voting meaningful?

Voting in a democracy is based on the assumption of a free and informed decision.

Without these you end up with an autocratic system pretending to be a democratic system while people believe they have made a free and informed choice. Over time, as a population becomes accustomed to living in such a system a self-perpetuating belief takes hold where the population believe that the system is democratic, even as informed opinion, political diversity and choices are reduced. Such a system is then able to sustain itself, having grown from the initial illusion of free choice.

The crucial challenge therefore is how to ensure the decision is free (and not influenced unduly by propaganda or some other form of manipulation) and informed (how does one get a full range of information? Is it even possible?).

Evaluative democracy

Ensuring free decisions and informed decisions are of course are clearly interlinked, and political scientist Stephen Garvey thoroughly argues that voting the way it is typically done is so flawed that a more evaluative approach to democracy would be a better way to judge progress, determine leaders, and ultimately achieve a better (and real) democracy. This, he argues, is because an evaluative democracy

• Minimizes the role of political influence and manipulation by making the focus of political determinations on citizen evaluations which are based on the collective interest.
• Minimizes political campaigning.
• Minimizes or eliminates the role of political organizations.
• Minimizes the role of money.
• Establishes accountability of political and governmental decision-making through the standard of collective interest.

In essence, democracy (and the various issues raised for debate) would then driven by the people, not by leading political parties who decide the agendas based on their interests (which also results in a very narrow set of issues being discussed, and often contributes to low voter turnout). This has the potential, then, to be a much more people-driven (i.e. democratic) approach.

For more information see Garvey’s book, Anti-Election:Pro-Determination (Inexpressible Publications, 2007) and the web site, Evaluative Democracy.

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Election challenges

Campaign financing

In countries that have representative democracies a problem with election campaigning is that it requires a lot of money, and raising it often means appealing to those who have sufficient money to donate.

In the US, this has led to the criticism that both Democrats and Republicans have had to court big business and do not necessarily represent the majority of the people, as a result.

Such enormous campaign financing has meant that other potentially popular candidates have not been able to get further because they have not been able to spend as much on advertising and marketing.

This means that not only do political parties court big financiers but that these large entities/businesses and wealthy individuals can use the media to push their own agendas and interests which may not necessarily represent majority views.

Numerous calls for limits are welcomed by those without money, but resisted by those with it, for clearly one set of people would gain, while another would lose out.

This very much sounds more like a system of oligarchy, rather than democracy, as Aristotle had long warned of, quoted near the beginning of this article.

In the US, activists have been trying to raise the issue of campaign financing for years, but it recently took on another dimension as limits to campaign financing were removed. Kanya D’Almeida recently summarized this in an article in Inter Press Service:

The richest one percent has hijacked the very foundations of democracy in a country whose constitution of 1787 promised to be by the people, for the people.

…

[A US Supreme Court ruling in January 2010 that Congress cannot limit spending by corporations in elections] struck at the very heart of what many U.S. citizens have felt for years — that despite a careful constitutional separation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government, corporate capital had infected the body politic from head to toe.

This has also meant it has been hard to find out specific details about campaign financing:

By ruling that the government cannot curb spending and lobbying by unions, corporations or even powerful individual stakeholders, the Supreme Court green-lit the proliferation of Super PACs (political action committees) that are unfettered by electoral laws or transparency and free to pour unprecedented amounts of money into campaigns of their choosing.

Super PACs can also drag their feet on releasing hard data on how much money actually changes hands during election cycles and, in the new arena of impunity granted by the Supreme Court, can accept donations from registered 501(c) nonprofit entities that are exempt from exposing the identities of those who bankroll elections at will.

Much of this money is funneled directly into TV ads, the bulk of them bordering on smear campaigns against opposing candidates.

In addition to using the media to push their agendas and equally important, the US mainstream media also stands to gain:

According to investment banking and asset management firm Needham and Co., television stations this year will rake in as much as eight billion dollars from political campaigns.

In a country that has a lot of concentrated ownership of media, is there a potential conflict of interest; the mainstream media may not have as much interest in discussing these issues in too much depth for they stand to benefit from it.

In the US, this is just one of many other issues that affect the nation’s democracy, which this site’s section on the media in the US looks at further.

Electronic voting: efficiency or easier for corruption?

In a Democracy Now! broadcast on November 6, 2006 (just before US mid-elections) the issues being discussed were various ways that people were being prevented from voting. New York Times editor, Adam Cohen, who had been following this also talked about the problems with electronic voting machines, summarizing that they “are really not very good at making these machines” because they had all sorts of problems, even registering the wrong vote (e.g. some people put down a Democrat candidate and the summary page asking for confirmation showed it said a Republican candidate).

An HBO documentary Hacking democracy exposed numerous problems with electronic voting software/hardware in the US from a leading company, Diebold.

The documentary described how easy it was to tamper with the software and hardware. The initial question it asked was how do you know if the vote count is correct and accurate? How does America count its vote?

What they found was “secrecy, votes in the trash, and how to change the course of history” through things like extremely easy manipulation of electronic voting.

An example they noted was during the Al Gore/Bush campaign, a computer counted Al Gore’s votes backwards in Volusia County, Florida; he had negative votes. An investigation established that it could not have been through a computer glitch. Instead, it was thought it might have been tampering, but no-one will know for sure; It is against the law to look at the software used in electronic voting systems.

Furthermore, the documentary noted you can’t necessarily rely on the vote produced by the voting machines; As Democracy Now! had discussed above, this documentary had footage showing that when a vote was cast for a certain candidate, another candidate was repeatedly selected!

A concerned citizen-turned-activist discovered the code for “GEMS” the computer software code for some 40% of Diebold’s electronic voting software in use. Passwords, specifications, etc were all available. That was when the “wall of secrecy” around how these systems work, began to fall.

Computer Science PhDs at John Hopkins were shown the software code, and found:

• You could hack into the system without having to know how it works
• Security holes allowed serious manipulations
• It was not a problem limited to just Diebold
• $55 million was supposedly spent on security, accuracy and other critical features, a Diebold representative told Channel 4 News in UK. Yet the computer scientists broke into the system in 10 seconds.

There were countless more examples showing just how problematic electronic voting software has been even though the use of technology usually gives the impression of sophistication and accuracy.

The problem is not limited to the US. The Open Rights Group, a technology organization in the UK that works on civil liberties issues in relation to digital technology reported on e-counting of votes cast in the 2008 London Elections. They found that independent election observers were unable to state reliably whether the results declared in the May 2008 elections for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions.

When the independent observers tried to actually observer the votes being counted, they could not and were hampered by the technology put in place. Furthermore, they found that an audit of the software used to count the vote could not be published because of commercial confidentiality. As they noted, for a public election these are very serious concerns because transparency in the election process is crucial. And yet, the election software company is to be paid some £4.5 million for delivering this “solution” (approximately $9 million).

Media manipulation and ownership

As discussed earlier, a free and impartial media is important for a functioning democracy. However, as also detailed in other parts of this web site, a lot of mainstream media suffers from concentrated ownership by a handful of companies that usually results in less diversity of views being aired, as those owning companies have their own interests to protect and promote.

In the US and UK for example, there have been various cases of media outlet parent companies contributing to election campaigns or candidates/parties. Famously, Tony Blair got support by Ruper Murdoch and the Sun tabloid, usually a right-leaning paper, which helped him come to power in 1997.

In Italy when Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister (on more than one occasion), he was a powerful media mogul and was able to use that to good effect to promote his agenda and sometimes controversial views. As one of Italy’s richest men he was also embroiled in various allegations of corruption, including from the influential Economist magazine. Berlusconi has been able to use his influence in business, media and politics to avert much criticism and charges in various ways.

In Venezuela there has been both an intense anti-Chavez mainstream media, but also a state run channel where Chavez has had is own TV program. (As an interesting aside, Chavez’s recent election win—an overwhelming win—has been described by some foreign media as an example of amassing more power. The irony here may be that he may have won a popular democratic vote, but because he is not looked at favorably by nations such as the US, and because many of the mainstream media outlets of those other nations often follow the government/establishment position on such things, the reporting by the mainstream media from there reflected that government position. Had Bush or any other US presidential candidate won US elections with such a majority it is unlikely to be described as amassing more power, but rather an example of democracy and overall success and popularity of that candidate.)

Media Reporting

Danny Schechter, a media expert, wonders out aloud why we see some repeated good quality analysis (after an election) of why election reporting may have been problematic, and yet those problems occur again the next time:

After every election, there are post-mortems and then, after that, come the studies to confirm the presence of many institutional and deep seated flaws in our ritualized electoral-democracy.

Annually, journalists acknowledge their own limits and mistakes. The honest ones admit there was a uniformity of outlook in which the horse race is over-covered and the issues under covered.

They concede that there was a focus on polls without explaining their limits adequately or how polls in turn are affected by the volume and slant of media coverage. There are criticisms of how negative ads and entertainment values infiltrated election coverage, what Time magazine calls «electotainment.» They bemoan the fact that there was more spin and opinionizing than reporting along with less investigative reporting.

And then they do it all over again.

While Schechter is specifically commenting on US elections, these similar concerns often apply to many other countries, rich and poor.

Campaigning on personalities and sound-bites

Schechter above commented on the negative ads in US. This involves a lot of excessive and pointless attacking and degrading of opponents, rather than focusing on issues. It often involves a form of spin and slanting just to make the other candidate look bad, and both Democrats and Republicans get involved in this.

In the UK recent elections have been accompanied hype on populist issues such as immigration which, while the have issues, have been exaggerated and blown out of proportion to the issue itself.

The “image” of the candidate is often paramount, in that they must “appear” to support or not support a particular issue. Some media reports will try to make the most out of some minor issue such as appearance on a particular day and see if they can read any signals from it. The personality of the candidates themselves also become major issues.

Such tactics are arguably a waste of resources, and divert attention away from real issues which then get less time to be debated. Unfortunately these tactics will always be pursued because some of these do affect people’s views and opinions. It is well known that appearance, for example, does affect people’s opinions, regardless of whether it should or should not.

Threats of violence and intimidation

For developing countries in particular, the road to democracy is often fraught with dangers. In some cases militias threaten violence if their supported leaders are not voted for, or if some people choose to vote at all.

In East Timor militias supporting (and some accuse, supported by) the Indonesian ruling regime at the time resorted to enormous levels of violence, killings and intimidation to prevent people voting. Nonetheless in this case, the majority did vote, and achieve independence. Democracy has not automatically solved all the problems since, but it is a start.

In Burma/Myanmar, the military junta simply imprisoned/house-arrested the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as inheriting elements of brutal colonial past, the nation’s rich resources have been a curse. Numerous neighboring countries and corporate interests (e.g. diamonds, mineral companies) have interacted into what has became numerous wars. Attempts at meaningful peace have proven largely unsuccessful.

Sierra Leone and many other countries going through conflict have militias that intimidate people to vote a certain way.

Zimbabwe has had similar problems of militias intimidating, even killing opposition supporters leading to the June 2008 elections, as noted much earlier.

It is extremely difficult in countries whose borders have been artificially imposed in recent decades. Countries such as the United Kingdom have had centuries to eventually integrate peacefully (Northern Ireland perhaps being an exception, as it is also a more recent struggle). Poorer countries, that have been around mostly only since a decade or two after the Second World War not only have had a shorter time span to consider, but also have another major factor affecting them: foreign influence and interference in democratic decision-making and election processes.

Disenfranchisement of voters

In a Democracy Now! broadcast on November 6, 2006 (just before the US mid-elections) the issues being discussed were various ways that people were being prevented from voting. The broadcast interviewed New York Times editor, Adam Cohen, who had been following this concern in detail and gave various examples of attempts to try and use rules that appear fair but are actually designed to prevent a certain group of people from voting so that a certain party will win. If parties can do it, they will try, he implies.

Furthermore, if you look back at the history of voting in the United States, there has always been an attempt to use rules of various kinds to stop certain people from voting. It’s always been a partisan thing. One party realizes if it stops a particular ethnic group or racial group from voting, it may win, and they adopt rules that appear to be neutral, but actually aren’t neutral at all.

As shocking and concerning as some of these tactics are, these issues of course are not limited to the US, and in some countries, attempts to prevent groups of people from voting are far worse, including use of violence as noted above. The US was chosen as an example here because of the high regard people have for its democratic process. If democratic principles are easy to violate in the US, then many other countries will have even worse problems.

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Democratic governments and the military

In a truly functioning democracy, the military has to be subservient to the people. The US and most other industrialized democracies are a good example of this. The military pledges to serve the purpose of protecting democracy. (Ignore for the moment the issue of democratic governments waging war on other countries, sometimes against the wishes of their population.)

There are times when we witness military coups in a country where the generals coming into power claim it is in order to route out corruption that has made a mockery of their democratic systems, or some other such reason. The rule, they say, is temporary and necessary, but only until conditions are okay to restore democracy.

Yet, many times this has either been an excuse, or, even when intentions may have been genuine, dictatorship lingers on. One example is Pakistan. Enormous corruption in the democratic government was a reason cited by by General Musharraf when he lead a military coup. He promised a restoration of democracy as soon as possible. Many years later, the world was still waiting. Finally, rather than keeping to his promise, it was intense pressure (and miscalculation by his group, or those who favor him, by assassinating opposition leader and former Prime Minister, Benezir Bhutto) that led to Musharraf to give in, allowing elections in February 2008.

During this time, numerous other democracies looked the other way, as Musharraf was useful in the “war on terror” and some Western media eventually started to refer to him as President Musharraf, even though originally he was referred to as General Musharraf (which is what the media will often use when reporting on such rulers in in hostile countries. Ironically in Venezuela, former General, Huge Chavez, has occasionally been referred to as “General Chavez”, to give the impression that the country is a fake democracy being run by a military person. That would be equivalent of say someone like General Wesley Clark becoming President of the US and referring to him as General Clark).

Thailand has also seen a similar situation to that of Pakistan. And time again will have to tell if the military dictatorship is genuine in its desire for establishing democracy or not.

Another major factor for military coups and dictatorships that have overthrown fledgling governments is because of external factors, such as when the US, during the Cold War, overthrew many fledgling democracies in favor of puppet dictatorships.

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Powerful countries: democratic at home; using power, influence and manipulation abroad

Foreign policy issues hardly feature in election campaigns of countries such as UK and US, and yet their influence around the world is immense. Recall the 2000 elections between Bush and Al Gore, where both virtually agreed with the other in a televised debate on foreign policy matters. (Admittedly, many parties feel their target audiences are not as interested in foreign policy. Perhaps that will change in near future as issues such as the war on terror, the rise of Asia, climate change, and other issues become more prominent.)

Election corruption

Elections are typically local and national events. Foreign involvement in a national election, however, does happen, and depending on the circumstances and perspective, it can be seen as anything from providing assistance and support, to political interference and undermining of the democratic process (if it is seen at all).

There are countless examples in recent decades, too many to list here, but some recent ones include the external funding of “democratic” parties often by some Western countries in parts of the developing world.

For instance, in Iran one of the opposition groups to the ruling regime is a monarch descendant and not necessarily democratic as such, but gets Western backing nonetheless.

In Nicaragua leading up to the 2006 elections, the US actually warned Nicaraguans not to vote for for Ortega. (In the mid 1980s, the US had actively supported Contra guerrillas in a war against the Nicaraguan government. Ortega was leader of Nicaragua at that time.) The US went as far as threatening economic sanctions and withdrawal of aid if Ortega won. Even Oliver North and Donald Rumsfeld went there to tell people not to vote for Ortega (though Rumsfeld denied he went for political reasons). North was one of the main people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, the US deal to sell weapons to Iran and use proceeds to fund the bloody contras against Ortega and the Sandinista movement there, despite a congressional ban to do this (i.e. being against both US and international law).

A scandal caused around 2000 was when there was feared Chinese influence in US elections – at that time the media and politicians were (rightly) outraged at foreign interference, but ignored the immense number of incidents (and sometimes far worse) foreign interference their own country had taken part in, in other countries, before and since.

Recently, Russia has also been accused of interference with some of its former satellites (sometimes unsuccessfully such as with the the Ukraine “velvet revolution”).

By its very nature, it is hard to detect this kind of interference. Sometimes it is visible but accompanied by so much subtle propaganda that it seems benign, while other times it is only years later that the information comes out, by which time the damage has been done (and many people’s lives have been affected).

Yet, nations and organizations doing these things will often feel they have to for their own agendas and “national interests.” Of course the more powerful and influential countries will be able to pull this off far better than poorer ones, and is yet another tool in the arsenal of more powerful countries to try and maintain their position of advantage in the international arena. While it is easy to say and hard to do, transparency in all parts of a democratic process is key to help minimize or avert this kind of perversion of democracy.

(For far more detailed examples, including in particular the history of Western companies and front organizations funding groups to overthrow governments in the name of democracy but really to achieve various foreign policy interests, see the works of J.W. Smith from the Institute for Economic Democracy, and the various writings from Noam Chomsky. Whenever some of these things come to light, the mainstream and politicians of these interfering nations often claim these were mistakes that should not have happened, but Smith, Chomsky and many others show how systemmatic this has often been, implying it is part of a foreign policy agenda to shape the world, where possible, with governments that are friendly to their interests, democratic or not.)

Can democracy be forced upon a country through military means?

One part of the US neo-conservative movement’s ideology was highlighted in the buildup for war on Iraq: the use of military force, if necessary, to extend or maintain is super-power status in the world. The Middle East clearly suffers from ineffective, or no democracy. The American neo-conservative movement felt the US should use its military might selectively to enforce democracy where it wants.

Yet, as experience in Iraq has shown, and what many scholars and activists had long-predicted, democracy cannot be enforced from the outside; it has to be home-grown. Not only must it be home-grown, but must be genuine and seen to be genuine.

(As noted earlier, the US has also funded many supposedly democratic movements in various other countries, often for ulterior motives. In so many of those cases it has turned out that those groups have become puppet regimes or pseudo democracies. In many other cases, the US has actually supported the overthrow of a democratic government. As more and more people around the world have become aware of this, the legitimacy of such overt foreign influence has often been met with suspicion and domestic elections and democratic processes then suffer through the perception of them being tainted and not genuine. In worst cases, the consequences can include political instability and conflict, so it is a dangerous game to play. It is often done unaccountably too, as interference can be justified with that overloaded term “in the national interests.”)

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Democracy of Nation States in the age of Globalization

As noted further above, the international arena has an affect on most countries today. Both democratic and non-democratic forces may be voted in that then institute policies that are in some way affected by globalization (for example, supporting aspects that are described as overly corporate friendly at the expense of local people, while benefiting a few wealthy elite, or reacting negatively to some of the effects of globalization such as whipping up hysteria against economic migrants, etc.)

In the case of Africa noted earlier, many countries have found themselves subject to harsh conditions for debt relief, which on paper sound fair, but in reality leads to an undermining of democracy.

When globalization challenges national borders and is international in scope, how meaningful are some national elections? Even when a party is voted in based on some sort of criticism on the way globalization is affecting their nation, there are numerous times when those very parties have been unable to do much other than go with the pressures globalization brings (e.g. poor countries opening up to foreign investment, mostly by large western companies, thus undermining any local sector which cannot compete against such established actors or breaking some promises made to electorates).

Some time leading up to the November 2000 US presidential election, I recall hearing on radio (can’t recall details, unfortunately) how a farmer in an African nation lamented how he could not vote in the US elections for what happens there has far more effect on his country than whatever vote he could make in his own country.

The challenge will remain; richer nations, supported by the wealthy and powerful companies that come from their territories are pushing for others to open up, as this will benefit their companies and possibly their own nations more generally (or at least the wealthier segments of their own society). Poor nations are open to the idea of globalization and international institutions to discuss these processes, but repeatedly find that international meetings at the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization are far from democratic.

British economist John Maynard Keynes, is considered one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the fathers of modern macroeconomics. He advocated an interventionist form of government policy believing markets left to their own measure (i.e. completely freed) could be destructive leading to cycles of recessions, depressions and booms. To mitigate against the worst effects of these cycles, he supported the idea that governments could use various fiscal and monetary measures. His ideas helped rebuild after World War II, until the 1970s when his ideas were abandoned for freer market systems.

Keynes’ biographer, professor Robert Skidelsky, argues that free markets have undermined democracy and led to this crisis in the first place:

What creates a crisis of the kind that now engulfs us is not economics but politics. The triumph of the global free market, which has dominated the world over the last three decades has been a political triumph.

It has reflected the dominance of those who believe that governments (for which read the views and interests of ordinary people) should be kept away from the levers of power, and that the tiny minority who control and benefit most from the economic process are the only people competent to direct it.

This band of greedy oligarchs have used their economic power to persuade themselves and most others that we will all be better off if they are in no way restrained—and if they cannot persuade, they have used that same economic power to override any opposition. The economic arguments in favor of free markets are no more than a fig leaf for this self-serving doctrine of self-aggrandizement.

Furthermore, he argues that the democratic process has been abused and manipulated to allow a concentration of power that is actually against the idea of free markets and real capitalism:

The uncomfortable truth is that democracy and free markets are incompatible. The whole point of democratic government is that it uses the legitimacy of the democratic mandate to diffuse power throughout society rather than allow it to accumulate—as any player of Monopoly understands—in just a few hands. It deliberately uses the political power of the majority to offset what would otherwise be the overwhelming economic power of the dominant market players.

If governments accept, as they have done, that the free market cannot be challenged, they abandon, in effect, their whole raison d’etre. Democracy is then merely a sham. … No amount of cosmetic tinkering at the margins will conceal the fact that power has passed to that handful of people who control the global economy.

Despite Keynesian economics getting a bad press from free market advocates for many years, many are now turning to his policies and ideas to help weather the global economic crisis.

Rich nations have long felt the pressure from the business sector and elsewhere to reduce spending on various social programs, and in most democratic elections the sound bites are about parties promising to uphold those social programs as best they can. If rich countries are struggling with this question, the challenge for emerging/developing nations is greater.

International institutions: democratic or representing those with the most power?

International institutions such as the WTO, IMF, WB, UN (or more specifically the UN Security Council) are themselves far from democratic even though most of them give the impression of being an international forum where nations can be fairly treated. But many of them prescribe policies on poor countries in such a way that it undermines those countries, even if they are democratic ones. Under such conditions, corruption is not uncommon.

The IMF and World Bank have come under criticism lately for their long non-democratic leadership, and are now beginning to address that balance. This has not come about because of democratic tendencies of the leading contributors (all Western democracies), but because a handful of developing nations, such as China, India and Brazil, have now become politically strong enough to gather sufficient backing to demand these Western-backed/influenced institutions open up and let them in and share power more fairly if they are to be truly international organizations that they want/claim to be.

It is very early days to see what will happen; will the emerging nations just become another group leaving the poorer ones still under-represented, or will they be able to fight for better global representation?

The World Trade Organization is another such problematic organization in this regards, while the UN, generally universal, suffers from the problem of the non-democratic UN Security Council with its handful of veto-power nuclear powers.

For example, during various rounds of WTO talks, developing countries frequently complained that rich nations keep circumventing established procedures or just prevent developing countries taking part or even produce documents and drafts so late in the process (e.g. the night before they are discussed) that they do not have time to analyze them sufficiently. Any of these things undermine negotiation processes for countries already limited by resources. The “Green Room” antics whereby rich countries selectively invite a few poor countries to closed door meetings, telling them how things will proceed, smells of divide and conquer. In the meanwhile industrialized country officials will celebrate these talks as being open and transparent, blaming developing countries for some unexplainable reason for being unreasonable when things go wrong.

(And when mainstream media outlets of wealthy countries rarely report these meetings, let alone the concerns and perspectives of poor countries, their officials, who sound like they genuinely want to help the poor but cannot understand why they won’t accept their offer, get away without being held to account as to why their offers to poor countries were actually so harsh and unfair in various ways.)

Although sounding boring for most of the public, these talks are some of the most important in the world, for they affect the lives of all citizens. Promises by wealthy countries of openness, transparency and other democratic like behavior are just that; promises. In reality this is politics, dirty negotiation tactics and doing anything that one can get away with in order to push one’s own interests in the international arena (which, unfortunately is somewhat understandable from the perspective of those individual nations doing it; they are trying to get the best for their own interest, even if they often present it as being best for everyone). [For additional details, see also this site’s page: WTO Meeting in Hong Kong, 2005]

Of these international institutions, the UN is perceived to be far more democratic and inclusive in comparison. However, it too is tainted, this time by the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who have veto powers over many decisions, thus giving them more power, regardless of any overwhelming international opinion or even votes by the UN General Assembly.

These 5 are permanent members with excess powers because they have nuclear weapons, helped form the UN (in the case of US, UK and France), or were invited in for Geopolitical balance (in the case of the former Soviet Union, now Russia, and China).

Military power, it appears, is the final arbiter of justice. This is ironic when key democratic principles include an independent judiciary and a military subservient to the people.

But what recourse do poor countries have? To whom can they complain and go to when wealthy countries violate the principles upon which they make grandiose claims of following?

Reality of foreign policy

Of course, as history also shows, any desire for democratic like behavior between nations is wishful thinking, perhaps naïve; powerful nations will always do what they can to preserve or extend their power. Democracy at an international level would reduce their advantage so it would not be in their interest to extend power and privilege to too many others (a few are needed).

Perhaps desire for democracy at the international level should be dismissed as a waste of time. Poorer nations would surely understand this more than people from richer nations who have not had to typically face the full brunt of someone else’s power and influence for a long time.

Yet, they still take part in the international arena. Some of that might be because they hold on to democratic ideals, but there may also be an understanding that as some powerful nations emerge such as Brazil, China, India, and some others, such nations may (for now) be useful allies in international political negotiations.

This may be one reason why the developing world as a whole was able to derail parts of the WTO “Development Round” talks in 2003 when the wealthy countries tried to unfairly impose extra issues and actions onto poorer countries without agreeing to almost anything themselves.

However, the diverse interests of poor nations also meant that at the follow up 2005 WTO round, rich countries were able to manipulate poor nations by appealing to some of the more powerful ones such as Brazil and India and get them to agree to weak drafts on behalf of the rest for a few small concessions of their own, while doing away with any pretense of a democratic, open and transparent process in the way the talks were held.

The other reason they may still be involved is that they have little choice; like it or not, their nations are more vulnerable to the forces of globalization. They almost have to try and get involved, even if it is an unequal system, just in case they can get some concessions or have their voice heard.

Why is democracy at the international level so important?

There may clearly be cases where at all levels a committee/consensus type approach may be inefficient (e.g. to respond to a natural disaster, where some command/control approach may help immediately), but even there, a democratic process can be useful to feed back into the decision making so that the command/control structure does not become close-minded.

Clearly though, a more democratic set of international institutions is one way to try and address inequalities caused by projection of power. Furthermore, understanding our commonalities, not just differences may help solidify humanity, which currently seems on a trajectory of distrust and violence. Sundeep Walsekar, mentioned earlier is worth quoting again to show just one seemingly small, but perhaps significant example:

It is generally believed that much of modern Western thought has its origins in Greek philosophy. In the post-Roman Empire period, many important Greek works were destroyed. It was largely to the credit of the Islamic rulers of the 9th to 12th century that some of these works were recovered, translated and analyzed. The Arab, Persian and Jewish scholars of the time built upon the knowledge they had gathered. Trade with China and India provided access to the knowledge developed in the Eastern societies for centuries. The scholars in the Middle East further created their own ideas and innovations…. In a historical twist, their works were destroyed by Mongol invaders and others but Western universities secured and preserved some of them. Critical and independent inquiry is needed to ascertain to what extent the evolution of knowledge is a result of cross-fertilization of ideas between people from different parts of the world.

Dwelling a bit further on this notion of humanity with more similarities than differences, a common Euro-centric view of world history describes ancient Greek democracy as Western democracy, with ancient Greece as part of that Western/European identity.

Yet, as John Hobson writes in the excellent anti Euro-centric book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), ancient Greece and Rome were not considered as part the “West” until much later; that is, Greece and Rome were part of a whole Middle East center of civilization, in some ways on the edge of it, as more was happening further Eastward.

Western Europe adopted or appropriated ancient Greek achievements in democracy as its own much later when it needed to form a cohesive ideology and identity to battle the then rising Islam and to counter its defeats during the Crusades.

The point here is that democracy is perhaps more universal than acknowledged and that there is a lot of propaganda in how history is told, sometimes highlighting differences amongst people more than the similarities and cross-fertilization of ideas that Waslekar alludes to. This better understanding, which would take a long time to permeate into mainstream society, would contribute to creating a more tolerant, hence eventually a more democratic, society.

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The dangers of apathy in a democracy

Though it is ancient wisdom, Aristotle’s warning against concentrated power and wealth—in which democracy can be perverted into oligarchy—is applicable today. The more excessive this power, the more this oligarchy will tend towards monarchy and rule by individuals not laws:

If the men of property in the state are fewer than in the former case, and own more property, there arises a second form of oligarchy. For the stronger they are, the more power they claim, and having this object in view, they themselves select those of the other classes who are to be admitted to the government; but, not being as yet strong enough to rule without the law, they make the law represent their wishes. When this power is intensified by a further diminution of their numbers and increase of their property, there arises a third and further stage of oligarchy, in which the governing class keep the offices in their own hands, and the law ordains that the son shall succeed the father. When, again, the rulers have great wealth and numerous friends, this sort of family despotism approaches a monarchy; individuals rule and not the law. This is the fourth sort of oligarchy, and is analogous to the last sort of democracy.

All citizens of democracies should watch out for this. Even in the richest countries in the world, if citizens do not continue to hold on to their democratic tendencies, unchecked power and use the platform of democracy to concentrate wealth, power, decision-making, and ultimately, the future of the citizenry.

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How can democracy be safe-guarded?

Some feel that occasionally, a government may need to suspend democracy in order to save it. For example, a rollback on fundamental rights and decision making may expedite decision-making at times of threat and danger.

Governments may hand over power to the military, or more commonly, some in the military may take it on themselves (sometimes with pressure/support from outside) that their country needs saving from their government, and will step in accordingly (a coup).

It is hard to know if such coups were ever with the best intentions in mind, because it seems most coups have resulted in long term military dictatorship. The “stability” sought in such cases appears not to have been to ensure democracy, but perhaps to ensure stability for those with money and power, and ulterior agendas.

In other situations, the US War on Terror being perhaps the most obvious in recent times, the government has decided to roll back power of the people itself, and assume a stronger and more disconnected ruling regime.

Perhaps when a nation faces a direct threat of invasion, or some other pending disaster, a more efficient system of decision-making is needed, but in all these other circumstances to “save” democracy, is a temporary roll back of democracy warranted?

What about strengthening democracy, by increasing it? If a democracy is struggling due to corruption, a faltering economy or various social, political or other economic woes, or a threat of terrorism, is less democracy a cure? Could more democracy be better, by increasing accountability, participation and transparency?

As mentioned earlier, the idea of voting as it is practiced today might be flawed because of the potential for so much misuse, abuse, and people’s lack of access to full information, free from manipulation. Alternatives such as the Evaluative Democracy approach described earlier, and others, need far more mainstream discussion (which is hard to get when so much of the mainstream media and political establishments benefit from the current arrangements).

Just as Aristotle warned of apathy, another bit of ancient wisdom might be appropriate here, summarized by Professor Steve Muhlberger recounting a situation whereby a king of Maghada in ancient India, who wished to destroy the Vajjian confederacy, sent a minister to the Buddha to ask for his advice and whether his attack would be a success or not? In his response, the Buddha said the people of Vajjia could avoid decline if they continued their open and inclusive tradition.

The Buddha saw the virtues necessary for a righteous and prosperous community, whether secular or monastic, as being much the same. Foremost among those virtues was the holding of “full and frequent assemblies.” In this, the Buddha spoke not only for himself, and not only out of his personal view of justice and virtue. He based himself on what may be called the democratic tradition in ancient Indian politics—democratic in that it argued for a wide rather than narrow distribution of political rights, and government by discussion rather than by command and submission.

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