Talk:Constitutional democracy

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• According to the online CIA factbook, there are only 4 constitutional democracies: Ghana, Panama, Sierra Leone, and Suriname. However, there appears to be some debate as to the differenc between a constitutional democracy, and a federal republic, as the United State and France would be more usually considered. I urge my fellow wikipedians to be careful when constructing this article, as there is a lot of disputed info out there. Interestingly enough, although the CIA factbook lists these as the only constitiutional democracies, their names are Republic of Panama and Republic of Ghana. I majored in Political Science, and I'm still confused! PDXblazers 06:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A fair point. I have looked at the CIA World Factbook, and it in fact defines a constitutional democracy as "a form of government in which the sovereign power of the people is spelled out in a governing constitution." [1] This could be taken as meaning that the US, for example, is a constitutional democracy as it's constitution refers to the sovereignty of the people. I suspect that actually what is meant by the definition given is that a the constitution has specific provisions for any decision to be referred to the people so that they could overrule the government (eg by referenda). I think there needs to be more debate on this, in particular I would be interested in any other definitions from reliable sources. Captainj 10:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

• Why is there so much debate about the definition of a Constitutional Democracy? It seems to me to be much simpler; a constitutional democracy is any democracy that has a constitution setting it as such. The term democracy indicates a form of government where all the state's decisions are exercised directly or indirectly by a majority of its citizenry through a fair elective process. A Constitution is a system, often codified in a written document, which establishes the fundamental rules and principles by which an organization is governed. This would mean that a number of nations around the world are constitutional democracies. I personally would consider the United States a constitutional democracy because it has a constitution that lays out the groundwork for a democracy in the methods of electing the president and legislature as would many other countries not listed in the CIA’s four. Maybe there is more to the requirement that the constitution lays out a separation of powers and/or checks and balances but to me that point is moot and should not have any bearing on whether a country is a Constitutional Democracy or not. I have not been able to find any definition with more clout than the others that have been mentioned here but perhaps this is the root of the problem with this article, to much dispute as to what is and isn’t a constitutional democracy. I always like to keep things simple in topics such as this so keeping the definition broad by not specifically requiring checks and balances and/or separation of powers will make it easier to elaborate upon specific examples where they are included (ie: US) but there should also be a clause stating that some organizations more specifically define what is and isn’t a constitutional democracy and that this should always be kept in mind when considering your audience. The audience in Wikipedia’s case is anyone so we need to be sure to include every interpretation of the meaning of a Constitutional Democracy not just the CIA’s. I am sure that what a lot of people think of when a Constitutional Democracy is mentioned is: a government with a constitution setting up a democracy. Specific implementations of Constitutional Democracy are what will make this article good.Aknight 22:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Constitution?

I was just wondering, if the page is about constitutional democracies, why the article doesn't mention constitutions as part of the definition, or even hardly at all. I'm not a poly-sci guy or anything, so maybe I'm just missing it, but something seems wrong here. Billy Shears 20:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

An excellent point. Part of the problem is (as discussed earlier) that no-one seems certain what the definition of a constitutional democracy is. Perhaps the definition from the CIA handbook should be used (see above). However be aware that a constitution may not be the deciding factor. For example many countries have a constitutional monarchy but don't necessarily have what is considered a fully codified constitution (such as the United Kingdom) the term constitutional monarchy is thus referring to a monarchy that has powers on paper, but not much in reality. Captainj 22:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• Point taken but the definition of Constitution given above only states that, “Often codified in a written document,” Not exclusively. In the case of Great Britain the monarch I believe still technically retains the power to veto any bill passed by parliament by not signing it although such a move would be so unpopular today that the extremely limited monarchy today would probably be abolished. I don’t think any monarch has failed to sign a bill in quite a while. So for all intents and purposes Great Britain is a democracy with a ceremonial monarch. I am not sure as to what document specifically sets forth the methods of electing the House of Commons but there does not need to be such a document according to the above definition. I do know that Great Britain clearly elects the House of Commons in an entirely democratic manner and that will not be changing any time in the predictable future. This all suggests that perhaps Great Britain is Constitutional Democracy as well.Aknight 05:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

(An interesting side note) I pulled out a Political Science textbook I have on Comparative Politics and it makes no mention in the glossary of Constitutional Democracy however it clearly states Constitutional Monarchy along with a couple dozen other Democracy or Constitutional related terms. Perhaps it is a more recent term but I would have thought that this would be something covered and well defined a long time ago, apparently not.Aknight 05:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It is of course perfectly possible that a style of government fits more than one definition. Regarding the UK, I don't know if it is a constitutional democracy, as I am still not clear on what that is, although you should note that it does not elect its second chamber. Personally I prefer the term elective dictatorship for the UK, although I doubt that it has any basis in political sceince. If you can't find the term for constitutional democracy then perhaps this article is not sensible and should be deleted? Captainj 10:57, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Democracy

This page makes a common mistake in dealing with the issue of a "democracy." In the first line, it defines a "constitutional democracy" in such a way as to preclude a system such as used by the United Kingdom. But a "monarchy" and a "democracy" are not inherently mutually exclusive concepts. "Republic" and "democracy" are not the same thing, and should not be confused (source of authority versus method of decision-making).

If we are going to limit use of the term "democracy" to countries which allow for national referenda, that should be stated in the first line of the article. If we are talking about "democracy" as meaning a country that allows for elections by the general populace, then one has to include the type of government practiced by the United Kingdom, and others (Canada, e.g.). In any event, there is absolutely no reason that a "constitutional democracy" requires and American-type "separation of powers."

But a country could be a democracy and not a constitutional democracy. For example the UK is a constitutional monarchy which technically is a type of democracy as you pointed. Does that mean that the UK is a constitutional democracy? I don't know. We need more sources as to the definition of a constitutional democracy (see above). Captainj 09:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I'm proposing that constitutional republic and republican democracy be merged and redirected to this article, which would be upgraded to make any necessary distinctions between "republics" and "non-republics". It would appear that these are variants, overlaps, or large subsets of a single group, all deriving from liberal democracy. Neither merge candidate makes any claim to a differentiation from liberal democracy - most of the text seems to be aimed at showing differences with what might be termed "non-constitutional democracy", and this is shared with constitutional democracy (actually from liberal democracy). So far, there appears to be nothing in the existing articles that would contradict the assumption that "a constitutional republic/republican democracy is a constitutional democracy that is a republic".

There seems to be an open question above as to whether the phrase "constitutional democracy" might include a certain subset of the constitutional democracy. A couple of articles use the term "constitutional democratic monarchy" to indicate those constitutional monarchies that are also liberal democracies (such as Great Britain). This subset would seem to be a candidate for inclusion in "constitutional democracy", in which case the term would effectively be equivalent to liberal democracy.

In any case, my main concern is that there not be multiple independent articles covering much the same ground, not referring to each other and providing missing, incomplete or contradictory coverage of the shared sources (republic, liberal democracy, etc.). - David Oberst 21:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC) David Oberst 21:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe the main problem with the articles is that there weren't enough Political Science/Government majors involved in writing them - and that they simply got their terms confused. A constitutional republic is VERY different from a republican democracy (and from a liberal democracy, as I mentioned earlier in an AfD discussion). Further, I'm not convinced that there is such thing as a republican democracy - rather that such is an unfortunate contradiction in terms. A merger with republican democracy would be okay - it seems to be serving as an (incorrect) disambig. page of sorts and can be gotten rid of. But a merger of the others would be unthinkable - if you're going to merge at all, you should merge the republic into the article about republics and the democracy into the article about democracies. --Tim4christ17 16:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think the problem is more that people are trying to set up phrases as mutually exclusive categories. There is also the problem of whether people mean something different by, say, "constitutional democracy is..." as opposed to "Country X is a constitutional democracy. You'll notice that all the articles give (or gave) the United States as an example. Thus, "The United States is a constitutional democracy" and "The United States is a constitutional republic", or even "Constitutional democracy is practiced throughout the EU" would all be "valid" and non-contradictory, although of course they may not completely describe the political system of the country or the focus of the speaker. There seems to be a strain of usage that goes "The United States is not a democracy", in the sense that it is not an Athenian/pure/direct democracy, but while this may be true to that extent, it doesn't preclude a term such as "constitutional democracy", which is something different.

When you say a "constitutional republic is VERY different from...a liberal democracy", if you mean that as "The United States is a constitutional republic, but not a liberal democracy", then I don't think that is correct. "Liberal democracy", as far as I know, is a fairly well defined term in political science, and the United States, like all western countries, falls squarely into the mix. Some are republics, some are not, but all share the core defining characteristics. Since it is these that the current constitutional republic article emphasizes ("constitution", anti-mobocracy, "rule of law", etc) concentrates on, and since they derive from "liberal democracy" rather than "republic", this is why I believe constitutional republic should be treated together with constitutional democracy. While a separate article could be created, it would spend much of its time duplicating the common "liberal/constitutional democracy" inheritance, and right now I can't see anything in the current article that would contradict "a constitutional republic is a constitutional democracy that is a republic", unless the constitutional democracy article is first invalidated. - David Oberst 17:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Canada is a constitutional democracy, according to that MP I worked with. So what is an example of constitutional republic? is Congo a Constitutional republic? And a Republican democracy? Is the United Stated a republican democracy? Keep it simple silly! --CyclePat 22:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

And I've responded to a post that is more than 5 months old. --CyclePat 17:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)